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.