Halloween Rigor

If your students are anything like ours they are fired up in anticipation for this upcoming holiday. :) These are the times we see a lot of fluff in the classrooms. I wanted to give you some alternatives in case you were looking for something to do with your kiddos that involved higher order thinking.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R

If you are not familiar with this acronym, it's a great way to add rigor to your activities. It lends itself well to holidays like this.

S-Substitute-substitute something else for pumpkins to decorate for Halloween. I like to give them areas where pumpkins may not be plentiful-Africa, Alaska, Hawaii-what would they use to decorate?

C-Combine-combine Halloween with another holiday-what would that look like? You can even incorporate rules from Depth and Complexity here. What is always true about Halloween?

Adapt-Adapt Halloween celebrations for other places or other creatures. How would a monster celebrate Halloween? How would a tiger?

Modify-Modify Halloween candy to make it healthier-invent your own new healthy candy.

New Use for an everyday thing-what is a new use for a pumpkin or halloween candy.

With Kaplan's Depth and Complexity:

Rules-using what is always true about Halloween, create a new tradition or way to celebrate.

Details-using details we know about characters-what do you think they would dress up as for Halloween (my favorite has always been the student who said Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz would dress up as Woody from Toy Story.

Multiple perspectives: compare the perspectives of a Jack-o-lantern and a plain pumpkin.

Write from the perspective of a haunted house, etc. How would it feel, what would it see, what would it wish?

Trends-analyze the trends in Halloween costumes over the years, predict what future trends will look like.

Powerful Words

One of the things I always tried to impart into my students was that words have power. Whether it is in a speech, argument or story. We need to be careful about the words we choose in order to have the best impact possible. 

I share this video originally shared by Terri at Engage Their Minds.

The Power of Words

Then the students make their own lists of words they consider powerful. One asked if he could write "hate". I say yes because it is a powerful word. They make a triorama and glue two together.

Here are some our 4th Graders came up with:

Socratic Circles

I believe, as Socrates did, that students learn best from each other. A teacher can lecture but I think there is more engagement and more participation from everyone when we can have a group discussion that includes everyone.

This is where Socratic Circles come into play. We review and practice the rules first. No one laughs at anything anyone says. We do not talk over each other-I have even had an object that you have to be holding in order to share something to make it tangible for them. Stay on topic.

Then my favorite way to introduce it is to take the class outside. We make a big circle and start discussing. This year my position is called the Art of Thinking. We push-in to 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classes. So I took my 5th graders outside and had an amazing conversation about the impact of social media on our perspectives. Is it that same in other countries? Other cultures? We talked about people like the Amish who do not have access to social media-how are their lives, their perspectives different?

With the young kids you could talk about people who have made a difference in history. What made them want to make those contributions? What made them so brave?

If you try it, let me know how it goes. 

Rigorous Unit for Where the Wild Things Are

I think this is probably my all time favorite book to read aloud to students. We were doing a training a few years ago and had a video of it from Discovery-the sound wasn't working. So I narrated the whole thing page by page because I pretty much know it by heart. ;)

So how can we step up the rigor using this story?

We can use concepts from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity:

Multiple Perspectives:

Bubble map-how would Max's mother describe him compared to how the Wild Things would describe him? I do this on chart paper. Draw a big bubble with Max in the middle, draw a line down the center and then have the kids give me adjectives describe Max from mom's POV and the Wild Things. It is usually very similar and we can discuss why that is.

If I were Max I would....

If I were the Wild Things, I would......

Ethics:

Was it right for Max to leave the Wild Things?

Patterns: Identify the patterns in the story. Use those patterns to predict as we read the story aloud.

Rules:  What was always true about the Wild Things? What was always true about Max?

Details:  My favorite activity to do because it also reviews adjectives. Take out the word "Wild" and replace it with another adjective. What other details of the story change? So where the "pretty" things are-they blink their pretty blinks and show their pretty nails instead of rolling their eyes and showing their claws.

Rigorous Comprehension Questions:

Is this story real or make-believe? How do you know?

Did Max really travel anywhere?

If you could travel somewhere in your dreams, create the world that would look like?

How do you think Max felt when he met the Wild Things?

Why did Max leave?

What do you think the Wild Things did after Max left?

What do you think Max learned from his journey?

Products for Depth and Complexity Instruction

Several years ago I connected with J. Taylor Education. They provide training and products for Kaplan's Depth and Complexity.

I wanted to share with you a TPT-like site where units that incorporate these concepts are being sold. I created units that target early childhood from this site, just a few are:

https://depthcomplexity.com/all-products/

Where the Wild Things Are Unit

Giving Tree Unit

Arctic Animal Unit

Wordless Book Unit

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Fairy Tale Unit

Escape Room to Review D&C Concepts

They also have some items for free. Let me know what you think!

Frayer Model

So sometimes the classics still work. The Frayer model is a great way to solidify vocabulary-which we know young kiddos definitely need more of.

I use it with my usual vocabulary words, but also in other subject areas. This was our objective for social studies. You can see how the students all used their own words to define what it means to be a good citizen, illustrated it, and then gave examples and non-examples.

Kaplan's Trends with the Young Ones

Trends is one of my favorite concepts to teach. I personally am fascinated by Trends. There have been many rabbit holes that I have traveled down after having a question. Trends in Baby Names fascinate me-the way old-fashioned names are coming back or the way culture plays a part-have actually had Sansa's and Arya's in Kindergarten.

Here are some ways you can incorporate it into your lessons. What I do is make into a unit. We review how to do research, how we can trust certain sites over others. So for example:

1) What have been the number 1 Halloween costumes over the years? The students can illustrate what they think costumes in the past looked like and then we can analyze the data. They can also predict what future costume trends might be.

2) Number 1 toys sold at Christmastime.

3) Top baby names-are any of their names on the lists? Would they name their child a popular name or go more unique?

4) Fashion-we do a whole unit on shoes-how have they changed over time? I am a wear a dress with sneakers to work kind of gal-does practicality trump style? 

5) Trends in TV and movies-the students are shocked to learn about silent movies and how we grew up with only 3 channels.

6) Trends in weather-tie it into science. Now in Texas this is hard because most days it's 90 degrees and sunny. But we can analyze trends for the whole US or compare it to trends in weather in other countries.

7) Trends in art-what made certain artists popular?

8) Trends in foods-I watched the documentary on Netflix called Rotten and was shocked to learn the history of the avocado-I had no idea there were trends involved in making that so popular today (and who knew the drama involved).

9) Trends in our city-we look at the development projects in the works and compare it to what the city used to look like. 

10) Trends in trends-what is cool? From pet rocks to tamagochi's to fidget spinners. Analyze the trends over the years.

11) Trends in fairy tales-from the horror of Grimm to the "woke" tales of today where Cinderella doesn't need a man. Brings a depth to my fairy tale unit.

Analyzing is rigorous but it's also important to me to give them an opportunity to predict what will happen in the future. That way they are also applying what they learned.