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Learning Experience/Unit

All About Me

Subject

English Language Arts (NYS P-12 Common Core)

Grade Levels

Elementary, Kindergarten

Assessment

Students will be assessed according to the following rubric:

All About Me.doc

Learning Context/ Introduction

This learning experience will allow children to introduce themselves in a variety of ways at the beginning of the school year and help them to identify how they are an integral part of the classroom.

Students will create a graphic organizer, a classroom book, and a classroom drawing.

Duration

Day 1: 25 mins
Day 2: 45 min lab session
Day 3: 25 mins
Day 4: 30 min

Essential Question

Who am I? What are my likes and dislikes? How am I an important part of my classroom society? How are we like a box of crayons?

Instructional/Environment Modifications

Environmental:
LCD projector, SMART Board, computer lab access, color printer

Instructional:
two volunteers, computer lab aide

Procedure

Day 1:
The teacher will introduce the project that students are going to undertake by modeling his/her own All About Me graphic organizer in Kidspiration. The teacher will complete this task using the SMART Board so that all of the students will be able to see the process and ask any necessary questions.

Day 2:
The students will work in the computer lab to complete their own version of the All About Me graphic organizer. They will use pictures to fill in all of the categories. Those who can and wish to include letters or words may attempt to do so. When they have completed the organizer, they will print it out and hand it in. This may take more than one lab session depending on the pace of the students and their familiarity with computers.
Students will briefly present their graphic organizer to the class as part of their Show and Tell time. Their fellow students will be given the opportunity to ask three questions of the presenter to allow for discussion and elaboration of the presented material.

Day 3:
The teacher will read "The Crayon Box that Talked" to the students. Afterwards, the class will discuss the story through problem and solution and tie in the fact that like the crayons we are all different but are part of the same classroom (box). Students will discuss their thoughts about this and how being different and working together is important in a classroom.

Day 4:
The student-created graphic organizer will be compiled into a class book by the teacher. The class will be split into two groups equally mixed by ability. Each student will be given a different color crayon. One group will be asked to design a cover and the other group the back for the compiled book. Students will need to make sure that each person's color is used because our class would not be our class without each person in it, just like the box of crayons.

Reflections and Feedback

This lesson went surprisingly well for being taught early in the year in Kindergarten. The students required little help completing the graphic organizer and did everything but print by themselves. They were excited about the project and enjoyed completing it as well as presenting it to their classmates. If I were to do this lesson again, I would try to encourage the students who were capable to use more text and include more about using text in my presentation of Kidspiration.
I was a little concerned about how well students would do working as a group to design the front and back cover of the book but they did surprisingly well. They worked together to decide what they wanted to draw and took turns using their colors to draw it. They were very proud of themselves when they finished and I look forward to being able to do more projects like this with them in the future.