Indirect Teaching Strategy

I used a Guided Inquiry approach to teaching decopage on a bottle using tissue paper with Natalie. She wanted to decorate the glass bottle but she didn't know how so I used this Indirect Teaching strategy to guide her to use a glue and water mixture to paste on tissue paper to the bottle that she wanted to decorate and here is the result!

Credit goes to a grade 2 student, Natalie

Day 2 for Earth Day!!

After the paper mache dried the choice is to paint it blue and then paint the land on top of it OR to paint it green and then paint the water on top. Therefore we have some blue Earths and a green Earth. One of the students decided to make a bird instead of an Earth and the other student hasn't painted at all yet. Take a look at the progress of our model building after Day 2! The students were impressed with their efforts of the inital stages of the paper mache especially when they saw the Earth coming into existence as a hard round ball shape.

The next step is to continue painting. Stay tuned!!

Earth Day is Approaching!!

The Primary students are getting excited about Earth day, April 22nd, this weekend. I decided to use an Experiential Instruction Strategy to do some model building. We are going to make an Earth using Paper Mache! I first set up the Paper Mache station with smocks, balloons, strips of newspaper, and a good consistency of flour and water.

 Then I blew up a few balloons to help give the students a 'picture' of what the Earth was supposed to look like and I paper mached one of the balloons so that I could use it as an exemplar.

I taught the students how to soak the strips of newspaper in the flour/water consistency and attach it to the balloon. I kept the consistency mixed up using kraft sticks so that the students could focus on wrapping the paper mache around the entire balloon to build the model of the earth.

Here is the result after 'day one.' The students worked pretty well with the materials with the exception of a short attention span and some frustration with getting the entire piece of newsprint wet before applying it to the sphere. Somehow, they managed and are now waiting for them to dry so they can paint them next day.

Bring on the Sunshine!

I taught the Primary students to create suns using styrofoam plates, tin foil, glue and sparkles. Take a look!

By Hayden

By Sami

Primary students from JK to grade 3

Shifting The Monkey!!

It sounds funny but the more I hear about it the more I want to read it. "Shifting the Monkey" is a book written by one of the people I was following, Todd Whitaker, until recently when I decided that he was talking over my head. It was a fellow blogger, Justin Tarte who brought his book to my attention and I am thankful for this. I am now following him again on twitter @toddwhitaker. The author of "Shifting the Monkey" is  Todd Whitaker who has written 30 books and he focuses on leadership, teaching and motivation. I looked into it and this book is available at Amazon.com. Here is the beginning of the excerpt of the book on Amazon.com.

"Everyone has responsibilities, obligations, and problems to deal with in the workplace and in life. Some people, however, have mastered the art of shifting those monkeys onto the backs of others. They claim they don t know how to solve a problem or do the task, they say they don't have time, they complain, they perform poorly, they find any and every way to avoid the work - and yet somehow, they're never held accountable. Instead, hardworking, loyal employees who care about results end up shouldering those burdens for their lazy or unmotivated colleagues. The slackers get just what they want - less work - while the best employees become alienated and overworked."

It is available at Amazon.ca
Feel free to view  Justin Tarte's review of "Shifting the Monkey." I think if you are in management or a leadership role it is a 'must read.' This book is on my list to read.

Senior Kindergarten Students are Printmaking!!

Printmaking can be done at any age. Take a look at what a couple of students created when they were experimenting with printmaking. I used buzz groups to facilitate this lesson where I taught the same skills of printmaking to groups of two or three students at a time. I believe in a Progressivist teaching method where students learn by doing and this is exactly what my students are doing.

I taught William and Jefferson to use styrofoam plates and a dull pencil to make an imprint of shapes, then to cover the plate with marker, press a piece of paper over top of it, and voila! The result was that they learned to make a hand made print.

Take a look at what the older students came up with.

I showed both Dhillon and Benedict to carve letters backward onto a styrofoam plate so that when they covered it with marker they learned that when they pressed the paper on top of the plate the imprint was visible and legible.

Happy Easter!!

'Happy Easter' from all of the Primary students! Here are the results of their hard work when I taught them how to decorate eggs with paint, tissue paper & water/glue, and sparkles & glue.