The Trial of A. Wolf

This awesome lesson was created by Debbie Tchir-Houle, and it was too fun and amazing not to share with everyone! A huge shout-out goes to Deb for all of the hard work she put into setting up this activity, it was so comprehensive and well thought out!!

So here is the activity:
Using the book "The true Story of the 3 Little Pigs" by Jon Sciezska, students are witness in the trial of A.Wolf. They are asked to evaluate the evidence presented to arrive at either a guilty or innocent verdict for A. Wolf, who is accused of killing and eating 2 little pigs and attempting to kill the third. There are several exhibits from both the defence and prosecution that support either an innocent or guilty verdict. Students are shown all the evidence, and then left to arrive at a verdict based on what they seen and heard during the trial. 

I made a digital collection of the evidence (which is embedded below), but Deb has a physical collection as well that goes along with it! 

Here are some pictures of the evidence

When the students were finished, they had to go to their science blogs and explain their verdict, as well as their justification of why they decided he was either innocent or guilty. It was a nice tie between our evidence and investigation unit and language arts, where we just finished writing a news article about the Big Bad Wolf escaping from jail. Plus, it was a pretty fun science lesson!! 

Here are a few of our Blog posts:

http://taneshascienceblog.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-trial-of-awolf.html

http://danielkscienceblog.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-trail-of-wolf.html

http://kaydencescienceblog.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-trial-of-awolf.html

Concept maps for Vocabulary

I'm in a really interesting course right now on connecting science and literacy in the classroom and I came across a useful good idea I thought I would share. By having students create a concept map in a small group to introduce a unit in science, you are able to engage them in meaningful discussion about the vocabulary they will be using during the unit of study. 

To do this activity, you simply print out a list of the vocabulary words that the students will be using during the unit and give each group a sheet. In small groups, you challenge them to arrange and glue the words on a blank sheet of paper based on the connections between them. They also need to write their own definition of the words as a group and use lines to connect words that are related in some way. Any words they are unsure about they use sticky tack to place on the side to connect in later. 

We did this activity today to introduce our evidence and investigation unit, and I couldn't believe how rich the dialogue was! Students were actually discussing the vocabulary and trying to work together to figure out what the words meant and how they could be connected together. For me, whose class is full of non-talkers, this was a big breakthrough! 

Here they are, working away! 

Google Slides- A world of Possibilities

I think that Google slides is my #1 go to web tool for creating learning activities for students. One thing that I love is that I can use it to create interactive texts/ activity booklets for students to use as they research online. If you haven't tried it, you should! Here are some examples from my classroom. You can also make notebooks etc. and print them out using slides- all you have to do is change the page size. Another thing that Slides has going for it is that you can include content outside of the printable page that students can drag and drop. You can also create pictures to use as the backgrounds, which is really handy for graphic organizers for students- They just have to insert text boxes over top. We recently did this for a flow chart of a food chain, and I am going to make the story arc in there for students to plan their writing. Really, the possibilities are endless. 

Science: Sky science notebooks 

Social studies: Provincial Government magazine

Science: Interactive lessons on trees and forests

Science: Printable Trees of Alberta research Notebook

I also use it to make posters for my classroom, and this is what I used to design my teacher planner this year. With a bit of creativity, you can make some seriously cool stuff in Google Slides :)  

Garner Lake Programs

Garner Lake offers a lot of great programs for all grade levels.  The instructors are very knowledgeable and flexible!

Dixie, who coordinates the visits, loves working with Ashmont  and compliments the school every year we visit.  She has always been very accommodating.  Programs usually cost about $2.00 per child and because it is so close it is a nice day trip.

Flight School

Part of our grade six science program involves teaching air & aerodynamics and flight. I figured what better way to engage students than to put them through a series of "flight school" modules! In order to facilitate this, I created a google Site to organize all of the information students need to complete the tasks and modules. As students demonstrate a mastery of the concepts discussed in each module, they will earn badges, which will appear on our leaderboard. Each module coincides with a different topic we need to learn about. For example, module one relates to the properties of air. Also, I have tried to include a variety of different projects and assessment formats to keep learners focused and on task. So far, the kids have really been doing a great job! The link below will bring you to the site. 

The other thing we are doing is an interactive flight notebook. It guides students through many of the objectives they need to understand during the unit to compliment our hands-on experiments. Below is the notebook that they will be using. The nice thing about Google Slides is you can insert videos and links right in for students to quickly access. 

         

Gamification of Learning

This year, I started down the path of implementing elements of game-based learning into my classroom. After taking a course on technology this summer and reading the book "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, I really began to see the benefit of engaging students in a non-traditional way. The trend of using elements of games (such as badges, levels, quests or missions, etc.) is referred to as gamification. The first big game we did this year was something I called the "Zombie Apocalypse: Math Edition". Students earned supplies to survive the zombie apocalypse, which they did by correctly answering math problems, or demonstrating mathematical thinking. I have embedded it below if anyone is interested in checking it out. 

This month, the game I created relates to science. Students will be using clues to track Santa through the solar system in a race to save Christmas. We are using a passport and badges to track their progress. The kids are really excited to get started, and I can't wait to see how quickly they learn all about sky science. I have add a link to the project and an example of my badges below. 

http://goo.gl/3Dq09j