The farm

There is a number of students in my class with low oral language and I wanted to provide them with an experience that they could talk about and learn new vocabulary.

I decided to take them on a farm visit. We built up a relationship through our blog with a class that is opposite to the farm. We commented on their blog and they commented on ours. They even made a post about their visit to the farm so we could see what we would do when we visited.

We visited the farm and then went to visit our buddy class. The children were able to think, talk and write about their experience. They are still talking about the visit months later. We followed up with using cream to make butter, using butter and milk in our baking.

We drove past a dairy factory too and the kids were excited, calling out that they could see the vats that stored the milk.



Our buddy class introduced themselves, we talked about our farm visit and we saw their school. They really wanted to show us their playground.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reviewing, editing and celebrating writing.

Image
-Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey Two stars and a wish, stamp for wow word, stamp for cool sentence. I am learning what I am learning and  why.  Highlight in reading, lists of different sentence starters.  I can find examples in my writing. I can improve my writing. I can talk about my success and next steps. I write carefully as I go. Write a bit, read, fix up as you go. Self-check my writing and fix up some mistakes.  Let kids fix up some (4) then move on. I feel like an author and want to share my writing.   Too focused on quantity not planning and editing. Do I make it manageable? Do I value that part of the lesson? Feel like they share something from their writing with someone most days. A buddy, buddy class, at home, on the blog.  Responding model on p197. From the influence of Gail Loane, everyone is an author. Two stars and a wish- first, respond to the message, then criteria. We write to communicate an idea. 1. Message 2. Positives ...
Read more

Letting the learner lead

At GAFE this year they talked about asking the students to think of a problem and come up with a solution. I have been pondering how this can look in my classroom. I thought about a whole class slot of time to allow them to work on a project, then I thought about giving them the problem, and I also thought about how it could work with what things are already happening in the class. At the end of it I could see that modelling the process means that when a problem arises naturally for the students in my class they will know the process to solve it. So I have let them follow ideas they have as much as I can, fitting it into our class program and allowing them to work on projects as they arise. For example Morris is wanting to raise awareness about the weeds on the nature trail so I am supporting him to do this by allowing him time to write a message and to put the weed busters website on QR codes and stick them on the path for others to access. Another example is below. This is a...
Read more

Clarity in the classroom

Clarity in the Classroom Author: Michael Absolum Workshop from Toni Making learning intentions clear for the students. Knowing where students are to pitch their learning criteria. Example writing lesson: Played video from literacy shed- Showed clip reminding of that they had been looking at retells. Talk about the video with class, wrote down key feelings as the SC was to add detail.... Teacher to write plan, then students don't need to write the plan. Gave a sheet with thoughts and feelings on for them to add in their books. Show models of how to write it. Send away able writer's reminding of the SC. 2 or 3 examples of adding feelings, challenge is to write why they are feeling a certain way. eg He was sad and asked.... Feedback just focussed on the SC of adding details through feelings. Reminder of the SC. Clarity about what is to be learnt handout and checking where we are as a teacher on the rubric.
Read more