One of the best things about this school year has been the experimental maker activities with third grade. I have been on this mission to make curricular connections with the third graders while integrating literacy and maker projects. Our latest adventure has involved wordless picture books.
One of our third grade classes was able to be partnered with our 4 and 5 year old class creating student leadership opportunities while forging relationships. The process is just as important as the end product in this activity. I create prompts centered around the curricular goal. Once a student selects their wordless picture book and tells the own story in their mind to coincide with the illustrations, they are given an envelope that corresponds to their specific book. In each envelope is a prompt and a challenge. Each challenge consists of a specific supply list that they can work from to create. They can go "shopping" for the supplies that they wish to use from their list:
One of our third grade classes was able to be partnered with our 4 and 5 year old class creating student leadership opportunities while forging relationships. The process is just as important as the end product in this activity. I create prompts centered around the curricular goal. Once a student selects their wordless picture book and tells the own story in their mind to coincide with the illustrations, they are given an envelope that corresponds to their specific book. In each envelope is a prompt and a challenge. Each challenge consists of a specific supply list that they can work from to create. They can go "shopping" for the supplies that they wish to use from their list:
 |
| Shopping for Supplies from the Maker Challenge Supply List
After their supplies have been gathered, they get to create something driven by their prompt. For example, each of our grades has a charitable theme throughout the year. Our third grade theme is called Gemilut Hasidim in Hebrew, which means to give loving acts of kindness. As a result, one of the wordless picture books that the students could select from among a pile of many was Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson. In this story, a little girl picks a bunch of wildflowers and gives them away throughout the day pleasantly surprising the recipients by her kind gesture. For this particular story, the girls created a kindness collage out of recycled magazines.
|
After all of the creations have been made, students present to the class about their prompt and what it inspired them to make. As part of their presentations, they consider reflection cards similar to these shared by Jackie Gerstein. This entire activity is done in a fifty minute class period. To see more of their glorious projects, checkout @21stStacy and #davis3 on Twitter.
No comments:
Post a Comment