October 2014

Mrs. Clark's Grade 1/2 Class 

September was a great but busy month. We have already established norms for Daily 5. This is really amazing, however, because of the number of students and the need for smaller groups we now have a Daily 6. I'm really impressed with how quickly this group of children was able to understand the Daily "6" process and consistently engage in the expected behaviors. The Daily 6 consists of; read to self, word work, read to someone, listen to reading, Ipads and work on writing. I think part of the reason they love it so much is because I do and there is so much independence and freedom of choice encouraged in this process. These Grade 1/2's love to work on their own, in pairs and in small groups!

We have been working on our Comprehension strategies. We completed our study of the book "Chalk" and created a bulletin board as our final project.

We began working on a new book "How To Be" by Lisa Brown.  

This is a book about how to be a: Bear Monkey Turtle Snake Spider Dog.This is a book about how to be a Person.

The comprehension strategy "questioning" has been the focus for our book study. “Thoughtful readers ask questions not only as they read, but also before and after reading. 

We began our book study by looking at the title and cover and generating questions. For example: Why is the book called "How to be?", What do the colors mean? Why are there animals in the picture? As we read and discover the book we attempt to answer the questions and gain a deeper understanding of the author's purpose and message. As Amani, a Grade 2 student in our class stated, " The book means that a person can be anything they want to be." Wonder, infer and discuss is an important part of this process. We will be learning more about "background knowledge".  Activating prior knowledge and building background improves understanding.

We began working on our final project! We are using the book and the structure of the text and pictures as a model for our own "How To Be?". Students chose an animal. We grouped students who chose the same or very similar animals. Their task was to create several movements, actions, sounds to show how their animal behaves. We presented these to the class and I made a chart recording students ideas. The whole class discussed how this animal can be compared to a human, what behavior or characteristics are similar. Our next step is to use these words and phrases to write our own model of Lisa Brown's book. We will write first and then illustrate the words and phrases we chose to describe our animals. I am hoping to use the Ipads to photograph and record students discussing their project. I will post the finished product soon!

September 2014

The new school year has begun. This year I have 25 Grade 1's and 2's - a new challenge!

We have already begun work on our Daily 5. Students are learning about the 3 Ways to Read a Book, the first component of Daily 5, "Read to Self", and "Reading Salad". We review and practice the 3 ways to read a book daily; read the words, read the pictures and retell. I presented a lesson on each of these to ensure students understanding. I used the book "Dinosaur Day" an almost wordless picture book to reinforce this idea. It's so important to build their confidence and belief that they can read even if they don't know all the words. It works! We made an anchor chart showing how "Read to Self" should look and sound. The first practice took us 8 times before we were able to follow the behaviors we decided on. The second time only took 3 - we're on our way!  

This year I made a chef's hat and made a real show of the "Reading Salad" lesson. It was memorable and that's what I was hoping for. We also began work on the reading comprehension strategies. Students are learning, what is a question and how do we use questions as we read to help us understand the text. this relates closely to the "Reading Salad" components - Real Reading =  Text + Thinking!

The Grand Finale: Part 4

We continued working on answering the questions we had generated. 

We used Linda Ashman's website to discover some of the answers related 

to the creation of the book, the author's process and the central

theme.

  http://www.lindaashman.com/

Some of the "thicker" questions we looked at:

"Why is the book called rain?''

Why is the title only one word?

Why are there only a few words as text?
Why did the author call it the Rain/Shine café?
Why did the author write this book?

After looking at Linda Ashman's website and some whole group discussion 
students were placed in small groups and given a question to discuss.

Some of the  thoughts from students:

As you can see students figured out the central theme of the story!!!

Stay tuned for additional activities and story writing related to 

"Rain" by Linda Ashman.

The Grand Finale: Part 3

To put into practice the questioning strategy students selected a question and were asked to do the following: 

1) answer the question

2) identify how they answered the question (T, BK, I, DD)

3) create an illustration for their answer

Here are some samples:

Students shared their answers using the digital projector. 

They answered questions from peers and discussed their work.

We went back to our list of questions and decided which we had answered 

and which ones we needed to continue to work on. 

The Grand Finale: Part 2

I went back to the book  "Comprehension Strategies" by Tanny McGregor.  I introduced students to the 4 ways we could answer our questions and  modeled sorting the questions.  Again I used the "I do", "We do", "You do" process. 

 Students then sorted the remaining questions in small groups. Each group was given a set of questions to decide how we were going to answer them; using the text T, background knowledge BK, inferring I, digging deeper DD. Students placed their letters (T,BK,I,DD) on the question chart. As I circulated to observe students I noticed there were good discussions happening. Students were disagreeing on how to answer questions and were giving proof for their choices. 

For further practice students were asked to choose a "Good Fit" book and generate "Before, During and After" questions (at least 5). They were asked to record their questions and then identify how they would answer these questions using the 4 ways.

The Grand Finale: Part 1 

Well, the school year is over and I have to say it was an amazing journey for me and the students. Our work on comprehension strategies was a highlight for me. In the following blog entries I will share the work students did and the process we went through.  Mrs. Clark

I began with the text "Comprehension Strategies" by Tanny McGregor. This book provides so many practical ideas and teacher friendly lessons. I completed both the "Reading Salad" and the "Metacognition" lessons with students. We practiced "Real Reading" as an "I Do", "We Do" and "You Do" process. Students latched onto this and continued to demonstrate this skill during Daily 5 and independent reading.

The lesson on "Questioning" and subsequent anchor chart that resulted from it really demonstrated that my students were capable of the "deeper thinking" that this process required. 

Next Step was to introduce the book "Rain" by Linda Ashman. This really is an amazing wordless picture book with a universal message. The pictures are created with such detail and and thought. Each page evokes discussion, questions and the opportunity to make inferences. 

I modeled the questioning strategy for  students focusing on the front cover of the book; the title and the picture. After modeling several questions students were so eager to share their own that I began writing all of our questions onto a chart labeled "Before", "During", and "After".  The process of generating questions took a week! It was very difficult holding off on discussions or answers to each question but we wanted to focus on the creation of good questions. By the time we were finished we had 27 thoughtful questions and students who were very eager to answer them!

Part 2 coming soon!

Reading Strategy: Questioning

 "Reading Salad" is when you read a book and think at the same time. This is called "Metacognition". You could be asking questions, figuring out new words or wondering.  We can answer our questions using the text (T), background knowledge (BK), inferring (I) or digging deeper (DD).  We started looking at a book called "Rain" by Linda Ashman. We are asking questions before, during and after reading. Mrs. Clark is writing our questions down. We will sort them by T, BK, I and DD and answer our questions. 

Written by Solongo, Amani, Max, Laiba and Austin 

What We Did At School?

We made questions from the "Butterfly" book.We used our background knowledge to help us think.  We thought about lots of questions. We figured out a few questions. Asking questions helps us learn about what we are reading. Mrs. Clark made a big Q with who, what, where, when and how on it. We brainstormed ideas to figure out the questions.  

Written by Leah, Jack, Caroline, Grace and Nathan 

Stay tuned for more student written blogs!

Our Finale

We decided to use the Ipads to create an "Educreation". We drew a picture and write words and sentences to describe our learning and answer the question: "How do my senses help me learn?"

Here are some examples of our writing and drawing: 

April 4th 

We used Power Kids on the Lib Guide to answer some of our Inquiry Questions. Mrs. Clark took notes and then put the notes on cardstock. We sorted them and created paragraphs. We are in the process of creating illustrations for our paragraphs. We noticed that we are using more text features after learning about them when we created our posters. 

We didn't like the title on this paragraph so we changed it to fit with the content. 

             How Did I Do As A Learner?

We learned about our eyes.

We know about the 3 parts of our eyes.

We watched and tried to read along.

We were good listeners.

We could raise our hands and take turns to talk better.

We followed instructions to do an experiment.

We did lots of thinking.

What Part of the Inquiry Process Did We Do?

We wondered how we see.

We went on PowerKids. 

We investigated by watching and listening.

We created ideas to write down.

We shared our ideas.

We connected our ideas. We reflected on our learning.

We did all of the parts of the Inquiry Process. 

What do you think about our learning and reflecting?

Searching for Animal Senses

The grade one class has been involved with inquiry learning about their 5 senses.  Here is a summary using  their ideas and words of the work we did today.

We have made questions we want to answer.  Today we chose one question to answer  - Mrs. Hnatiuk's question. Her question was "What senses do animals use?"  We wrote the question where the ? mark was on our poster.

After writing the question, we talked about how we use A.B.C.O.U.T. when we take jot notes.  If you don't know what A.B.C.O.U.T. means - each letter stands for something about taking jot notes.

A is for abbreviations - use Dr. instead of Doctor
B - bullets to begin a new idea
C- Caveman talk - we just write the words important words NOT the whole sentence
O - one idea on one line
U -  use your own words
T - thank where you get the information

We wanted to practice using A.B.C.O.U.T. to take our  jot notes today.  Instead of using a book, we went on the computer to find out the answer to Mrs. Hnatiuk's question .  We went to Mrs. Clark's page and found the Power Kids Life Science database.  We did not write the question down to search, instead we wrote the important words from Mrs Hnatiuk's question.  You can see our words below.

The computer was not working to read for us, so we read the words on our own.  Once we read a sentence if it had something to do with our animal senses' question we decided what caveman talk we would write on our poster.
Here is the picture of the jot notes we took.  Caroline took the picture for us today.

   After we were finished we said thank you to Power Kids Life Science because they helped us learn about animal senses.  What do you think about our learning?

Five Senses Posters

Students decided that creating a poster would be a great way to share some of the knowledge we have gained about the five senses. Mrs. Hnatiuk shared a lesson on "text features" with students to get them started on the right track. After completing the posters each group presented their poster to the class. As viewers and listeners our job was to consider 2 things the group did well and 1 wish for improvement (2 stars and a wish) focusing on the text features that we had looked at. We recorded these stars and wishes along with all of the wonderful vocabulary students used as they discussed their posters. We used the stars, wishes and vocabulary to go back and improve our posters.

The most important part of the Inquiry Process is reflecting on our learning. The following comments were made by students after completing this activity. 

Reflecting

We shared our posters and what was good about them. Grace

I was thinking my group could add more pictures and details. Details make our poster better. Jack 

We shared our thinking. Leah

We need to add more text features.  Caroline

By making a wish we're helping the groups to have more ideas to make the posters better.  Amani

I listened carefully and I learned more about the five senses.  Jerzee

When I was talking my class listened to me and so I listened to my friends when it was their turn.  Jon

Our brains had a workout listening to all the good ideas (just like we learned in health)! Leah 

We make the wishes to help people.  Jayden

We learned we need to add more writing to make your poster more detailed. Jack

We could put all those words on our poster. Caroline

Good thinking and reflecting Grade 1 !!!  Mrs. Clark 

Student Reflections On Text Features

A text features helps us understanding what we are reading.  We can learn more about the book when we use text features.  There are many kinds of  text features.  Here are some of the text features we talked about in class.
We use our bold print for some of the words because they are important.  Bold print means the words are darker and sometimes they are bigger. Photographs are a text feature and if you don't know the words you can use the photo or picture clues. You might find labels on pictures or photographs to help you learn new words.  A Table of Contents helps us look for ideas at the front of the book.  It tells us which page to look on.  A Glossary helps you find out the meaning of a word. 
We wanted to learn about text features because we wanted to make our posters on the five senses better.
Mrs. Clark's Grade 1 Class

Monday, February 24th 

Survey Says 

We completed the following survey: "Which of the five senses do you use most often to learn?"

Here are the results:

7 students recorded that they used their sense of sight most often to learn.

8 students recorded that they used their sense of hearing most often to learn.

2 students recorded that they used their sense of touch most often to learn. 

We shall see if these results change after we have completed our Inquiry into the Five Senses. 

What happens when one of your senses is impaired/How does it affect your learning??

Today we explored what it would be like to be blind! First we listened to a story while wearing blindfolds. 

After the story students made the following comments:

Jerzee - "I had to use my imagination." (to understand the story)

Laura - "I made pictures in my head to see the story."

Jack - "I listened very carefully to the words."

We partnered students and took a "trust" walk. One student was blindfolded, the other student had to lead. We took turns. 

What we discovered:

We use our sense of touch much more when we cannot see. We touch everything to find out what it is.

We need to use our touch and hearing for safety when we cannot see.

When you are blind you need to trust others to help you.

Students also discovered that they had difficulty keeping their sense of direction to know where they are going.

Five Senses Inquiry

We our "delving deep" into our Inquiry question, "How do our senses help us learn?" The first part of our journey requires "frontloading"; accessing prior knowledge and developing new understandings about our five senses.  We began with an exploration activity. I gave students a set of objects to explore and find connections. We came to the conclusion that the objects could be categorized by their connection to the five senses. During our discussion students made many interesting observations, posed questions and made comments on their own learning:

Leah - "We looked at that stuff to figure out what we would be learning about".
Laura - "The senses are all connected to our brain".
Jack - "When me and Max were working together to find five senses we were talking, working hard and staying on task".
"We have learned what sense goes with what body part". 
Austin "When you were a baby and you tasted something you remember not to eat it". 
Caroline "Now I know not to eat playdough because when I was a baby I tasted it and it was yucky and now my brain tells me it tastes bad".
Amani - "When you taste something it goes to your brain". 
Leah - "Everything you do with your five senses goes to your brain and you remember". 
Ben - "For safety" (Why do we have five senses?)

After completing the exploration activity we used "Five Senses" books to create a list of vocabulary. We sorted the words into categories and will be making a "dictionary" of senses words. Mrs. Hnatiuk will be in to discuss poster criteria and we will create a poster in small groups for each of the senses. 
Our next step is to continue generating questions for students to explore. Students will also discuss and decide which sense they use most when they are learning by completing a survey. This should be a very interesting discussion. I know students will discover much about themselves!