This morning in Math, we took some time to review all concepts that we have learned so far this year, doing a couple review pages in our Everyday Math Journals. I love the Everyday Math takes a spiral approach to learning, so that taught content is repeated and not forgotten. In a spiral curriculum, learning is spread out over time rather than being concentrated in shorter periods. In a spiral curriculum, material is revisited repeatedly over months and across grades. Spiraling is effective with all learners, including struggling learners. Learning difficulties can be identified when skills and concepts are encountered in the early phases of the spiral and interventions can be implemented when those skills and concepts are encountered again later in the spiral. After the Daily 5, we took a look at our new unit of inquiry (UOI) board, reading the central idea, and discussing the provocations/lines of inquiry on storytelling. This is our fourth unit of inquiry this year and it falls under the transdisciplinary theme of: How We Express Ourselves. Our central idea is: We communicate ideas, feelings, and what is important to us through stories Our lines of inquiry are: -There are many ways to tell stories -Storytellers need skills -There are different reasons for storytelling -There are many types of stories Our provocation is: Stories have been shared in every culture as a form of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and instilling moral values. The key concepts related to this unit of inquiry are: perspective, function, and form. After discussing this new unit and what our lines of inquiry meant, we 'tuned in' by discussing and writing about what we already know about storytelling. After this, we looked at a variety of different stories (mostly folk and fairy tales) and talked about what we want to learn during this unit by creating wonders for our wonder wall. As a first-grade teacher at an inquiry-based learning school (IB PYP), I've come to understand the importance of planning. Planning is critical and also best practice. I still plan at the beginning of each week and each day. A teacher without a plan has no purpose or learning objectives for her students. With student-directed learning though, there's a major difference between planning and flexibility. I plan according to what my students need and how I'm going to assess their skills or knowledge, just like every other teacher. The difference lies in the delivery of instruction. I will continue to plan weekly, but now my planning rests on answering each of your child's inquiries along with meeting the needs of the curriculum. There is a lot of power in asking the right questions. You might wonder how lesson planning works if you're always reconstructing on the fly. I've found that if the students take the lesson in a different direction than what I've planned for, it's my job to light their way to where my intention and their intention meet. Most often, if their curiosity takes us in a completely different direction, I let them run with it. However, I also let them find the connection between what I need them to learn and what they want to learn.
This week we are focusing on fairy tales, with many different versions of Cinderella. We have a Vietnamese, Jewish, Korean, Cambodian, Ojibwa, and Mexican, version of the story. This helps us learn that many stories have been passed down from different cultures. We will also be learning about different ways to tell these stories, and the necessary storytelling skills. This week we will be exploring verb tenses. I always like to start this inquiry by looking at verbs with -ed endings. Many regular verbs end with -ed, but the trick is in how we pronounce the -ed ending. It can be pronounced as id, d, or t.
When we pronounce voiced sounds, our vocal chords vibrate when we say those sounds. [v] [z]. for example. When we pronounce voiceless sounds, our vocal chords do not vibrate. [f] [s]. No vibration. This vibration or lack of vibration then carries forward to the following sound in the word. Therefore, this vibration or lack of vibration explains why we pronounce the past tense of verbs in three voiced or voiceless ways: [t], [d] or [Id]. 1) [t] final soundVerbs ending in voiceless sounds [p, k, θ, f, s, ʃ, tʃ] cause the “-ed” ending to be pronounced as the voiceless [t] (with no vocal chord vibration). 2) [d] final soundVerbs ending in the voiced sounds [b, g, ð, v, z, ʒ, dʒ, m, n, ŋ, r, l] cause the “-ed” ending to be pronounced as a voiced [d] 3) [əd] or [ɪd] final soundVerbs ending in the sounds [t] or [d] will cause the “-ed” ending of a verb to be pronounced as the syllable [əd] or [ɪd]. We will continue working on this skill throughout the week.
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March 2017
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