Olympic Classroom Decor

Just thought I would share the amazing work of my Educational Support staff during our integrated unit on the London 2012 Olympics. This definitely added some character to the room and helped enhance the theme. 

The rings were made from hula hoops covered in streamers to match the Olympic ring colours. The torch is made of tissue paper, construction paper, and metallic mesh. Once again, amazing work and I truly appreciate all that she does for our classes.

Past, Present, Future

 

As a pre-test to our integrated unit on Environmental Degradation, students were given the task of creating a past, present and future representation of the community they live in. 

Some of my students created wonderful work and drew very futuristic images of the future. One student drew the future as a bunch of tree stumps. She has used her prior knowledge of the environment and deforestation to project how human impact can negatively affect the future. This is what we were looking for. As only one student did this, it provided a starting point in teaching and finding out activities for the students. A post-test to this unit would be the same activity and hopefully more students will be able to apply their knowledge of human impact on the environment in their representations of our community in the future.

Olympics K-W-L Chart

I thought it would be a neat idea to create a massive K-W-L chart for our integrated topic on the Olympics and the students loved it too. Each student created their own K-W-L chart and then contributed parts of their charts to our large class one.




















Also, instead of just What I know, What I want to know, and What I've learnt, we also added another column for How I am going to find out. This was a great idea because it helped students come up with a number of resources they could use in their research during this topic.

Features of an Information Report

We usually start a new writing genre with a pre-test and then deconstructing a text from that genre. This unit, we did a finding out activity with the students prior to the deconstruction. It worked exceptionally well and when we began to deconstruct an information report, students were able to use the knowledge gained from this activity to help them deconstruct. This idea was given to me by my teaching and learning coach. Check out her blog here: http://samkenely.edublogs.org/

Students were placed in mixed ability groups and given a chart. There were five different information reports floating around the room that they had to analyse. Essentially, students were trying to find similarities between the texts to identify the features and structures of an information report. 

I really enjoy these types of activities, where students are finding out the information, creating links and doing their own exploring to find the answers. Rather than giving students a list of the structure and features of an information reports, students work together to create their own list. During our share time at the end of the lesson, students were able to create this list.

Integrated Unit - The Environment

Here is our massive Discovery Wall for our integrated unit on Environmental Sustainability:

The Lorax

During our unit on environmental sustainability, we read the story The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

This story is a great way to connect environmental degradation to human impact.

After reading the story, students were to create a Before and After drawing of the story, showing the destruction that the Onceler caused.

Students in my class did an amazing job drawing Truffula trees and the Thneed factory.