This post is a little late but here it is! It was a week packed with activity. I spent the week in my practicum class learning the ins and outs of the class dynamics and teaching a few lessons. Since Christmas is just around the corner we had lots of fun with Christmas themed activities. This past week was also the Christmas Concert which was a delight to watch, all of the hard work over the last few weeks came together to be something spectacular!
One of my favourite Christmas time stories is the Polar Express by Christ Van Allsburg. Many of the kids are familiar with the movie version but only a handful had read the book so it was fun to share that with them. While reading the story I gave the students the job of pretending to be and thinking like a news reporter. We were looking for events in the story that we could write a news report on. We reviewed some questions to help us shape our thinking and writing- the 5W's. After they had sketched out some ideas and answered the 5W questions with as many details that could be interesting to a reader they were off to the printing presses! For some students putting themselves in a different role stretched them and for others they were right at home, we might have a few future news reporters in the class! I borrowed the Polar Express News template from the Busy Teacher's Cafe (www.busyteacherscafe.com).
One of my favourite Christmas time stories is the Polar Express by Christ Van Allsburg. Many of the kids are familiar with the movie version but only a handful had read the book so it was fun to share that with them. While reading the story I gave the students the job of pretending to be and thinking like a news reporter. We were looking for events in the story that we could write a news report on. We reviewed some questions to help us shape our thinking and writing- the 5W's. After they had sketched out some ideas and answered the 5W questions with as many details that could be interesting to a reader they were off to the printing presses! For some students putting themselves in a different role stretched them and for others they were right at home, we might have a few future news reporters in the class! I borrowed the Polar Express News template from the Busy Teacher's Cafe (www.busyteacherscafe.com).
Since Christmas concerts are VERY exciting it can be hard to focus on too much else so we took advantage of the Christmas excitement to do a few art projects. We made 3D snowflakes to decorate our classroom with. I was impressed with how well everyone followed the directions and how helpful students were with each other. We attempted to use wrapping paper and coloured paper to make our snowflakes but I would recommend sticking with regular coloured paper. The wrapping paper didn't hold its shape as well as the regular paper. There is a little trick to cutting the snowflake segments, cut in the wrong direction and you get stripes of paper but follow the directions carefully and you get something beautiful! For younger grades or if you don't have two adults in the classroom, I'd recommend photocopying lines onto the paper in advance so students know exactly where to cut. For us we learned a few things for next time and a little bit of problem solving! If you'd like to make the 3D snowflakes with your class check out this tutorial.
Once our classroom was decorated we had a special guest come and teach us some Aboriginal Art Designs for our Christmas cards. We learnt about ovoid shapes and U shapes in Aboriginal designs. We then used these two shapes to make our cards, imagine that only two shapes make so many beautiful images! They worked really hard on these and it was wonderful to see how proud they were of their hard work, they were SO excited to have something special to give to loved ones. After all that's a huge part of Christmas, showing how much we appreciate those around us. Here's a few examples of their work!
And with that my Christmas holiday begins!
Have a wonderful holiday cherishing your family and friends!
Merry Christmas!
Have a wonderful holiday cherishing your family and friends!
Merry Christmas!