The Calendar might show Sept 26, but there's no sign of fall in the air! Even still, we know it's coming and with that in mind, our Gr. 5 students stepped into fall today by activating our senses. Experiential learning means experiencing things in real life but no one ever said you can't start the experience in the classroom.
We began with an awesome fall story by Lois Ehlert Leaf Man
We followed this up by writing a letter to Lois Ehlert telling her what we enjoyed about her story. Among the highlights were her creative phrases like "A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows", her creative art work, and cool imagination. If we get a reply, we'll be sure to paste it here.
Next we went onto a brainstorm of what our Fall Memories might include:
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As we moved through our plan, we noticed we were activating our various senses. It was time to write our shared Fall Memories. Mr. Fernandes held the marker and talked out loud to explain what was going on in his mind (a scary thing at times!). Creative phrases, activating senses and word choice were all part of the plan.
If you can't read my chicken scratch, here's the typed version below (and yes Chloe the Dog was clearly missing from the story because you know she'll be racing through the forest with me!)
“Bonzai!!” That’s the scream of happy students leaping into the crunchy, crackling leaves. Fall is one of my favourite seasons of the year. No matter where your eyes roam, you are surrounded with the vibrant colours of fall – yellow, red and orange leaves flutter down from the mighty trees soon to be covered in snow. While the temperature may be dropping, there’s nothing like a piping hot bowl of pumpkin soup to warm me up. And once that happens, it’s time for a stroll through the woods with the crisp air all around. Thank you God for the beauty of Fall!
Once the story was written we developed our success criteria to show what a successful fall memories paragraph would look like:
And with that, part one of our Fall Experience is done. Our goal is to help the Gr. 1/2 class actually experience all we've written about once Fall actually does arrive. That means some of our Gr. 5 students (keep writing.....) will be helping our Gr. 1/2 students leap in the leaves, stroll through the forest, and create a delectable pumpkin soup. Now we're just waiting to see those leaves start to fall! Stay tuned...