When the journals have been completed, students will come to the carpet for shared reading, shared writing, and create a graph. We will begin writing a "W" chart recording what children want to know about pumpkins. As we learn more facts, we can check this chart to see if we have answered their questions.
follow by reading The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons. there are many facts about pumpkins in this book which might answer some questions students might have. After reading and some discussion, create a bar graph to record who likes pumpkin pie. List a column for yes, no, and have not tried.
4. Evaluation:
A. Students will be assesses on following directions, if they write on topic in their journals, and listening and participating on the carpet.
I will use the following rubric to assess student's progress:
4 = Child has followed instructions, written on topic, and participated in discussion.
3 = Child followed most directions, written something in their journal and participated in discussion.
2 = Child has followed some directions, wrote off topic, and contributed little to discussion.
1 = Child did not follow directions, wrote nothing, did not participate in discussion.
B. I will record their scores according to the rubric noting how students perform on each assignment.
C. Today's lesson was not as drawn out as yesterday's. Students were still very much involved and interested. I did forget to create the "w" chart. Yet, during their writing, student came up with some wonderful ideas. Their writing was aslo very impressive. One student even wrote and 'I wonder' story from the perspective of a pumpkin. About one third on the class eagerly shared thier work with their classmates. I look back and can not believe I forgot to move from their directly into creating the chart to combine thier ideas. Yet the students do have their ideas in their journals (if only I could read them all.) I want to learn more about the writing process from start to finish when student 'publish' thier work. I also want to get students sharing their work more in class with each other. I did only read the one book which fit well into our timing since art is during our morning session. I feel this lesson was very productive in reading, writing, and graphing. I realize I will not get to all the books I planned for. I will go through and chose the best selections for now. If we have time for two books during the day, I will read two of the best choices.
5. Feedback:
Your interaction with the students while reading seems to get them into the story. Most of the students were interested and listening to The Pumpkin Book. Good move asking the students to vote and them not taking the voting action because some voted twice. This class really needs to understand consequences for their actions. The comprehension questions you asked were well thought out and caused the children to think before answering to answer these. I hope you do type of forced choice or written assessment when you finish this unit.
6. Reflection:
Students really seemed to enjoyed the book. They were eager to make predictions and discuss their knowledge. I did not create the What You Want to Learn Chart as I had intended. I wish I had. It would have been a good reference for future lessons. Perhaps i can recover and create one tomorrow. Instead of making the chart, I kind of got side tracked in making a graph about what kinds of things we could make from pumpkins after reading the Pumpkin Book. It was a sudden decision and I wanted to include graphing since we did not make a graph with our good morning story. The graph turned out quite well using the items the class collectively produced as the "bar" for each of our two categories. The students surprised me by coming up with many items (all but three of four items I added after they had exhausted their knowledge.) We made a graph listing the things pumpkins are used for versus things that can be made to eat from pumpkins. Then the class was to vote on their favorite thing to make from pumpkins. But their were students who were voting more than once. Therefore, I explained that the results were invalid because of the unfair voting practice and declared the voting closed and unacceptable. Then I moved on to the next lesson.
Due to timeimg and the activities, I was only able to read one of the books I planned. I know I need to be more organized in my lessons. Perhaps with practice I will become more fluent at transition from activity to activity and lesson to lesson. At least the students were interested and engaged in the lesson nearly all the time. A few students are still struggling with their writing, yet nearly every student at least wrote something in their journal and tried to stay with the task at hand. This is not always the case during writing time. Often their in a lot of discussion amongst students unrelated to their writing. This was not the case today, students who were talking, were talking about the assignment. This was reassuring and an accomplishment. I only hope the interest continues. I do intend to move on tomorrow with Patty's Pumpkin Patch which covers another genre (concept/ABC books). This will add another dimension to their understanding of genres.
Lesson One B | Lesson Three B | Lesson Four B | Lesson Five B