Sarah+Wang

Here is the drama activity that Debbie and I did for Camp Reading Rocks. It was hard to get this all in during one lesson; this lesson would take a week to go through effectively. [[http://advancedreadinginstitute.wikispaces.com/file/view/Mountain%20Man%20Frontloading.ppt|

Mountain Man Frontloading.ppt]] This is a frontloading activity done before reading A Rendevous with Idaho History.

Below is my in progress mini unit. Our theme is the solar system and I couldn't think of an inquiry question that would work well with this. So, instead of a question I made it into a Darth Vader theme. Darth Vader is coming to blow up our solar system if the students do not persuade him otherwise. They must create a persuasive project based on the information learned that will convince him our solar system is worth keeping. Some end projects are amazing! I have a teacher who is going to dress up as Darth Vader and grade their presentations. Some kids have chose to decorate a t-shirt for him, a lunch box, a rap, solar system in a box... [|Darth Vader Scoring Guide Final Project.ppt] Whenever we do an end project, my students help me create the expectations and scoring guide. This really helped them create ownership of their projects and some have really put forth more effort than they have with past projects. [|Darth Vader Warning #3.ppt] [|Darth Vader Warning 2.ppt] [|Darth Vader Warning.ppt] The above are just messages from Darth Vader that I would secretly put in student's desks. They look forward to that everyday. One day I forgot to put one out and they were looking all over the room for the message. It is a great motivator and reminder of their assignment. [|Hubble.pps] Just a great power point to add to the solar system information. [|Solar System Introduction Darth Vader.ppt] This was the introduction I used. When we learned about the planets from the Think Aloud below, I displayed a picture of each planet. [|The planets.ppt] Think Alouds for students. [|Yoda #1.ppt] Yoda visited our class too - they needed inspiration! [|Solar System scoring guide for students.doc] This is the list of expectations and projects students came up with. We also did a roll play activity called "Alien Dating Game." Students paired up and pretended to be different planets and the rest of the students were aliens, looking for other aliens on other planets that they would like to meet, but they had to guess which planet what which by asking the planets questions. The planets could elaborate their answers or answer in just a yes or no, depending upon the level of questioning from the alien.

We also watched a video about our sun, earth, and moon. This was a great introduction to the solar system unit.

So far I in reflecting about this unit, I would like to create a questionaire, find videos about our solar system, and do more roll play. I am stuck as far as teaching kids how to put effort into their projects. Some are excelling well at this but some I have to keep pulling along. I have a few boys that like to get things done in about 5 minutes, and the content and quatlity of their projects are poor.