TT: Thematic Unit: Homes and Houses in Infants

One of the most popular posts on my 'Senior Infant Adventures' blog is based around 'Homes and Houses' related lesson ideas. Therefore, for today's Throwback Thursday post, I am reposting my 'Homes and Houses' unit of work. I hope you find it useful!  

History: Homes in the Past
Get the children to draw a picture of their house on one half of a sheet. Get them to tell their partner what their house is like, how many rooms it has, what it is made of etc. Have them set aside this picture, to complete it later.
Look at houses people lived in long ago, when their Great Granny and Granddad were little. Using whiteboard markers and laminated pictures of old thatched houses, get them to circle parts of the house that are different from their own. Each group can get a different style of old house. 

These images do not belong to me. They are used for education purposes.

You can then talk about all the things they noticed and, as a class, get them to point out these things in their picture: Show me the straw roof! Show me the little door! Show me the stone walls! Show me how many rooms they had on your fingers etc.
They can then draw a picture of a house from the past on the other half of their page.

Science: Electricity at Home

Before the lesson, unplug your class CD player or laptop and discuss why it isn't working. This should lead into a discussion on electricity, plugs and switches. Play a game of 'I Spy', getting them to spy things in the classroom that use electricity. You can also pull some items out of a 'magic bag' and get them to tell you whether they use electricity or not. (Useful tip for them: They need a wire and a plug if they do!). As a concluding activity, colour in things in their workbook/worksheet that use electricity and cross out the ones that don't.

In the following lesson, you can discuss electrical safety and read the story: ‘Lil’ Plug and Lil’ Red Safety Adventures'. Get them to make stop signs and hold them up anytime the characters in the story are doing something dangerous with electricity. Following the story, to sum up the learning, you can play some games to revise and test the children's learning on the Spot The Danger Interactive Game.

Geography: Homes

Discuss and play matching games with the rooms in the house and what they contain (see picture above). Then get each table to create a house, as each child at the table is assigned a particular room to create. Once all the rooms have been created, get the group to stick them onto the house frame, to make their house.

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/33/25/
1332594_fed6200e.jpg

In the following lesson, the children can learn about various types of homes locally and internationally. Perform actions to learn these home names (e.g. apartment - stand on toes, igloo - make a circle with arms on knees, tepee - make a triangle with arms over head, terraced - link hands with lots of people, semi-detached - link hands with one partner). Assign a house type to each group and get them to make one of the house types from lollipop sticks.

Art: The House That Grew:
Talk about the story of the house that grew:

    “A husband and wife moved into a house in the middle of the forest. At first this house was very small, but, as time went on and the couple had more and more children (go into detail), the house got bigger and bigger. The husband and wife kept thinking of new and exciting things and rooms to add to their house, things that no one had ever thought of before. If anyone saw the house they would think it was the strangest house they had ever seen. They tried to make every room they built have something to do with things that the child liked to do. It was the most funny looking house that there ever was, with all kinds of strange things sticking out of it, lots of different shapes, things made from the funniest of materials, furry things, shiny parts, wooden things and even some 'holey' parts!”
Make collage houses using various material types with lots of 'funny' extensions!

Music: Building Composition:
Talk about things you would do on a building site when building a house. Mime some things one could do (using sounds) and the rest of the class can try to guess what activity is creating the noise. Create a building composition with each group taking a particular working tool to do the sound and action of. Get each child to draw a picture of the tool they are making the sound of and stick them onto a long sheet of paper to form a composition sequence. Performed this following the composition chart (using dynamics also). 

English: Poem:     

Chores

http://hookedonthebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kids-chores.jpg 

‘"Do the dishes,
Clean your room,
Use the vacuum,
Then the broom,
Wash the laundry,
Fold the clothes,
Clean the fridge,
Then the stove,
Wipe the counters,
Mop the floor,
Scrub all around,
Your bedroom door,
Clean the bathroom,
Toilet and all.
Get all your things,
Out of the hall,
You listening, Tom?"

I have to go,”
“What’s that Mom?

I wasn’t, no.”’ 

 from http://zelmo13.easycgi.com/childrenspoems/poempoetry43957.htm

Our Homes and Houses Noticeboard:

Preparing Senior Classes for Standardised Testing

My class are about to sit their Drumcondra tests next week. Because of this, I decided to dedicate this week's post to ideas, resources and last minute activities to prepare your class for their standardised tests and help you feel that little bit more prepared!

English: Comprehension:

• Give the children practice answering multiple choice fiction and non-fiction reading comprehensions using worksheets such as those you can find on www.havefunteaching.com (fiction and non-fiction) and www.ereadingworksheets.com (non-fiction). These websites allow free downloading of a huge bank of reading comprehensions. Before they work on these worksheets independently, model how they should complete them. Start by reading the questions and underlining important words. Then, read through the whole piece, marking anything that might be useful in answering the questions. Finally, start answering the questions. Do the worksheet at the same time as them and while correcting as a class, show them things you underlined, crossed out, your thought process in answering the questions, etc. (Note: You may prefer to skip some of these steps if you want to practice preparing for the 'real test' as they will not be able to write on their standardised test!)

• Teach/revise word decoding skills. I use the acronym 'BuRP' to teach them word decoding strategies: Breakdown the word to see if you recognise any little words in it, Read on/back to see if you can guess what it might be and use the Pictures to see if they give away any clues. This is obviously not an exhaustive list of word decoding strategies, but it helps to have a few on hand that they can easily remember!

English: Vocabulary:

• Www.saab.org will generate vocabulary drills that you can use with 5th and 6th class students. If you want to print them, you can do so from your browser. You can also find lots of cloze procedures online to practice with the children.  

• I get the children to keep dictionary copies all year. These contain words from their class reader. They look up, make sentences with and learn words throughout the year (about 5 a week in 5th). When it comes to this time of the year, I get them to quiz their partner on words from their copy. If their partner guesses the correct meaning of the word, their partner can ask the next question. If they answer incorrectly, then they can ask another question, and so on.

• Revise words covered during the year from their reader/spellings book each night for the 2 weeks leading up to the test. 

Maths:

• I get my class to complete lots of tests leading up to their Drumcondra, so that the material they covered during the year is fresh in their minds. It also gets them into the habit of taking a test, using workings and reading questions carefully. The tests help me plan what topics I need to revise with them before the end of the year and it highlights children who are in need of extra support as well. 

• The tests I use come from the Maths Assessment Tests books published by CjFallon. The Planet Maths Satellite Books from Folens also contain some good multiple choice questions at the end of each chapter. 

• I like to give my class a revision sheet to revise language they covered during the year in Maths. I give them this sheet as part of their learning homework in the week before the exam. It features the names of shapes, lines, angles, fractions as percentages and songs I taught them to learn various procedures. I also include examples of how to do certain types of sums that will help them (and parents!) to complete revision written homework I send home in the week running up to the test. 

• Teach them how to use RUCSAC as a problem solving strategy in word problems (if you haven't already!): Read, Underline, Create, Select a strategy, Answer the problem and Check your answer.  Practice using this strategy on lots of problems, while also modelling it for them.

• If you have a number of students still struggling with the same topic, even after revising the topic as a class, you can divide the class into groups. Stronger students can act as 'peer experts' on a topic and work with the different groups. You can then either oversee all of the groups, or stay with one group to work on a particularly difficult topic. 

I hope you find these tips useful in the run up to the end of the year and don't forget to let me know if you try any of them out!

TT: Water as a Thematic Unit in Infants

Water as a theme offers lots of opportunities for learning - here are some lesson ideas based around the theme, for use in a Senior Infant classroom:

1) Geography/Science/Environmental Awareness and Care: Water Collages

Talk about why water is important and whether we could live without it. Get the children to come up with ways people use water. The children who answer correctly choose the picture on the table that best suits their answer and stick it on the chart until all pictures have been used. The children can then draw a picture of a time today when they used water.
In the next lesson, ask the children whether it is only people who need water to live. Discuss where they might find fish in their local area - whether there is a sea, river or lake nearby. Following a discussion of the differences between these, identify local rivers, seas or lakes. Get them to think of animals that live on a river, sea or lake and then chose the correct picture from the hidden table and stick it on a new chart. Finish the lesson here with an individual/pair activity. 
In the next lesson, revise the animals discussed in the previous lesson, then go on to discuss how litter affects people and creatures living in lakes, seas and rivers. Discuss how people could stop others from littering. Create posters/signs to leave by the river to encourage people to stop littering. Before undertaking this activity, talk about what pictures they could include and what words they would need to use.
(Lesson idea derived from Greenschools' website lesson plans).

2) Science: Floating and Sinking

Identify the terminology of floating and sinking and talk about objects they think would sink and others they think will float. Test various objects in pairs, estimating and giving reasons for their choice first (as a class), then, mark results in on the worksheet. Once these experiments have been completed, talk about why certain objects floated or sank, mentioning the materials, weight, etc (floating objects could be identified as being light, made of wood or filled with air for example). Check out the BBC website for a revision concluding activity. 

3) Music: The Little Mermaid
Listen to 'The Little Mermaid' songs 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World' and discuss whether the songs make them feel happy or sad and why. We picked suitable actions to match the sad/happy quality of the music and used these to respond to the music through movements.

4) Maths: Capacity
Compare various sized containers and whether they would hold more or less water than each other (as a class or in pairs). Test this out by filling one container from another. Estimate (as a class) and then test out how many egg cups or spoons of water (and sand) would fill the containers. Choose which method of measuring to use (cups or spoons) to measure various containers.  

5) Gaeilge: An Aimsir

Describe the weather every morning. Teach actions to accompany the weather elements (ag cur báiste, an ghrian ag taitneamh, an ghaoth ag séideadh, etc) and mime these, getting others to guess what they were showing. Pick out pictures from the mála draíochta and describe the weather shown in the picture. Learn the song: "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach?", with one half of the room singing: 'An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, An bhfuil cead agam dul amach, dul amach ag sugradh?' The other half of the room reply with: ' Níl cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, níl cead agat dul amach, tá sé ag cur báiste/tá cead agat dul amach, dul amach, dul amach, tá cead agat dul amach, tá an ghrian ag taitneamh.'

6) Religion: Water
There is ample opportunity to integrate water into Religion as Alive O2's term 3, lessons 1, 2 and 3 are all based on the theme of water.

Music for First Communion

Whether you are teaching a 2nd Class or preparing the school choir for the ceremony, First Communion can be a stressful event to organise, especially if it is your first time. You can be unsure of which songs to choose, when they should be sang, where to get backing tracks and how much children should be involved in the mass. For that reason, here are some tips for those of you preparing for First Communion in your school.

1. Hymns:

Below is a list of the hymns we used in my school's First Communion mass this year. Most of the hymns are easy to find on various Alive-O C.D.s, others I have included links for: 

• Entrance Hymn: This is the Day (Alive-O song played on piano)
• Responsorial Psalm: He Knows My Name (instrumental and full song)/My Shepherd is the Lord (Alive-O song played on the piano). These are both suitable for soloists to sing from the alter, with the choir joining in on the chorus.
• Offertory Procession Instrumental: Inis Oírr or Blind Mary.
• Song after Offertory Procession: We Come to You Lord Jesus (Alive-O song played on piano).
• Communion Hymns: As I Kneel Before You (full song and instrumental), The Cloud's Veil (Alive-O song played on the piano with a soloist singing the verses). 
• Recessional Hymn: Christ Be Our Light (Alive-O song played on the piano). 

You can download the hymn sheet I used with my choir here.

2. Get the children involved as much as possible: 

• This year, some of our 6th Class students accompanied the choir on the organ, while another played guitar. In order to make this more manageable for them, you can reduce the amount of chords required by the sheet music (guitar) or get them to play bass chords on the piano as simple two finger (thumb and little finger) octave chords.
• Other children played tin whistle/fiddle/etc. during instrumentals for the Offertory Procession and Communion itself. If you are looking for more detail on using tin whistles in a mass, check out my post on Tin Whistle Tunes Suitable For School Masses.  

3. As far as making sure everything goes smoothly on the day: 

• Make a list of things you need to bring to the church: Spare piano music (stapled in the correct order), spare tin whistles and notes, a computer and charger, speakers, cables, mics and stands, song sheets, a mass booklet, music stand, an extension lead, etc.
• Have a back up plan if you are using a computer to play music, just in case. I like to get some children to learn some of the tunes on the tin whistle (if possible) and have some sort of instrument available to give you a starting note if you are left to sing unaccompanied!
• Check the sound levels of instruments/speakers/mics from different areas of the church before you start.
• Don't forget to tune instruments.
• Make a list of the order of songs during the mass for you to glance briefly at during the ceremony.

Best of luck with your preparations!