Comparing the Past and Present

It's another off week for me, which means a flexible schedule in the library.  These are fun because I get to teach a variety of things, make the teachers happy because I'm reviewing concepts (and it gives them a break!), and makes the kids happy because they still get to check out and do something fun!

This week with my Kindergarten and First Graders, we are looking at past and present.  We're also discovering QR Codes for the first time for some of them as well!  Students have had a lot of fun taking the tablets around and scanning cards to watch videos, see pictures, and see what the past was like!  I also have had a past/present picture sort waiting for them to do at one of the tables (complete with hula hoops that are labeled), as well as a cut/paste activity on comparing the past/present.  Plus, there's also the bonus of getting to check out this week!

For those of you that might be confused, our school has a STEM lab ("Innovation Lab") that meets 3 times during the nine weeks and it's during the library resource time.  So, my first week was kind of a dud with teachers signing up for a flexible schedule.  It was brand new to them and some of the sample lesson plans I sent out were a little ambitious and probably scared them off! (Mali marketplace, anyone?).  So, for the second week, I recruited teachers by making up a digital citizenship lesson a K class missed due to a field trip.....and when the word spread that it was like an extra planning period, well, my K-2 teachers went wild and all signed up!  They were really happy I asked THEM what to teach!  I was doing math patterns with my Kinders, pirate maps with the Firsties, weather with the second graders....you get the idea.  Now that we're on the 3rd week, I've been able to have a "soft opening" with my fourth and fifth graders with our Makerspace (planning to roll it all out after Thanksgiving), teaching past/present with K and 1, weather and economics with 2nd, character traits with 5th...you get the idea!

So I wanted to share my Past/Present packet with you because my kiddos have had so much fun with it this week so far!  Click on the title page to see more!

These are "hunt keys" I created for my kids so they could mark off the cards they scanned and watched

Past, Present and Future?

We culminated our unit on past and present this week with some special visitors! Parents brought in some really cool items from the past (and yes, I feel old when I can remember when there were no remotes to the TV!), as well as students bringing in things such as 45 records and a french fry maker! My brain was not quite with it during the first part of the week (we had PALS this week!), but I managed to get pictures for the later part of the week.


Another focus this week was friendly letters. We started with the basal story from our Harcourt Trophies, Dear Mr. Blueberry. Before we read, we measured out 30 meters from the window in our classroom and on down the hall to see exactly how big a blue whale is! It's quite a ways! In the story, Emily writes letters back and forth to her teacher (Mr. Blueberry) because she thinks there's a blue whale in her backyard pond! The kids loved predicting whether it was really one, as well as learning about blue whales. (There was quite a debate in my room if this story was fiction or not....some said it had too many facts in it to be fiction, so it brought on a great discussion of what "informational fiction" is!). I have a wiki page for each of the Harcourt Trophies stories we've done so far with literacy center ideas, as well as activities to do while reading (we use this series for our Monday read alouds). I'd love for you to go and visit!

I love using this story to introduce friendly letters. With the inspiration of Pinterest (there's a great "body" poster on there to use!), as well as a song I've used for years (sung to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes), we explored the different parts of a letter. We then wrote letters to our parents about what we had learned about blue whales and if we could have one in our backyard. :)

The rest of the week for read-aloud, we read the "Ike LaRue" books to explore more letters. If you're not familiar with this picture book series, please go to the library and pick it up! Ike is a dog (his owner is Mrs. LaRue) and the books are hysterical! He writes to Mrs. LaRue in one because she put him in obedience school. In another story, he is on the hunt for missing cats and clearing his name, and in a third, he travels across the country (great way to explore the difference between postcards and letters).

Communities: Past and Present Part 2

So I was really excited about teaching population this week - more so than I ever thought I would be!

After doing a brief oral explanation of what population is (number of people in one place), we talked about the population of our classroom, the school, our county, and even our state! (I had looked up the information beforehand). This tied in so well with our study of graphs and "keys" for our picture graphs! Check out our posters below (I LOVE our school's poster maker!) that were made in Publisher:


I also found a way to display our trioramas from last week (I had been scratching my head, but finally decided our New Year's wish balloons had been up there long enough).




The caterpillars you see are from our "contractions," another pinterest-inspired activity! I'll share more about my "Grammar Tree" in another post! :)

Since it was only a four day week, we spent Tuesday on population (which my students have now expanded to talking about any group of objects in one place....like the population of magnetic coins that don't seem to want to leave my white board!). Wednesday was a cute booklet that had us drawing what things looked like now and then (closely related to a big book we have called Things Have Changed!). It's one of those great things I inherited years ago, but can't remember from where or who, or I'd share (one of these days, I'd like to get a document scanner and put things in Adobe!).

Thursday we discovered past items and jobs that have since been eliminated using the website What Is It? from Harcourt School, and created "coins" of colonial jobs. I adapted a worksheet from the book below I had picked up in my travels. It's from one of the pages that the students were supposed to "match," but thought making coins would be more fun!


The kids really enjoyed the activity and of course, my boys loved the fact that there was a gunsmith as one of the coins!

Friday was a day where we shared our homework this week: interviewing someone "older" about their childhood, comparing it to today. I thought it was funny because one of the questions was asking which invention had changed their life since childhood. I laughed at one that said "Atari," bringing back memories of my old TI99/4A we had (MUNCHMAN!), but most said cell phone, Internet, or computers. My kids were stunned when I told them that I never had computers in my classroom until middle school!

"Gosh, Mrs. Youel, how old ARE you?"

Some days, I ask myself the same question! :)

Communities: Past and Present

Do you ever have those units that are, quite frankly, a little boring? While I think it's kind of cool to look back on where we've been to where we are now....well, 7 and 8 year olds don't always feel the same! I decided to give my unit a little "kick" now that I've been inspired by Pinterest to be more creative! (What an addicting site! If you haven't been there before, it's FABULOUS!)

Our standards ask us to cover how the community, transportation, population, and jobs have changed from the past to the present.

We started with transportation - something my boys really enjoyed! I created a Powerpoint for the students to help them visualize that we truly went from two feet (walking) to what we have today! After a couple of days of discussion and comparing what we use now to what was used long ago, the students created a "tall ship" sort, where they put the past "vehicles" on top of the sail, the present replacement underneath.



Ship Template
Clip Art

We then focused on the different types of communities and, after a great video from Discovery Streaming and a Powerpoint my students help create using Google Images, they then created a triorama about the 3 types.

This is my sample. (If you've never done a triorama, you cut a piece of 8x11 paper into a square, then fold corner to corner to make the triangle, making sure to cut one side to the middle - that's the "x". Then, you fold it over and glue to make the triorama!).



This is one of my student's. They did a great job! Not quite sure how I'm going to display them. (I'd love to suspend them from the ceiling but there's always that fire marshall thing!)


Next week, we're focusing on population and jobs. I have a few ideas playing around in my head. Hope this helps those of you who have to do a similar unit!