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!