The first example I wanted to share is one where the class was communicating and collaborating to share knowledge and work together. They have been studying penguins and Ms. Brown mentioned that many kids have requested that they talk about some of the animals that are predators of penguins.
For their research, Ms. Brown took several different books about penguins and read aloud to them the portions that talked about their predators. After reading, she would ask the kids to share what animals were mentioned and she wrote those up on the board as well as any other words that they thought they'd like to use when working on their report that might be tricky to use. This was a good example to me of engaged learning because even though they went back to their desks after to write up a little bit of what they talked about, they had just worked together to talk through some ideas about predators and some of the defense mechanisms that the penguins used.
The second example I wanted to share was a sensory activity. This is the one that I've shared before about the snow in the cups. It was a sensory activity because they had to collect the snow in a cup and then observe what happened. After they observed what happened, they did write ups with illustrations about what they had learned.
I know I've talked about this example before but I hadn't seen their write ups with illustrations and I thought it was a fantastic example of involving their different senses and was a great way to learn about the world around them.
The third example I wanted to share was one where they were able to think creatively and make choices. This activity was revolved around the Water Cycle. Even though all of the pictures below are depicting the same events, you can see examples of the kids making their own choices regarding to placement, shapes, and whether or not there was a snowman.
Learning the water cycle in this way will probably stick with them longer than if they had just done a write up on it because it helps them visualize it and make it meaningful to them.
One thing that was less engaging today was a spelling practice. Ms. Brown sent a couple kids to work with me on their spelling words for the week. I had a white board and a marker and a list of words and tried to help the kids remember which words were spelled with the "e", "ee" or "ea" to make the long e sound. I could tell that the way I was going about it was not reaching the students and I don't think they were any more prepared for their spelling test having practiced with me. As I drove away I tried to think of ways that might be more engaging for the students.
One idea I had, if I was able to work with the whole class instead of just one at a time was to write the "e" "ee" and "ea" on giant circles in different places in the classroom and when I read off a word, let the kids skip, hop, or crawl to whichever circle they thought it would be. This I think would be engaging because they would be physically moving and able to work together to figure out which word was what.
Another idea I had was to write out the words with the long e sound replaced by a piece of plastic or other see-through substance. I would then send the kids in the group around to different stations to fill in the blanks with the different options for representing the long e sound and have them work together to figure out which one looked the most correct.
The last idea I had was to find poems or silly songs that involved the spelling words and display the words on a smart board for the whole class to see and sing along so they can have extra exposure to those words throughout the week to help the correct spellings look more familiar.
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