IIM - Independent Investigation Method - Research Project!

For the past few weeks, my class has teamed up with Mrs. Shore's third grade class to start a research project about the rainforest.  We are following IIM, or the Independent Investigation Method.  We have been careful to document all the steps of our research in a powerpoint presentation that we can share it with our parents and our school when we are finished.  We are also going to become published authors when we put all the information we have learned into our own books via Student Publishing!  Here are some of the photos of our project so far!

First, we discussed the vocabulary of IIM and research.  Then we started learning about our topic.  Here is Mrs. Shore reading a book about the rainforest.  We set up a rainforest discovery station with books, photos, and even stuffed animals so that we could learn as much as possible!

We started keeping a glossary of words we are learning as we read about the rainforest.  Here are photos of a 3rd grade glossary and a 1st grade glossary.

We generated questions about the rainforest because there was still so much we wanted to know!  We sorted the questions into topics.  

Here are are 5 Big Questions to answer!

Next it was time to start our research!  First, we talked about plagiarism.  This video really helped explain about why it's important to credit someone else's work.  

We started by siting our sources.  We will record all our sources on this list.  

Now we are working on taking notes.  We discussed what notefacts should look like and have practiced putting information in our own words in a shortened way.  

Now that we are doing our actual research it is almost time to put everything we are learning together into a product!  The class is so excited to become published authors!  Check back for updates on our books!

Easter Eggs!

I saw a cute activity on pinterest for Easter writing, and of course it came from one of my favorite teacher blogs.  You can get the free printable on her site!  Luckily, our librarian had The Easter Egg by Jan Brett, so I got started on this project quickly.  The kids loved the story and were thrilled that they could design their own eggs!

Timelines

We have learned about past, present and future in Social Studies and the entire first grade assigned a timeline project so that students could share their personal histories over time and show how they have changed.  The instructions were simply to create a timeline with dates, descriptions in complete sentences and photos.  I used rubistar to make a rubric that we used to grade the projects.  I loved seeing all the baby photos!  These projects were adorable and the kids loved presenting them to the class!

Anonymous Assessment

At the first grade conference one of the presenters told us about a great way to monitor for understanding without embarrassing any students who don't know the answer and in a way that lets everyone who does know the answer share.  I thought this was great for me since I am always checking to see if my students can remember a concept or vocabulary word that was taught to them.  I like to call on the students who frequently don't pay attention, but I also don't like to single them out in front of the others.  Likewise, I have a lot of students who want recognition for remembering something, but I can't ackowledge all of them. 

To do this, you assign a secret number to each child.  I gave mine a label with a number on it that they keep in their binders in case they forget.  I just numbered the seats in order around the room, so I would know each number myself.  When a question is posed, each student gets a post it and puts their number in the corner before writing their answer.  Then they come and stick it on the board.  I can easily determine who has it and who doesn't.  In the future I will make a grid board with the spaces already labeled by numbers so that students can learn to put their post it in a designated spot, rather than remember their number. 

I used this activity with our math program and we discussed each one of the incorrect answers on the post its.  It was a very good lesson even for those that already understood, because they could explain why other answers were incorrect. 

President's Day

 For President's Day we read and watched videos about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  I found this Venn diagram activity on pinterest and had the students complete it as a formative assessment.  We read and discussed each item in advance but some still had trouble deciding where to place them. 

 

After additional teaching, we did a fun persuasive writing activity.  We brainstormed what we would like to do as President and then wrote, trying to use our self editing again.  I took photos of the kids with an American flag and a thumbs up and hung them all outside the door.  They are super cute, and I think I would vote for some of these ideas!

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day we did some writing using our senses to describe love.  After some group brainstorming about what love looks, smells, sounds and feels like, the students finished the sentence starters on their own. 
After attending the first grade conference last month I saw a great presentation about doing writing using the phonics dance.  Since then I have tried to get my kids into self-editing.  They seem to be doing a little bit better, sounding out each of their words when they are done writing a thought, so at least their spelling is phonetically correct. 



We also made pocket hearts for collecting our Valentine's cards.  The directions are below. 

1. Lay one piece of construction paper on top of the other, lining them up as evenly as possible and holding them horizontally.  I put the pink piece on the bottom and the purple piece directly on top of it.
2. Holding both layers together, fold in half to get your center point then unfold (this is only a guideline for finding the center of the page)  Next, bring the two bottom corners up until they meet in the middle along your first fold line.  If using the same colors as I did, the lower half of your page should show 2 pink triangles with a purple rectangle above it.
3. Fold the purple rectangle down then fold the the purple corners to the back and tape in place.
4. Temporarily fold the holder in half and cut the upper corners so they are rounded.  When you unfold the holder it should look like a heart.
5. Write the person's name across the purple band.
6. Decorate the holder with markers, glitter and/or stickers.
7. Tape your holder to the wall and it's ready to receive your Valentine cards

 

100 days of school

Yesterday was the 100th day of school!  Unfortunately, I wasn't in school yesterday to celebrate with my kiddos.  I attended the Texas First Grade Teacher Conference in Austin.  I got some great ideas I am excited to eventually start using, but I missed a lot of fun 100 day activities.

I had the kids work on some 100 themed activities, including measuring how many times they could clap, blink, hop etc in 100 seconds.  They made predictions and then figured it out.  They also tried to come up with 100 food words and 100 animal words.  

Last week we also did this writing activity so that we would already have it on the walls when the 100th day arrived.  We brainstormed what we would all be like when we are 100 years old.  This was seriously the funniest writing I have ever read from my firsties.  They completely cracked me up with their ideas about older people and their big underwear, dentures, and bingo playing.  

We made some artwork to go with it but kept it real simple because we were in a hurry on a Friday afternoon.  They used cotton for the hair and drew wrinkles and spectacles etc.!