Thursday, April 26, 2012

Robins

Spring has sprung around here lately, we supposedly had the warmest March on record, and we are starting to see lots of robins outside! Continuing on the review of Super 3 with my Kinders, we talked about robins this time. I created a smartboard notebook with pictures of robins from Flickr Creative Commons along with each step of the Super 3. We again brainstormed questions of things we might want to learn and ways we could get information. They really had clearer ideas this time. I liked that some of the ideas for the sources of information included observation of a nest, my brain, and owners of birds in addition to all the usual suspects like books, websites, etc. After talking about the Plan step, we moved on to Do and used this website for information. Then, the students drew a robin using the descriptions and pictures we saw and wrote sentences about what they learned. We ran out of time before the Review step though. I hate that that step often gets left off. Here are some of their works in progress, some of their pictures showed even more information like nests with 3-4 blue eggs and eating worms.

Robins eat berries. Babies eat worms. They lay 3 or 4 eggs.

Robins eat worms. Robins eat berries.

Robins eat berries and worms. Robins have up to two sets. (We talked about how robins lay two clutches of eggs each spring.)

Robins eat berries. Robins lay their eggs in a nest.

Robins lay eggs in a nest. Robins eat worms.

3 comments:

  1. I just recently discovered your blog and am enjoying going through past entries. Thank you for sharing your ideas. I just finished a robin lesson with my Ks in library this week. I'm wondering if you could share the link to the website that you used. Also, how long is your time with each class? Does that include a book exchange? Our Ks are not quite as advanced in their writing skills as yours. I'm very impressed with their sentences.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for reading! The link I used was from KidZone at http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/birds/american-robin.htm - hope that helps. My fixed classes (as this particular class was) are 45 minutes long. Most of my classes do also check out at that time, but my K's don't. We have some great teachers here that really help the kids learn! Their writing impresses me too. Just keep encouraging them to try. I sometimes have a kid that struggles, but I just ask them to try. Having them do the sentences before the picture is usually a good motivator for my kids!

      Thanks for reading and looking through past entries. Let me know if you have any other questions or if I can help at all!

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  2. I just recently discovered your blog and am enjoying going through past entries. Thank you for sharing your ideas. I just finished a robin lesson with my Ks in library this week. I'm wondering if you could share the link to the website that you used. Also, how long is your time with each class? Does that include a book exchange? Our Ks are not quite as advanced in their writing skills as yours. I'm very impressed with their sentences.

    ReplyDelete