Oh dear...

One group's KW(L) chart for the moon.

As I mentioned in a previous post, this unit has been fairly difficult.  The title for this post could, perhaps, be the title for this unit in some ways.  We started off strong, with students creating a KWL chart for the moon and the sun.  Students shared their knowledge and questions with partners, then created posters for both the sun and the moon recording their current knowledge and questions they had.  The students did well with this, and I felt we were off and running.

Afterward, it seemed like slow going.  Instruction seemed to be disjointed as a result of snow days, scrimmages, student sickness, and assemblies.  We read texts on the moon and on the sun.  Students listened for answers to their questions and recorded what they learned.  Students read and discussed texts with partners.  Overall, I think they learned the science content.  We will soon see...

The reading content was more difficult for me.  I tried to embed this instruction with my science instruction as students listened to read-alouds and read texts with partners.  We practiced reading nonfiction texts and finding the main idea and supporting details.  We used different colored highlighters to show the main idea and details.  I had a brilliant idea the other day.  I took information about the moon that and created paragraphs about different topics.  I created cards (one sentence on each) and mixed them up on a page.  Students were to work with partners to cut out the different sentences, group them by which ideas went together, and then decide which sentence was the main idea and which ones were the details.  The students would then glue the cards in the correct place on their pages.  It was brilliant...a veritable "marriage" of science and reading that would be incredibly effective. 



Oh, the carnage...

Sometimes what you plan and what actually happens are two completely different things, however.  This "marriage" of science and reading seemed reminiscent of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries's marriage.  Glue sticks malfunctioned, students lost the ability to cut, and students' cards were "eaten" by that sneaky little monster that sometimes comes around and gobbles up homework pages and notes that were supposed to go home.  Many of the students were confused about which ideas went together, and even after getting that straight, some students had trouble distinguishing between the main ideas and details.  Students glued their strips down incorrectly, then ripped them off, and tried to reglue them.  As I walked around supervising the groups, I became overwhelmed by the number of students who needed help.  During the activity, it was all I could do to not throw up my hands and run away.  In the end, we went over the page together to check it, and some of the final products looked pretty rough. 

It was definitely one of those "live and learn" days.  I learned to make the content a little easier for the main ideas and details so students can easily sort out the topics.  I learned that maybe having 4 different topics was too much at first.  Most of all, I learned never to hand out the glue sticks until students have laid their strips out and had their answers checked by me.