This week we finished reading our first whole class read aloud novel, The Wild Robot. We loved the wonderful story of Roz, a robot, who learns to love and connect with the animals as she makes a remote island her home. We focused on the the learning outcome: students can paraphrase and discuss ideas. First we read a chapter and worked together to pull out the important ideas. We then worked to focus in on the main idea of the chapter by writing a summary. In order to truly focus on the main idea, our goal was to try to keep our summary as close to twenty words as possible. The students enjoyed the challenge of capturing the most important moments with a specific number of words.
Despite the rain, the grade fours had a fantastic time on our field trip to Heritage Park. It was wonderful to experience all of our learning in Social Studies first hand. We sheltered from the rain in a tipi, felt beaver pelts as we learned about the fur trade and rode a train like the ones that helped to make settlement in the West possible. Seeing the first settler homes, the "soddies", homes that housed families with sixteen children and sandstone buildings helped the students to better understand what life was like for early settlers. Most are happy that they are able to go to a school with hundreds of students and one grade per classroom rather than a one room schoolhouse of the past!
Comments
Post a Comment