Week Eleven: The American Revolution and Harold

Week eleven is here!  It's a bit miraculous to think it is already the 11th week of school!  With Halloween approaching more bats and pumpkins and fall themed activities are starting to pop up.  Halloween isn't discussed much in classes because of respect for cultural diversity, but many things about fall and spooky creatures can be fun to include in lessons without actually talking about Halloween.

So this week 3rd graders watched a Magic School Bus about bats and then had check out time. 

Fourth ad Fifth graders are about to start their classroom unit on the American Revolution so Mrs. Jennings helped build a foundation for this learning with an introduction to the famous figures associated with this historical event.  Each student was passed a biography of a famous person, asked to read the biography and pull two important facts they learned.  Then one at a time Mrs. Jennings would ask students to tell the class what they had learned, she would type their response on the smart board.  Once all the famous figures were discussed they would use this information to fill out a bingo board and play the American Revolutionary bingo board.  Pulling facts from text is such an important standard and this lesson is wonderful at reinforcing this skill. 

Kindergartners heard Harold and the Purple Crayon, then watched a Harold video.  We also sang Flip Flap Jack and helped them put magnetic pieces on the board to build Flip Flap Jack- a man made of food!  I had never heard this song but I really enjoyed it.  An interesting developmental moment that Mrs. Jennings and I noticed was the difference between pre-school and kindergartners in respect to places felt or magnetic pieces on the board.  Pre-school kids are not concerned with where their pieces land on the board, however kindergartners are very aware of where pieces should go and want to make sure they have placed them just so.  

More Grimm fairy tales for the second graders as this week we heard The Brave Little Tailor.  We listened to the tale from our big Grimm's fairy tales book and then watched an animated version.  The version we watched was from Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simsala_Grimm.  Two characters Yo-Yo and Doc. Croc fly on their magic book through many fairy tales helping the characters succeed.  Most of the time the animated version is similar to the print version, however this time they were quite different.  In the print version the King did not want the tailor to marry his daughter for fear he was an evil monster.  In the animated tale the tailor did not boast or try to deceive the King about what he had done, instead the evil villain was another knight who wanted to marry the King's daughter.

Reading aloud is something I love to do but struggled with when reading from a text heavy book such as the Grimm's Fairy tales.  I often found myself leaving the page and recalling the story the best I could to tell the students.  I messed up with the ending of Hansel and Gretel so for the Valiant Tailor I wanted to try and read the text more accurately from the book.  It was tough.  I had to stop twice because I had lost my place and apologize to students.  Thankfully they were great about the issues and listened very well!  Still, I highly recommend reading the original text aloud to students, but perhaps photocopy and enlarge the pages you need prior to teaching the lesson.  This way the print is larger and might help you keep track of your place.  

CEBS Dispositions:

Values diversity - Willingly works with others from different ability, race, gender, or ethnic groups. Welcomes feedback and interaction with others. Listens carefully to others and respects the views of those perceived as different from self.

Values collaboration. Actively seeks out and incorporates ideas of others. Takes leadership in working with others to improve the overall environment. Regularly share information and ideas.

EPSB Code of Ethics:

Week Nine and Ten: Grimm's Fairytales and SPOKcon

I'm grouping weeks nine and ten together because of holidays and conferences these weeks ended up just being two days- Thursday 8th and 15th and Friday the 16th.  These were two exciting days! 

We started Grimm's fairytales with the older graders, reading the 6 Swans and the first Thursday and Rumplestiltskin on the second  After reading the story aloud to the class, we watched an animated version of the story.  After the video I asked students to tell me differences they saw between the written version of the story and the animated video.  The 6 Swans was not familiar to me before this class.  It was exciting to read it aloud to students and learn of it as they were hearing it for the first time as well.  Our goal was to also read Hansel and Gretel on the 16th but because of testing we were only able to read the story and watch the movie with one class.

During these days we also taught about the water cycle.  The class listened All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon. 

After hearing the story read aloud volunteers helped demonstrate how water evaporates and forms clouds, when the clouds can no longer hold water it falls back to Earth as some form of precipitation.  This was demonstrated with cotton balls!  One volunteer was the cloud and the other acted as evaporation, picking the cotton balls up from the ground and placing them in the 'clouds' hands.  When the volunteer student could no longer hold more cotton balls they fell from her hands acting as precipitation!

  

 On Monday and Tuesday October 12th and 13th I had the privilege of attending a local conference on summer programming and outreach, called SPOKcon.  I heard speakers from all over Kentucky discuss programming and outreach they were able to offer their communities even when they had small to no budgets. 

I always find conferences extremely beneficial for networking and inspiration.  At this conference I learned some great program ideas for group art projects with the community.

CEBS Dispositions:

Values collaboration. Actively seeks out and incorporates ideas of others. Takes leadership in working with others to improve the overall environment. Regularly share information and ideas.

EPSB Code of Ethics:

Values professionalism: Professional development and involvement. References and makes use of professional organizations or publications. Willingly participates in professional activities or events that promote professional development.

       

Week Eight: Non fiction search and Pete the Cat!

This week in the library flew by!  This week student's are becoming more familiar with the library and how to locate materials on their own.  Mrs. Jennings has created note cards with call numbers and asked students to locate the book which matches the call number.  Students are assessed by presenting the note card and book to myself or Mrs. Jennings to verify call numbers.  Students really seem to enjoy this game and I like to see students get excited to find items.  We do this game with 4th, 5th, and 3rd grade classes.

It was interesting and actually a bit frustrating.  I came face to face with the Fred Jones' 'the helpless hand raiser.'  I would start to help in big general terms, for example if they asked where 941.2 was I'd say 'the 900s should be on the last shelves of the non fiction.'  But some of them would come back five, ten minutes later with the same card saying they were still not able to locate the item.  It was definitely a test of patience.  Whether the student wasn't trying, was legitimately struggling, or just didn't want to try was hard to distinguish.  I want every student to succeed so I helped as best as I could, often times going through title by title with a student helping them understand how to search for a Dewey Decimal number.  Fred Jones would say to help the student and move along quickly so that you are not lingering and presenting them with an opportunity to continue to ask for help.

Some students had no problem locating materials, zipping through many index cards before the time was over.

Eric Litwin, author of the wildly popular Pete the Cat books was the topic of the 1st graders as they continued on their author study.  We read Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons and then watched a quick version of the story found online.

CEBS Dispositions:

Values diversity - Willingly works with others from different ability, race, gender, or ethnic groups. Welcomes feedback and interaction with others. Listens carefully to others and respects the views of those perceived as different from self.