Point of View

This morning we read No David! by David Shannon AGAIN! But, this time we read it for a different purpose. As part of the Grade 1 Language/Reading Ontario curriculum, students are required to identify who is speaking in an oral text, as well as the point of view expressed by the speaker. In order to gain exposure and practice in this area, I felt it necessary to begin by using a familiar text. 

We talked about what point of view means, whose voice is heard in the text, whose voice is not heard, and how the story would be different if another character (David) was telling it. It was absolutely amazing to see and hear how well the students comprehended these concepts. I still can't believe their work after just one lesson!

I had students work in pairs to write out the story from David's perspective. What would he say if his voice was heard? What they came up with was awesome!

For the final pages of the story, each child received as many post-its as they needed to write what David would be saying. They had a lot to say! Check out the thinking and learning going on here! Wow!

This is the rubric that I will be using, while studying point of view, to assess my students.

After re-writing the story from David's point of view, we brainstormed a list of interview questions for David. Here is our list.

I then gave students the opportunity to sit in the HOT SEAT! I chose different students to become David. They wore this crazy hat/headband and had the chance to answer the interview questions as David! They did such a fabulous job! The laughter in the room was priceless! I LOVE this age. These kids are fabulous!

Since we didn't have enough time to give everyone a chance to be in the HOT SEAT, I cut out speech bubbles and sent children off to work in pairs again. They all got a chance to be David and answered questions from his perspective. They LOVED this!

This afternoon, the children had a chance to create their own communities. This is the checklist they were all given. They were provided with a model of what was expected, and then they were required to create their own using materials provided. They enjoyed this.

Such great artists!

Our reading buddies came for a visit today! Instead of reading in pairs, we decided to give the grade ones a chance to work with their grade five buddies on an important task. As part of our community unit, students are required to make models and read maps of familiar areas, as well as use appropriate vocabulary to communicate and describe locations of places and objects. Pictured below, Ms. Huot is giving all of the students instructions on how to create simple, effective directions to a "secret location" in the school. The children then were given the chance to find Ms. Huot's secret location, and then write their own. Once each reading buddy group wrote out their directions, another group had to go and find their secret location in the school! Fun!!!

Our next session with our reading buddies will involve them mapping out their route on a floor plan of our school.

I just love grade 1! It is the most amazing, rewarding grade I have ever taught. I am cherishing all these special moments and am so glad that I am able to share these memories with all of you! Thanks for reading.

On another note, my son's front tooth is finally growing in! He was very excited to see a little bit of white peeking out of his gums! He's almost 7 (in two weeks) and he has an adult front tooth! That's crazy!

Good Night!

~Amanda

Tying up loose ends!

As promised in my last post, I have a few pics I'd like to share.

Friday was a BUSY day! Take a peek at all our great learning! First up! David Goes to School by David Shannon. I mentioned that I would take a pic of the chart that I created for inferring with this book. Well, here is a sample. Each child had a different pic from the book, and they had to complete the chart independently. The T-chart said
I think... I infer                I know this because (evidence and schema) ....

Here is the rubric I used to assess the students in their inferring abilities.

Check out these adorable David faces! 

My sample

Hallway display

Hallway display. Love the David border!

We have been working on The Local Community, as part of our Social Studies curriculum. The unit is coming to an end so we decided to give students the opportunity to solidify their learning through play at a variety of learning centres. The first activity below is of the students mapping their bedrooms. They were asked to map out, on graph paper, a bird's eye view of their bedroom. Parents were so supportive and assisted their child with this task at home. The students brought in their work and used this to create a model of their bedrooms, using plasticine. Fun! Take a peek at the great work!

Wow!

Thanks so much to Farm Boy for providing us with the styrofoam trays! 

Here are a few of the other centres that the students participated in. They enjoyed this learning period so much!

Students designed their own community by placing the items provided (roads, vehicles, people, buildings, etc) in appropriate places. 

Town Mouse and Country Mouse

Where in the community? (board game)

Finally, as a fun finale to our unit on fractions, students followed a recipe and created their very own personal pizzas! We provided the students with one whole wheat english muffins, tomato sauce and cheese. Students were invited to bring in additional toppings for themselves if they wanted something extra!

Before we ate our pizzas, we discussed ways that we could slice the pizza in order to feed two, three or four people. It was decided that the pizza would be too small to feed three or four, but you could definitely share it with one other person by cutting it down the centre - in half! Nice!

They were actually quite delicious! I ate 2!

Friday was a super day! Food always makes things a bit more exciting!

On another note, students, parents and teachers from the area were invited to participate in a local radio station contest. They were asked to send in a pic of the class dressed up in Ottawa Senators gear. Well, Mme. Bowler entered the contest with her Grade 4 homeroom students. Here is what their backdrop for the picture looked like!

Now, imagine 20+ students and 2 teachers dressed in Sens gear, faces painted black and red, chanting "Go Sens Go!"

Of course they won!!!! Yay!

FABULOUS! Congrats Grade 4!

Finally, I decided to give a fishtail braid another whirl today. Thanks to Lauren Conrad's youtube tutorial, I was successful! It's so much fun trying new things, and finally being able to do it! Super easy!

Hoping your weekend is fabulous so far! Mine is!

 ~ Amanda

More Pizza Pizzaz!

Inferring... continued
This morning, the children were excited to get back into inferring! I gave each group of two another page from the story, No David! by David McPhail. The children were required to fill out a chart just as they did yesterday. After sharing all their inferences with the class, I read the book aloud to them. They just thought it was hysterical, especially the part when David is running down the street naked! They had so much to say about that pic! I am so impressed by their inferring abilities! Wow!

Because I think they are ready, the students will be inferring independently tomorrow. I am going to start by showing them the book, David Goes to School. Instead of David's mother saying, "No!", his teacher is the one speaking. To get ready, I minimized all of the pictures from the book and pasted each one of them onto large ledger-sized paper that has the same chart on it (I infer/I think... and I know this because...) Each student will receive their own page with a different picture from the text, and will be required to fill it out. I created an Inferring Rubric in order to assess their learning. I had hoped to upload it here, but have been unsuccessful. For the past hour, I have been trying to figure out how to attach a word and pdf file to this blog, but I can't seem to figure out how. So, I won't be able to show you the charts or rubric that I made... however, I promise to take pictures. If I can figure out how to attach them so that you can download and print or save for yourself, I will. Sorry! Bummer!

Math Scrapbooks and Pizza Fractions!
As mentioned in a previous post, my student teacher prepared Math scrapbooks for the students. This is a very simple concept and is working quite nicely. The students received a picture of the pizzas that they discussed yesterday with my student teacher. They were required to write the fraction for each pizza and then explain what they have learned so far about fractions. Some of them were stuck, but many of them were able to explain their thinking - or at least something about fractions that they didn't know before.

Once the students were finished with their scrapbook entries, they were given the opportunity to visit a Math centre. Since we have been working for the past month on mass, capacity, greater than and less than, as well as fraction concepts, these were the types of centres made available to the children. My absolute favourite is the first one below.

Pizza Math - my student teacher visited Gabriel's Pizzeria and they graciously donated six small boxes to our classroom! Thank you Gabriel's! My coop students prepared six different pizzas, with different toppings. They were created so beautifully! I am so thankful for all of the help! 

All of the pizzas were divided in either halves, quarters, thirds or eights! The children had a lovely worksheet, created by Ms. Huot, my student teacher, to keep them on-track. Instead of photocopying one for each child, we laminated five and used dry-erase markers so that they could be re-used. The instructions were to count the slices in each box, determine the fraction of slices that have pepperoni, mushrooms, olives and green peppers. They did a fabulous job!

Children filled this out while they visited this center.
They were required to show their completed copy when they finished.

What is the fraction of slices that has pepperoni? What is the fraction of slices that has olives?

Don't these look great?

 The sixth box gave children the opportunity to create their own pizza with toppings. When they finished creating their pizza masterpiece, they had to write the fraction of slices that had each of the toppings.

An opportunity for creativity. Students take ownership when they are involved in the "making."

Smart Board - Another centre that was available was the Smart Board. Thank goodness for Smart Exchange. We find lots of great gems on that site!

Mass - The next center was where the children could use a variety of materials to balance two different objects. They had to draw pictures of the objects they used and then write about their findings.

Students busy at work!

Mass worksheet

Capacity - The children had the opportunity to work with four different containers. They were required to predict how many scoops of beans it would take to fill each container and then test their predictions. When they finished writing down their findings, they had to compare the capacity of each of the containers and order them from greatest to least.

This was a bit messy, but the children enjoyed it!

Greater Than/Less Than - Finally, we had a greater than and less than centre. Here is a pic of just a portion of this centre. Not too exciting. The part missing is a much more exciting, with crocodiles and numbers! Maybe I will have a chance to post another time... didn't get a pic!

Greater than/Less than

Garbage Audit = GROSSE!
Our school was involved in a garbage/recycling audit yesterday! The grade 5 students collected and sorted through all of the garbage and recycling that was collected in the school. This was done to determine if we place items into the proper bins. Are we recycling effectively? Is the Boomerang lunch program working? Are we creating too much trash?

Today we had the opportunity to visit the gym where all of the garbage was sorted and on display. It was kind of disgusting, to be honest, but it was a good learning experience, and interesting to see what we are doing and what we aren't' doing right!

YUCK! Kudos to the students and staff who sorted. 

Until next time,

Amanda

Inferring and Fractions!

My Grade Ones are Inferring!
As you know, I have a super student teacher who is eager and keen to teach anything and everything. She is fab! I have been really wanting to teach the concept of inferring, so this week I am taking over in the read aloud department! A couple of weeks ago, I introduced students to the concept of inferring by reviewing schema and evidence, and then we did a cute little activity that involved searching through my purse. The activity was called "What's in Mrs. Campbell's Bag?" 

This is what we did this morning:

Activation: Prior to introducing the book, No David! by David McPhail, I reviewed the terms “schema” and “evidence”. We talked about using our schema and evidence to “infer” or make “inferences”. I reviewed the following anchor charts with them.

In order to engage students and get them excited about this, I introduced the “I’m inferring game.” Here’s how it works. One student leaves the room. The other kids hear a secret word. They are told that they have to give clues to the person in the hall when he/she comes back into the room. The goal is to give great clues so that the person in the hallway will be able to guess what the secret word is. For example: If the secret word is sad. A clue might be “I felt this way when I lost my favourite toy.” Then, have the person guessing/inferring say “I’m inferring that the word is sad.” The secret word can be feelings, people, places, things, actions, etc…)

I introduced the book, No David! We looked at the front cover of the book. I glued a photocopy of the cover onto a piece of chart paper and made a T-chart below.

Students used their schema and evidence from the picture to fill out the chart. We did this as a whole group. This is what they came up with.

After students understood the concept, I gave them another picture from the book and they broke off in pairs to fill out their own charts. This is what their charts looked like.

Once students completed their charts, they presented them to their classmates. They did a fabulous job of inferring and really seemed to understand the concept. Tomorrow, I will continue this by giving students pictures from different parts of the book. They will complete the chart together in pairs (as they did today), present them to the class, and then I will read the book! Wow, it's going to be great!

Stay tuned for more inferring and point of view activities using the book No David!, David Goes to School, and David Gets In Trouble.

Math Fraction Pizzas!

I found some super cute ideas on Pinterest, as well as on www.thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com

My student teacher and I sort-of tweaked the ideas we found to work for our own group. Students in grade 1 in Ontario are required to know the terms, whole, half, and quarter. We decided to make pizzas with the students to make it a fun, authentic learning experience for them - one they could relate to! Who doesn't love pizza?

A few days ago, my student teacher started introducing the concept of fractions, and they have re-visited this concepts a few times since. This afternoon, the children had a re-cap with an excellent smart board activity, and then they were given the instructions on how to create their own pizzas! They were required to make two pizzas. One that showed it cut into halves, and the other into quarters. Before hand they brainstormed toppings that they might like to have on their pizzas. Fun!

Here are the samples that my student teacher created.

Students were sent off to create their own. Here are some of them working diligently on them.

Aren't they cute? Students brought these pizzas home with them today. Tomorrow they will be participating in an awesome pizza fraction math centre (pics to come), and then on Friday as a fun finale, we will be making our own personal pizzas - for real! I promise to post some pics!


Loving Grade 1 (and hoping I will be teaching it again next year!)


- Amanda

Easter

Today was a great day! I had to fly by the seat of my pants this morning after I got a text from my student teacher that she wouldn't be in today. We have all been sick this week and it was her turn today! Since she has been teaching most of the day, I didn't have anything planned! Thankfully, I have experience and was able to quickly throw something together! It was fun! Here are a few things we did:

We have been working on inferring so I gave all the students a plastic Easter egg with a secret item inside. They were told to take a quick peek to see what it was and then write out three clues that would help their classmates infer what was inside! I started by giving the students an example.

After giving students a chance to check out their items, they quickly started writing out their clues. What a great exercise! They loved it!

I try not to do too much photocopying because its costly, but also because students need to learn spatial sense- they need to learn how to set up a chart, graphic organizer or a simple list.

After we all wrote out our clues, students read out clues to each other and the children had the opportunity to guess the mystery objects! Fun!

We also made cute bunny baskets. Take a peek!

Super cute bunnies!

I gave the students their treat bags today because there were many sick little ones today at school and I wanted to be sure they had their treats from me on Easter! I thought the bags looked so cute! Inside: Easter pencil, eraser, foam bunny, plastic Easter egg with 2 Easter erasers and 2 chocolate eggs inside, bunny lollipop.

Adorable

This afternoon, we had fun reviewing Math concepts taught by Ms. Huot. Here is a cute pic of our community, Noun Town, and a bird's eye view of urban, suburban and rural communities.

Noun Town

Bird's eye view

That's it for now!
AC