My school has a great tradition of maker-thinking when it comes to Valentine's Day. Our fantastic instructional technology specialist runs a contest for students who build Valentine boxes that use simple machines (she does this for pumpkins in the fall, too). However, students don't need to make their Valentine boxes move to be interesting:
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Students created mazes in our makerspace this week, using broken crayons, pencils, and worn-out markers to create paths for hexbugs, which are small battery-powered robots. The goal was to create the maze that the hexbug would take the longest time to solve. Some students created little doors for the bugs to push through, while others had curved lines or complex traps.
5 hexbugs cost about $20.00, and it was a great way to work through problem-solving and revision, and collaboration. We might even say it was a-maze-ing! Once a year, my current school has a family learning night. Parents are invited to come and try out activities they can use to support students at home in different subject areas. This year, I created a resource to support parents in talking about texts with their children.
We talk a lot about the importance of reading for enjoyment in my class. Reading self-selected texts is academically beneficial and it is important. We also want students to consider and question what they are reading. They might be able to talk about what is happening in the story, but hesitate to say what it means, or offer a judgment, or generate a question about it. Beyond these claims, students may also struggle to offer supporting evidence - how do you know this character is dishonorable? Why do you think the writing doesn't seem natural in this scene? Many adult readers already do these things without realizing what they are doing, so it can be hard to break it down and ask their children questions. Longer texts can be packed with meaning, but they take a while for students to access and process. The pictures in the presentation below offer practice with analysis with a "text" that is immediately accessible. They also create some fun imaginative exercises! I hope families can use the questions to transfer the analytical practice to books students read this year. Talking About Texts with Photos - link to presentation created with Adobe Spark |
Jamie Wright
I've had the privilege of working with hundreds of students and families in IA, CT, NC, MO, TX, and Canada. I love being a teacher-librarian! Categories
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