Dragon Study

We have officially launched our Dragon Study in these past few weeks! Kids have been organized into several dragon classification groups (Fire, Mountain, Thunder, Lake, Earth, Wind) and travel with their groups to different dragon stations based on different types of learning.

At our Linguistic station, groups act out a play in front of the whole group. So far, we have seen student adaptations of George & the Dragon, Herb the Vegetarian Dragon, Jane and the Dragon and Not Your Typical Dragon. They have been enjoying trying out different roles while learning to project their voices and remember their lines.

The Musical station tasks the students with building an instrument that will bring to our ears the voice of a dragon. There are many different types of dragon that they could make a voice for. Some are loud, others are gentle, some are happy, others are serious. Each child plays his/her instrument for the group to see if they can guess which dragon it is the voice of.  We have seen a variety of drums, shakers and stringed instruments so far.

At the Intrapersonal station kids choose a picture of a dragon that they think most embodies their own inner "dragon spirit".  This dragon becomes the cover of their folder and the student then reflects on their choice, writing about how they share qualities or traits with the dragon of their choosing.

The Kinesthetic station challenges students to shape a dragon model out of a Model Magic clay. Details are added using toothpicks to make scales, eyes and other features. It is painstaking work to model the clay into a shape that resembles a western or eastern dragon. These dragons are shared with the group and then displayed out in the hall.

The Visual/Spatial group works collaboratively to create a habitat for dragons. The group  uses oil pastels to show the environment and its features. Each group must consider and plan what resources will be provided in their habitat to help the dragons sustain life - sources of food and water, space, and shelter. These large scale murals are shared with the rest of the kids and displayed in the hallway.

The Logical/Mathematical station sends our students on an archaeological dig to unearth the bones of dragons hidden under the sand. After very carefully brushing away layers of sand, our scientists retrieve bones and must consider the size and shape of the dragon it may have belonged to. Using clues from a dragon skeleton diagram, they create a visual representation of the complete dragon with the found bone drawn in place. The kids have really enjoyed this investigation!

Our station work will continue next week as we rotate all the groups through each station. Some pictures of artifacts and students creations are below. Behold the dragons!

Author Celebration!

Today we celebrated the end of our first unit of study in writing: Personal Narrative. For this celebration, kids were paired up with a buddy and their stufty guests to take turns reading their own book to their buddy and then listening to their buddy's story and giving them some encouraging feedback on their writing.

Over the course of many weeks, students have been taking seed ideas from their own real life experiences and weaving them into written books. As they have written more and more, they have built their stamina for writing more and also tried out strategies to elaborate their narratives. 

Some of the craft moves we have been learning include:

- Spreading a story out across pages

- Bringing our characters to life with talking, action, thinking or feelings

- Starting our stories off with a strong lead to grab our reader's attention and finishing with a closing (other than "The End") to say goodbye to our readers

- Incorporating moves made by some of our mentor authors like powerful word choice, stretching out the "hot spot" of our stories, and making our descriptions richer with comparisons

Writing is a process that will continue to grow and improve for your child the more they practice and the more they write. 

Enjoy the pictures below of buddies proudly and enthusiastically sharing their stories!

Dragon Day!

 This Monday we had our Dragon Day as a culminating fall festival celebration! Many kids wore costumes throughout the day and most kids said they were looking forward to trick-or-treating that night. 

Our day started with watching the Kindergarten costume parade from our bootwell benches outside the classrooms. That was followed by a cool craft in which kids made a dragon bookmark to hold their place in a book with a big chomp! Next, we had some dragon play time outside and had our class photo shoot. We continued our dragon festivities with making paper dragons with cardboard tube mouths and accordion folded paper bodies and finished the day by creating our own dragon breath devices!

Enjoy the pictures below of the kids on Dragon Day! We had witches, unicorns, pro-athletes, Darth Vaders, superheroes, ninjas, princesses, characters from movies and video games, an angel, a devil, dragons, a unicycle riding clown, a police officer, a ringmaster, a jester, and some friends who were happy to come as they are!