Diversity Detectives

As a class we walked to Little Lake Park with ipads and clipboards in hand. Our task was to look  for signs of a variety of plants, animals, and anything that may harm the habitats. As we moved through the various habitats within the park, students found many interesting signs and rich discussions were had using vocabulary we’ve been learning about in the classroom such as habitat, consumer, producer, affect, and species.

Students examined their written and photo data and created a slide to highlight their findings. They presented their slides to the class adding more explanation.

 

Word Study Connected to Story-Telling

During Writer’s Workshop we have been working on organizing ideas and connecting them together. We’ve also been working on adding voice to our writing, using interesting words and phrases.

So today we worked collaboratively to write a story using the students’ word study words.  First students chose one of their weekly words and kept it a secret. They all joined the circle and each student had a turn to add a sentence or two to the story, being sure to include their secret word.  Students decided to include ideas from our Global Read Aloud project as well!

Here’s our first collaborative story:

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Learning Buddies

We are so fortunate to be able to engage in a learning buddies project this year. We have partnered up with the grade 5 class.  Once a week we get together to engage in reading, games, and cooperative play.  The grade 5’s have the opportunity to build their leadership skills as they tutor the K’s and the K’s benefit from one-on-one learning. The amount of talk and smiles that we have observed tell us that this is a successful project!

Thank-you so much, grade 5’s for going on this learning adventure with us!

 

Our Classroom Farm

After much research, inquiry, building and creating we have engineered a classroom farm!

It all started with the delivery of the eggs.  Thank-you to a student’s family for donating the incubator and eggs! We are eagerly awaiting the hatching sometime next week!

 

Then we talked about things we knew about farms – some students knew a lot as we do have some farming families in our class. Many students had questions, especially when it came to animals. So we moved into some inquiry projects around farm animals.  Students broke into small groups, did some research with books and videos, recorded their thinking and learning on a poster, and then presented it all to the class. Reading, writing, oral, and cooperative skills were all at work!

 

Then the engineers got to work building a barn, a silo, a farmhouse, a pasture, and a pen for the pigs and cows complete with a mud puddle! The students created animals for the farm including chicks, horses, cows, and pigs. They even managed to turn 2 big boxes into tractors!

Now, we’re all having fun playing in our classroom farm! Students are building relationships and social skills as they engage in the dramatic play. What a fun way to celebrate all of the work we engaged in with this farm inquiry!

 

A Look At Literacy Centres This Week

Lots of exploration and learning is happening in our Literacy Centres this week!

A Rainbow World

This week we spent a lot of time exploring the concept of diversity and thinking about how we can work and play together to make others feel good.  We read the book: The World Made a Rainbow.  The students realized that the colours came together to create something that made people smile, even when we couldn’t spend time together.


We then listened to and sang the song, “A Rainbow World”  This song was a great way to introduce the idea that we all look different but when we come together we can be something great-just like a rainbow! Here is a video of another group of students performing the song!

Students all made a rainbow to display in our class. They used cutting and gluing skills.

Students used their drawing and writing skills to create a mural about working and playing together.

Then, students explored the concept of diversity further as they played with dolls representing children around the world!

With two more stories we made self-to-text and text-to-text connections, further exploring the idea of celebrating our differences and how we become something amazing when we come together!


 

It was time to do some writing! Students participated in a sharing circle, “What makes you special?” The students helped me to write some ideas to complete the sentence, “I am special because…” and then they got to work with independent writing.

It all came together with one bulletin board, “Each one of us is UNIQUE, but when we get TOGETHER the picture is COMPLETE!

 

The Pizza Parlor!

The students had a lot of fun with this project! We started out brainstorming ideas of what we would need to create a pizza parlor in our classroom.  Students came up with ideas for pizza toppings, types of pizza, restaurant names, menus, and jobs.  The construction began!

 

We read a lot of pizza themed books along the way. One of our favourites was, “Every night is Pizza Night!” Not only did it spark discussions about pizza, we talked about a lot of new foods too!

Once the construction was over the play began.  Students trained to be chefs, waiters, hosts, and customers.  Students learned a lot about manners, questioning, organizing, and drama skills.  A lot of fun learning was had by all!

 

Literacy Centres

Here are a few of the literacy-based centres that students are working on!

I’ll Meet You At The Top Of The Coconut Tree!

We have spent some time reading the book, “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”.  First we read it several times as students talked about the sequence of events and identified the letters. Many students made some text to self connections as well!

Then, we  brought out the shakers and added a beat to the story.  You could try it with your child as well.  The video below has the story read with a rhythm. Try tapping, clapping, or shaking as you listen.  You can even make your own shakers with empty kinder eggs filled with rice.

A visual arts provocation was set out for students to design their own coconut tree!

Amazing Puppeteers!

This week we have transformed our drama centre into a puppet theatre!

Through this adventure students are developing pre-writing skills (brainstorming and organizing ideas). They are using pictures and words to create scripts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next comes the collaboration as students work together to  choose appropriate puppets and practise their play. Students are developing oral language skills, problem-solving, and leadership.

Students have presented 2 puppet shows to the class so far with great success!  A question and answer session as well as sharing positive comments rounded up the experience. We’re looking forward to many more over the next couple of weeks!