Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Final Blog???
During my four day unit plan, I taught a writing lesson. I probably would not have decided to do so had it not been for this class. The main topic of my unit was Dinosaurs (fossils and evidence). I used their StoryTown book as the basis for my lesson and decided that it might be fun to take what they're learning about in their book and extend it into other parts of the day. So my original plan was to integrate reading and science, but then I decided that I thought it could be a great chance for the kids to take something they were interested in and write about it.
I had them make inferences about a dinosaur print worksheet. This is what my focus lesson was based off of, but it was a simplified version. They had to use the evidence that they had in front of them to make inferences about what was going on in the picture. A lot of the students got really creative, and I was really excited to see what all they had to say. They had two pictures to choose from and in both pictures, there was a picture that led to a particular idea. I thought a lot of the students might write pretty similar stories, but it turned out that they really went all out and added in a lot of details that I didn't expect, making each story quite different from their neighbors. Many of the students worked in pairs, which I thought worked out really well because it allowed them to work together and to feed off of each other's ideas and creativity. I borrowed one story that two of my students worked on together. Both of these students speak English as a second language and are in the lower level groups in the class. I was very impressed by their story, though, and I wanted to scan it and upload it, but I don't know how. So I'm just going to type it.
Roar.....!!
Ounce a pon of time in the dessert, a Ty-Rex was finding it's prey, on a hot summer day. Then he found a Dino Bird with the colors of Navy Blue and Black stripes. Then he ran...... and he ATTACKLED It!!
And he ate all his meaty bones. Then his parents tried to find Dino Bird when they saw his bones.
Next his friends were trying to find Dino Bird. Then he found him dead with his meaty bones on the ground.
The End!!
I was really excited about this story. The point of what they were doing wasn't for them to write an incredible grammatically correct story, but to use what they saw in the picture to make inferences about a possible story that might have taken place and add details that were not present in the picture. They definitely did just that. They were also really good about using transitions and using words that showed chronology in their story. There was a such a wide variety of writing in the classroom... it was really great to read them all. I even have one student who is writing a four part story about the childhood through the adulthood of the two dinosaurs he believes were in the picture and their many encounters and conflicts. He's still working on it. It makes me happy. YAY.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Cursive.
I was just thinking about this every day for the past few weeks as I watch my class work on their morning work. Every single day they do a few pages in their handwriting practice book. Each page gives practice with one cursive letter, upper or lower case. I have never seen them actually write anything else in cursive throughout the entire rest of the school day, nor have I ever seen the teacher do anything with the cursive workbook. I've never seen her use cursive either. I don't know that the workbook will ever be taken up or checked or anything at all. I've also been practicing my cursive for no real reason and realizing that I don't even remember most of the capital letters, and that I really don't like it at all. Why do we learn cursive? Is it something we really need to know? From third grade on, every single year, our teachers told us we had to practice it now because the next year we would have to write EVERYTHING in cursive. But that year never came and now I really don't know why we bothered. I was just thinking about that lately for some reason....
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