Mapping, Counting, Connecting, & Reflecting

Happy Thursday! Here are the highlights from our day today:

 

During our morning meeting, I read the story Willow Finds a Way. We were able to touch on themes such as bullying and friendship. It was also a great story to help address the classic issue of "well, then you're not invited to my birthday party!" and how that makes others feel.

 

 

We finished off our unit on spatial directions and our relationships to the environment with a final lesson on maps. The students had a choice between making a map of the school, the classroom, or the playground. All of them chose to make a map of the entire school. Most chose the focus of making a map that showed how to get from our classroom to the gym, which works really well because they are at opposite ends of the school!

In math, we worked on counting sets and the terms more than and less than. We started off by acting out an Animal Express train that picked up a variety of wild animals! We counted the 'animals' on the train, matched them with the proper numeral, and used a few examples of animals getting on and off the train to discuss more than and less than. Then, students worked independently on the sheet shown above.

 

In ELA, we read a story that connects with our PWIM theme; The Cow That Laid an Egg. This is such a cute story! We worked in two centers afterwards. Center one had the students making text-to-self connections. Center two had the students retelling the story by creating an illustration of their favourite part of the story. The text-to-self sheet looked as follows:

 

 

Finally, we rounded off the day with an assess and reflect type art lesson. We began with the book The Day the Crayons Quit, which helped students to think about the importance of using a variety of colours and colouring inside of the lines.

 

I introduced a rubric for the students to self-assess their future drawings and art projects. The picture below isn't mine, but is the sample that I copied to create ours for the classroom:

Then, I handed back all of the artwork that we've worked on since the beginning of the school year. Students were asked to choose one piece of art to share with the class and they were to reflect on something they could have done better and something that they did well or that they really liked.

It was a great day and I hope that everyone has an enjoyable long weekend!