After spending last week researching, learning and writing down lots of facts abut our animals we were ready to start editing this week. We read over the facts that we had written and asked ourselves, "Can we read this?". We looked carefully at our spelling, using our word walls and animal word banks to help us spell words like they are spelled in books. We also talked about sentence conventions (like capital and lower case letter usage and punctuation) and used everything we know as writers to make our writing easy to read. After marking up our fact sheet drafts with our special purple editing pens, making them our "sloppy copies", we brushed up on the lowercase letters we learned how to write earlier in the year and then used our very best handwriting to make our final fact drafts. Wow! The students did such an amazing job on this work, slowing down and really working hard on this challenging but important skill. When groups finished their final fact sheets, they worked together to sort their animal information into chapters and wrote the table of contents for their books!
PBL Reflections ~
This spring, I have had the pleasure of mentoring Cassie Wiegand as she takes the lead teaching role with this awesome group of kids. This slightly removed perspective has allowed me to be much more aware of the student interactions happening within each collaborative animal group. It has been so much fun to watch the kids navigate this challenging work so competently, able to solve problems that come up with confidence and patience. They really have learned that mistakes are okay to make and they accept the mistakes that are made (by themselves and their peers) as an important part of the learning process. Every one of them has had a positive attitude and has eagerly contributed to the work of their group in the way that they best can.
During this first week of our Animals project, every one of our animal groups has exceeded our expectations for work completion and will begin publishing their books this coming week! Groups will also be collaboratively creating a life-sized painting of their animal!
This spring, I have had the pleasure of mentoring Cassie Wiegand as she takes the lead teaching role with this awesome group of kids. This slightly removed perspective has allowed me to be much more aware of the student interactions happening within each collaborative animal group. It has been so much fun to watch the kids navigate this challenging work so competently, able to solve problems that come up with confidence and patience. They really have learned that mistakes are okay to make and they accept the mistakes that are made (by themselves and their peers) as an important part of the learning process. Every one of them has had a positive attitude and has eagerly contributed to the work of their group in the way that they best can.
During this first week of our Animals project, every one of our animal groups has exceeded our expectations for work completion and will begin publishing their books this coming week! Groups will also be collaboratively creating a life-sized painting of their animal!