High Quality Work
Claim #3
FCE Primary students' writing has grown in authenticity and purposefulness over time.
Claim #3
FCE Primary students' writing has grown in authenticity and purposefulness over time.
Kindie Wasps Book
“Thinking like a scientist is important to me so I can remember stuff when I’m older. When we made our Wasp Book, my picture was voted to be on the front cover. I was really proud of that. I remember so much about wasps because we made that book, like wasps don’t really like flowers, just bees do.” Ava, Kindergartner
Description: The process to get to the writing of this Wasp Book was a lengthy one. Our expedition called “Thinking LIke a Scientist” called for students to ask questions and wonderings about the real world. We learned about asking questions with question words and to look close at things by using our five senses at all types of things in the real world that we had wonderings about. We brought in a wasp nest but did not tell the kids what it was. They had to ask a lot of questions and explore it and really inquire in a natural way. We charted questions they had and things they noticed. We finally gathered enough information and noticings to begin to explore possibilities. We used nonfiction books and technology to find options and make some inferences and synthesize all our information. We discovered it was NOT a bee hive, which was the assumption that many kids made. We found it was a wasp nest! We then gathered nonfiction wasp books and did a lot of reading and recording our learnings. We had done so much learning about parts of a nonfiction book (table of contents, bold print, and labels to name a few) as part of this expedition, that we could model our class book following this format and each child created a page of their favorite learning about wasps and the wasp nest. Each child did a rough draft and then created a picture to match using colored pencils, which was a new medium for them. Before the final draft, we learned about high quality work and why it was important for our work to be high quality so that our readers could learn what we wanted to share.
First Grade Small Moments
“A small moment is a great story from our life. Like when I lost my first tooth. It was SO exciting!!!!” Darby, 1st Grader
Description:
As part of our learning expedition, Everybody Has a Story, students were immersed in high quality fiction books to learn and explore the story elements. Once students felt confident with the story elements, they began the journey of writing our own personal narrative or “small moment”. Students wrote stories from their lives. Students selected their favorite small moment and grew their story by adding details. We worked on strong leads, adding details and closing our story. Students kept the reader in mind to make their stories interesting and entertaining.
As part of our learning expedition, Everybody Has a Story, students were immersed in high quality fiction books to learn and explore the story elements. Once students felt confident with the story elements, they began the journey of writing our own personal narrative or “small moment”. Students wrote stories from their lives. Students selected their favorite small moment and grew their story by adding details. We worked on strong leads, adding details and closing our story. Students kept the reader in mind to make their stories interesting and entertaining.
2nd Grade Mansion Project
“It was hard sometimes like when we had to do our technical drawings of the mansion, or when we had to decide as a group what information we should put in our tour of the mansion.” Carter, 2nd Grader
Description:
After touring the Highlands Ranch Mansion, each student collaborated with others to create a paragraph about a room in the mansion. The paragraph is accompanied by an activity that was created to have a more engaging tour of the mansion. Currently the docents to the mansion us the children’s tour guide to help teach young visitors about the history of the mansion.
After touring the Highlands Ranch Mansion, each student collaborated with others to create a paragraph about a room in the mansion. The paragraph is accompanied by an activity that was created to have a more engaging tour of the mansion. Currently the docents to the mansion us the children’s tour guide to help teach young visitors about the history of the mansion.