Happy Weekend! :)
I'm so glad to say that we had an extremely productive week, yet I'm happy to have a morning of relaxation and coffee drinking! --It's the small things!
This past week we had so much fun! My team and I have moved to the concept of choosing one mentor text a week and teaching several comprehension strategies within it, as well as integrating science and math lessons! It was amazing.
We began with reading Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato. Each day the students brought their Readers Response Notebooks down to the carpet with them and we discussed and recorded important vocabulary, story elements, idioms, and more!
At the end of the story, we also discussed what a Folktale was as well as the lessons we can learn from the story! The students came up with very brilliant responses. My favorite was "Don't be lazy--it doesn't work!" So simple, yet so profound for 6 and 7 year olds.
Now, because the topic of the book was a man and his potato, I thought, what can I do to meet one of our science standards through the use of a potato? Hmm...
Categorizing Potato Chips it was! I bought several types of chips/snacks and as a whole group, we categorized and classified the chips as well as making a thinking/tree map to correspond.
We began with this plate of chips:
I explained what a "rule" was and modeled how to use the rule to separate the chips into two groups. We began with flavored and non-flavored and the plate transformed into this:
Next, we focused on the flavored chips. The students came up with the next rule: "Sort them by color." So we did a light yellow group and an orange group.
They decided that they couldn't break down the Ranch chips any further, but they could break down the orange chips into chips with ruffles and chips without (smooth). So they used texture as that rule.
We concluded that the flavored chips were now categorized as far as they could be, so we went back to the larger group of non-flavored chips.
In that group, the students decided to sort them by shape: round and rectangular.
Now, the rest of the categorizing blew my mind! As far as I could think, the pretzels could not be categorized any further. But one student suggested that we pick up three pretzels and break them. Then, they could be categorized into broken and whole! :) Awesome. So we did!
We then looked at the round chips (plain potato chips and tortilla chips). After we all looked at the chips for a bit, I noticed they were having a bit of trouble coming up with a rule to sort them, until I asked my sweet student from Mexico to talk to us about tortilla chips. She instantly lit up and thought of the next rule: sort by ingredients! She said, "Mrs. Hunter, tortilla chips are made from corn!" Another student piped up and said, "Ohhh....I get it. Potato chips are made from potatoes!" So cute.
So, we broke this group down into what they were made from: corn and potato. :)
Finally the sorting was complete! I've never heard so many positive comments from my students about how fun this was! They were beyond the moon excited!
Here is a picture of their thinking maps!
To conclude, I had them write a paragraph explaining how we categorized the chips! I also let them choose their favorite chip to munch on while they worked! My room was instantly filled with crunching and writing. :)
That day we concluded with a wonderful class meeting. We read the book How Full is Your Bucket? for kids and the students ate it up!
We discussed ways we can fill buckets and what makes our buckets feel full. We passed the talking stick and all had the opportunity to share. We then wrote out our thoughts on sentence strips to create a visual reminder of filling buckets.
It's been wonderful hearing them use the terms "I filled a bucket" or "My bucket feels full. Thank you".
Now, don't get me wrong. I do not want you to think that we never have classroom challenges. Every classroom does and there is always something to work on, but I truly believe that if we expose and teach our children how to lead and interact with each other in positive ways, we are preparing them in tremendous ways for their future! :)
So...have you filled a bucket today? :)
--Mrs. Hunter
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