Over the past couple of weeks we have been working on a media project involving the concept of kindness. Students first attended a musical presentation by Erroll Lee in which the concept of kindness to others and the environment was the focus.
Then, we explored the concept of a meme. Students used Adobe Spark to use images and words to present a message of kindness. Below are some of the finished projects.
Snow is in the air and we are all enjoying a variety of fun activities outside! One of my favourite activities served as the inspiration behind this art project. This project comes from an exceptional art website: www.deepspacesparkle.com. Thank-you to the creator of this website for helping me to guide my students’ learning!
A Perfect Day – Snow Angels
As we move through our narrative writing unit we are “amping” up our writing skills, thinking about how to show emotions rather than simply tell the reader what a character is feeling.
I told the students a story about how my daughter was excited to be going on vacation. I told the class that Mary didn’t tell me she was excited, I just knew. I then asked them to tell me how I knew. They came up with a great list of ideas that, really, are sentences that “show” Mary’s feelings.
The students all agreed that these sentences were much more interesting than, “Mary was excited.”
Next, students tried it out themselves. They looked at a picture of an angry boy and wrote sentences that “showed” how he was feeling. We came together, shared ideas and recorded them as an anchor chart.
The next day, students worked with a partner to write “show” sentences on chart paper. They were instructed to keep their emotion a secret. When they came together to share their writing, the rest of the class tried to guess the emotion after reading all of the sentences. Some were easier than others. Students discovered that action sentences can show emotions, too! Students then had a chance to add more ideas to all of the charts. We’ll keep these charts handy for reference as students begin drafting their own narratives!
Over the past two days we have been talking about sorting data. First, students gathered some data – classroom objects. Then, students reviewed the concept of attributes and examined their data to determine categories that could be made.
They discovered that in order to use a venn diagram effectively they had to use two different attributes to sort the data. They also discovered that some data may need to be placed outside of the venn diagram.
Next, students moved into pairs and worked with a set of food cards to determine categories and sort in different ways.
We consolidated our learning with a whole group activity in which students drew their own fish, gathered to discuss the attributes observed and sort the fish in different ways on a large venn diagram. Students made many observations and asked questions as the shape of the data changed as we changed our sorting categories. They used their math vocabulary to talk about the data, making comparisons.