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| Henleigh's Frozen-inspired face paint. |
One of the core beliefs of my teaching focuses on the idea that students learn best through action, movement, and novel experiences. I saw the data firsthand for years as a classroom teacher when my students showed a real love of learning for those lessons which required them to move and engage in a novel way. Let's face it; we all know what we personally remember from sitting in a classroom, and it's not the days of note-taking or teacher lecturing.
On that note, I wanted to share a fun writing experience I planned with my kiddos last week. I'm using an over-arching theme of Write It! for our writing activities, and the first lesson was Paint It!
Here's the scoop!
1. Paint It!
What kiddo doesn't love having their face painted? None that I know! The first step of the day was having the kids browse face painting on the net for their character ideas. Both kiddos immediately knew which character they would portray, but we had to take to the nets to figure out the BEST design. My little princess chose a Frozen-inspired crown, and my handsome guy selected his favorite Red Ranger. Full disclosure here: Their faces did not look absolutely perfect. Actually, they were not even remotely close to perfect, but my kiddos could have cared less. They felt like little face painted rebels going throughout the tasks of daily life because, short of a birthday party or carnival, who gets their face painted on a random Wednesday? We do!!
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| A Frozen princess and a Red Ranger. |
Once we completed the face painting, we were on to the next phase - writing. Their task was to brainstorm what they could possibly write about-using their faces as inspiration. The assignment was completely open-ended in that they could choose the genre and product with which to create their writing. Hayden is a circle map aficionado, so in early stages of brainstorming, we usually defer to this form of graphic organizer.
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| Hayden's variation of a circle map graphic organizer. |
Writing is a process- one that does not always happen in a day (or even two or three). Also, every piece of writing does not have to be completed through the publishing phase. Writing is recursive. It ebbs and flows, and because of that, my kids get time to walk away from writing projects and return on another day with new eyes and new ideas. A few days after we created the circle map graphic organizer, Hayden decided he wanted to create a recipe titled "Red Ranger Cupcakes". He is deep in the research phase where he has been looking up different recipes that he will use to give his own "Red Ranger" twist. In the next days he will be taking the top 2 or 3 recipes to the test kitchen to narrow down his very favorite. Hayden has been baking solo for about a year now, and he is a super baker.
On a side note: It's important to remember the amount of reading that goes into baking, and even more importantly the genre of reading required while baking and cooking- the dreaded non-fiction procedural text that is so feared in public school. Throw into the mix the math that is also required in baking and cooking, and this lesson is a win-win for multiple reasons.
Be looking in the coming days for Hayden's recipe, and also a post about adapting this writing process for younger non-writing kiddos!
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| Kids in the test kitchen testing recipes! (This happens to be a french toast casserole on another day) |
