Capacity Introduction
During my first practicum placement, one of the first lessons I taught was a grade 4 lesson on Capacity. The previous day, we had done some experimentation with containers, water bottles, bowls, and anything else that could hold water, and did some estimating with capacity. I then needed an activity to go along with the estimation of capacity and introduce students to the idea of knowing how much a litre is, and the capacity of other objects compared to the litre. I had students form groups, and then make predictions and estimations about the capacity of objects through word problems. I really enjoyed this introduction activity because it got students thinking in different ways about the litre and using different knowledge to understand capacity of different objects, and how subjective capacity can be if people use different measurements. I would keep this activity this way next time because it made students work together to understand word problems, and, they had to collaborate and cooperate with group members. They were learning about how to listen to everyone’s ideas, and how they were going to answer questions using everyone’s thoughts. I would change this in the future by introducing students to smaller groups at first. Some groups had up to 6 people, which was very difficult for some of them. Next time, I would cap the amount of people in a group to 3 or 4 to help students with their group work skills. This introduction helped me in my role because I was able to roam around, ask open-ended questions to students and pick teachable moments to share with the class. I also got to see where every student was at in terms of their knowledge on capacity and the litre. This can be adapted to different situations because you could do gallery walks with chart paper for any subject at all. It is a great strategy to see where all students are at in their learning, encourage collaboration and cooperation, and students get to share their work with their classmates, which brings them a sense of pride.
Attached are the word problems that I used to provoke thinking within the groups.
Christmas Story Hook
During my Language block, I introduced a story writing assignment to the class. I needed to be able to get a lot of material covered before students started writing. During this 2-week long lesson, I review and taught students the parts of a story, the process of writing a story, figures of speech, and review proper punctuation and grammar. One of the strategies I used to review all these many parts, as well as hook students’ attention, was writing a Christmas story as a class. We went through the brainstorming process, outlining process, and the final product all together. As a class, we would write our story for the first 5-10 minutes of class. I would guide students on the flow of the story (beginning, middle, and end), and remind students of the figures of speech that needed to be implemented (idioms, similes, alliteration). Students loved being able to share their ideas of the story, and it gave me an opportunity to model what I was looking for in their own stories. In the future, I would love to do another activity like for a class. I felt like it helped students a lot with their writing, it gave students ideas and things to think about for their stories, and it helped refocus students when starting the language block. In the future, I would try to shorten the story by taking away some details. I wanted everyone’s ideas to be included, so the story got a little long, and sometimes would cut into their individual writing time. Next time I would want to explain editing and revising more thoroughly to the students, and model it to them using the class story. This activity helped me in my role because it gave me a way to model my expectations to students and have a fun hook for students to get excited about literacy and writing. This can be adapted into different situations by using doing parts assignments or examples of assignments together as a class to show students what you are looking for. You could provide them with a rubric, checklist, and more explanations to show your expectations, but modelling your expectations helps students grasp the expectations more thoroughly, and they have a better understanding of how to start, continue, and end their work.
Grade 4- Habitats and Communities Assessment
Above is an example of an assessment and cumulative task I presented to grade 4 students after our unit on Habitats and Communities. The students in this class had a lot of test anxiety, and their performance on tests was affected by this. The unit itself was created to be very hands-on and student-centered; there was a lot of center work, scavenger hunts, experiments, and group discussions. It made sense to me to consolidate using a more hands-on approach and in a way where students could vocalize their understanding of the concepts along with typing out their understanding. Creating a Google Slides presentation taught students how to collect and organize research, stick to an assignment schedule, manage their time, and the beauty of peer editing. Students chose habitats using a draft system and had the freedom to choose to focus on a specific location or the habitat in general. I was excited for these students to dive into their research and become invested in their habitats and found that students learned a lot more than what we just covered in the unit because of the use of outside sources. This assessment was very successful and something that I hope sticks with students as they continue through their years.