Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs, Oh My!

For the past couple of months, we have been exploring the ancient civilizations of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec people.  Our DC Social Studies Standards indicate that first grade students should be able to, "Describe the characteristics of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations," including developing an understanding of their class structures, religious traditions, artistic and oral traditions, writing systems, and advances in astronomy, mathematics, and architecture.  It's a lot to cover and process for six-year-olds but we've been doing our best!

BrainPopJr.com

I began this unit by focusing on the Maya and using one of my favorite teaching tools: BrainPop Jr.!
(BrainPopJr.com has great animated videos on a variety of topics and the kiddos love them!)  We watched the Maya Civilization video and found out that archeologists have studied artifacts and ruins in Mesoamerica to learn about the ancient Maya. We also learned that the Mayans built pyramids and used hieroglyphics to communicate.  Some of the kiddos had heard of pyramids and hieroglyphics from Egypt, but interested to find out that other societies had them as well.

I planned various lessons to explore the different advances that the Maya people had made in writing, math, and astronomy:

• We watched a YouTube video of a calligrapher and Maya expert writing names in Mayan hieroglyphics and then the kiddos got to try to translate their own name into Mayan glyphs.  
• We learned how the Mayans did math, using symbols of sticks and shells and the kiddos got to solve math problems using Maya Math.
• We looked at photographs and artifacts (donated by a parent) of ancient Maya temples and calendars.

• We read fiction and nonfiction books about the Ancient Maya.  We used a series of nonfiction books called "True Books" and also picture books such as Rain Player, an original folktale inspired by ancient Maya culture.

We are currently preparing for our Spring "Museum Night" where we will showcase our learning about the ancient civilizations.  The kiddos are very excited to share with the families and friends all the information they have learned.  More on that to come...

Editing and Re-Writing

Personal Narratives continued...

Yesterday I posted about the revising process that each kiddo went through to improve his/her personal narrative story.  After we had completed our revisions, the next step was editing.  I found a great teaching video that I used to model my introduction of editing.  We made the same "Features of Easy-to-Read Writing" Anchor Chart.

Again, the kiddos relied on their writing partners and red pens to check their work.  After the little writers felt confident about their stories, they had to get their stories checked out by a teacher.  Then they could begin to re-write.  

The re-writing process seems to drag on forever, but I feel strongly that re-writing is a valuable skill to learn.  Through re-writing, the kiddos incorporate the revising and editing changes that they made earlier, while ensuring that the message of their story still comes through.  Plus, they carefully check their handwriting, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and spacing to ensure that their stories are "easy-to-read."

Today we finally added our cover pages and an "About the Author" page to complete our books. Most of the kiddos have now finished their stories (finally!) and they are ready to go for our school-wide Publishing Night next week.  Publishing Night at our school consists of inviting the school community to read our authors' books.  We pin each book on our bulletin board and put a little envelope (or library card pocket) next to each piece and leave index cards for visitor to write "Notes to the Author."  It's very exciting for the kiddos to get feedback from friends and family members.  Can't wait!

Asking Questions

As I've posted before, I love finding new teaching videos.  I recently found this one about asking questions before, during, and after reading and decided to try it in my class.

I made a few adaptations to the lesson to make it work a little better for my first grade kiddos.  I used the book Milo and the Fire Engine Parade (although Supermotamus looks like a fun book!) and I started the lesson by modeling how I would look at the book and generate "Before Reading" questions.  Then I gave each kid two post-its.  One said "During reading, I wonder..." and the other said, "After reading, I wonder..." As I read the story, I paused and gave the kiddos a chance to write down their questions.  At the end of the story, I went through the same process as the teacher in the video and we considered whether or not our questions had been answered.  I really liked this aspect of the lesson because I think it was an important point to make -- while we look for answers in the story, sometimes we don't find the answers and that's okay if the question wasn't essential to our understanding.

Then, I took the practice a step further by asking the kids to do the same process in their Independent Reading.  I gave them a sheet with three boxes to practice asking questions before, during, and after reading a "Just-Right" (Independent Level) book.  This was a good check to see if the kiddos really got the idea.  Asking questions about their own reading is an important Common Core Literacy Standard so it's something I will revisit frequently this year, but this was a great start!  Plus it went right along with our newest Comprehension Helper: Questioning Owl.   

I'm so glad I found a video to inspire yet another lesson.  As it happend, the day I was taught this lesson, I was being filmed as well.  A few months ago I volunteered to participate in a program with my school district to gather footage that will be used as part of a training for new teachers in the district. I'm pleased to say that the folks from the district were very impressed with my kiddos! :)

Guided Reading Video

I love teaching videos!  I really can't get enough.  When I find one I like I typically watch it again and again.  (This summer I motivated myself to get to the gym by only watching teaching videos while on the treadmill or elliptical!)  I recently found this video of a second grade Guided Reading lesson.  I think I've already watched it 3-4 times.

I love the work the teacher is doing with her group! I am going to be introducing inferring to my kiddos in the next week and I think the way that this teacher explains the concept to her readers works so well. I also like the way she pre-Post-its the kiddos' books so they know when to stop and think.  I'm definitely going to be incorporating this strategy into my lessons in the future!