As I haven't finished the current unit of work I am working on at the moment (People who help us) I will write this week about something I do every week regardless of the theme... letter formation stations!
Before I tell you about the different stations I have going during writing time, here is a really good interactive letter tracing resource I use to launch lessons along with letter formation rhymes and stories:
For about 5-10 minutes of the letter formation lesson I usually get them to practice writing the letters on their whiteboards and attempt to get rid of bad formation habits before I let them off on their own making letters.
Station 1: Making letters out of playdough. (Here's the recipe I used to make mine: Playdoh Recipe)
Station 2: Continue practicing letter formation on whiteboards.
Station 3: Repeated practice of letters in sand boxes (old perfume gift boxes filled with a thin layer of sand). Shake the box when they run out of space and start again.
Station 4: I give them A5 sheets of paper with the letter printed on them about 6 times.They must cover the letters with glue, cut some pieces of wool up and stick them on to cover the shapes of the letters.
Station 5: Formation of letters on blackboards with chalk or on lined paper taking note of tall, small and fall letters as they write them. Usually consists of a front page of letters (capital and lower case versions of the letter being studied) and a back page of words starting with the letter (e.g Ryan the rabbit).
Possible Station 6 idea: I also like the idea featured on this website: All About Learning Press where a Ziploc bag is filled with soap and taped to the table and then the letters are traced on the bag. I tried making this but have not tried it out in the classroom as of yet!
Children are moved around stations after roughly 5 minutes at a station. They continue the work of the child who has left the seat empty in the case of the writing on lined paper exercise and the sticking wool onto the letters exercise.
Water as a theme offers lots of opportunities for learning - here are some of the lessons I taught based around water last week!
1) Geography/Science/Environmental Awareness and Care: Water Collages
We talked about why water is important and whether we could live without it. I then got them to come up with ways people use water. The children who answered correctly chose the picture on the table that best suited their answers and stuck it on the chart until all pictures were used. The following day I posed the question of whether it was only people who need water to live. We discussed where we might find fish in the town I am teaching in - whether there is a sea, river or lake nearby. Following the discussion of the differences between these, we identified our local river and nearby lakes. They suggested animals that live on a river or a lake. They chose the correct picture from the hidden table and stuck it on another chart.
We then talked about how litter affects people and creatures living in the lakes and rivers and how we could stop them littering these. We decided to create posters/signs to leave by the river to encourage people to stop littering. We talked about what pictures they could include and what words they would need to use. We then mounted these around a large river chart on the wall outside the classroom. (Lesson idea derived from Greenschools website lesson plans).
2) Science: Floating and Sinking
We identified the terminology of floating and sinking and we talked about objects they felt would sink and which would float. We tested various objects in pairs, estimating and giving reasons for their choice first and then marking this in in crayon on the worksheet. We then tested it and talked about why it floated or sank based on weight, materials, etc (Floating objects were identified as being light, made of wood or being filled with air for example). We marked the answer in in pencil. We checked out the BBC website for a revision concluding activity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/digger/5_7entry/8.shtml
3) Music: The Little Mermaid We listened to the Little Mermaid songs 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World' and discussed whether the songs were happy or sad and why. We picked suitable actions to match the sad/happy quality of the music and used these to respond to the music through movement.
Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.
4) Maths: Capacity
Compared various sized containers and whether they would hold more or less water than each other. Tested it out by filling one container from another.
We estimated and then tested out how many egg cups or spoons of water (and sand) would fill the containers.
We chose which method of measuring we would use: cups or spoons depending on the size of the container.
Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.
5) Gaeilge: An Aimsir
We described the weather every morning. We learned actions to accompany the weather elements (ag cur báiste, an grian ag taitneamh, an ghaoth ag séideadh, etc) and mimed these, getting others to guess what we were showing. We picked pictures from the mála draíochta and described the weather shown in the picture. We sang the song: "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach?":
One half of the room sang: 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach ag sugradh?' The other half of the room replied with ' Níl cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, níl cead agat dul amach, tá sé ag cur báiste/tá cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, tá cead agat dul amach, tá an grian ag taitneamh.'
Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.
6) Religion: There is also ample opportunity to integrate water into religion as Alive O2's term 3 lesson 1, 2 and 3 are all based on the theme of water, however we have not progressed this far in our Alive- O programme!
The theme of shopping and food could have lasted for two months never mind two weeks as there was so much scope for integration! Here are some of the shopping centered activities that were undertaken by senior infants!
1) Oral Language Development: We added a play shop area to the classroom for use during structured play and put price tags on all the items in it from 1c - 20c. We used real coins in the play center to pay for these items. 2) Maths: We learned all about money (1c up to 20c).
Image does not belong to me. It is used for educational purposes.
We talked about the different characteristics of all the coins and played 'what's the mystery coin' games as a class and in pairs (they listened to the characteristics of the coins and told me which coin I/their partner was talking about).
We played feely bag games for identifying coins without seeing them (using size recognition mainly).
We also played bank and exchanged 1c coins for a single coin. (To make them aware of the value of each coin.)
We sorted coins in terms of value.
They used coins to buy items from a shopkeeper in their groups.
We added coins to solve problems and see how much money we had in our wallet. (Put dots on coins to remind us of their value and aid counting of money).
We kept a class piggy bank to make use of our new skills in adding money to see if we could buy a new item for the class shop at the end of the day (during the day I would ask them to put in a 2c or a 1c or a 5c coin until we had a number of coins in the piggy bank to add up at the end of the day).
3) Creative/functional writing: Writing a shopping list.
We read the story of 'Wallace's Lists' (see: Wallace's Lists book preview) and talked about all the things we could make lists about. We then used words from our food word wall in conjunction with our sounding out skills to write our own shopping lists which we later used in the play shop.
(Apologies for poor quality picture)
4) Gaeilge: Ag siopadóireacht.
We found food items for our siopa in our mála draíochta. 'An maith leat ___?' was asked of some of the children after each item was removed from the bag and placed in the shop. We learned the vocabulary of 'cheannaigh tú' by trying to guess what each pupil had bought and hidden from us. They also described their actions by saying 'cheannaigh mé___' or 'níor cheannaigh mé ' when a guess was given. We sang and acted out the song 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus d'ith mé é.' (To the tune of Polly Put the Kettle On). We later changed this song to 'Cheannaigh mé ___, cheannaigh mé ____, cheannaigh mé ____agus chaith mé é' when we were discussing an siopa éadaígh the following week.
5) History: Shops in the past.
We named and discussed grocery shops, pharmacies and sweet shops. We matched items sold in each to the correct shop. We then looked at pictures of what these shops looked like in the past, guessed which type of shop it was and spotted the differences and similarities between the old version and the new version.
Images do not belong to me. They are used for educational purposes.
6) Geography: Mapping the Monster's Shopping Trip. We talked about places and things that you would see if you took a walk through a town. They listened to the Monster's Shopping Trip on the British Council Website:
They noted the journey the monsters took and the shops they visited. We then discussed making a map of this journey. I showed them how they would start by drawing the monster's house and then the road. We discussed things that might be around the road, buildings, bridges, lakes, trees, signs etc and added the shops mentioned in the story. They then created their own version of the monster's journey.
7) Art: Class Bakery. We talked about things that you might buy to eat in a bakery. We looked at pictures of these foods (cakes, buns, croissants, pies, doughnuts, biscuits, pastries) and talked about different cake designs. They then created their cakes and pasteries from clay. The only downfall of these creations was that when they dried they were quite brittle to handle and to paint. I covered them in PVA glue to harden them a little before we painted them to minimise damage. If I were making them again I would consider making them from homemade playdough in various colours and then bake them in the oven to harden them, meaning they wouldn't have to be painted. I would also have gone over them myself making sure all the little decorations they had stuck on were merged properly to the piece before it dried. Other than that, the kids loved this and they looked quite impressive on display in our class bakery (which the early finishers created a banner for)!
8) Music: Let's Go Shopping song "Let’s Go Shopping,
