Nature Walk: Living and Non Living

This term, we are very excited to be embarking on a new topic.  We are going to explore living things.  But, we feel very strongly that students learn best by doing and when their learning is interactive and hands on.    We want our kids to guide their own learning.  We will not be standing at the front of the class spouting facts about different living things.  Instead the kids and their wonders will guide us.  But, before we get started we want to check for understanding and establish some background knowledge.  First order of business, a nature walk.

Armed with clipboards, magnifying glasses and pencils we headed outside.  The kids were asked to to write down everything they noticed.  We walked around the school examining trees, litter, rocks, spider webs and playground equipment.

Once inside, we sat in a sharing circle and each student shared one thing from their list.  As they shared from their list I wrote down what they shared on recipe cards.  Now we had 22 different objects from outside.  Next, we played a game where I showed a card and they had to decide whether the item was living or non- living.  We classified (a grade one process of science) our items and created a two column chart on the chalk board using masking tape.

There was a lot of great discussion and big thinking about how to tell whether an object is living or non- living.  Part way through our discussion we realized we needed to add a new column.  We decided to call this category, "used to be living" in order to provide a list for leaves that had fallen to the ground and dead spiders.

After our discussion, the students were asked to go back and work in their science notebooks.  I wanted them to classify the objects on their personal lists and record their classification in their notebooks.

This is a great opportunity to see the children's thinking skills in action.  How will they classify their own lists and how will they represent their learning?  Will they use a t-chart, a labelled diagram or a web.  These are all different tools that the students have been exposed to throughout the year from their peers and modeled by their teachers.  This open ended type of activity allows every child to succeed and show what they know.

This lesson leads nicely into our next lesson, what living things need to survive?  To be continued....

If. . .

We have been getting our students ready to begin literature circles.  Before starting, we wanted to make sure that the children would be able to engage in meaningful chats with their peers around the different books they were reading (I'm sure Literature Circles will be a future post so stay tuned!).  We have spent about a month engaged in activities around how good readers make deep connections, ask questions and make inferences.  One of the activities was from Adrienne Gear's book, Reading Power.  Basically, I read the book If. . . by Sarah Perry.  After reading and discussing the book with the students, they got with a partner and were given a photocopied page from the book.  They had to work together and record different questions they had.  It was amazing to hear some of their thoughtful, deep wonders.

That night, I went home and showed the book to my son.  He then proudly created his own mini If  Book. (Yes, I know, the teacher in me never stops!  For the record, I showed him the book and he went off and created the book on his own).  It got me thinking, writing their own If stories would make a wonderful Thinking Outside the Box Challenge.  Wow, once again Division 10 amazed me with their creativity and their ability to be such great thinker!

If carpets were magic

If words could talk

If dogs could fly

If magnets weren't magnetic

If guitars can play themselves

If balls were tears

If sumos could fly

If numbers could run

If babies grew on trees

That would put a smile on any teachers face!!!!  I promise I didn't pay her anything for that one!

If this is the end dream up more.

Reading is a Laughing Matter

The other day, we were busy publishing our first poems for our Poetry Anthologies.  As the children finished, they went to the carpet, chose a book and could read alone or with a friend.  I was pretty much preoccupied with helping the publishers finish their first poems when I looked over at the carpet and just had to stop, smile and grab the camera.  I'm not sure if we have ever mentioned this before but our class LOVES books.  They love to be read to, they love reading on their own and they love sharing books with friends.  It is often a mad dash to the front of the classroom where many of the new favourite books are stored.  Sometimes children bring in their favourite stories to share with the class.  After a recent trip to the public library, one of the students had brought in 8 joke books he had found.  They quickly became very popular.  Anyways, as I looked over at the carpet, it was exciting to see the children just loving books.  They were sitting in little groups giggling and enjoying literature.  I must admit most of the jokes were pretty corny, but there they were, a bunch of six and seven year olds, totally focused on reading.  Having children develop a love for literacy and find reading a pleasurable way to spend a morning is pretty special.  Joke books are definitely on my wish list.  What a great literacy center or different genre for the children to explore.

Thanks L for bringing in the books.  We enjoyed the laughs while practicing our reading!

Thinking Outside the Box: Make a Board Game

As an introduction to this task, I asked the students what board games they liked to play.  I chose a few games that many kids were familiar with, such as Candyland and Snakes and Ladders and we talked about the rules for these board games.

I unpacked a whole bunch of cereal boxes, cracker boxes and cardboard that I brought from home and told the kids they were going to create their own board games.  The only criteria, their game could have no more than three rules.

Each student had to complete a planning sheet before beginning to build the game including the name of the game, the rules and materials needed.

The part that the kids enjoyed the most, was teaching their game to others.  We spent some time, once the games were all completed trying out the games.  The inventor of the game took the role of the teacher and taught the other participants how to play the game.

A new version of Snakes and Ladders called Swim to 100.

Shake the apples board game.

A soccer game for two people.

A fishing game.

An elaborate game modeled after the board game, Mouse Trap.

This game was a board game version of the solitaire game called Mine Sweeper.