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| Introduction | |
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| Narratives | |
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| Exhibits | |
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| Reflection | |
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We chose "The Fall Harvest Season" as our project theme because it easily encompasses many of the curricular goals that we had for this semester. It incorporates many language and literacy benchmarks that are a strong focus for the first grade level. Also, the children are very interested in this topic because it offers the chance to explore the changing seasons and the autumn holidays.. Some questions that we explored were: "What changes occur in the fall? Are there signs we can look for each year? What holidays occur during the fall? Why do we celebrate them?" We did the following in this unit:
- Lesson 1- Fall Brainstorm Web- With consideration of their five senses, the children brainstormed the "signs" of fall. We made a theme web on the computer using KidPix and the large projection screen in the media center. The children were introduced to the concept of "webbing" and recreated their own webs on KidPix later in the semester.
- Lesson 2- Adopting a Tree- The class adopted a tree on the playground outside of the classroom window. We observed the tree outside as it was beginning to change. We also took digital pictures of it. Then, we went into the computer lab and projected the pictures onto the main screen. The children made their own representation of the tree using the drawing tools in KidPix, and typed sentences about what the tree looked like as it changed. These were printed and compiled into a class book.
- Lesson 3- Fall Slideshow- The class created a slideshow using the children's ideas about fall, and added voice audio clips to each slide as they read their descriptions of autumn. The children were introduced to the concept of a slide show using KidPix Deluxe, and were able to watch and listen to it during center time.
- Lesson 4- Apple Orchard Book- We took a field trip to an apple orchard and pumpkin patch and took pictures with a regular camera. Then, using a scanner, the pictures were brought up on a computer. As a way to remember the field trip, each child was "assigned" a different image, for which they described what was going on in each picture. They added captions using the typing tool in Adobe PhotoDeluxe. All of the captioned pictures were printed and compiled into a class book of the field trip.
- Lesson 5- Thank You Letters- Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, the class discussed what it means to be thankful. Each of the children chose a person in the school to whom they were thankful to. They each wrote a thank-you note to the person. Using a digital camera, they took turns taking pictures of themselves with the person they were thanking. The image was added to the handwritten letters and given to each person.