Possible Sentences

I learnt about this activity in a PD I went to on teaching EAL (English as an Additional Language) students. It is called possible sentences and can be used in reading and writing and also can be modified to be used across all year levels. 

It must be used on a familiar topic but it is a great way to introduce new vocabulary to the students. My example is on London and I have used information from Microsoft Encarta to create the example. 

Students are given a sheet (or place this on the IWB) that looks like the following:

LONDON

1.       capital city, United Kingdom

2.       largest city, Europe

3.       population, 8 million people

4.       the Queen, lives, Buckingham Palace

5.       Westminster Abbey, famous church

6.       transportation, the Tube, double-decker buses

     Only the key words are provided to the students. Their challenge is to put together a sentence using the exact words on each line. So they will essentially build a paragraph of six sentences based on this example and in sentence one, the must use the words "capital city" and "United Kingdom". 

     My students really enjoyed this activity and I've used it to teach new vocabulary, to focus on an area of grammar (such as past tense or writing consistently in a tense) and to model what a paragraph should look like for a writing style.

    If you find this activity is to easy for some students, you can challenge them by stating that their sentence must start with a particular word. For example, a sentence I would make for line one is: The capital city of the United Kingdom is London. But, if I challenge the students and state that they must start the sentence with the word "United Kingdom", it forces students to change their sentence structure and add in more words to something like this: United Kingdom is a collection of countries, yet, the capital city is located in London, England.

     This can also be used at the younger levels by helping students create a sentence by giving them the key vocabulary to use, rather than a paragraph. An EAL strategy but also so useful for language development in native English speakers!

Sculpting

This is an EAL (English as an Additional Language) strategy that I learnt about at a PD by Margery Hertzberg. The name of this activity is "Sculpting" and is a great way to assess whether your students have understood a concept, storyline, definition or idea. Hence, there are a number of ways that you can use this activity. 

I used this in my reading class as a way of students showing their understanding of a new word we learnt that week. The focus in the class that week was making meaning of unfamiliar words.

Teammates sharing a high five after a win with an excited commentator and spectator on the side.

For this activity, students had two minutes in their groups to create (sculpt) a still frame image  to represent to word "commentator" as that was a new word we learnt. I was sooooo impressed with the creativity of the students and all the different ideas they came up with for their image.I've covered their faces for privacy, but the facial expressions added to their images also.

This was a great way for EAL students to show their understanding of a new word. Sometimes they are not always able to verbalise their understandings, thus this activity allows these students to show their understandings in a creative way still proves their learning. This can also be an oral language activity as students need to communicate with their group members to create their sculpture.

A running race with a spectator and commentator on the sidelines.

A basketball game with a commentator on the side of the court.

A ballet performance with a host commentator.

Ordering Fractions

In teaching maths, I find one of the best ways that students learn is through hands-on activities. 

"Concrete - Pictorial - Abstract" Approach to Maths 

Read this book by David Sousa to learn more about this approach. Essentially, the approach takes a unit of math and argues that students learn best by starting with working with concrete materials, moving to then using the strategy with a pictorial representation and finally moving to abstract problem.

This website has a wonderful example of this approach: http://www.loganschools.org/mathframework/CPA.pdf

The example is working with a worded problem relating to money.

Concrete: Students use play money to solve the problem.

Pictorial: Drawing out the problem with images of the money.

Abstract: Using the number operations to solve the problem.

So when I was teaching "ordering fractions with like denominators" to my class, I began with the concrete (using fraction pieces) and then moved to the pictorial (using flash cards). I combined concrete and pictorial by giving students a fraction flash card and having them arrange themselves to create a number line of fractions with the same denominator. Students were not allowed to speak to each other when arranging themselves so it ensured that the students all used their own knowledge to understand ordering of fractions. Having students move around to represent fractions is an excellent way of keeping students engaged and showing clear representations of fractions. It also allows students to stretch and have a change of pace from sitting down for an activity.

 For more information on the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract approach, please read the following:
http://www.loganschools.org/mathframework/CPA.pdf
http://www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/CRA_Instructional_Approach.asp
http://fcit.usf.edu/mathvids/strategies/cra.html

Creating a Pie Chart with Sentence Strips

Our data...a little blurry from the IWB.

Pie charts... where do I begin? I find them very difficult to teach to children as they often understand and can analyse them, but struggle to create them. 

I tried this idea recently with my maths class for creating a pie chart. We used sentence strips to create a pie chart. For our example, it worked out that we were teaching fractions and graphing simultaneously and so we used data from our "Smarties" fractions activity to create a pie chart to represent that data.

The total number of Smarties was 40, so we began by dividing our sentence strip into 40 even pieces. Each piece was the width of our ruler.

Next, we coloured in the amount of each part of the pie chart. Thus, three pieces of the sentence strip were coloured brown to represent the three brown Smarties, six pieces coloured orange to represent the orange Smarties and so on.

The next step was to create our pie chart by putting the ends of the sentence strip together. The smaller the sentence strip, the easier this is so we had to get a little creative to keep the ends together.
Once the ends were together, we place our circle onto paper to trace our pie chart.

And finally, we used a ruler to create the divisions of the pie chart on our paper. A fun and creative way to create a pie chart! This is also a concrete way of creating pie charts. Following the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract theory, we then moved on to creating pie charts on paper and then abstractly.

One More Term

My blog has been on a bit of a hiatus lately as I have been on holidays. For those of you in other parts of the world, let me explain how the Australian school year works (I had to get used to the change too!).

The school year starts right at the beginning of February and goes until the end of December/Christmas. It is divided into 4 terms with a break in between each term. 

Term 1 - February & March 

***Two week break***

Term 2 - Mid-April to End of June

***Two week break***

Term 3 - Mid-July to End of September

***Two week break***

Term 4 - Mid-October to Christmas

***** Five/six week break until the next school year*****

A little different then at home in Canada... actually very different. But it is definitely enjoyable to count down the weeks until your next holiday break. And the two week breaks are great to refresh and renew. Also wonderful for short traveling, which is what I did over this break. After a quick trip to Teacher Games , my partner (who is also a teacher) and I went to the absolutely beautiful Sydney!

And tomorrow we are back to work for one more term in the 2012 school year. Bring on Term 4!

Boy Overboard

This is a book I just finished reading to my class and they absolutely loved. It is a Morris Gleitzman book so it included lots of humour. I was a little apprehensive to read this story as it is about a family of refugees from Afghanistan that are trying to immigrate to Australia. Many of the students in my class share similar stories to the main characters in the book, hence I wasn't sure if it would evoke any negative feelings with the students. 

Instead it had an opposite effect and students were able to have a greater understanding of the characters and their backgrounds. This is a great book for creating an inclusive curriculum in your classroom. It is also quite an enjoyable read for adults too!

What I Know About...

This was an excellent way to start off our unit on graphing but can be used for basically any topic you would like.

Students formed into a circle and the only material I needed was a soft toss ball. I started by tossing the ball to a random student and they had three seconds to share one thing they knew about graphs. After stating their fact, they toss the ball to the next student and so on. If a student could not state a fact within the three seconds, they sat down. We continued to toss the ball until there were only two students standing up. 

Such a simple concept but the students loved it. As you know, their competitive side often comes out in games in the classroom. We must of come up with over thirty different facts about graphing in this game. 

Next time we play, I will use this to form a class K-W-L chart for the unit. Rather than doing a brainstorm session on the carpet to fill in the "What I Know" section, we will play the game and have a student (or myself) record all the facts stated by the students to then be placed in that section of the K-W-L chart. 

This is also a wonderful EAL strategy to use in a maths classroom. The best way to help students develop their knowledge of the English language is through oral language. We often struggle or forget to focus on vocabulary in maths, thus this game allows students to verbally express their ideas and have exposure to vocabulary specific to the unit in focus. 

Please let me know how you can use this and/or modify it in your classrooms.