The second graders at my placement are a bit more challenging than all of the other grades. They are beginning to assert their independence and test their boundaries with each other. My mentor teacher was going to be out for a day and I had to come up with a one day project quick. I really wanted something that would be a group project so they could practice working as a group and give them more of a sense of community while still giving them freedom of expression and personal choice. I also wanted to incorporate some math and history. So, I went out looking for ideas and came across this paper quilt project.
This turned out to be the perfect project and one of the kids all time favorite. We had been working on creating patterns in the previous project and talked about how we see patterns in nature as well as our behavior so the goal was to create their own patterns within the given framework of the three sections the protractor created on each quarter square.
The kids got more and more excited as they saw their community quilt come together. They worked harder, got along, and praised each other for the good work they were doing. Afterwards, I took photos of each "quilting bee's" quilt and laminated miniature versions of them to hand out to each one of the kids.
This
did only take one class period and it had me gluing and pasting like a
mad woman! You'll notice that I messed up the combinations in the first
two ~ but, by the last class I was more careful and put it together
correctly.
At the elementary school where I am currently student teaching, I was asked to teach an after school class on architecture. The class is comprised of ten kids ranging in age from 2nd to 5th grade. After chatting briefly about their interest in architecture I showed them a quick Prezi presentation on some unconventional architecture for inspiration. Various well- and lesser-known architects' work was featured as well as some finalists from a futuristic skyscraper competition. This really got them excited. For our first project, the kids sketched a cityscape from their imagination based upon the style of James Rizzi from a lesson plan that I found here. Due to their different developmental stages and interests, I gave them a bit more freedom of choice in their colors and design elements than this lesson indicates. A few completed the project so we'll finish up this week and move on to other elements of an architect's job. Here are the completed ones:
At work on their projects:
