Elaborate Engagement & An Impromptu Social Studies Inquiry Moment

    This week was a short week, but that doesn't mean there was a lot of productive work! We continued with our All About Narwhals book writing. The students listened to Ms. V read the non-fiction text to find information. A fun UDL activity that I witnessed was how Ms. V encouraged the children to act out certain information. One page mentioned that narwhals breathe through a blowhole on top of their head. She asked if that is how we breathe, to which the children explained that we breathe through our noses. Next, she told the children to pretend they were narwhals and to swim around the room. (I wish I'd have taken a photo.) Excitedly, the kids began to crawl around the room. Some kids squealed and giggled, so when she asked if that was how narwhals sounded, the children instantly began making clicking and whistling sounds like they learned that narwhals do. Soon after, she told them to go up to the surface so they could take a breath of fresh air with their blowholes, and the children raised themselves up from crawling to imagine they were surfacing out of the icy water to breathe. Next, she said, "Swim back to your spots," and the children went back to their spots on the carpet to listen to more. In chapter 8, Kopp (2017) pointed out that, "Using drama is highly motivating... It also offers the opportunity totap into students' multiple intelligences and learning styles- in this case, verbal and kinesthetic learners."

This picture shows the addition of other facts we gathered from the text. In Kopp (2017, Ch.4)

 the section about taking notes mentions how an anchor chart such as this is a suitable way to help kindergarteners begin to learn how to take notes.

We moved on to begin forming sentences to go in the All About Narwhals book using picture sentences. These sentences are formed by having the students give ideas and agree on a statement, then together the children develop actions to represent the words or phrases of each sentence. Another step in forming the sentences is to draw pictures to stand for the words. Can you guess what the topic sentence says? Narwhals (notice there are two) are amazing animals! When the students acted it out, they made a salute like move by taking their hand which was in fornt of their nose, extending it to straighten out their arm to signify narwhals, and for amazing animals, they made a rainbow type action by spreading their hands upward, over their heads spreading their arms apart to their sides. The appearance has two sentences. Narwhals look like (Do you see the two eyeballs?) whales (That's a whale incase you couldn't tell.) that have spotted skin (Did you spot the spots?).  The second sentence is Male (There's a little stick person for male.) narwhals have a tusk (I bet you thought that was a unicorn horn.). Working through the process of forming these sentences help even our MLLs learn the information by heart! 

After each sentence was completed, the children had a chance to copy it down for themselves. Some were able to do it independently and others needed a bit of support.

    I missed telling you about our impromptu social studies inquiry that happened a couple of weeks ago.  

    During the morning meeting one day, a student asked Ms. V if he could show the coins he had brought to school to his classmates. There wasn't time then, but after lunch recess, she had him get the coins and tell about them. He said that he had gone to the Denver Mint. As a souvenir, his parents bought him a minted penny and a blank. He also told the children that they are not going to make pennies anymore. Mrs. V added a virtual field trip by showing the Denver Mint to the children on the screen. Some children were curious about where the other mints were located when Mrs. V mentioned that there was more than one, so she looked up a map of the U.S. to show the places that have a mint. To show how the pennies were made, she showed a video. As the student showed his coins to his classmates, Mrs. V took out some other coins to show that they were also made in a mint. While asking if the students knew the names of each coin she showed, one little girl piped up and asked if she could see the edge because she already knew that a quarter would have ridges and a nickel would be smooth! The lesson ended because it became math time. At the end of the mini-inquiry,  children were left with the suggestion to look for some coins at home. Perhaps they could look for the letter on the coins to see if they could figure out where they were minted.

This lesson started by a child wanting to share about his coins. This helped to engage his classmates.

 

Mrs. V helped the children explore learning more about the coins.

Mrs. V was able explain some details about where coins were made, led by the students' curiosity.