Tuesday, September 24, 2013

120, bilingual first grade- We worked in small groups. The group I had discussed Austin's Butterfly and what it means to "look like a scientist". I provided a photo of each child and they drew their self-portraits again, but this time they used observation. The drawings are much closer to looking like the children and they could see the improvements for themselves by comparing the drawings side by side.

112, self- contained first grade. We continued our self-portrait backgrounds. One student  wanted to add glitter and more details to his work, even asking for supplies I hadn't presented (glitter.) I love that they don't mind going back into the work and continue to explore ideas and improve their pieces.

108, monolingual first grade- The students were learning what a "caption" is for their reading lesson.  The students drew a picture of their favorite place in our school.  They then told us what the caption should be for their drawing.  One student was drawing the kitchen area.  She asked if she could sit at a table near the kitchen to draw from observation!  Her drawing features many realistic details.  The caption makes it seem more like a story.

I documented about a child who made "the biggest castle ever" with her blocks a few weeks ago.  She drew a scene of herself with her castle of blocks.  The drawings are looking more realistic and I can see improvement in only a few weeks of school.

Preschool Room 101 continued with their alphabet.  

Preschool Room 103 completed half of their alphabet book. My big project for the pre-k and K over these past few weeks was to create an alphabet with each group.  I will photograph each letter on its own, so there will be four versions of each letter- 101 used foam shapes over watercolor paint, 103 used tempera paint, 102 is drawing their own letters and painting them with watercolors, and 104 created their letters out of string.  I'll place the four versions of each letter into a photo collage.  That is phase one.

For phase two, each group is going to draw a word that starts with that letter. (For example, "Egg" begins with "E".)  The bilingual kindergarten will use Spanish words, the monolingual kindergarten will use English words.  Since pre-k is dual immersion, I had to choose, so 101 will use Spanish words and 103 will use English words.  I'll photograph those four drawings and put them together in a photo collage.  

The photo collage of the four letter A's and the photo collage of the four drawings of "A" words (two words in Spanish, two words in English) will be placed side by side in a book, creating our very own School #33 English/Spanish dictionary! 

Here's a sneak peak at what Room 103 completed today!