Cool New Find

       

I am always on the lookout for great books to read with the boys.  The fortunately love picking out books at the library for entertainment and information.  They are now reading to me each night, from simplistic books that are more about decoding than about the story.  I feel this is a necessary step for them to growing into readers of more complex story lines. 

And, because they love stories not, I love to read them to them to keep their imaginations and love of the story alive, while they are learning the details of reading.  We recently read Charlotte’s web together and we all loved it, but I have had three false starts since then.   So, while I was at the library the other days, I decided to flip through the pages of a Magic Tree House book.  I noticed a note written in the back “great read aloud unit studies K-3.”  Hey, that is what I was looking for. 

So, I picked up Book #1 “Dinosaurs of the Past.”   Three days later, we are done with the book and the boys loved it.  They used other books to prove points about each of the dinosaurs mentioned in the book. We talked about how dinosaurs laid eggs, which character they related to the most, and what they would do in the same situation.  I am wishing I had the time today to go ahead and pick up #2 to keep the momentum going. 

Fast forward to this morning, and I decided to look up and see if there were some good unit studies out there for the series, and I found this web site:  http://mthclassroomadventures.org/index.php?r=site/lessonplans

Wow, is all I can say!  This site has cool lesson plans, activities and extension activities for each book in the series.  This could also be a great way for parents of struggling or reluctant readers engaged throughout the summer.  If you child is already a proficient reader, they can read the books themselves and they are geared for a 2-4^th grade level I believe.    

The general theme is that a couple of kids find a tree house and in that tree house there are a ton of old books.  When they look at the book they are transported into it’s setting, and then the story centers on the setting.  From what it looks like there are all sorts of history and science themes explored throughout the series.

Rage Against the Institution

I have been quite this week on the blog.  For those who know me in real life, you know that when I am quiet in my writing it is because I am filtering, revising, rolling around something complex with in me.  I have started several blog post.  All felt disorganized, judgmental, cynical, and unproductive.  While I love a good rant, I like to think I that I don't rant for the sake of speaking, but because I want something changed.  Improved. A wrong corrected. 

What am I so riled up about?  Well lots frankly, but specifically humanity's treatment towards our youth.  See, as humans we do fall in the scientific category of animals, but we like to think of our selves as beings and not animals.  Yet, what I am seeing in my day to day life, feels like our youth are being raised as animals rather than as beings, and I must say that I also feel that raising them in the wild, would be a far cry better than many of a modern ways of shuffling kids around or off to the side so that the world can go about its business. 

Why am I so disturbed by this right now?  Well I am usually frustrated with this, and it is something that stays in the back of my mind constantly.  See, my own personal children are the victims of being forgotten.  One son was left to rot, literally, in a crib 23 hours a day for 2.5 years, to the point of physical, emotional and intellectual scars that will stay with him for life.  Recently, my husband and I went to see the showing of the documentary STUCK which takes an in depth look at the impacts on children, families and society when kids remain unparented due to bureaucratic hurdles that leave them trapped in orphanages.  Almost all of the footage was something I had seen before, but never had I seen it all together in 85 minutes of back to back fotage. 

What struck me to my core, was seeing the Romain orphanages and the profound effect that emotion, physical and emotional neglect had on the children stuck in the institution.  Kids who were mostly born healthy were exhibiting symptoms of psychosis, autism, ADHD, ADD, PTSD, ODD, PDD, and failure to thrive. 

While I know that there are many genetic variables that can increase the probability of a child to have one or more of these disorders, there was no way that 100% of the children in the orphanage had inherited genes that would cause such wide spread mental and physical impairments.  These cases were clearly caused by the act of willful negligence by society.  We, all of us, caused this, directly or indirectly.  Human beings, were reduced to treatment worse than stock animals raised for consumption and the price was outstandingly high. The extreme example of the Romanian orphanages, felt like a wake-up slap in the face judgment on a problem that is much more subtle, but all too real, with other institutions geared towards youth.

Then there is the here and now.  Me as a parent of two boys, who both survived their early months and years in an institution.  With that come the labels of SPD, PDD, OCD, and PTSD.  Then, there is the other here and now of my life as a public school teacher, and an active member of the homeschooling world  Something I am hearing over and over again is, "my child is not succeeding at school because they are ADD, ADHD, not hearing anything the teacher says, not challenged, has so much homework they feel like they are sinking."  Sadly, I am mostly hearing from parents of young children.  Parents are being told in the masses that something is wrong with their child, and than medication is needed, so that they can become "regular learners" in the institution of education. 

Seriously!  If I was a CEO of a company and 30-40% of my staff needed to be medicated to perform their duties asked of them, I would not all of the sudden assume that the work force was falling apart.  I would re-think my company model.  I feel like we (society) consider our youth to just be shorter adults.  Not true!  Kindergartners are not just smaller adults.  They are goofy, wiggly, unsure of where their body ends and another person's body begins.  Some of them are physically ready to read and write, some are not.  Being ADHD is basically acting like you are a kindergartner when you are not one. 

Unfortunately, I am finding that in this day and age of standardized test, and efficiency and constantly being technologically plugged in, we do have an epidemic of attention deficit.  There is a deficit of people truly being present and paying attention to the people and places around them.  I have yet to hear of a natural system where 30 animals would be put together in a small confined space that were all the same age with a non-relative in charge.  Of course our kids apear to be hypervigilant, hyper aware, agressive, territorial, dissacociated.  My son, who is extremely sensory aware, might be labeled as ADD in such a situation, or I would say, I want him watching my back in a crowded place, because no one is going to sneak past him.  I feel like we are going in the wrong direction with our educational system.  I re-watched a TED talk "Bring on the Revolution" which implores us to really think how we should be teaching today. 

I don't feel like the initial idea of educational institutions were originally terrible.  And, I feel like sticking with it in this day and age is unconscionable.  The epidemic of emotional and psychological acronyms seems to correlate directly with the widening gap of how the "real world" works today in the 21st century, and the way we operate the educational institutions for our youth. 

So now what?  Well, I am sure I will have more on that later. 

What a week...

What a crazy week it has been.  Normally I have down time, which is my time write, reflect and post.  Not this week.  We are in the throws of spring planting in our many veggie gardens, our business "The Backyard Pantry," is swamped with orders from people who want our ready to plant raised bed gardens.  On the homeschooling front the boys have been very busy building a wildlife sanctuary for their cheetahs and lions.  They wrote wonderful stories about why their animals needed help at their sanctuary.  For me, at school, I have been busy planning out the rest of the year.  It seems strange to say that I can actually know day by day what I need to cover up until summer begins. 

Gardening has been a wonderful way to have the boys be involved in leaning about their world.  They have watched as we have used our chickens to weed garden beds and eat harmful bugs.  The boys have had to use fine motor skills to help gently tease fragile plants out of their containers and then transplant them into bigger containers.  They have measured and mixed soil and experimented with what ingredients to add to soil to make it "just right."  One of my favorite things about living in the SE is the abundant growing season.   I have loads in the ground including, potatoes, garlic, onions, carrots, tomatoes, mustard greens, kale, spinachh, and Swiss chard.  I am looking very forward to time this weekend getting a bunch more stuff moved outside.

Homeschooling this week turned out to be very fun.  We even made friends with a few other HS families, and one of them has a farm just down the road from us.   Yesterday, I even got home early from work due to threatening weather.  As a result, I got to teach the boys most of their lessons.  I love the time I get to work with them one on one.  I just can't imagine trying to cover such foundational skills in a large group setting with kids who need so much guidance.  As I worked through math with the boys, (one at a time) I could change the next problem based on how that child did on the current problem.  I could push each of them to the next level or work on something they were struggling with. 

As far as classes go for next week, well, they will be crazy, but they will be based on real life.  Our business is in the height of its season and strawberries are ripe, so we are doing week two of the animal sanctuary plans, and going strawberry picking.  Yes, there will be math, spelling and reading lesson throughout the week, but they will be in the context of life.  Next week look for a great weeks worth of strawberry lessons:)  as we will hopefully have gallons of strawberries to put up for the year.  Our swimming pool is also opening up for the year, so the boys will start gearing up for lots of great exercises at the pool and climbing on the facilities rock wall for PE.

Then there is the third part of my life right now.  Middle School...  I love the spring curriculum as it is all focused on the natural sciences and that is my specialty. Ecology and botany are my last two units of the year, and I have been happily working and reworking my curriculum map to squeeze in lots of wonderful inquiry labs, and modeling of systems labs, and content for the rest of the year. 

Here is my latest TpT item for sale.  I will be using this lab to kick off my ecology unit and I am looking forward to doing it next week with my kids.  I have designed this lab for middle schoolers based on my work experience of doing rain forest ecology survey work in Central America. 

Abiotic Variables Effecton Biodiversity Lab $3

Are you searching for an engaging inquiry based lab to hook your students into your ecology unit? I was, so I created this lab to provide my middle school students with the opportunity to do an ecology survey on three locations around our school. Students get to go outside and collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The second day of the lab, students complete their data table by hearing from the other groups in the class. I have also included basic reflection questions, higher level questions and an extra credit opportunity applying what they learned. Feel free to check out my blog at http://backyardlearning.blogspot.com to learn more about my products.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Abiotic-Variables-Effecton-Biodiversity-Lab

The hard and soft stuff about reading

When I taught in an elementary setting, reading instruction was constantly a hot button political issue for most teachers.  All elementary teachers, and many middle grades readers have some strong opinions about how to teach reading, what order, when, and what to do when a child struggles.  I am not immune from this discussion and I have a variety of perspectives to offer to the debate. 

First off, I am currently a middle school science teacher, and I can say unequivocally that a students ability to read, process and apply information is an essential foundation skill for their success in science.  If they can not follow lab procedures, read background information, use my board as a reference for the daily plan...then, they struggle with all most all other aspects of the concepts they are trying to learn. 

My second perspective is that of a parent.  I am the parent to two six year old boys.  But, my boys have very different stories of their early life.  Both of my children came to our family through adoption and a drastically different times.  One son came to us at 8 months but he was born 1lb 7 oz.  He spent his first 3 months in an incubator as an orphan, and then the next 3.5 months in an orphanage.  While his orphanage care was better than most, the heat was not working that winter so he was often in a smaller room all by himself that was easier to keep warm.  From the time he was 6.5 months until he was 8.5 months we were able to visit him a couple hours a day while we waited for the courts to approve our adoption.  Why I am telling you this, is that this son, came to us very young, but with serious sensory deprivation for almost 8 months of the first very crucial years of his life.  He was cross eyed (as many orphans are due to lack of visual stimuli and hours of laying in a crib.)  He had little to no muscle tone, and he could not physically hold on to an adult because he had never really been held. 

So back on to reading.  With "E" I began imparting my love of reading at a very early age with him and he loved our time together, from a very early age, as we would sit and read through books.  Now, it is not uncommon to see him sitting quietly (this is the only time he ever sits) in the bean bag chair intensely flipping through his favorite books.  He loves books, he loves the stories, the pictures, the characters.  He laughs out loud at the funny parts, and cries during the sad parts.  He is immersed in the story and can tell anyone who will listen, all about the book, characters, setting and what he thinks about it.  These are skills not usually emphasized for a kindergartner. K5 curriculum mostly seems geared towards letter sounds, long and short vowels, blends, sight words and punctuation.  The "hard skills" of reading.  "E" really struggles in these areas.  He has to work very hard and the details, slowing down to make end sounds to words, recognizing why some letters make different sounds at different times.  Should I be worried?  According to some I should be. K5 is all about fluency, sounding out words etc. for some.  For me though, I am not.  What I see is a passion for books, and a child who is going to have to work harder at the details.  For his entire life, he has never fit neatly into any category and why should I try to squeeze him into a box now? 

My third perspective is my other son (younger by 4 months.)  "I" came to us at 3.5 years old, and our home was his 5th!  He came into this world with a cleft pallet and hearing impaired.  He did time in two abysmal orphanages that were the holding places for "special needs" kids.  He then was adopted into his first home, but the family he was initial placed with was not equipped to handle many of his emotional and physical needs.  Then he came to be with us.  At 3.5 years he weighed 17 lbs, could not sit on anything without a back, walk on uneven surfaces, was mortified of water, and only knew 2-5 words.  When we took him for his first developmental screening, he was considered to have the developmental skills of a 12 month old.  We were warned that he might be MR, or have PDD, or be on the autistic spectrum.  The doctors then asked us to come back in 6 months to see how he progressed while living in a stable home.

We did, and in just six months he progressed to the developmental age of 2.5 years.  Still a year behind, but he progressed 1.5  years in just six months.  That is resilience, and this resilience has consistently allowed me to be pleasantly surprised as I have watched him grow.  Emotionally though he still lagged behind his physical, or intellectual age.  I can never guess when he is going to act like a 6 year old or a 2 year old.  It makes planning a day quite tricky.  Again, how has teaching and parenting "I" effected my perception of reading instruction? 

I will confess, I figured he would be delayed in his reading skills.  He has so little concept of language, stories and 2D visual experiences.  I have been proven wrong.  "I" has decoded language beautifully.  He can sound out words when he is emotionally with me.  He can clearly explain the difference between long and short vowels and apply that knowledge to the words he is reading.  When he struggles with a word one day, he will practice this word over and over again, and have it down the next day.  He seems to get very basic story lines like "they boy is walking the dog."  If I ask him "what was the boy doing in the story?" He can tell me "walking the dog."  However, when it comes to more complex story lines, characters, feelings about a book, how he relates to the book, he struggles immensity.  One of the key aspects of problem solving and higher level thinking is drawing upon past experiences.  When you have a 3.5 year experience deficit, it is going to effect your ability to relate when you are only 6 years old.  Am I worried about "I"?  Not so much.  I know why he struggles.  I know where we need to focus our attention. 

As a homeschooling parent of two kids we are working through the reading on many fronts.  All of which have importance, but mostly I feel that my job right now is to make sure they continue to love the process, the plot lines, the adventures that reading can lead them to, and to continue asking of them what I always have, that they keep moving forward. 

How are your children doing with their reading?  What would help you support them? 

Feel free to check out my products on TpT about reading activities.  These are geared more for middle school, but some of them can be adapted for the younger years.

Thinking Chart Great Depression Book Study: 

This can be used as an assessment tool or product focus for student literature circles focusing on the theme of "The Great Depression." I have my students read books about the Great Depression and have them meet once or twice a week in their lit. circle groups. During each meeting, students add to their thinking chart showing their knowledge gained.   FREE

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thinking-Chart-Great-Depression-Book-Study

 

International Reading Group Projects:  $1

After students read books about the world in literature groups, have them put together a presentation about the setting of their book. This packet includes project menu options as well as organizational charts for student presentation.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/International-Reading-Group-Projects

 Where the Red Fern Grows Literature Circle Unit $2.00

I love to start my reading year off with having all students doing literature circles groups on the same book. This unit is designed to help students become confident and capable of meeting in literature groups with specific jobs and objectives.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Where-the-Red-Fern-Grows-Literature-Circle-Unit

WW II Book Study Compare and Contrast Essay $1.00

I used this as an essay guideline for my reading students in cooperation with their US history class. When they were studying WW II, I had students read one Holocaust book in a literature circle and then they read another book from a different perspective about WW II. I had students choose one element of their books to compare and contrast.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/WW-II-Book-Study-Compare-and-Contrast-Essay 

 

Rewards

As a teacher and parent, it is common to get in the mind set of offering rewards.  Rewards come in a lot of ways in schools.  For some teachers/students the big rewards vary but can be grades, comments, candy, parties, extra time doing something, AR prises ect.

As a general rule, I struggle with tangible rewards.  I by nature am cheep (our family of 4 must live off a teachers salary), an environmentalist (so I hate to give things that will be thrown away in a matter of days), and I am staunchly opposed to using food as a reward or punishment (I will go in to detail about this latter.) 

Regardless of how I feel, many of my students have grown to expect rewards or to get something for doing what is expected of them.  While feeding my addiction of listening to TED talks I came across this TED Talk on rewards and I felt like I was finally affirmed about giving kids (or anyone) a tangible reward when looking for quality work. 

Why would I even bother taking issue with rewards?  You might wonder...  First off I hate food as a reward or punishment. For many, many reason. 1st  the state I live in has a major obesity epidemic and with that the side effects of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.  The last message I want to send to my kids is "gee, you are so smart, here is something to clog your brain and reduce your ability to concentrate." Also, food is a need and it is not Ok to use a need as a reward or punishment.  I could not imagine telling my child that they get to have shelter or shoes because they are good.  The third major reason I hate food is a reward is that I personally have a so that we adopted at 3.5 years old who had nearly starved to death. Food is not a toy to him. Ever!  If it is a reward, he would do anything for it, moral or not.  I don't ever want him to think that bad kids don't get food and good kids do, because that is just not true in the real world.  Many kids starve at no fault of their own. 

One of the other major reasons I do not like to give rewards for task is the vast amount of data that suggest that providing or offering a reward for a higher level task, creative thinking, or a task involved in making the world better, does not generate high quality work.  It shifts the purpose of the work from the real reason why a child should do something, to doing it for a piece of candy. 

So, this is one of my teaching philosophy, but as a parent of two six year olds and one with major OCD issues revolving around technology, and I have been needing something to help manage his technology time and reward him for participating in non-technology related activities.  Thus, I had a need for a system to keep me honest and keep him from obsessing. 

  Every weekday he gets 15 min of iPad time and one movie and it must be after 5pm.  All school work must be done, rooms clean and everything that we expect from him must be done.  On the weekends he gets 30 min of iPad time each day.  What I have come up with for rewards is a system of tickets that are each worth one minute extra or iPad time or he can trade in 15 for a new game.  When I have a task that is not a higher level thinking task I offer tickets.  For example:  cracking 10 pecans in worth one ticket, picking up sweet gum balls off of the garden area 1 ticket/(small) bucket. 

What this has done for my son is provide him with a clear visual for extra time earned.  It is not a thing I have to buy, food to manipulate him with, nor will it be something that ends up the landfill. Again, I do not use them for higher level thinking.  I do offer the tickets to both boys.  Tickets can also be revoked to bad attitudes, talking back, not doing what is required .  My favorite is if one boy is mean to the other one, or messes up something the other one created, the offender must give a ticket to the offended.  It sure does help with home sanity. 

There you have it.  My random tip of the day.  I hope it helps someone out there who is struggling with the issue of rewards.  If you did not watch the TED talk linked above I highly recommend it, as it will make all of this make much more sense. 

Art of Observation

I started off my classroom teaching in rural Eastern Oregon.  My students were rarely phobic of science, and they "did" nature and the outdoors, because of a lack of inside opportunities.  While teaching middle school science to my rural kids we continued a long standing tradition at the school of creating insect collections.  Yes, the ones with 50+ bugs pined to Styrofoam neatly categorized into scientific order.  Probably a project you vividly remember completing if you were asked to do so.

I was labeled by my rural students as an "Earth muffin" because I liked to play outside, not just do hard ranching or logging labor in the outdoors, but for fun and the beauty of it.  So, needless to say, I struggled with this project as I would inevitably have a few collections turned in with "not quite dead" bugs pined to the board by my procrastinators.  There were lots of benefits to the project though. My students benefited in gaining skills like time management, biodiversity, classification, using a dichotomous key, and the art of observation. 

You see, what my kids had to do, was look closely, look for a while, and look in a variety of places to meet the project requirements.  Once collections were brought it, students could compare and contrast the collection created with the location of the ranch where the bugs were collected.  They could look at the variety of insects in the same order.  They looked...and again...and in a different way....in a scientific way....in an artistic way...The questioned...tried something different....organized...

See, looking closely is not necessarily something most 7th graders get to do very often in their day to day life.  Now that I am teaching in Southern ssuburbia, my students are shuffling between school, endless baseball, football, soccer (insert a long list of sports that practice 5 days a week with a couple of games thrown in) or church, or theater, and a whole host of other very organized outcome oriented extra curricular activities. 

When my students in Oregon told me that they did not get to their homework it was because of calving season, or irrigation issues, or no electricity, but they were still observing life around them.  Here, my kids are busy with a whole host of other things, and they are fast moving things with lots of structure. 

How does this affect their ability though, to be scientifically literate?  Is fast thinking, seeing, producing, eating, being... the best?  Usually not.  With all of this said, it is now spring here (sort of) and it was time to teach about invertebrates in the South where there are an abundance of six legged creatures.  But, with quantity comes fear and scepticism, and thus I did not feel that I could sell my students (and their families) on a large scale insect collection.  But, I still felt that they needed to take the time to observe insects in the world around them.

I am fortunate that my school's campus has an outdoor classroom, of sorts, where I could take the kids out to collect one living bug, and then work through the dichotomous key to ID it.  After everyone correctly identified their bug they compared and contrasted and made observations about the entire classes collection.  Watching my students during this lab brought me immeasurable joy.  I watched macho boys frolic through the fields desperately trying to catch fluttering butterflies. 

The quote of the day though, was when one student proclaimed in frustration "I would have been so much better at this when I was 5!"  She was probably correct.  I feel as educators we must search out time and space for pure observation of the world.  If not, our students will lose the valuable innate skills they came to us with.

With all of that said, if this is something you would like to do with you students or your own children, I have created a detailed student friendly dichotomous key, and two different options for students to record and reflect about their insect and experience. 

Insect ID Dichotomous Key and Insect Observation Labs:  $5

The art of observation is the root of most great science. It is rare that we remember to take the time to let our students really take the time to look at the world around them in detail. The purpose of this lab is three fold. 1) I want students to look at a living specimen in detail and recognize it has particular features to help it fulfill its niche.
2) Students use a dichotomous key and practice using logic to classify living organisms.
3) I want them to be reflective in their work and either defend their answers or ask further questions about the process. This packet contains a student friendly dichotomous key and two varieties of labs that can be used with the key.

 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Insect-ID-Dichotomous-Key-and-Insect-Observation-Labs

Smart Moves

One of the biggest things I get out of going to teacher workshops is the realization of why my 7th period students can never sit still.  Chairs become very hard after 6-8 hours, and no matter how engaging the speaker is, or how motivated I am to learn the material, I have a limit for stillness.  Why would I expect middle schoolers to be any different.

However, as educators, we are given only so much time to teach our kids and there is a huge amount of what I refer to as, hard skills that must be taught.  I am also obligated to teach the same material to 7th period that I taught to 1st.  Before I discuss how to work around this problem, here is how I break things into hard and soft skills. 

Hard Skills:  Hand wiring, spelling, facts, lab procedures, notes, basic math facts, formulas, test taking...
Soft Skills:  conflict, sharing of materials, critical thinking, problem solving, attentiveness, balance, volume control, staying on task...

Without soft skills, it is much harder for students to master the hard skills. I cannot get to a meaningful lab conclusion, if my students cannot share materials, or work cooperatively to solve a problem. Yet, as teachers, students, and professionals, we are typically judged and evaluated only on hard skills.  So, what do we focus our time and energy on for the few precious hours that we have a captive audience?  The facts, the rules, the tangible and measurable skills.  The unfortunate reality of hyper focusing on hard skills is that many of our kids lack a well rounded foundation in the soft skills, need remediation or practice in this area, or were exposed to such skills prior to being emotionally, intellectually or physically mature enough to process the skill. 

I am constantly finding myself looking for new and interesting covert ways to embed physical activities in my student's (and my own home schooled children's) day that promote attentiveness, cooperation and emotional control.  Last year I read a phenomenal and quite influential book entitled Smart Moves:  Learning is not all in the Head by Carla Hannford PhD.  She discusses, in a palatable way, brain and nervous system physiology and how movement activities (brain gym) can fill in many of the perceived gaps and deficiencies in student achievement. 

If you are like me, a middle school teacher, where kids have little movement in their day;  or a parent of young kids; or an elementary school teacher who is dealing with your recess times getting shorter and shorter... I highly recommend checking this book out and giving some of the activities a try.  It has helped me to identify learning styles, brain hemisphere dominance, major developmental milestones, and a more realistic spectrum of development rather than strictly a numerical age approach to expectations. 

I do not have any personal connection or affiliation with this author, but I am thankful for the book and how her research and methods are helping my personal children and my students. 

Happy reading!

Helpful links for those who want to know more:
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Moves-Learning-Your-Head/dp/0915556375
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Brain%20Gym
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gBPP1ZibE

Building a wildlife park! K5 Homeschool Lessons

Theme of the Week:  My boys have recently acquired a fair amount of stuffed animals.  They love wild animals and we also recently took a trip to Washington DC.  While there we visited the Smithsonian National Zoo and an idea for much of my spring curriculum was born.  I am a huge fan of thematic units and immersing my kids in a learning experience rather than a series of isolating learning objectives. 

So, with all of that said, my objective for the week (and probably several weeks) is going to have to have my boys build a wildlife rescue center for their stuffed animals.  This will involve subjects in the following ways:

Reading:

Reading of non-fiction books to look up facts

Reading fiction books about their animals

Writing:

Making fact cards (displays about the animals in their sanctuary)

Creative writing about what happen to their animal and how it ended up at their “wildlife center”

Fine Motor Skills/Art/Handwriting:

Creation of habitats using a variety of material, cutting, gluing, taping, and constructing the geographical natural features as well as the safety features.

Science:

What needs do their animals have to have taken care of while living at the center?

Classification and sorting of animals

Habitats

Social Studies: 

Map skills and geography; where in the world does this animal live?

Geographical features:  Rivers, lakes, mountains, grasslands ect. 

Math Comparative Numbers:  For each animal they will need to find the height, weight, number of legs, and how many are left in the wild.  As they learn about more animals these numbers will be used to compare size ect.

Public Speaking:  At the end of their project the kids need to share their work with an audience and answer their questions.   

You can download the entire file with daily lessons, links, handouts, and graphic organizers here: 
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Homeschool-K5-Lessons-Spring-Week-2-Wildlife-Park  My lessons are free for now and all I ask is that you follow me on TpT and sign up on my blog e-mail list.  I love hearing from you about what works, what did not work or questions you have about the lessons. 

Animal in the Zoo Sign Templet:  Free for Now

I have developed an extensive thematic unit revolving around having my K5 boys making a wildlife sanctuary or zoo for their toy animals. You can find the detailed lessons here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Homeschool-K5-Lessons-Spring-Week-2-Wildlife-Park  This file is a template that kids can use for the sign that will hang on their animals enclosure to teach the public about their animal. For more information about the work I create please visit my blog at http://backyardlearning.blogspot.com .

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Animal-in-the-Zoo-Sign-Templet

All about SCAMPER

I feel like as a society there is so much focus on quantity, but less on depth.  Not necessarily because teachers, administrators or society is shallow, but just because we are constantly asked to do more in less time.  Not that long ago I listened to a TED talk by  Sir Ken Robinson about how school kills creativity.  As a teacher, the title hurt, but as a parent I got it.  There is a lot to go over, we have a long list of facts and skills we are expected to cover in 180, 47 minute class periods.  One of the most profound things I head during the talk was "The kids that are entering kindergarten today will leave the work force around 2070."  He then went on to say, "how can we possibly prepare them for that with facts when who knows what the facts will be then." 

I can distinctly remember my very intelligent father helping me all of the time with my history, math, physics, and literature homework.  But, when it came to biology, chemistry, civics, geography, he felt that too much had changed since he went to school, for him to be able to help me.  Granted he taught me how to research, ask questions and figure out the problems, but the facts he learned were not really so useful anymore. 

Unfortunately, state and national standards are very fact heavy, but when we are thinking about creating tomorrow’s pioneers and workers, we must recognize that the facts are dynamic and evolving.  Thus, as a biology teacher, I must emphasize critical thinking, and not just the facts.

One of my favorite critical thinking strategies to use with my students is SCAMPER.  It is an acronym that stands for the following:

S=Substitute  Could you substitute some part for something else?  Could your plan be used in place of something else?
C = Combine  Are the steps in the process that can be combined?  Are there organs in a system that could be combined? 
A = Adapt  How might you adapt or change your topic, plan, invention to do something else or better survive?
M = Modify How can you modify a certain aspect of your topic, invention..?
P = Put to other uses.  How could you invention, plan, organ ect. be used in a different way than it normal is used?
E= Eliminate  is there a part that can be taken out?  If so how would this effect the entire product, plan, function of the system. 
R= Reverse/Rearrange  What would happen if you reversed the order or changed the order in some way.

I did not invent this process and it is used in a variety of settings.  Here is a great link to look more at the strategy:  http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm What I do have to share is two units I have designed using SCAMPER as the framework for students to think deeply about a topic.  I have created In depth plans for how to use SCAMPER when looking at Hurricane Katrina and with the Digestive System. 

Hurricane SCAMPER critical thinking lesson design: $3.00

SCAMPER is a wonderful tool for pushing kids to think critical on a particular item or concept. S=substitute C=combine A= adapt M = modify P=put to other uses E=eliminate R= reverse or rearrange the order. In this packet I have provided the SAMPER student assignment/rubric, a weeks’ worth of detailed lesson plans, links to helpful websites, and pictures of student projects and research. The entire assignment is geared towards hurricane Katrina but it could easily be done with other major hurricanes.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Hurricane-SCAMPER-critical-thinking-lesson-design

Digestive System Alternative Creative Assessments $1

Are you tired of assessing just through a test? Do you have a group of students who need a new and exciting way to demonstrate their knowledge? I found myself in this situation when teaching about the digestive system in the middle of my human body systems unit. I had a group of very high level learners and thinkers. I wanted them to have a variety of ways to demonstrate their content mastery. In this packet, you will find four ways students can prove to you they know the basics (and usually) a lot more about the digestive system. I have also included a detailed set of directions for SCAMPER’ing the digestive system.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Digestive-System-Alternative-Creative-Assessments