Sciences Sociales: An exciting activity coming up!!

The students are beginning their inquiry into wild animals of Ontario. We hope to find out about the animals that live around us, including what they look like, what they eat, and how their lives are impacted by their habitats. In the process, we will be learning how to organize research notes and how to make an interactive presentation.  It is going to be a busy few weeks! 

Mme. Cynthia

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/kids/animal-facts/animals.asp?region=ont




The class has finished learning the geography of Canada so they should know the names of the provinces, the Great Lakes, the oceans.

What is "gradual release of responsibility"? 

This is an education term that describes one way we teach a new concept to students. We start with a teacher guided activity, then move to the group doing the activity together (shared) then to partners and then to individual work. 

We are exploring a text form called narrative. In reading, students heard several narratives in read alouds, where the adult points out the features of a narrative with some help from the class. We then focused on reading narratives in the guided reading groups. Then students were ready to find the features of a narrative with their peers: Setting, main characters, problem, events and solution. Finally a student does an activity on their own. 

Why is it important to understand the features of a certain kind of text? This information helps a reader understand the text better and the reader knows what to expect in that kind of text. 

Enjoying a read aloud with Ms. Petrocco

The kind of narrative to write will be a Mystery Narrative!

 Analyzing the clues! 

I think these props will make the reading and writing very interesting!

Our class has 5 Chromebooks! We use them for reading and writing!

At the same time, we have been focusing on writing narratives. The students have had lots of experiences with reading narratives but now they are preparing to write their own. So before they did, again the teacher will modeled by writing her own narrative, then students worked in groups, and soon they will be writing their own narrative with all of the background knowledge we have discovered together in the gradual release model. Using props and a mystery theme engaged the students as you can see in the class pictures!