Grade 3 EFL Class

My students and I had so much fun this week creating poems and riddles about our Earth and other planets. To activate the prior knowledge of my kids about riddles, we discussed what riddles are and watched some slides with riddles about planets. To build up the confidence of my ELLs and bring in an atmosphere of competition I shared some riddles of me ELLs from the previous year.

To scaffold the creative process I decided to complete a worksheet with 8 riddles that the students had to solve.

Girls solved the planet riddles very quickly.

After we checked the worksheet together with an answer key that I projected on the screen, I said it was time for my students to practice creating their own riddles. I prepared special space theme frames for the students to publish their riddles and that was an additional motivator.

Here are some of our acroctic poems about EARTH:

Earth is very 
Amazing, I always 
Remember Earth.
The earth is different.
Hey! Do you like Earth?!

by Moon Ju


Enormous Earth
Armed Earth
Risk-taking Earth
Threatened Earth
Hot Earth.

By BieBie

Earth story
Alive Earth
Rock and Roll
Tilted Earth
Hats for Earth

by Jennifer



Grade 3 In Class Support

This week in Miss Micelle's class I chose one of the understanding visible thinking routines - creating understanding maps to practice the reading comprehension skills of our Grade 3 students.

I chose two fables - one to model the strategy ("Belling the Cat") and another for students' guided practice ("The Boy Who Cried Wolf"). I also prepared my scaffold of the Ron Ritchhart's Understanding Map by changing the order of steps and putting all 8 steps into a grid.

At the beginning of the class we all read the "Belling the Cat" fable, and I asked the students to reflect on their process of thinking about the story and trying to understand it. We had a brief discussion and agreed that it always starts with a question in your head. While talking to our students I modeled going through the understanding process steps, sticking the cards with the steps on the board as a visual scaffold.

Next we went back to the fable and started by formulating a question about the lesson or moral of the story. Then we practiced making our understanding process visible while going through the 8 steps and talking about it. Gradually we came to the core of our question and managed to answer it. As a result we had at least 3 various lessons/morals of the story and every student could learn something that he or she connected to.

After that I gave my students the second fable and they formed four cooperative groups. Each group had an adult in it as there were two teachers and two TAs during this session. Both TAs, Miss Michelle and I guided the students during the discussion.
The students' goal was to read the fable and, using the Understanding Map, formulate the lesson/moral of the fable and write it in one sentence. During this activity all our students had to discuss their thinking and practiced using metalanguage.

All the students in Miss Michelle's classroom enjoyed this activity.

Grade 3 In Class Support

On Tuesday Miss Michelle's students were presenting their reports to the class. the children worked in 5 collaborative groups. All our students were very creative and presented not only information but also engaged the audience in interactive activities like quizzes and question/answer sessions. In order to make sure our students were moving around the classroom, we played the 2 Corners Game. During the game our students had to sort out cards with FACTS and OPINIONS, read them aloud and stick them to the appropriate poster.

After listening to all five presentations, I asked the children to get back into their collaborative groups and check whether their reports were structured correctly. That way I wanted my kids to reflect on their reports.

Mia is checking some final facts for the quiz on her iPad.

The boys are discussing who would say what during the presentation.

In Miss Lisa's room we all were engaged in vocabulary activities. We read aloud the new words of the unit, decided how many syllables each word had and arranged them in alphabetical order. I also used Google translate with my Korean students and made sure those who needed it had a Korean translation of these new words.

On Thursday Lisa and I began to assess our students' reading skills. The DRA assessment (The Developmental Reading Assessment) was developed by Joetta Beaver and published by Pearson Learning Group.  The Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) helps teachers in K - 8 identify students' strengths and weaknesses in reading.  These results then drive effective reading instruction.   With the DRA results, a teacher can:  analyze student reading performance within a literature-based reading program,  set instructional goals specific to each child, document student progress over time, and match readers to appropriate reading levels and books.

Maly read well and retold the story including all the important events.

BB  enjoyed his assessment as well.

In Miss Claire's classroom our students were busy collecting notes and facts for their Earth Reports. I supported the whole class during this activity as Claire assessed her students' reading skills. My ELLs were fully engaged in the task as I pre-taught this earlier in my EFL class, using the same template. During  that EFL class my students had to sort out and collect facts about the moon. I showed my students a video about the moon as an instructional scaffold.

Jennifer and Mollymoon enjoyed the activity and it did not take them long to complete it successfully.

In Class Support in Grade 1

As usual we had our rotation activities and guided reading sessions in Grade 1 this week. I worked with small groups of students, developing their reading comprehension skills. This week our teaching team agreed to focus on activating our students' prior knowledge and practicing predicting as  important comprehension strategies. We had group discussions, made personal connections and created mind maps.

Miss Kelly's students are creating a recipe of their favourite sandwiches after reading about a sandwich made by Cat and Dog.

Grade 3 EFL Class

After finishing up their presentations of the report about the moon, I wanted my students to reflect on what they had learnt recently. I chose the visible thinking routine "I used to think...., but now I think..." for my ELLs to measure up their knowledge about the moon.
I learnt that my students' thinking had changed in many ways: some of them used to think that our moon shines and then learned that it only reflects the sun light, others thought that it takes  our moon 30 or 31 days to orbit the Earth and then learned that it actually takes only 28 days. While working on this activity the children discussed their learning with their peers.

My students realized they learned a lot of facts about the moon during this unit.

Grade 3 In Class Support


On Monday in Miss Lisa's classroom we were busy learning about the moon. The class was divided into 2 collaborative groups. Miss Lisa and Mr. Borey were leading guided reading in the piazza and Miss Boramey and I stayed in the classroom and read an e-book about the phases of the Moon. We learned about the names of the phases and completed a comprehension task. In order to sum up the information learned, I asked my students to form pairs and exchange 3 facts about the moon.

At the end of the class we sat in a circle to play a game and yet again practice naming the moon phases. All my students were engaged and lots of learning took place.

Listening to the Tumble book about the phases of the Moon.

Learning about Moon phases with the help of game cards.

Thinking about the comprehension activity.

On Tuesday we had an engaging writing activity when we all had to create a story with a real writer. The students revised the structure of the story and shared their ideas about the introduction, events and the climax of their stories. Our students were real risk-takers while presenting their story plans in front of their peers and teachers.

Miss Ellen Leou is a real author and she wrote many children's books.

After the writers workshop we got busy practicing our research skills and collecting information for our report about Earth.

Moon Ju and her group collaboratively selected lots of facts for their report.

EFL Grade 3 

To support the in class report writing I chose to do various cooperative activities related to report writing. During one of them my students had to sort out facts for classification, description, location and dynamics. We also revised the report structure and the meaning of each part.

As a result we created posters with brief reports about our Moon and each student was asked to share his/her poster with the rest of the class.

 

In Class Support Grade 1

In Grade 1 class we continued practicing our rotation activities and today activities at all the stations went really smoothly. The students had group discussions of our essential agreements and tried their best to follow them white visiting the stations.

Grade 3 in Class Support

The highlight of this week was Tuesday morning, when our great team of more than 60 students, four teachers and four TAs was engaged in various activities outside. There were four stations organized, with a teacher in charge of each one. Each student constructed an understanding of new concepts, shared their thinking and cooperatively practiced various skills.

In my station the students had to model the movement of the Earth and Moon around the Sun. Before we started the fun, we discussed the words "rotate" and "orbit". We also made some connections to the central idea of our unit and talked about the place of the Earth in the Solar System and the importance of it.

Next, we got to the fun part! All my students formed several groups of three. They all chose to act as the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, to experience how the planets orbit around each other. When there was a group of four, the fourth student became a comet or an asteroid. Lots of spinning, laughing and learning took place on the grass. We were lucky with the weather - it did not rain and the air was scented with the aroma of white acacia trees.

After the first round we had to stop and reflect a little bit. In one of the groups, the girls were not getting dizzy at all after all the "rotating". I asked them to share their secret with the rest of the kids. Another group talked about space awareness and how they had to leave more space for the Moon, when they took their positions on the grass. When this brief reflection was done we had one more round.

Finally all the students had to choose a partner from a different group and discuss the activity. I asked them to change the pair-share partners three times. While observing and listening to my students' conversations, I heard a lot of academic language of the unit being used and questions being asked.

When it was time to go inside, some of my students were tired but all of us were excited and satisfied with the team work and learning experiences. We  had a wonderful morning and a celebration of curiosity as some of our students, after getting the answers to their initial questions, realized that they had even more follow up questions. That is how a successful learning experience triggers the inquiry process and naturally leads to another learning experience.

"If you do not want to get dizzy rotating, go slowly!" Nora said.

There was enough space for all the Moons and Earths on the grass.

A brief reflection before our second round.

Time to change roles  - it is not easy to be the Earth!

EFL Grade 3 Class

On Monday we talked about the Solar System and my students talked about what they knew about it. After the discussion we watched a short video and read an article about the Solar System. In order to learn what information my students retained from the video and the article, I asked them to draw our  Solar System. It was exciting to see how some of my students planned the paper space and the size of the planets. In order to support the others and make them see their mistakes we pair-shared and several students corrected their drawings in terms of planet size and place.

On Wednesday we talked about facts and opinions. After a brief sharing of ideas, we watched a  video and played the Fact or Opinion game. I read aloud a fact or an opinion about the Earth or our Solar System from a card and the students took turns pinning the card to the Fact or to the Opinion Poster. The students had fun and moved around the room. At the end of the class we completed a worksheet and used an answer key for peer assessment.

On Friday we revised and summed up all the knowledge about the Solar System that we acquired during the week. We watched one of the Tumble Library videos about our Solar System Exploration and completed a cloze activity.  To have a bit of a "Fun Friday" all my students played a quiz card game with a partner to check how many facts they learned about the Solar System so far.

Jennifer and Hailey are sticking their cards to the "Facts" and "Opinions" posters.

A fact or an opinion? Explain your choice.

Samir is always eager to share his interesting opinions!

Grade 1 In Class Support

On Wednesday we launched our language rotation activities. The focus of this project is literacy development for our Grade 1 students. Our Grade 1 team of teachers and TAs did a lot of planning and assessing before we started the project. Our students will be developing their literacy skills in various stations moving through several 20 minute activities.Our first session this week was mostly devoted to explaining the routines to our students and discussing essential agreements, however, we also managed to do some of the planned activities. 

We read a story about winter fun.

One can describe ice sculptures but it is always better to see them!