Ap. 17 – Ap. 21
- MON: Easter Monday
- TUE: Nicholas Oldland Author Study
- (2) langauge arts unit plan Lesson 2 author study
- Reflection & Ways to Improve:
- An emphasis on this lesson was placed to use non violent ways to help the Bear character in the book; despite this discussion I still had one student draw a picture of Bear shooting the man to stop him from chopping down a tree
- There were a mixture of ideas including telling the man to stop, scaring the man away, having the man and bear become friends, and talking to the bear
- This was the first time I had stopped a book before finishing it and having them complete a task, however it went better than I thought; some students did not finish their pictures in the time provided (I had told them when they had 8 minutes left and told them the time the clock would show when we were clean up and meet again) however those students took the time they needed to finish and then joined us at the carpet to finish the story
- As a group we counted how many times we saw the little red bird in the story after we looked at each book last week (they’re were ten)
- Since we have been working on feedback during story workshop I asked the class if they had any feedback or could tell me their favorite parts – some participated and others agreed with the comments made
- Book of Letters Yy
- Yy Book of Letters
- Reflection & Ways to Improve:
- This lesson has become very routine for the students and due to this some are still wiggly during the video and short lesson before
- The students had a fun laugh since one of the Y words we had was Yoda
- I’ve noticed with these lessons that many have been rushing through it to get to their free time but since the second week I have begun erasing some letters and having them redo them if they are too messy (for example during Uu week some students had written their Uu’s so they looked like V’s). This week many students struggled with making their lower case Y’s go under the line. I’m starting to notice that because I have been doing this for students many have started to take their time with the letters to avoid having to rewrite them.
- WED: Seek Activity
- I am now taking the students and picking them up from PHE and music class to work on transitions and management
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A student excitedly bringing the character back to his teams cup
- The activity I did after music today required quite a bit of prep. After school the day before I counted how many sorting animals I had (one math tub we have in the classroom is 5 cups of different corresponding colored small plastic animals) and that night I made 5 groups made up of the students I assumed would be at school the following day. The following day while my class was in music I adjusted my teams to match attendance, wrote their names in the color of the team they were on on the whiteboard, set up colored mats to group them on the carpet, and hid two characters for each student to find.
- Usually students are wiggly after music because they have to sit most of the time but today they listened attentively – I’m assuming this was in part due to the tone in my voice and that students were interested in the activity
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Students searching the house corner
- Most students enjoyed the activity and were quickly excited to find the characters and place them in the cups left on the carpet. This activity made apparent that some students who do not acquire success easily start to express their displeasure about the activity. It was only after a student from another team showed a character to a student who was complaining that he became interested and actually excited to do the activity.
- There were no rewards once a team was finished (they were just told to wash their hands for snack) and I did not mention which team completed the search first, last, or in between. I was happy to hear that during their snack students didn’t mention what place they came in but just expressed their enjoyment of the activity.
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In this photo you can see the student on the right expressing joy in finding a character for her team.
- THURS: Story Workshop
- This weeks story workshop was much more successful as students have had some practice with the “First, Next, Last” worksheets
- Although these worksheets are short and to the point I notice some students have more to their stories they want to include. However, since the practice is focused on them writing more space would require more time and could discourage some students form trying to write.
- Another focus of this lesson was also for students to explore the different rooms (many often stay in our classroom) to see the different materials available. Due to this, it was interesting to see the different stories students created when they interacted with different materials
- Math – Introducing Width
- (W4) Math Measurement – Lesson 5N Width
- Shown Above: Students creating thick/wide and thin/narrow objects with different materials
- Reflection & Ways to Improve:
- Most students heard the instructions but a few (3) used each material but only made a thick or thin – I sent these students back to create the missing half after discussing what was missing using worksheets that had already been handed in
- I should have asked students to label their pictures since I wrote the vocabulary on the board rather than labeling the first one with them and then sending them away to finish labeling the other two – however some students did label theirs after hearing/seeing me send classmates away to finish
- Most students stuck with the three materials I had set up to make thick and thin items rather than stray to use other materials (I said they could use something else if they thought they could make a thick and thin object with it)
- I modeled using the geoboards to show another way to make a thick and thin object and simply left them on the carpet as another station, but not many students used these. I know the students have not had much experience with the geoboards, which is why I chose to include them in my modelling, yet lately they have been taking the elastics out during play times. I considered this as them expressing some interest in this math tub item and did notice later that students were using the geoboards properly during the end of the day play time. Thus, even if they did not use the geoboards during my math lesson I was happy to see some utilizing them on their own time.
- FRI: Writing Book – How to Help Our Planet (Earth Day Focus)
- (W4) Writing Book Lesson Earth Day
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“I pick up garbage.”
“I water the cherries.”
- Reflection & Ways to Improve:
- I didn’t create the brainstorm chart but with the book and student suggestions there were a good amount of examples for the students to utilize (one I hadn’t thought of was spring cleaning: a student had recently done this with her mom and said they had recycled her old bike by giving it to her cousin)
- I also read a different book since the book I wanted to use, despite being in online I could not find it in the library, so I read Big Earth, Little Me by Thom Wiley instead. This book was a success as students enjoyed the flip features of some pages.
- I connected this topic to nature school and their playground my asking if it would be nice if these places were covered with garbage – to which they said no
- Only one student drew a picture which was off topic but he connected it back to the topic when I was questioning him about the picture
- One girl was struggling to think of an idea so I brought her the book I read prior to their individual work which she used an idea from; two girls near by used the book to copy a sentence out of for their writing book (in hindsight I should have ensured that they understood the sentence they had written)
- Earlier in the week I had gone to the school library and found a couple more books related to helping the environment which I placed on the ledge for students to view once they had completed their writing – this was a success as every book I had taken out was being looked at by a student and one even returned to them as he waited to go outside for recess
- Afternoon Organization
- After lunch the kindergarten community was being used for Welcome to Kindergarten, which meant our students had to be elsewhere. Part of the time was taken up by a half hour performance and the rest of the day was spent outside playing in the sunshine.
- I had arranged bubble mixture and pipe cleaners for the students to blow bubbles outside which was a huge success. A couple of grade one students even began to blow bubbles.
- This was fun for the students especially once they began to make multiple holes on one bubble wand or twisted multiple pipe cleaners together to create bigger bubbles. I was worried the wind might deter some students but many persevered until they had created several successful bubbles.
- It was a fun afternoon and many enjoyed playing tag, blowing bubbles, playing on the playground, and using various equipment.
Week Four Reflection