_

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Post It Note Directions





















A lot of times I like to leave step by step illustrations with my sub plans. What I often find is that on step 7 out of 9 I make a silly mistake or realize I drew too big and they won't all fit on one page. I started doing the steps on mini post it notes. Then I can stick them on a sheet of copy paper in order when they are all done. You can slide them into a plastic sleeve if you're afraid they will fall off. This is also great if you decide to change it up from year to year. Or if you find less steps are necessary. I also like having the boxes the same size. This could probably be photocopied to give to students who were absent during a previous class. (Darker post it colors may not work, but yellow should be ok).



Catching Snowflakes

I tried the "catching snowflake" portrait lesson that I first saw here but wanted to make it my own. Instead of painting a jacket on their person, I had the students create a paper loom on the sweater portion and weave the sweater. This provided an authentic extension into weaving.



Luckily I had these students in first grade and they were already familiar with weaving. We used the thickness of a a ruler to make vertical stripes starting at the neck and shoulders to the bottom. Then they wove 1.5" paper strips through. I had them slide each strip to the top and glue it into place before adding another strip. At the bottom they had to glue each section to create a sturdy base.

We also did a mini-lesson on symmetry before they made their paper snowflakes. This lesson took 3 (40-minute) sessions.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Clay stampers to label clay

Individual letters are a great way to have students label their own clay pieces. I usually scratch their initials and class code on the back. I'm always afraid I won't be able to read their writing, or that they will squish or collapse their piece. This is something they could do on their own. It would also be a quick way to quickly add the class code to each piece after the students leave.