In this blogpost I will be highlighting two different grades and lessons I learned from. Due to circumstances for the last day of watching the classroom “mini lessons” I ended up observing a kindergarten classes math lesson instead of watching our regular rainbow group grade 1 literacy/UFLI lesson. I have decided to make curricular connections with both the kindergarten numeracy lesson/activities and the Literacy lesson I observed the week before.

ELA Grade 1 Lesson Activity and Curricular Connections

During my second visit to the rainbow group grade 1 class, the students firstly completed a UFLI lesson, then moved onto making local Ktunaxa plant booklets.

I thought this activity was a really great way of bringing Ktunaxa into a lesson. The teacher had a powerpoint with a slide for each plant with a picture, the English name, the Ktunaxa name, and interesting facts about it. With the class she then helped students complete the booklet doing one plant at a time. When it came to writing the Ktunaxa name, she also had a speaker and used the Ktunaxa app so the students could hear how it was pronounced. There was also a spot for the students to draw a picture of the plant to bring art into the lesson. I think it would also be fun to do something like scavenger hunt where they have to look around the classroom to find the information to fill out their booklets to just bring in a little bit more movement into the lesson.

Curricular Connections

English Language Arts

Big Idea:

Curiosity and wonder lead us to new discoveries about ourselves and the world around us.

Curricular Competencies:

-Create stories and other texts to deepen awareness of self, family, and community

-Use foundational concepts of print, oral, and visual texts

-Use sources of information and prior knowledge to make meaning

-Communicate using letters and words and applying some conventions of Canadian spelling, grammar, and punctuation

Content:

-Language features, structures, and conventions

FPPL:

-Learning recognizes the role of Indigenous knowledge

-Learning involves patience and time

Science:

Big Idea:

Living things have features and behaviours that help them survive in their environment.

Curricular Competencies:

-Demonstrate curiosity and a sense of wonder about the world

-Experience and interpret the local environment

Content:

–names of local plants and animals

-the knowledge of First Peoples

–structural features of living things in the local environment

Kindergarten Math activities and curricular connections

The Kindergarten math activities I observed were St. Patricks Day themed! They were very fun and engaging to watch. Something I like is the teacher has different stations each with different activities that focus on the same concept using a variety of games and activities. The picture above shows the measurement activity the students did where they measured pictures of various St. Patricks day themed objects like a pot of gold, rainbows, leprechauns etc… then used gold coins to measure them.

This was an addition activity where the kids used coins to make the number on the rainbow. In the picture above you can see there are 6 gold coins on the left of the rainbow and you want to have 10 in total so 4 gold coins need to be added to the right side of the rainbow in order to make 10.

Curricular Connections:

Big Idea:

-Objects have attributes that can be described, measured, and compared.

-One-to-one correspondence and a sense of 5 and 10 are essential for fluency with numbers.

Curricular Competencies:

-Develop mental math strategies and abilities to make sense of quantities

–Model mathematics in contextualized experiences

-Develop and use multiple strategies to engage in problem solving

-Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving

-Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

Content:

–direct comparative measurement (e.g., linear, mass, capacity)

–number concepts to 10

–change in quantity to 10, using concrete materials

*Background photo by J Lee on Unsplash