March 21 & 22
This week I have bee working with a 1st grade teacher using primarily two books as reading enhancement for a science lesson on sound. Yesterday, I read the two books to the class. The non-fiction book, Hearing Things by Allan Fowler went into recognizing voices, loud vs soft sounds, high vs low pitches and the three main parts of the ear. The favorite page was the one depicting the parts of the ear, the students thought it was cool but gross (one boy said the inner ear looked like a snail), but the favorite activity related to the book was a toss up between making low and high sounds and closing their eyes to really "hear" the quiet. The fiction book was Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You? I am reasonably sure the classes on either side heard the success of this book...with each "can you?" the students proved that they could! The favorite here was the fish kiss - again rated "gross" by some. We discussed the term "sound word" in relation to such words as "moo" and "tick tock" that represent a sound. I also tied in a quick discussion of fiction vs non-fiction and author vs illustrator.

Today I returned to the class to do two activities based on sound words. I asked the students if they remembered what the term for a word that represented sound was and then asked them for 5 or 6 examples. I got some direct from Seuss's book such as "moo" and "boom", but also got some new ones: "vroom" and "sssss". Then I asked the students to choose two of the words and draw a picture of something that made that sound. The second activity was an even bigger hit. I bought 24 masks - 4 each of 6 animals. The class was divided into 6 groups. One at a time each group was blindfolded and had one style of mask put on. They had to ask "what sound do I make?" and then guess what they were.

Tonight I gathered more materials and went over the plans for the final lesson on Thursday. Friday I will take the class a slide story from the pictures I took today and will take Thursday. (They all wanted their picture taken today so it will be tough selecting a limited number.) We are going to make a display using this and the pictures that the students drew today.
4 hours