The last few weeks have been a Whirlwind. Our newscast team got off to a great beginning and created a short episode.
Kindergarten- This week we will visit Russia for our world wide study. first we will get out our journals and paste our world map on the first page. We will look at the country of Russia and color it carefully on our map. Later we will recall the places we’ve visited already this year and mark those places too. “Hermie the Worm” in New York, “The Mouses Wedding’, Japan, Anansi,”Africa and today’s story “The Stubborn Turnip” a string tale, based on a Russian folktale. The story today comes from “Handmade Tales, Stories to make and take”. All students will practice telling the tale, We can also act out the tale ourselves.
Grade one and grade two- Read aloud Billy Brown and the Belly Button Beastie. We will discuss the elements through the story and students use a storytelling rope to retell the story. They can create their own rope with elements if time and place in their journals.
Grade three-and four Today, students will study a variety of Fairy Tales and look for elements of the framework of storytelling. I will select a variety of fairy tale picture books from the 398.2 section of the library. One book will be given to a pair of students. Each group will spend five minutes looking over their story to locate and identify the following information.
Beginnings that differ from ” Once upon a time” – Endings that differ from …. ” and they all lived happily ever after” – Settings, including the country of origin- Main characters, both heroes and villains- Hero’s quest and or magical elements encountered along the way.
Each group will quickly identify aloud the title and author, show the cover and read aloud the beginning sentence. then move along to settings, characters, and quests and finally endings.
Place a poster paper folded into 5 sections at each library table, each group will place one of the elements they discovered. Each poster then can be unfolded and will become a springboard for a new retelling.
Fourth grade will be looking for and research their famous Missourian for their Living History reports. Some third grade students have not been on Destiny yet. We will use the above lesson as a back up to these two needs.
Fifth grade – We will try again the Genius Hour assignment that failed miserably last week. With the changes I’ve made and shortening the learning curve, I hope to have success. If all fails , I will print out the assignment and students will keep it in their note books. This is the trials and tribulations of the technology lesson for every teacher, though worth it when it finally turn out right.