Compare/Contrast Writing Assignment

The students work on writing after Marie leaves, and Friday they finished their compare/contrast essay comparing the Nile River with the Amazon. These numerous writing activities give them the practice of organizing their ideas into a graphic organizer, writing a rough draft, and editing (with teacher help). They then produce a finished piece that is considered their "published" work.
Since Compare/Contrast is a new writing format for an informational piece, I put writing "stems" onto the blank foursquare to get them started. The first square started with the prompt of 'opening statement', then "These two rivers are alike because_______". The students filled in the square with information from the Venn Diagram we had written the day before. The 2nd square began with the stem, "They are also very different! For example, the Amazon River___________". The 3rd square began with the stem, "On the other hand, the Nile River____________". The 4th square was for a concluding statement, which restated the opening statement. The majority of the students were able to fill in the squares with the information they had on their own, a few had difficulty and required teacher support. The final pieces were graded using the Pennsylvania Writing Rubric, and the scores are improving!
In addition, writing is becoming easier and less time consuming for the students as they are getting over their initial frustration and lack of writing experience. Scores will level off, and I will then push again, adding new writing lessons to push them from this new plateau to a higher one. I am pleased with the results that our lessons have brought!

River features intro

Today we started early to avoid the Halloween-y afternoon mayhem. We gave the kids time to add final details to their projects, which fortunately allowed some kids who had been absent to catch up. When everyone was finished I called 3 sets of students 2 at a time to take a look at some of their choices and ask the class what was the same and what was different. This was to reinforce the compare/contrast idea we introduced on Wednesday as well as to give the kids a chance to conclude the project with a critique of sorts. I also asked the kids what they thought the final product should be: a mounted piece to hang on the wall or a functional piece that would be useful. It was a unanimous decision to have something useful, so I'll be sewing them on the machine to turn them into little ditty bags which they can hold their upcoming timeline book project in.

It was then time to introduce more river information. Cindy led the students in reading a packet that described rivers in their multiple aspects. Doing the reading helped emphasize main idea and details which we'll continue to stress when we start our river models next week. Cindy had begun a drawing on the board when the reading discussed ports at the mouths of rivers. When the reading began describing source and waterfalls, I continued the drawing so we ended with a full illustration on the board. With this in mind next week we'll have the kids sketch and plan what to include in their river models before we work them in clay.

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........

Literacy Goals are Moving Along!

Yesterday, after spending 2 weeks doing DRA's (Developmental Reading Assessments), I see some good progress! After 8 weeks in school, the children that I gave the assessments to had made considerable gains. One student went up 2 levels! Using art as a basis for teaching writing skills and supplementing those with Guided Reading (small group reading at their level focusing on comprehension skills), is starting to show some definite progress in both reading and writing. We have completed 4 pieces of writing, from graphic organizer to rough draft to edited copy. From those 4 pieces, all students have gained at least 2 points (10%) improvement. This improvement in only 8 weeks is very impressive to me. I have been teaching third grade for 7 years, and am quite impresssed. Most students have raised their scores even more. We are beginning our 5th piece tomorrow, with a compare/ contrast essay on the Nile River and the Amazon River. Both rivers have been stitched on the students Map of the World Fabric Piece.

We have done 2 Main Idea/Detail activities, Teacher modeled first, then student completed independently. The first was on a piece of non-fiction on Rivers, the second on Canals. This literature follows our theme. Informational writing follows this format also, however the students find it much easier to recognize the Main Idea when they have written it themselves! This intricate web of daily activities wrapped around our Teaching Artist and activities is starting to blossom, and the evidence is slowly emerging!

Rivers of the World: Asia, Europe, and Africa

Today was a big catchup day. We decided to just do embroidery of the various rivers instead of doing an individual book exercise, then stitching. We reviewed the names of the continents and rivers we've learned so far. We had the kids work with the atlas, which they seem to be getting more familiar with. First we found Africa, and the kids quickly located the Nile. We noted the source in Uganda, that it travels through 3 countries, is the longest river in the world, and that the mouth is in the Mediterranean Sea. I had pre-threaded the needles today to help us get started faster. I was able to show them a new stitch- Whipped running, and several students used it.
We moved our hoops over to look at the continents of Asia and Europe. We sang the continents song again. We located the Volga River which sort of helps divide the continents of Europe and Asia. After they stitched the Volga we traveled across Asia to find one of the major rivers in China. We noted the location of the Yangtze, its source, and its mouth at the Sea of China. Some students were able to finish stitching the Yangtze, but others have not yet. It was time to get cleaned up and ready for the bus.

After today, to complete the project we only need to have the Yangtze and a river in Australia stitched. To review the Houses, People, Plants, Animals, etc. Cindy and I discussed just focusing on the Amazon and the Mississippi, and having the kids create a Venn diagram in their sketchbooks to compare and contrast. Some additional details can be added to their maps based on the information gathered. We're concerned with the kids' reading progress and need to find more ways to work in the literacy goals. As we'll be moving on to our river model,  I recalled seeing a grade-appropriate description of river features in Cindy's collection of materials during our planning sessions we can use next week.

Trip to RiverBend Environmental Center

This trip ( our last trip) gave the students exposure to the concept of 'tributaries' which "contribute" to rivers. It also gave them a close-up look at living things that grow and live by streams and rivers. The first lesson set involved an immersion in the culture of the Lenape Indians. We will use this as a basis for a Compare/Contrast writing. The second lesson set was the concept of a "watershed". They use a scale model of a community, they use everyday pollutants in a manner the children understood, they let the students create "rain" and the students observed the pollutants enter the stream through runoff from the land. This reinforced the concepts of "mouth" of the river as they watched the stream/river drain into what would have been a larger body of water. The larger body of water was represented by a "drain". Fortunately, we had a reading activity (again focused on Main Idea/Details) about Rivers, and the terms drainage basin, mouth, source, and others were in the passage. The students were delighted to see the model of the Watershed, and to see that it had an actual DRAIN! Talk about an AHA! moment!

Coast Guard Station/Philadelphia Fireboat Station Lesson

Trip to US Coast Guard Station/Philadelphia Fireboat Station on the Delaware in downtown Philly
Another fabulous trip! The students started out on the bus noticing the difference between the rural landscape they had seen the previous week and the urban landscape they were seeing on this trip. We saw lots of industrial buildings, rowhouses, traffic, and other urban features along the highway. I noted out to them that once again we were traveling along a "River Road"-this time it was the Delaware Expressway-also known as I-95. They were surprised to see little glimpses of the Delaware River as we rode along the highway. I reminded them that it was the SAME river, and they absorbed the contrasting features. This set us up for the visit to the US Coast Guard Station/Phila Fireboat visit.
As soon as we arrived, the students noted the difference between the calm boarding of the boat up in Bucks County and the hectic entrance to the Coast Guard Station. There were men in uniform all around, we were told no photos were allowed, and the adults had to produce photo ID to get in. We proceeded to the rear of the building where the fireboat was located, and boarded the boat. Marie's description of this part of the trip is quite exact! The pilot let us into the control part of the boat in small groups and explained the double steering feature, the many buttons, and the water control systems. The kids were interested in the two big steering wheels but not much else! They were more interested in shooting the water out of the firehouses, which again Marie explained beautifully!
This trip really gave us the background knowledge we needed for the lessons on the difference between rural, suburban, and urban communities. This lesson comes up soon and I will be able to refer them back to what they noticed on the trip! The lesson involves reading an excerpt from EDHELPER, and focusing on main idea/details as they read.
We then boarded the bus for the Penn's Landing part of the trip. The point of this part was to give the students an incredible view of an incredible bridge (Ben Franklin) and to have them understand that the City of Philadelphia recognizes the historical importance of this port/landing area. We looked at all of the landmarks that were placed there for tourists- the Wm. Penn Timeline; the diagram of all the types of ships that had traveled through the port; and the scale model of the Delaware carved on the concrete. Marie describes this part nicely!
This part of the trip gives the students background knowledge that we will explore later in terms of Continuity and Change, as the port still has some features that were there long ago, and other features that have changed.