The big day finally arrived! We finished setting up yesterday morning and then farmers started arriving! We dressed up in farmer clothes. We had our art and posters displayed on our hallway bulletin boards and in our classroom. We had a guest book table, complete with a guest book designed by some of the Grade 1s. Our partners from Mrs. Caldwell's Oak Lake Kindergarten even joined us for the event!
As our guests arrived, we took each farmer into our classroom and offered them coffee, tea and cookies. Farmers had the chance to relax, visit and enjoy a nice coffee break. Once everyone had arrived, the students gathered in the classroom with the farmers. We showed them our video, which we made especially for the farmers. Then we watched a really funny video (which was suggested by a student for Farmer Appreciation Day.) The video is called "What Does the Farmer Say?" and it's a lot like the Grade 1 favorite "What Does the Fox Say?" Our guests had a big laugh watching the farmer version!
I had some special farmer guests in the crowd today too. One of my students invited my parents, who are both farmers. They brought a special surprise for all of the students involved in planning and executing Farmer Appreciation Day. Through the Ag More Than Ever program, they were able to get each student a t-shirt and some fun items like stickers, magnets and pens!
It was a very successful day in my mind. Our farmer guests said many thanks for the time and effort put into our event. They were pleased that we'd taken the time to show our appreciation. It makes me so proud to support young learners in their efforts to make a difference in the world and watching kids tackle a big project like this makes me feel especially lucky to be a teacher!
This is an education-related blog written by Mrs. Leah Obach @LeahO77. Leah is currently working as the Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for Park West School Division, working with K-12 students and teachers to help them use technology for teaching and learning. She has taught at the early years, middle years and high school levels. Student work, teacher reflection, resources and samples from classrooms around PWSD are included in this blog.
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
Farmer Appreciation Day: Poster Making & Set Up!
Students wanted to create special posters for decorating our classroom on Farmer Appreciation Day. We brainstormed messages together and students decided whether they'd like to work with others on big banner posters or individually on smaller posters. Students worked really hard to do their best printing, drawing, designing and coloring.
Yesterday afternoon, we started setting up for the event. We moved the
furniture around in our room to get ready for our farmer
guests and we started putting up our posters. It sure looks great in
our classroom and I'm so proud of the students for their amazing
learning, teamwork and passion!
Whether it was lifting tables, stacking chairs, setting out cookies or last minute poster-coloring, everyone pitched in to get ready! We even had a student photographer take pictures to show our setup day. I helped out with counting chairs, "directing traffic" and reaching some hard-to-reach spots for posters. Otherwise, the students did most of the work. They are really engaged in their learning and excited about their project!
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Farmer Appreciation Day: Learning from a Failure
Since we were scooping cookies until the end of the day on Friday, I had to put some cookies in the oven to bake after students left. When I took the pumpkin molasses cookies out of the oven, I knew there was a problem...
The recipe said the pumpkin molasses should crack on top and we expected a gingersnap-like cookie. When deciding what to do after school on Friday, I figured their appearance could be forgiven if they still tasted good, so I sampled a small piece of cookie and... they TASTED TERRIBLE!! I had to share the bad news with students Monday morning and we talked about two possible problems with the "failed cookies" - (1) the spices we used were too strong and made the cookies taste bad and (2) something made the cookies too watery - either an incorrect measurement of a liquid ingredient or the pumpkin being too watery. Students were a bit disappointed, but I reassured them that we could try the recipe again. Students came up with the idea to use less spices and I suggested we strain the pumpkin and measure VERY carefully.
On Monday afternoon, during our project learning time, a group of students volunteered to retry the cookie recipe. While other students worked on different aspects of the project, I helped a small group make two new batches of pumpkin molasses cookies. We made both of the proposed adjustments and the dough looked much better. We had to refrigerate the dough, so we did not bake the new batches until Tuesday afternoon.
The new batches turned out much better. They looked, smelled and tasted good! We learned from our failure and made some delicious pumpkin molasses cookies for the farmers!
The recipe said the pumpkin molasses should crack on top and we expected a gingersnap-like cookie. When deciding what to do after school on Friday, I figured their appearance could be forgiven if they still tasted good, so I sampled a small piece of cookie and... they TASTED TERRIBLE!! I had to share the bad news with students Monday morning and we talked about two possible problems with the "failed cookies" - (1) the spices we used were too strong and made the cookies taste bad and (2) something made the cookies too watery - either an incorrect measurement of a liquid ingredient or the pumpkin being too watery. Students were a bit disappointed, but I reassured them that we could try the recipe again. Students came up with the idea to use less spices and I suggested we strain the pumpkin and measure VERY carefully.
On Monday afternoon, during our project learning time, a group of students volunteered to retry the cookie recipe. While other students worked on different aspects of the project, I helped a small group make two new batches of pumpkin molasses cookies. We made both of the proposed adjustments and the dough looked much better. We had to refrigerate the dough, so we did not bake the new batches until Tuesday afternoon.
The new batches turned out much better. They looked, smelled and tasted good! We learned from our failure and made some delicious pumpkin molasses cookies for the farmers!
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Farmer Appreciation Day: Baking Cookies
After recess, we moved our class down to the kitchen to start baking! Students had printing and art to do, so they packed up their supplies and materials so they could work on their tasks while we were baking. Students took turns scooping out cookie dough while others worked on the assigned tasks. We made a lot of yummy-smelling chocolate chip cookies and it was really hard not to "taste test". We also got all of the pumpkin molasses cookies scooped out and ready to bake. It was a VERY busy afternoon!
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Farmer Appreciation Day: Grocery Shopping
Once we'd made our pumpkin puree, it was time to get the other ingredients to bake cookies for Farmer Appreciation Day. As a reading and writing activity, we reread the recipes we'd selected and wrote a list of ingredients we would need. There were some leftover supplies from previous projects, so next, students went through the supplies and created a shorter list of groceries they'd need to buy.
On Friday, we went grocery shopping. We walked to the local Co-op grocery store and worked together to pick out and purchase the items on our list. Everyone had a job to do. Some important jobs included: grocery list readers, cart pushers, cart loaders and grocery carriers. I think it's really important for all students to have a purpose and a job that contributes to the task, so I made sure students knew their jobs before we left our school. Once we were at the store, each student took turns doing their part of the shopping. We stopped a few times to work together as a group: we compared prices on a couple of products together and we checked
our cart together to make sure we had everything
that we needed for our cookies.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Project Based Learning Update!
I've been neglecting my blogging with the whirlwind of activities going on at school. From speech festival and the Remembrance Day service to professional development days and report card writing, it's been a busy couple of weeks for this Grade 1 teacher! A LOT has been happening in our classroom, but one of the most exciting things I'd like to share tonight is an update on our project based learning.
As you may have read, we did a brainstorming session with Mrs. Caldwell's Kindergartens early this year to help us decide what our focus would be for project learning this year. We narrowed our topics down to "helping farmers" and "helping cats", with the Grade 1s most interested in farming and the Kindergartens most interested in cats. So much learning and meaningful work has taken place since then!
Students decided one way we could help farmers would be to show our appreciation and to give farmers a break from the hard work they do! This led to a plan for Farmer Appreciation Day, which students will be hosting later this month. I don't want to "spoil" the details for any of our blog readers who are attending, but I do want to share some of the great things we've been up to in preparation for this big event!
As a shared writing activity, I helped students write invitations to send to local farmers and posters to advertise our event in local businesses. After the writing was printed, each student added his or her own designs and colors to the posters and invitations we sent out. All of our invitations have been sent and students are working on putting posters up this week.
This shared writing activity allowed me to work with students to develop writing for a real-world audience. (I love it when writing becomes SO important because it is leaving our classroom and being seen by many people!) We worked together to "stretch out" words and used some of the blends we are learning (like "er" and "ay") to help us spell words. It was also a good opportunity to practice the lowercase letters we are learning in our printing lessons. Everyone contributed to our writing and we are really proud of the end product!
As you may have read, we did a brainstorming session with Mrs. Caldwell's Kindergartens early this year to help us decide what our focus would be for project learning this year. We narrowed our topics down to "helping farmers" and "helping cats", with the Grade 1s most interested in farming and the Kindergartens most interested in cats. So much learning and meaningful work has taken place since then!
Students decided one way we could help farmers would be to show our appreciation and to give farmers a break from the hard work they do! This led to a plan for Farmer Appreciation Day, which students will be hosting later this month. I don't want to "spoil" the details for any of our blog readers who are attending, but I do want to share some of the great things we've been up to in preparation for this big event!
As a shared writing activity, I helped students write invitations to send to local farmers and posters to advertise our event in local businesses. After the writing was printed, each student added his or her own designs and colors to the posters and invitations we sent out. All of our invitations have been sent and students are working on putting posters up this week.
Here's the poster we wrote:
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