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".

Science Muscle Songs short

You know how a song can get stuck in your head sometimes and then you find yourself singing or humming some annoying snippet of it well... PERFECT!  We want information to "stick" in our students minds better so we have been making more use of songs in science.

Last year we used head, shoulders, knees, and toes for a song parody for part of a unit on government.  This time I found some examples of song parodies to show the students first so they understood what a parody was.  Then we brainstormed well known nursery rhymes type songs (is that what they are?) and Christmas carols.  The students were carefully grouped together and given limited time to create a song that covered the key learnings of the muscles, skin, bones mini unit in science.  They could pick any song to parody.  The results were surprising, by adding more choice to the activity students were more creative and came up with some great stuff in the very limited time we had (we were in a bit of a rush).

Music and song another powerful learning tool!

Dif Lens Science sing

You know how a song can get stuck in your head sometimes and then you find yourself singing or humming some annoying snippet of it well... PERFECT!  We want information to "stick" in our students minds better so we have been making more use of songs in science.

Also we used some songs from youtube that the lyrics taught key ideas we wanted them to know.  Unprompted they began to sing along to this very "sciency" stuff and ask to listen to the song repeatedly.  Music and song another powerful learning tool in science!

Science Chicken Dissect Short

Judy and I have been team teaching a unit on the Human Body to our classes.  The combining of our classes and the combining of our minds has led to some positive results.  A reminder that we are often better when we work together.

We have broken the unit into mini units by the body systems we are learning about.  To launch the Muscles, Bones, and Skin mini unit we hosted a chicken dissection.  The idea came to us in one of our late afternoon planning sessions.  We'd pick up a roasted chicken and "dissect" it in front of the classes.  The chicken clearly demonstrated all the key learning of the unit and more.  Seeing first hand the skin, muscles, bones, cartilage, ligaments, spinal cord, etc made the learning authentic, energized and I think lasting.  This lesson went better than my best hopes.  Of course at the end we didn't want to waste our chicken so after thanking it for its' very considerate sacrifice for the benefit of our learning we shared a delicious protein snack!

Shipwrecked! Class Novels

Stay tuned for a video here...

I have been reading the novel "Peter and the Starcatchers" to my class.  I have used this book as a read aloud a couple of times before. It is an incredible book, the best read aloud I've found by far.  Action, adventure, never a dull moment, strong male and female characters, etc.  The students love it.  The read aloud serves a few purposes as I use this time in our schedule in place of silent reading.  With the read aloud I know the majority of kids are engaged in rich literature, many students get exposed to stories that their current abilities would not allow them to read independently, I can model use of voice/presenting skills as I use a different voice for each character which the kids really enjoy.  We have a common story to work with to work on a variety of skills such as: identifying key plot elements, descriptive writing, imagery, character development, similes, metaphors, dialogue, etc.  The read aloud time is something we all look forward to and another big benefit is it helps many students to self regulate as it is soothing/calming which is why I read after lunch to bring them "down".  I have noticed that the read aloud also helps us build our class community as it is something special we do together, it is ours.

In an attempt to go deeper and build the emotional connections that contribute to lasting memories and to have fun I decided to try a "Shipwrecked" theme.  In the story about half way through the book there is a shipwreck stranding the characters on an unknown island. 

On Monday morning after the shipwreck scene the students came into the "shipwrecked" classroom.  I had messed up the room thoroughly!  Knocking all desks, chairs, tables, etc over in piles.  On the wall I had created (actually my far more artistically talented wife had created for me) a mural of an island in the ocean.  Students started peeking in the windows before school and word quickly spread.  By the time the day started and they actually came into the room their interest level, excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, curiosity were sky high.  Which was the point!  By changing it up, literally changing their environment it jolted them into a place where they were looking forward to being a part of whatever was coming.  

We quickly watched a video clip of a boat sinking at sea in stormy weather and the people swimming frantically to survive, again to increase engagement/emotional response.  Then they were distributed into random "tribes" by selecting a pre cut colour card out of a bag.  They worked together in their tribe amongst the wreckage as there was"no time to rebuild yet, they have to survive!" to generate a list of survival items.  From these we generated a class list.  They then worked together to re-build the classroom and create a table group of their new tribe members, it took just a couple minutes for them to put everything back together.  They came up with a name for their tribe then set about building their survival structures where each group got the same roll of tape and cardboard box to work with and the instruction they could use anything else found in the room, but they did need to ask about using my things first.  Creativity, enthusiasm were very high and the energy was great as they worked on their structures.  When the students are this engaged it feels so good to be in the classroom there are no significant behaviour problems just lots of smiles and on task children.  One student who has many significant learning, behaviour, social challenges wanted to make his own structure and do his own thing not with a group so I said go for it as he was then more engaged and worked harder than he had in a long while.

We have since been creating in our groups pictures/props to add to our mural scene.  Whenever I say they have some time to work on their shipwrecked stuff immediately the enthusiasm spikes and off they go.  This was one crazy idea (and I sure did get some looks from  staff when they saw what I was doing!) that worked out well.