Holy cow! 10 weeks later and here I am on my final month of my internship. The fact that I only have a month left is both terrifying, sad, and exciting all at the same time! This week was all about 'new beginnings' as I began 4 new units in my courses, as well as started my own school club! I have started the "Light and Shadows" unit in science, started the "dance" unit in gym, started the "New roots for Alberta" unit in social, and started the number patterns unit in math! I have also organized a "Drawing Club" which started this Friday, and it was SUCH a success that I think I will have to open it up to be more times than just once a week! This week was also filled with some great FNMI content in social class. On top of all of that, today was also a great experience because we were celebrating Down Syndrome Awareness Day and we all painted our nails blue and wore our funky colored socks. It was another great week, and here are my highlights!
Science
The kids FINALLY finished their cars this week, and we tested them out to see who could all pass the KISS motors car test! I had the kids complete a self-evaluation to see how THEY think that they did on this project, but more importantly for them to reconsider what the MOST important tips are that they have learned during the process. They were to leave their "Top 3 building tips" for the next employees, as well as to consider what things they would try differently next time! Overall the whole unit took much longer than anticipated, but I think that I did a very thorough job with it, and the kids definitely had a lot of hands-on fun!
Next I got the kids set-to-go for their next science unit. I found that science class can be very hectic with that many kids trying to find the right papers during the last unit, so for this unit I have gotten wiser and photocopied the important sheets on certain colors of paper so that I can just say "flip to the orange page" instead of trying to describe what sheet I am talking about! It is rewarding to know that even the slightest and simplest things such as that are things that I am picking up along the way! I also decided to give the kids their "I Can" statements because I think that it will act as a great 'study sheet' when the test comes around.
To introduce the science unit I wrote the word LIGHT on the board and had students brainstormed some of the things that reminded them of the word light, and I made it into a brainstorm cloud. Using those words, we tried to construct our own definition that didn't include the word LIGHT in it. We wrote this in our yellow vocabulary log. This is what we had come up with:
Then, perfectly on cue as if I had planned it, one student asked me "but Miss Miller, what about the moon?". I asked the kids what they thought about that question, and many of them already knew that the moon wasn't a source of light. I had already planned a demonstration to make sure that they could recognize the difference. I had a flashlight, a glowstick, a laser pointer, a lighter, and my Ipod. I held up each item as said "raise your hand if you think that THIS is a source of light", then I would ask "WHY?" and "where is the light coming from?". The students were able to predict how they figured that each one produced energy, and often responded with "the light is coming from WITHIN the _______".
Finally, I held up a mirror and wiggled it around so that it shimmered some light. Then I once again asked "does THIS produce light? And why?" - Most kids had decided that the mirror DID in fact produce light until I asked the question "Where does the light come from?". While some kids stewed over that question, others were bursting out of their seats yelling 'the sun!' 'a flashlight!' etc, then I asked prompting questions such as "If I turned out every light in here and made it PITCH black.... would you still see this mirror? Where do I turn it on? If I was to say I was sending you out into the pitch black forest alone would you willingly take a mirror to guide your way over a flashlight?" After much discussion the kids finally came to the conclusion that the mirror ISN'T a source of light because it is a reflector instead! So, with that in mind, we discussed the similarities to the moon, and then added to our current definition of light in order to make sure that we were eliminating the possibility of confusing it with reflectors later on!
After defining light, we did a similar process to define SHADOWS as well. I think that having this in-depth break-down of the main vocabulary will be very helpful to my weak students. The next day I continued to introduce some of light's properties by reading the kids an awesome picture book that I had found!
Health
The kids finished up their safety posters, and I made them into a bulletin board in the hallway immediately across from our door to help them remember all of the rules we have learned so far (and also to promote safety in the school).
Physical Education
In gym class we finished up our final few gymnastics routines! Overall most of the routines were very well done and the kids were SUPER excited!
This week we moved on to the dance unit, which has been very exciting for many of our kids! We have some very dance-oriented girls in our class, so they were very willing to showcase some different kinds of dance for us! We got to watch everything from point, to character, to Irish folk dance, to jazz, to tap dance! It was very rewarding to watch my girls so excited to show us their fantastic talents! We started off dance by listening to the beats of some music and getting the rhythm down by tapping or clapping. Then we moved on to some "instructional dance" as I called it which was where we were dancing to songs that TELL you what to do such as the "cha cha slide" and "If you're a kid". Then we played around with the bunny hop to get into the Easter spirit of things!
Social
We wrapped up our "living with the land" unit in social by finishing our National Historic Site brochures, and by having a Native-inspired celebration. I had the kids sit in a circle and hold the talking stick as they each presented their piece to our "Napi Creation Story".
Brochures:
Brochures:
Napi creation story and illustrations:
After our story time we had some "pemmican" (beef jerky) and "bannock" to highlight how things started to change once outside influences came into this area. Some of the kids ESPECIALLY loved the bannock I made, especially once I told them they could some berry jam on it to make it even better!
And finally, I recreated some of the games that I had learned during a SWATCA session by Move and Play about learning through traditional aboriginal games. I created the sticks for kids to play "Stick and hoop" and I already had the posts to play "make the stick jump". The kids thought that it was very neat how the Native children played these games, but they were actually designed to make them more accurate hunters!
Math
We were wrapping up our unit on division this week, and some kids were having issues understanding why we would ever represent remainders as a fraction. So naturally, I brought in some chocolate to help drive home the point! I had kids count how many kids we had (13), then count how many pieces of chocolate Toblerone we had (6). So we didn't have enough to let everyone have a whole piece, or even half a piece, so we had to cut our pieces into 3. We drew our 6 pieces cut up on the board to record our numbers, then we eat ate our pieces and filled in the pieces that we ate on the board. Once we had 13 little pieces filled in on the board, the kids were able to see that we had EATEN 4 whole pieces plus 1/3 of another piece. The point of doing it this way to emphasize that we weren't worried about what was remaining in some of these questions, but rather were looking for the fraction of how much we had eaten in total. The kids finally had that "light bulb" moment, and we got to eat chocolate in the process... so that's a win!
I decided to use a very kinesthetic method to introduce the next unit to my kids: I had color coordinated tiles of number patterns that they had to arrange, extend the pattern, and then write the number rule for. The kids had a lot of fun and I heard some really awesome math conversation going on, as well as overheard some great problem-solving strategies! I love how this group is also very good at working cooperatively and being supportive of each others' learning, it is so rewarding to be a part of! The kids were quick to realize that some of my patterns were set up so that they had to be subtraction questions, some were addition, and some were trickier patterns such as doubling and halving relationships!
The kids have also been busy doing some math games such as long division races, multiplication memory, and some dice races! I also had one kid who has forgotten how to read money and divide up money, so I made him up this 3-D handout with taped fake money on it to help him remember while he does some extra money work!
Drawing Club
I have been itching to start a club of some sort, and a drawing club seemed right up my alley! One of the main reasons why I decided to start a drawing club over any other club was because I have a LOT of extremely talented drawers in my class that aren't always the most socially accepted people, and so I wanted to give them the opportunity to showcase their talents and hopefully even encourage them to teach US a mini-lesson on drawing the thing that they are skilled at! I was amazed at the turnout that I had! 23 of our 34 students in grades 4,5,6 showed up to draw! Today's meet was basically to get a feel for WHAT the kids would like to know, as well as to see if any of them would be willing to teach a mini-lesson. 13 students were so excited that they DID sign up to teach a mini lesson! I am thrilled at the excitement over drawing club... so much so that I am even going to do it more times than just once a week now! After surveying what the kids want to learn and getting kids signed up to teach mini-lessons, I quickly gave them my top 5 tips for drawing, and we demonstrated all together how to draw a cartoon frog by drawing lightly, using basic shapes, and then erasing the extra lines. I am very excited about all of the opportunities that this club is creating!
Other stuff
Friday was Down Syndrome Awareness Day, so our class took some time to recognize how special children with down syndrome are, to create a poster of encouragement for their schoolmate with down syndrome, and to paint our nails blue to show our support. It was great to see a classroom so full of blue nails and colorful socks!
The cute little leprechaun traps that the ELP kids made!