Schools of the Future

Time is a tough concept for little ones. It's hard for them to imagine a past different than they have seen growing up and it's even harder for them to envision the future. As part of my unit about school, I asked them to imagine what schools of the future would be like:

I think this thought is really interesting considering the trend toward 

deskless environments in the classrooms.

Creative Family Trees

I often wonder who came up with the original "family tree" concept. I know it makes sense-branches beget other branches so it fits with the model of growing families. But like with everything I do with my students, I want them to think a little bit more outside the box and use their creativity. I asked my kiddos to come up with another way we can show our growing families-instead of a family tree-what could we use- a family.......

This is what they came up with:

Family Whale

Family Pan-I liked the thought of this one because many families cook/eat together-it made sense to me.

Ethics and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Ethics is one of my favorite things to teach my Kinder students. When they enter in the beginning of the year many of them base their opinions on what they think you want to hear. If you ask them is something is right or wrong, they change their thoughts based on your questioning. For example, "is it wrong to steal?". And they will answer yes. But what if you are a mother stealing to feed your baby who is starving (kind of the Jean Valjean argument). They answer, then it's right. They are listening to your tone and your questions and trying to give you the answer you want to hear.

The more we work on ethics and discuss the issues that arise in the stories we read, the more confident they get in defending their own arguments. We start pretty simply-our first activity this year is based on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom story. Was it right or wrong that the letters went up the coconut tree in the first place? I only had one student yesterday who took the opposite tack from the obvious "wrong" answer. But the more we do these activities this year, the more they will learn to see from both sides.

Inventing a New School Supply

So the top rung of Bloom's Taxonomy now reads "Create". Inventing something new is considered to be one of the highest level thinking skills and I can see why. It's very difficult to get my Kinder students to the point where they can think outside that box and invent something new. I start with school supplies because let's face it, that's something we all know a lot about in the beginning of the school year. We make a list of current school supplies that are needed for school and then talk about how we might improve one of them. What could a pencil do that would make our life easier-shoot out snacks?Write by itself? And then I let the kiddos loose to come up with their own ideas. This is really the first time I'm asking them to think at that highest level, the more you do these kinds of activities the more creative they become. :)

Introducing Empathy and Multiple Perspectives

I love following feeds on Twitter, but man, it makes me find and then of course, have to buy so many new books! I am on serious book-buying probation right now! :)

This book was one of those finds. One of the hardest higher level concepts for kiddos in my class is to think from another perspective. They don't understand how to do that, probably because at 5 years old the world completely revolves around them! :) I think the concept of this book is just genius-it's written from the school's perspective and how he/she feels on the first day of school. I read this to my students this year and also used it to introduce the concept of empathy which we revisit a lot during the school year. For some reason I did not take pics of the activity we did with it, but I did want to share this title and how it can be used to introduce those important concepts.

If I Were a Parent....

Well, it has been a very interesting first week of school for us. We have a whole new administration team, so lots of changes to get used to. I actually only have 11 students in my class right now. My principal has been moving them out of my class all week and since they are new, I no longer have an inside track to what their plan may be. I've been on pins and needles all week waiting for them to say they were going to close my class, however in the meantime we are just having a blast! We have gotten so much done already-every activity takes half the time it used to. We have our workstation routines down, I'm almost done assessing them. A very interesting week indeed!

I read them the Kissing Hand. And I introduced them to the concept of multiple perspectives. I literally get up on the table and look around the room from that perspective-how different the world looks from up there. Then I ask them to pretend they are a parent. If they were dropping their child off at school for the first day and he/she was nervous--what would they do. Our first writing activity of the year....