Final communities Day

On our final scheduled session, we managed to wrap up some loose ends. We spent the first 20 minutes completing the arts and social studies post-tests to be able to measure the students' understanding of the vocabulary. Afterwards, we had the students move into their "community" groups of rural, suburban, and urban.

I hung the Delaware River Valley map we'd been working on before and we reviewed the parts of the river and what states appeared on our map, and asked "What's Missing?" The students all called out- "Our towns!" we reviewed where our urban areas of Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Delaware were on the map. Cindy brought over the community concentric circle graphic to help us remember how our communities would be arranged. We talked a bit about why the urban areas developed near the river and asked the students to think about where they should place their own town on the map.

We passed their narrative books back to the children for them to read each other's books while I invited groups up to the fabric map to pin their town in place. The map came to life with their colorful applique towns attached. The students really enjoyed getting to read their classmates stories!

To complete the final piece I've been stitching the towns down, and it will have a border fabric to bind the edges. We'll have some more time before the end of the school year when I will return to install the piece and work with the children a bit more.

I'll be posting the post-test results soon, as well as an image of the final product.

Community Narratives

 Last Wednesday, the students had their narratives already prepared to copy into their pamphlet. Cindy had reviewed them and suggested one more sentence to transform into a "show not tell" sentence for each student. We helped brainstorm and check spelling with students one-on-one. When everyone was finished I explained the pamphlet book construction. The kids remembered that the last book we made was an accordion fold book. For a pamphlet book pages are folded in half and stacked into a signature to be sewn-bound along the spine. We did a quick math computation: the children counted their sentences/the pages they'd need which had to be divided in half to count how many sheets of folded paper they'd need. For example for a 10 page book one needs 5 sheets of paper. We explained how to copy the sentences into their books using a heavy-lined sheet of paper laid under the page they were working on for guide lines to show through.

Each child figured out how many sheets they would need an we passed out the paper for their folded signatures. The rest of the session was spent with intense focus as the students very carefully copied out their stories into the books.

 At the end of the period we passed out an additional blank folded sheet to serve as a title page, as well as the cover pages. I had scanned in each student's community embroidery and printed them out onto cardstock for the covers, since their stories had been inspired by the embroideries they had made.

 Before our session on Friday, I pierced each book 3 times along the spine with an awl to prepare for binding. As a class, together we followed directions on how to sew a 3-point pamphlet binding. Up through the center hole, down through the top hole, up through the bottom hole, and down through the center hole, with the two ends tied together across the long float down the spine. Unfortunately, the students had trouble keeping their holes lined up. Learning curve! If I were to do this with this age group again I would either hole-punch the holes for larger, more easily lined-up holes, or I would have clips to hold the pages firmly in place for binding. However, with help, everyone managed to get their books bound!

 The rest of the session was spent making sure the cover and title pages were complete, and working on illustrating their stories.

 The students were encouraged to read the sentences on each page, picture it in their mind, and draw all the details they saw. They were asked to use the whole page and consider backgrounds for their objects and figures.

 Cindy reminded the students that if they were to read their book to a kindergartner, a younger child would want to see big, bright, easy-to-see pictures.

 I think we'll spend a little bit more time on illustrations next week before we wrap up the collaborative project. Only a few more days left!!

Community Narratives

On Monday Cindy started us off with a review of "Showing, not Telling" sentences. We selected a few of the children's applique blocks to pull out a simple sentence, and the children had to come up with descriptive adjectives and adverbs using their thesauruses to expand their sentences. For example:

Seth's urban burglar on the roof

"The burglar is on the roof" (typical simple 3rd grade sentence inspired by one of the embroideries)
burglar: sneaky, quiet, malicious, bad, bungling, etc.
roof: slanted, flat, tall, high, pitched, slippery, dangerous, etc.
is? (could be a more active sentence): climbed quietly, slinked carefully, waited patiently, tip-toed precariously, etc.
==> "The quiet, sneaky burglar slinked carefully across the slippery, slanted roof" (much more interesting sentence!)

After creating some more interesting sentences, we explained that entire stories could come out of the children's pictures. We talked about using the setting (rural, suburban, urban) from their pictures and choosing characters to live there (perhaps from the details they stitched). We came up with some examples of problems and solutions the characters might experience if they lived inside the children's pictures. Then we brainstormed what a beginning, middle, and end of the story might be. The children were provided with a graphic organizer to use for their brainstorming, and I passed their embroideries back to them. I encouraged the students to look at what they had created, imagine themselves entering the picture, and think about what it might be like to live there- what would it be like? What problems would there be?

Alex said she had a daycare center, a school, a park, and an animal adoption center. She made up a story where the children from the school went to visit the adoption center, but a dog escaped, ran around the park, and the children helped capture him again! 

Cindy and I worked around the room, talked to the children about their plans, helped elicit ideas, and kept everyone focused. When children were stuck I asked them to tell me a little about their picture- what buildings had they included, who lived there, what's happening, where could people go, what could they do in that community?
The brainstorming activity took up our morning session, but all the children completed their organizer for the writing of a narrative problem/solution story based off of their community applique embroidery. Since we need to make up some time, we decided I should stay for the afternoon as well to work towards our next goal of a finished written piece inspired by their own artwork.

Emily's grumpy farmer- his sheep kept escaping to the clover field

In our afternoon session Cindy modeled how to use the graphic organizer to flesh out a story using one of the children's appliques and organizers. As a class we offered both plot suggestions as well as vocabulary suggestions for making the story more fun and interesting for the reader. Doing this as a group hopefully helped the children see how the descriptive words they choose can help a writer make decisions. For example, if a character is a "grumpy farmer", well why was he grumpy in the first place? Once the activity was modeled, we passed out writing paper to start the first draft. Again Cindy and I worked the room, helping students stay on task, asking questions to spark their imagination, and editing the drafts as they were complete.

We've decided to have the children create another handmade book for the final version of the stories and illustrate them. I'm scanning thir pictures in to print and use for the covers.

River timeline books

 On Wednesday we completed the river timeline books by binding them. Cindy had the kids prepared with summaries of their notes for each time period written out onto sticker labels to be inserted into the individual pages. I brought along the chipboard for sturdy covers as well as paper maps of the Delaware Valley region cut down to cover the chipboard. It was mostly a follow-the-directions lesson as we moved step by step through how to cover the boards and bind the book. Each child received 2 boards and 2 map pieces. They selected which side of the map the wanted to be showing, then glued it onto the board, folding over the corners and edges and gluing them down, like wrapping a package. Then we decided which side should be the front cover and which the back, and glued their accordion paper first to the back side, then the front side, careful to center it and line up the 2 covers.

Once the covers were complete and the book bound, the students doublechecked that their summary labels and everything was well glued down. Cindy and I roamed the room helping students as needed complete the binding.

When all binding was complete, we brainstormed some possible titles for the books. The students came up with: "The Olden Times", "Life of a River", "A River Changes", "River Timeline". We wrote each suggestion on the board and made not that book titles are always capitalized. Then I asked students to tell what their favorite time period was and why. I had also brought in photocopies of maps of Philadelphia from each of the time periods we had covered in the book for the students to select one image representing their favorite tie period to collage onto the front of their book with their title. At the end of class I offered the simile "A book is like a body" to see if anyone could figure out why (head, spine, and foot are parts of books, and covers/content are like outside/inside of a person).

 It's very satisfying to turn something you've drawn and written into a real book. The students were quite proud of how these turned out.

River Timeline

Wednesday and Friday this week we continued our focus on the Delaware River, but this time looked at the timeline of who was here and how it was used. We started off by doing a guided reading of (help me out Cindy- I forget the title and author!) 

As we read the book aloud as a class, Cindy and I would stop and explain any terms we thought were hard to understand. The children each had 4 post-it notes to take notes for the 4 periods of time we would be discussing. On the board I created a similar timeline showing the 4 time periods of Indians, Settlers, Industrial, and Modern. As we moved through the book, we wrote notes on the board under each time period. I also had a strip of paper folded in 4 to visually illustrate the changes in the landscape and the river over time.

With Wednesday being a half day, the children were a bit distractible, and it took longer than I expected to get through the guided reading. We had just enough time at the end to pass out the folded accordion book pages for the students to put their names and post-it notes into.

Friday was more productive. With the paper strip timeline up on the board, we reviewed the special information about each time period. The students remembered quite a bit! We also brainstormed some various ways to represent trees, tree stumps, wigwams, farms, houses, factories, and inventions to create a visual timeline in our books as background and illustration for the text. The students were allowed to use colored pencil or crayon to draw their symbols. We started off with the river representing the timeline down the center of the book, and with the color changing on the third page to show how dirty the river got during the industrial revolution. While students were working, Cindy and I circulated the room, encouraging students to fill the pages, asking them how they were representing their ideas, helping them if they got stuck, etc.

It's interesting to see how wide the range of artistic development there is among the students. Some of them followed directions and used the images as symbols, like on a map.

Mary's visual timeline

Brooke's timeline with symbols

Other students took a more pictorial approach, drawing scenes along their timeline. 

 

Samia's scenic timeline

 

Angelica got engrossed in details in the wigwams and horse

Isaiah's is between symbolic and scenic

Next time we'll copy sentences describing each time period onto sticker labels to insert on each page and bind our books with covers.

River ribbons

On Wednesday, we started off the lesson looking at some artwork by New Hope Impressionists and other artists who have created views of the river. A range of images was included, showing sights from the Delaware River Gap down to Gloucester, NJ. We talked about how our last word brainstorm for the river cinquain poem was just from our heads and our ideas of rivers, but this time we'd use the pictures for inspiration. With the kids paired up, each pair got a color copy of an image to view, and the class was instructed to use the title and artist as the starting point for a word splash, then consider the setting (including season, weather, physical features of the landscape), actions (what people were or could do in that painting), and sensory words (how it would feel to be in the picture). Students spent about 30 minutes together brainstorming ideas. The brainstorm was intended to prepare students with inspiration for a free verse poem to be written after they completed their river ribbon.

Daniel Garber, Tohickon

Using the river poems students wrote based off of last week's wordsplash, students wrote them out onto ribbons to be sewn into the river for the collaborative piece. We remembered a reading we had done a few weeks before comparing a river to "ribbons of water". I asked them about what was important about a cinquain form and suggested we change colors on the ribbons to suggest the different lines of the poem. I explained how to use the fabric markers on the ribbons, and then the students copied their poems onto the ribbons. It required a light touch, which some students had no trouble with. Other students used too much pressure and were frustrated with how much the markers "bled" on the ribbons. I find this to be an interesting exercise for penmanship- it needed students to slow down and be more careful about spacing and sensitive to the surface. Some students figured it out, and others still had trouble. To diffuse the frustration with the medium we compared the ribbons again to water, saying we were setting our words into the water. This revealed another metaphor for the process, which not particularly overtly made as a connection, was one of the ideas we were interested in having the students learn.
Once students completed copying out their cinquain poem, they brought their ribbon over to the collaborative piece to select its placement. Students were very familiar with the river features vocabulary in stating where they wanted their ribbon to be along the river.
With everybody pinned, Cindy explained how to continue with their free verse poem inspired by the images at the beginning of class. She compared word choice in a poem to the colors, textures, and brushstrokes an artist uses in a painting. I reinforced this idea by showing the elements of color and texture in our collaborative piece. The rest of class was spent helping students with the writing process.

Apology Poems

Cindy had the children complete their "Apology to a Leaf" poems and copy them onto the iron transfers of their leaf rubbings and then mounted and hung them in the hallway!

 Some of them show off the students' new thesaurus skills for learning new vocabulary and making writing more interesting. Take a look:

 Alex: "To My Poor Leaf"- I confess for ripping you in half then breaking your spine. I was wrong because I was bored sitting on the ground at my soccer game. I'm sorry and I tried to put you back together with bandaids.

 Hailey: "Sorry to my leaf"- I am penitent for plunging into a pile of you and ripping you apart. I'm so apologetic, please forgive me. I was bored on a fall day and I saw a leaf. I picked it up and crunched you. I saw a pile of leaves and jumped in them.

 Laia: "To my leaf"- I ripped the leaf into pieces. I was wrong to rip you in pieces. I ripped you because I wanted to make an Art Project. I apologize.

 Daniella: "Sorry Leaf"- Please forgive me for pulling you off the tree. I just could not help myself. You were so pretty.

Emily: "Fall Leaves"- I am sorry I stepped on you and ripped and crunched you in my hand. I apologize. I stepped on you. I was wrong. I crunched you because it was a neat sound.

Plant life in the Delaware watershed

Today was amazing! We had a storm and a windy morning that transformed the world into a carpet of leaves, a perfect morning for our lesson on plant life in the Delaware watershed. Before coming to Comly this morning I took a stroll and selected a variety of leaves to bring in with me to share. We started class talking about the storm and the wind and asked the kids if they had noticed anything different this morning. We looked at the globe to see where we were and why we have season changes. I told them about my leaf collecting and said obviously if I picked them up this morning they must all be plants that grow near the Delaware River! With the kids in pairs we handed out a leaf to each pair and asked them if they could identify it by comparing it to drawings of labeled leaves on the overhead projector. Most of them were quite successful, and it gave us a chance to talk about some of our art elements like line and shape as well as have some compare and contrast practice.


the collaborative background cut and pinned

I had brought in the background for our collaborative piece, which is starting off as a large river model of the Delaware in felt fabric. The kids identified the source and mouth and tributary as well as the names of the states the river passes through. The model at the moment just shows land and water, and the kids correctly guessed that we needed some plants next!

I brought in green fabric and fabric pastels to do leaf rubbings for some color and texture. Cindy had lots of texture plates for the kids to use for this project. This makes our 3rd printing technique (silkscreen, stamping, and now rubbings). I showed an example and asked the class how they thought I'd gotten the leaf images on there- it was interesting to hear some of the responses (paint the leaf and press it on! Trace it! Silkscreen it!). When they were ready each table come back to select their leaves and colors. Each student printed 2 leaves using 2 colors. As they finished I quickly ironed the oils out to heatset. Ironing between paper meant there was also a resulting transfer print of the image to the paper.
While I worked with each table to do leaf rubbings Cindy had the students work on a poetry and then a reading piece on the same theme of Fall leaves. Their poetry style was to write an "apology poem" much like William Carlos Williams' poem "This is Just to Say":

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

She gave them some different ways to say "I apologize", and shared 3 elements of an apology poem, including the apology, an explanation of what happened, and a reason why. The children imagined an apology to a fallen leaf, and I'm so happy that they all had a dry fallen leaf in front of them while they did this- the result of a morning impulse inspired by a windy autumn day. I suggested to Cindy that she might want to use the iron transfer papers with their poems somehow for their final copy.

River Model-First Try at a Persuasive Writing

On Wednesday, Marie and I were all set to have the children compose a persuasive piece to be edited and used in a "brochure". This would give the students the experience/practice of using what they have learned about Main Idea and details as they write in a persuasive style, which they hadn't yet done. We talked about who their 'audience' would be (people that would come to visit the river) and the purpose of the writing (to convince those people to visit their river). We had a four-square with the general topics already put in to hand out to the kids. We had decided to use this opportunity to have the kids show what they understood about landforms (the first square); the source (the second square); and the mouth (the third square); as they tried to persuade people to visit their river.

As the lesson progressed, we could see that merging the idea of a persuasive piece with and informational piece (the landforms, the source, the mouth) was confusing for the students, and their writing was not focused. This was certainly a moment to reflect for me as a teacher! The students struggled through trying to include information as they tried to persuade, and the writing pieces needed so much support that I decided to simply use it as writing practice, and to start from scratch on Friday with a more defined writing task.

On Friday, before Marie arrived, I introduced a graphic organizer that was specific to a Persuasive Writing. I modeled the purpose of a persuasive (in this case a brochure) and filled in a large graphic organizer that had 3 Main Reasons, each branching off into 2 details. We decided on the 3 main reasons someone should visit the river would be 1) what you can do there 2) what you can see there and 3) how easy it is to get there. I used the kids ideas to fill in the 2 details for each of these Main Ideas, and reiterated the fact that the conclusion would restate the main purpose-Visit My River.

I then modeled writing each main idea as the beginning of each paragraph as a full sentence, and then added each detail as full sentences. I reminded them to add even more details, if they thought they could. I gave another mini-lesson on using a Thesaurus to find better (expensive) word choices to make their writing more interesting to the reader. I then handed out the blank version of the graphic organizer I had used on the board.

Now the students had 2 tasks to focus on, the persuasive writing and using better word choices. The persuasive writing and the searching for better word choices had also both been modeled. Now, the task began to move smoothly! By the time Marie arrived, most of the students were done the graphic organizer and ready to begin the writing. Marie explained how they would make the brochure, and noted the visual elements that would draw "potential visitors" to take a brochure and then perhaps decide to visit the river. She explained how just as the writing was important, so was the decorative aspects of the brochure. She encouraged them to look closely at their writing to choose what to decorate the brochure with (we were using lots of stamps of Naure); again connecting the art to the writing.

Danielle is ready to put her text and picture into her brochure cover

The lesson went smoothly, as each child finished their rough draft, they came to me for editing and then to Marie to embellish the brochure. As in all writing tasks, each child moved at their own pace and the classroom was full of children at different steps of productivity! The writing in the brochures was now more focused and lots of students actually used the thesaurus to change particular words!

Note: I should mention at this point that this particular group of third graders came in September as Basic and Below Basic Readers and Writers, and 1/3 of the class have IEP's that entitle them to extra support from a Resource Room Teacher. Math is also challenge for them. I have adjusted my teaching style since September to accomodate the types of learners in this classroom, we move steadily and methodically, with lots of visual prompts and reminders.

River Model Prep

To prepare the students for our river model project and incorporate some reading practice, Cindy found a great 2-page story about 3 kids making a relief map model out of dough. A lot of art vocabulary was used, like modeling and representation, and Cindy defined dough in a very tactile way that should have them sparked for working with the model magic on Friday! Cindy and the guided reading specialist pulled aside particular kids for guided reading groups to help them through the story while I kept an eye on class progress, answered any vocab questions, and redirected some of them to where to find the answers for the comprehension questions at the end. It was interesting to see how so many of them gloss over or write simple/easy answers, but when prodded or questioned to think about the "why" then they are able to provide a more in-depth answer. There's a lot of copying going on, even artistically, and I wonder right now if it's just a strategy that helps the below-level students keep up and how much to allow it.
While we waited for students to finish the reading we passed out sketchbooks and gave kids time to color some of the sketches they had done on our trips. It was nice to revisit the experience that way. Some of the kids debated about what they saw when/where.

With everyone ready, I asked the kids what the reading was about (making a model out of clay). I asked them if they remembered seeing any other models when we were on our trips (the swing bridge at the canals, the Delaware river map at Penn's Landing, and the pollution watershed model at Riverbend). I told them we would be making our own river models and so we needed to brainstorm what important things should be on the model. With "Parts of a River" written on the board the kids helped fill in the spidergram (water, land, tributaries, mountains, source, mouth, animals, plants, roads, houses, bridges, boats, buildings, urban, suburban, rural).

When we got to the last 3 words about community types a student hopped up and brought me a chart they had made with Cindy showing urban, suburban, and rural in concentric rings with pictograms of what one might see in each spot and how crowded or spread out they'd be (I love seeing how much drawing Cindy uses in her lessons- is this a new thing? Even in the math lesson I saw at the end she asked the kids which way it was easiest to solve the problem-- and stressed drawing a picture). This gave us a quick review and opportunity to talk about communities we've seen and experienced, and compare the kids' more suburban life with my city life.

 With that I told the students that we'd be making our own river models that share all the physical river features (and we circled source, mouth, land, river, tributary, and meander) but that they'd be able to choose whether their model showed a rural, suburban or urban area. I passed out the mdf boards we'll be using as a base for the children to trace in their sketchbooks and make a plan. I asked them what we call that plan an artist makes before they start a project (Sketch!).
The kids had plenty of time to draw a design for their river model, which I hope will make the creation of it on Friday an easier process. It allowed for some problem-solving and checking of student understanding.
I think we're ready to make some models!

Day 12, finishing up Rivers of the World

On Wednesday when I came in, Cindy was having the kids review the "6-pack" for the Amazon river to transform the important points into sentence form. We hadn't done our 6-packs (the people, houses, plants, animals, problems, and uses) for the Nile, Volga, and Yangtze the other day in hopes to get lots of stitching done. So after they had completed the Amazon facts, we picture-walked through a book on the Nile River, with Cindy reading out loud, the students taking notes to add to a new 6-pack, and me writing down main points on a large sheet of paper to mirror the Amazon one they'd completed. This set us up perfectly for a Venn diagram organizer for a compare/contrast writing. I believe this was the first time they'd been introduced to the compare/contrast format and concept. With diagram handouts in the kids hands and a larger Venn diagram poster on the board I elicited what was the same about the Nile and Amazon to put in the overlapping section, and then what was special and different for each of the rivers to put in the left and right sides of the diagram. The children naturally made comparison statements like "The Nile is longer than the Amazon", and I pointed out that we use sentences like that a lot when making comparisons, especially using words such as less/more and -er endings. It would be great to continue this idea with some images, and perhaps we can spend a few moments tomorrow on comparing their maps to reinforce the idea of compare/contrast. Images are great for this kind of activity, and compare/contrast is an essential form for writing about art and aesthetics. With the Venn diagrams complete, Cindy collected them for use in their next writing assignment.

We brought up the overhead transparency of our Rivers of the World map to review which rivers have been studied and stitched so far (Mississippi, Amazon, Nile, Volga, and Yangtze), we counted out how many that was (5) and compared that to how many continents there are (7). I asked them which continent we hadn't done yet (Australia) and also asked why we weren't going to stitch any rivers in Antarctica (nobody lives there and it's too cold there for rivers to flow). We passed out the Atlases and had them find Australia and its major river (the Murray-Darling). I compared it to the Amazon river because both have their sources up in the mountains, and I compared it to the Nile river because both start as 2 separate rivers that join and have one mouth. We discovered a new word for a body of water-- the Murray-Darling's mouth is in the Great Australian Bight (a shallow, curved bay). As always I asked them to find the source of the river as their starting point for stitching and the mouth as the end point for stitching the river. I'm hoping this process of starting and ending in stitching will reinforce the idea of the beginning and end of the river and direction a  river flows.

Students quickly finished their stitching and as we had plenty of time, I brought out my fabric markers. I told them this was their chance to make their map their own and unique. I mentioned some options such as coloring in the continents like the map on the classroom wall, labeling the continents and the rivers, adding details to each continent and river based on the information they had learned from our six-pack exercises, etc. The children were VERY enthusiastic about coloring these in and were quite inventive in the details they added. Some added compass rose and cardinal directions, some created a color-coded map key, some wanted to add the equator, some drew animals and fish in the land and water. They had a clear idea about what should be on a map!

Now my challenge is making a final decision about how to make these more "finished" pieces in terms of the edges. I could either mount them on boards and tape the edges at the back, or I could be more labor intensive and add a backing fabric and seam the edges........