Central Boulevard School Teachers: Alexandria Olsen and Tracey Zito
Entering, Emerging, Transitioning, Appropriate for All | Stand-alone | KR9, KRF1, KW1, KSL5, KSL6 | Buncee
Formative: My students were informally assessed daily through teacher observations and checklists.
Summative: Assessment included a writing piece of two simple sentences with provided sentence frames to explain the students’ favorite weather pattern and activity. The sentence frames were: “I like the ___ days. I can ___.”
The ENL primary stand-alone classes learned about different types of weather, and activities that can be completed during those weather patterns. Students listened to stories of children around the world completing different activities in each weather pattern, and then they were able to reflect on their own chosen activities.
I can identify an activity that I like to do in a chosen weather pattern.
Language: I can write and speak in complete sentences to describe my favorite weather and activities.
Technology: I can recreate my illustrations of my favorite weather pattern and activity on Buncee.
In the initial stage of this unit, the students explicitly learned about each weather type, including the vocabulary word and how it looks outside. From there, each day the students listened to the song “How’s the Weather?” on YouTube, to practice asking and answering questions about the weather. Then, students took turns being the “weather kid” to look out the window and tell their peers what they saw outside. Using the sentence frame “I see the ___. It is ___.,” allowed the students to practice speaking in complete sentences, while identifying different weather patterns outside. Then, the students practiced incorporating math by graphing the daily weather and comparing the different weather types each day. From there, the students listened to a variety of books about activities that can be completed in each weather type. Lastly, students were able to reflect on their favorite activity, and the associated weather pattern.
My students and myself thoroughly enjoyed completing this project. The vocabulary words within this unit were crucial for my students to understand in order to take part in their classroom’s calendar routine. The incorporation of different aspects of technology enhanced my students’ comprehension of the content, as well as the knowledge of how to apply it in real life.