Puppet Power: The Teachable Moment

Earlier this week we had a guest performer present a puppet show to the whole school in the gym.  What an unexpected and awe inspiring treat!  The performer was a world class talent and his show was without any "flash" just him and his puppets, some as simple as just his hands and a cloth.  The whole school was engrossed in his unique creative storytelling, it was incredible. 

We saw this before recess so I quickly scrapped the original dayplan and gathered materials for making puppets from the art room.  I'd seen in a magazine a kids craft for spoon puppets that I remembered after having seen the puppet show.  So a handful of plastic spoons, some felt scraps, cotton balls, pipecleaners, felts.. and we were off.  I showed the kids some examples from the magazine picture.  That's all they needed they were thrilled to be making puppets and wanting to make more and having fun with them.  Some of them are so creative it really was impressive to see what they came up with. 

Next day we finished making our puppets and got into groups to write a short play to be performed with their puppets.  We had a class discussion on our target audience to consider while we were writing our scripts, the grade ones and what that might mean for how we structured our writing.  We then discussed the goal of the story: to teach a positive lesson to the grade ones.  We brainstormed a list of about 10 ideas, things like: include don't exclude, sharing, name calling/kindness, etc and wrote these on the board to refer to.  They were then given time to write their scripts together.  Total engagement, they were happy to be working on this project.  They practiced the show when they were done.

Tomorrow they are going to finish getting ready and perform their show for the class to make sure all is well then we will invite the grade ones to come join us and watch the positive lessons the big kids puppets have to teach them.

An unexpected teachable moment that led to several really good classes for our students.  I will hopefully have good things to report after the show tomorrow and some pictures too.

UPDATE:  The show went well, ended up performing for both grade one classes, attached are a few pics.

Testing, Testing...Can You Hear Me Know?

At the conclusion of a large unit in science on the Human Body we had a semi-traditional assessment to measure our students' learning.  Judy and I had previously designed a cut, sort, past test in another subject with great results.  We felt, and the students commented that by not having to write as much they were more motivated to complete the test, and the cutting and pasting allowed them to arrange their thoughts, check their answers prior to gluing them down. AND cutting and pasting for a test was more fun!

Now there was a lot of information to cover in this unit so it was a lot of cutting and pasting.  The results on the test were mostly great.  Well over half of the students scored As and the rest had solid Bs, except for 5 or 6 that failed terribly, like not even close.  What happened?  So we decided to re-test these students.  It turns out they were confused and/or a little lazy in completeing the test with its' different format. 

The re-test was an oral test/discussion where we met one on one with the students.  The results were eye opening.  Four of the students scored As (3 perfects) demonstrating they had definitely learned the material well.  That's what we thought as we thought we'd really nailed the unit!

Lesson/reminder, allow for variety in how kids show their learning.  If an assessment does not go well for a student follow up is needed and often the best most efficient way is to talk with them and find out what they really do know. 

Simple Machines Walkabout

We recently completed a unit in science on simple machines.  After we had learned about each of the different simple machines we went on a wlakabout to discover the simple machines around us.  Students were given a observation recording sheet that had been organized into the 6 different simple machines.  The instructions were to write down the machines they found into each of the categories. 

We started in the classroom where I demonstrated in a very exaggerated way my discovery of several different machines in the classroom.  They got the idea quickly so I set them loose!  In the classroom at first.  I continued to circulate and help with discovering more simple machines.  We then continued our mini adventure in the hallways and into the open area.  Many discovers of simple machines and they were getting more and more into it.  So out on to the playground next where much fun was had using and demonstrating the simple machines and many machines were found. 

Then on to a walk around the neighbourhood with instructions about staying on the sidewalks and not touching people's property.  Things really took off now!  We heard respectful debate about whether things were in fact simple machines or not and many things were discovered that we hadn't thought of.  When we returned to class we reported out what we had seen/discovered and had a great class discussion.

Reminder for me, when possible move the classroom out of the classroom.  Get them moving.  A simple short walking "field trip" energized and motivated the students.  They demonstrated that had learned what we hoped they would and they could transfer their knowledge to the "real world".