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.