We have been studying color in art. Here were experimented with cool colors while doing some Inukshuk art! See Kid World Citizen for original lesson plan.
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The goal: We are more the same than different...In grade 3 in Alberta we have to teach about Global Citizenship. In particular we generally compare Peru, India, Ukraine, Tunisia, and our own country, Canada. I wanted to be very careful that our students realize that in the end, we are all people, even if we have different environments! Snutt the IftWe first read the book Snutt the Ift. It comes from the same publisher (Little Pickle Press) as "What does it mean to be Global?" another great book for this unit. The book Snutt the Ift is all about an explorer who goes to a far away planet that is absolutely wonderful! There he becomes lonely because he has no one to share his discoveries with... but then he meets a Waft. The Ift and the Waft explore together in slightly different but highly similar ways. It is a super cute book and the kids loved it and totally got the message. Showing the Photo EssaysRecently a bunch of photo essays came out comparing situations in different countries. One was the typical groceries for a week, the next was a typical classroom, and one was where children sleep. I first took the classroom ones, put them on chart paper and students had to list the things they found similar and different to our own classroom. We discuss first that all of these were just examples, and just like how no two classrooms in our school are the same, no two classrooms in a whole country will be the same either. A couple things to notice (other than our problems with spelling! I offered no help because I wanted them to focus on their ideas rather than their spelling): - The noticed the basic environments were usually the same: desks, windows, roofs, etc - They were very jealous about the kids who got to wear "Hats" in school - They were surprised by the homogeneous looking classrooms. We are at a school that is all Aboriginal/Indigenous people to Canada, but due to a variety of factors the students may look very dark or very light. They can be pretty diverse looking, so they were surprised by classes that weren't. - They liked the "Fancy" Japanese and Russian classes where children sit properly, wear bows and wear ties! OutcomeEven though most students had more "Different" than the same, they put a sincere effort into finding similarities. So much so that I am confident that in a real life situation they would try to do the same!
Our Trip to ChurchEach week, one of our classes goes to our local parish to experience Mass. This is very important to us because most of our students (even though we are a Catholic school) don't go to Church. Some have never been, and I always figure they can have a positive introduction or a negative one... and I hope to make it a bit more positive. I personally was not a fan of the Catholic church as a child... heck, I even left the Church for years! One of my major complaints was that I had no idea what the homilies were about. That was my first step with my kiddos. Our reading was Luke 13:18-21... the Parable of the Mustard Seed. In class we are studying Baptism and how it brings us into the Church family. Here is the basic lesson set-up I used! Read the Biblical TextTogether we read the passage Luke 13:18-21. Watch the "Modernized" VersionWatch an ExplanationCompare to BaptismSince we were discussing Baptism in Religion class, I decided to connect the parable to the sacrament. We discussed how Baptizing a baby is like planting the tiny mustard seed. The baby will go through many challenges as it grows up, but hopefully his or her faith will grow and he or she will pass on the love of Christ. This is just like how the mustard seed will grow into a tree, and help our the birds of the air. We all can start in small ways and spread the love of Jesus. Celebrate with SongWe learned the song "Faith as Small as a Mustard Seed" and sang it together as a class. Comic ReflectionAt the end of the lessons, students had a short time to draw a quick comic to reflect on what we learned. I find that drawing comics in Religion really helps them retain the lesson. We don't spend a lot of time on aesthetics, just quick stick figures to get the message across! P.S. For the Children Who Haven't Seen a BaptismMost of my students haven't seen a Baptism, so we watched this fantastic video from Catholic Icing. They loved it! It was fantastic for talking about the symbols in the Sacrament. The Three Types of RocksMy students and I have been studying the three types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Some were getting it, some were not. It didn't help that this was my first year teaching it and so I had to relearn the concepts myself! We also had to learn about the rock cycle, which in my opinion is a heck of a lot harder than the water cycle which they learn later on in the curriculum. The Rock CycleI was so lucky to have discovered the Science Notebooking blog early on in my career. The lady who writes this blog is an absolute genius science teacher for elementary kids. Whenever I am stuck on a science lesson, I go to her and she rarely lets me down! We even included the Rock Cycle Song "We Will Rock You" to our lesson! This time she shared a lesson she found where students visit different stations to "Ride the Rock Cycle". They have a page to record their journey, and at each station they roll the dice to find out what happened to them as a rock. The original lesson is from Illinois State Museum, and you can get all the materials from their website. It really helped my students with recognizing that the rock cycle is, in fact, a cycle. They might visit the same center more than three times! The first couple rounds were a struggle for my lower readers, but many of them naturally paired up with other students and in the end they all loved it! There is a comic the kids do afterwards, but we are doing that next week! Here is an example from the Science Notebooking blog: Infamous Edible RocksTo firm up my munchkins understanding of how each type of rock is formed, I was completely stuck. Then, after searching Google and Pinterest, I figured out that most people use food to teach them! I did the same... I borrowed the idea from a million different websites who did it slightly differently for each one. My class started out with igneous rocks. We used melted chocolate for our lava/magma and ice cream for our Earth's surface. The children loved how the ice cream caused the melted chocolate to harden, just like the lava would cool and harden on Earth's surface. We then created sedimentary rocks. The students used graham crackers and icing for this one. Belatedly I thought I should have given them some animal cracker or gummi animal to create a "fossil" in their sedimentary rock, but this still worked. Last, but certainly not least, was our metamorphic rocks. They were starbursts that were squashed together using our heat and pressure from our hands.
Halloween So this was the first time in years that I have dressed up for Halloween. I am actually not generally comfortable with the whole Halloween idea for Catholic schools (which I work at). My students completely knew what Halloween was (and did not understand why we don't get the day off haha!) but hadn't even heard of All Saint's Day. Our closest Church didn't even have a Mass that day! It seems like it is becoming less important to a lot of people. As a result, I don't often dress up. It bothers me that the focus is so completely on candy and parties in a Catholic school. However, there is something to be said about working with enthusiastic, fun people! My fellow co-workers were very excited to dress up, and wanted the kids to see how much fun you could have with costumes. My friend, "Miss Frizzle" in the middle, convinced me to be the Magic School Bus and then she designed this fantastic bus. The kids adored it! It had a license plate, the Magic School Bus Children in the windows, a horn, everything! It was a huge hit. She was Miss Frizzle from the Space episode. Even her shoes had stars on them! Our other friend was a Cave Woman, inspired by Flintstones but modernized ;-), but since her students have been learning about the fur trade they were convinced that she was trying to be a Fur Trader! It really was adorable to watch their reactions to the teacher costumes. Many of our teachers went all out... we had a pirate, Steve Jobs, a chipmunk, Papa Smurf, the Flash, and more! All Saints' DayToday we had a wonderful morning studying the Saints. I wish I had taken more photographs because the children were very enthusiastic. We started off filling this sheet out as a class: The children thought it was pretty cool. The bonus was that they did know the names of a lot of Saints (since so many schools in our district are named after saints!). They were also convinced that the priest from our local parish is a Saint, so we had to have the Big S little s Saint discussion too. Afterwards we headed to the computer lab where the children studied a Saint of their choice. I gave limited choice due to the fact that this was their first research assignment with me. They could research St. John Bosco, St. Kateri, St. Clare (of Assisi), or St. Patrick. We used St. Valentine as an example for the whole class. I bought this worksheet from Catholic Icing for $1.00. It was well worth not having to make it myself! It also had a map, and we are learning our continents so I made them circle what continent their Saint was from! Afterwards we took a break from our work and did some worship singing. This group loves to sing worship songs... it might have something to do with the fact that they are allowed to sit on top of their desks when they do, but let us keep that hush, hush! It would have been perfect to get a video of their singing... At one point they all linked arms and started swaying with the music with big smiles on their faces! It was a wonderful way to end a week where they were having some difficulties getting along with each other. Some of the songs they chose to sing today were: |