Sorting Fractions
On day 3 of fractions for the grade 1’s, I had introduced wholes, halves, fourths, and unequal. Students still were having trouble differentiating between the types of fractions, so I needed to get students thinking about how to sort them. My associate teacher had sent me some of the fractions work she had done in the past, and there was colouring and sorting fraction activity in it. I made my colour the fraction worksheet inspired by the one I had seen, and then I created charts for the students to sort the fractions.
After we did a math opener and review the fractions we have learned so far, I handed out the colouring sheets, that explained what colour to colour each respected type of fraction. After the students coloured them, they had to cut them out, and paste them into the respected section of the chart. They were working in groups, so it was important that they asked their group members what they had coloured in, and talk through any potential issues. Since these students had limited experience with group work. This was a perfect activity to encourage students to be more comfortable working with other students, and they picked up on it fairly quickly. The students loved this hands-on activity and they all did very well on it.
If I were to do this activity again, I would have students create their chart, and organize it in a way that made sense for them. For the sake of time, I created all the charts during my prep period, and they had no choice on where to put their fractions. If I kept it more open, there would have been opportunities for students to create patterns, open up discussions about largest to smallest, and more. Other than this change, I enjoyed the activity, and I believe that it could be adapted to many different lessons and topics. For example, students could sort money based on size, worth, etc., to better understand the coins. I would love to do this activity again. It encourages cooperation and collaboration and uses kinesthetic learning to cement hard topics like fractions into their learning.
My Holy Week Calendar
During my second placement, we were in the season of Lent. An important time in the Catholic Faith. During this time, there are many important days. Several of these important days come from Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter. These days include Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. The students need to understand the chain of events that happen during this week because it is so important in the catholic faith. I decided a great way for students to understand the chain events, as well as some symbols that were involved, is to create a small calendar with 4 boxes for each important day in Holy Week. It had the title of the day, with blanks, a blank square to draw, and a short description of the day.
The students had been talking about different events that lead up to Easter for about a month, so as I went through the days, it was a bit of review, but a good refresher. I went through a short powerpoint with the students and explained what happened on that day, the significance of the day, and symbols that are associated with the day as well.
Reflecting on this activity, it was done over the week and finished with my AT on the Tuesday after Easter. Every day we took out the sheet and reviewed what the day was, what happened, and the symbols. The repetition helped them understand better the chain of events. They also were able to start recognizing what special days we were talking about based on the symbols that they had drawn. This activity can be adapted to be used in literacy (storytelling, plot, climax, etc.). Giving students a timeline with spaces to draw pictures could help students visualize the story, and see the progression of the beginning, middle, climax, and end.
The students enjoyed learning about Easter, and it made me feel proud and happy that they were enjoying the subject of religion, which sometimes gets a bad reputation for being boring or unimportant. I would enjoy doing this lesson again or even adapting it in a different way.