Story Telling ~

We have been reading a variety of different fairytales this term as we continue to explore features of a narrative. Fairytales are a great way of exploring the elements of a story as these stories use a familiar beginning with the use of 'Once upon a time' and a predictable ending with 'living happily ever after.' Children love the familiarity and predictability of these stories and just love joining in to read the text aloud as a whole class. We have been applying the B.A.R strategy to the learning of fairytales, looking at how we can make a story ... B - Better, A - Add something to it or R - Remove/Replace an element to make it more interesting. After listening to a selection of stories and taking them apart through discussion and reconstruction, students are better equipped to start writing on their own. Rein-acting elements of fairy tales offers opportunity to use dialogue and language purposefully in a tactile and kinaesthetic way. This think and do philosophy to learning engages the whole person in learning, activating both the mind and body to consolidate the whole learning process.

The B.A.R Strategy

B - Better

A - Add

R - Remove/Replace

Student suggestions included a few of the following,

We could make a story better by:

using different settings i.e a city, a bridge or a swamp instead of the forest, 

by including a moral into the story like fables do,

or changing the scary elements 

and characters featured in the story so people don't get eaten!

We could add something by:

creating a new scene,

incorporating a different character into the story

(or by adding extra details), 

like Red Riding Hood walking through the forest 

with a friend and not by herself.

We could remove or replace something by: 

using different adjectives or nouns within the text,

 removing Red Riding Hoods cape and giving her a name instead.

Or swapping the big bad wolf for a stranger in the woods!

(and include a new protagonist later on)

Or removing the wood cutter and replacing him with her Dad.

(A new hero - My Grade Ones loved this idea!)

Drawing upon a rich fabric of ideas assists students to write creatively and imaginatively.

Digging into learning ~

This term we have been researching dinosaurs and fossils as part of our explorations on our changing world. I found this great fossil kit (Dig it out) at the Taronga Zoo. The children had great fun taking turns to unearth the fossil buried inside. I also hid some small plastic dinosaurs in the school yard sandpit for students to discover, so much fun! They were delighted to find the dinosaurs buried all over the place as they experimented with being an archaeologist, setting students off on their own path of discovery. 

This certainly encouraged students to go further and dig deeper with their learning. Everybody was very keen to share their findings with a buddy or the whole class. Which proved helped when it was time to do our individual speeches on our favourite dinosaur. Instead of being hesitant to stand up in front of their peers, students were eager to share their knowledge with the class.

As part of this unit of study we implemented higher order thinking skills into a blooms and multiple intelligence matrix to offer opportunity to extend thinking and learning for all students. Children needed to accrue a certain number of points (for each activity) over a seven week period before completing a culminating task. The more complex tasks were allocated higher points, taking longer to complete and included a number of steps that students needed to carefully work through. This allowed for autonomy and independence to bloom and grow - great skills for Grade Ones to develop early in their learning journey.

Students loved worked with a buddy as they researched and gathered information from a variety of sources. The iPads were a great learning tool, which were made a whole lot easier for the children to use (and access information) with suitable websites being pre saved to the home screen prior to use. 

A fossil is a creature that died a long time ago. It's body turned into rock.

There is nothing better as a teacher than seeing students fully engaged and excited about learning. I found myself expectant and eager for 'Project Hour' each week as I watched students immersed in 'hands on' learning opportunities. Watching the excitement light up their faces as they called me to check out 'this and that' was so very satisfying. We ALL learnt a lot!