Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Connected in the Classroom: Apples, Apples, Apples!

Yesterday, I talked about Spatial Relationships in the first grade and today I'm talking about apples! This lesson started as a poem - my cooperating teacher showed me a poem and then all of a sudden we had such a fun lesson about adjectives and graphing!

My focus during this lesson was on the adjectives used in the poem and in the song. And eventually on the adjectives they would come up with on their own. But you could adjust these objectives to fit your students - you could focus more on math than the language arts. There is just so much you could do!
We started by reading a poem called 'Apples, Apples' by Liana Mahoney:

Apples, Apples
Growing on a tree.
Apples, apples
Pick one just for me!

One apple, two apples,
Three apples, four -
Red apples, green apples,
Yellow apples, more!

Apples, apples
Tasty as can be.
Apples, apples
Share one now with me!

After reading the poem, we looked for sight words, color words and number words in the poem. I had the poem displayed on the SMARTboard so the kids were able to come up to the board and underline the words. After we had discussed all of the vocabulary words, we looked for adjectives. We discussed what adjectives are and how they can be used to add detail to writing. We read the poem through a couple of times.

Then, I taught them a song about apples that I found on Pinterest:

I’m a little apple, short and round
I make a munchy, crunchy sound.
If you bite into me you will see -
I’m delicious as can be.

The song is sung to the tune of 'I'm a Little Teapot.' The kids were able to catch on quickly and they came up with a some little motions to help them remember the words - it was cute as can be! They were all about singing this song over and over! I often use it now during a transition time - if we are waiting to be called to an assembly or waiting for the music teacher to pick up the kids, we sing! 

I went through a similar process with them to dissect the song - we talked about the sight words then we talked about the adjectives!
Then we had a little apple taste test and my students just about lost their minds! I have never seen a group of six year olds so excited to eat apples! :) I wish I had taken a picture of the set up because it was pretty darn cute! 

I had four different kind of apples - Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Honey Crisp and Cortland. And I had plates numbered 1 to 4 for each group. My kids sit in pods of 4, so I put 4 apples on each numbered plate. This way, I was able to organize everyone eating apple number one at once, then everyone moved on to apple number two at the same time. I was anticipating mayhem so I really planned carefully and it worked! I managed to keep the whole situation under control!

Before they ate each apple, I had a little prompt to get them thinking of some adjectives. So, before they ate apple number one, I asked them to smell it and think about what it smells like. I ran through each of the five senses. This really helped them in identifying adjectives!

Each of the kids had a little apple rating chart. After eating an apple, I got them to color in a happy face, a neutral face or a sad face to indicate how they liked the apple. This little graphic organizer eventually helped them to pick their favorite apple.
After they had tested all of the apples, I asked them to take a minute to think about which apple was their favorite. Some of them knew right away but some of them needed a minute to look at their graphic organizer. This little gap in time was perfect - it allowed some students to come up to the SMARTboard while some took time to think! 

I had an empty graph ready on the SMARTboard divided into 4 categories - Apple 1, Apple 2, Apple 3, and Apple 4. To the side of the graph, I had apples with each student's name on an apple. When they came up to the board, they moved their able to the column that represented their favorite apple. Once every student had moved their apple, we had a graph! My students have not interacted with graphs before but this was a great beginner activity!

I asked them some questions like:
- Which apple was the most popular? How do you know?
- Which apple was the least popular? How to do you know?
- How many apples are there in total? Is that how many students there are in our class? (This helped them to understand what a graph is representing)
- How did you choose your favorite apple?

These questions prompted some great discussions! I didn't introduce any new graphing language because that was not the focus of my lesson but I was impressed to discover their existing language! 
Finally, we talked apple adjectives! I had all of the students come to the carpet at the front of the room. I had a SMART notebook file divided into each of the five sense so that the students could think of some adjectives to associate with each of the senses. I went through each of the sense and they came up with some fabulous adjectives! I reminded them to think of eating the apples and I had a few extra apples at the front for them to refer to!

Form this lesson, we looked at tens frames (with apples as the dots, of course) and the students all wrote journal about apples! I had so much fun with this lesson and my students did too!

See you tomorrow with a gluten free recipe! 


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