Tuesday touches on Taxonomy!!

In order to compare the native peoples of the Caribbean with two very diverse groups of learners, I heavily considered the student's responses on the VARK questionnaire. The first group is much more independent and kinesthetic therefore I opted to have them compete in groups. Prior to setting them loose on the articles, I used a familiar class expectation list for group work. It was especially important to reinforce this right after vacation; a little extra never hurt anyone! It was actually a lot of fun; we did the activity as girls vs. boys. They had to highlight important information from a variety of articles, group share, and finally record on the board so both teams would be able to get an overview of both groups. 

The second group is, surprisingly, much more auditory. I decided to change gears and read the articles aloud. Every time a student heard something they thought was important, they would raise their hand and we would discuss their fact. This was actually a great way to do this activity because we were able to touch on some higher level thinking skills such as inferring, predicting and comparing. 

We used a couple of different graphic organizers to structure the learning of these Caribbean groups. I used 50 Literacy Strategies, by Gail E. Thompkins, and Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, by Doug Buehl to help guide me while trying to make the information relevant and as organized as possible for the students. Positive reinforcement helped me, in both classes, encourage participation from some unlikely sources. Rather than say "Bobby and Ricky, make sure you raise your hand next time", I tossed a mint or expressed a lot of excitement about their fact or word choice. One of the students in the second group has difficulty focusing, but positively contributed to discussion and the comparison! Another, who is a doodler, was able to paraphrase very well and still hit on the focal point of a paragraph. 

Yet again a great day from 6th Grade!!

6th grade Takeover Week

Today marks the day of my first complete day of teaching solo in grade 6! A coincidence, that a great friend of mine would only say was meant to be, is the word of the day today is respect; fueling my excitement about this week!

We are opening the week by learning about the three types of Caribbean Islands by using the Jigsaw method. I want to keep the student's noses out of textbooks as much as possible! We will be spending the second half of the Language Arts periods in the library where the students will share their favorite reads of the year thus far with each other! During the week the students will write reflections to me using Google Docs summarizing their reading and sharing how they connect with a particular characters story! In the afternoon, we will be figuring out which islands are which using Sheppard Software for practice. By this point the students should be labeling examples of which islands belong under the three different categories of islands!

Off we go :)