A Baobab Told Me......

Submitted by admin on Sat, 10/04/2008 - 21:13.

It's a busy week in 1st grade anymore and it sails by in a blink. There are so many aspects to this for 1st graders including acquiring the reading skills to bank our new tree vocabulary. ( tree, bark, branches, leaf, leaves, wood, forest, seasons, winter, spring, summer, fall...so on) This is actually my front loading in a sightly different form. "Frontloading" that's really a second language technique about getting a student in the zone for something you will be teaching that they by virtue of language or poverty need to have expanded so a lesson is one they can access. (we once called it another name, I call it inspiring, creating excitement, supporting, prepping for success). So I'm preparing them for lessons coming in literature themes in a months or so that goes to tree and forest, making familiarity. And to aid the science. We used sentence frames this week as mandated, to both say and write about trees although it is interesting how much they want to expand outside of the frame.

In the Avenues program now, one of our "mandates" all 1st grade teachers had leveled for them (by roving team and CELDT testing a state requirement), the children by language level ( it would seem a hard thing to actually do with even a remote accuracy with 6 year olds only with the assigned "test" and bereft of teacher thought) and then we are mandated to send them to "ELD" time in the morning for an hour. I actually like this a lot so don't get me wrong here. A lot. More than I thought I would. We work on our oral language skills with various pieces and it can be a very effective way to be sure this is taught. I like working with the grade as a known figure. It seems to induce a sense of 1st grade-ness.

This last week they listened as we read in a big book called "Fall Is Not Easy" By Marty Kelley

It's such a cute story. Also good for pattern, sight word development. The tree is shown within 4 seasons, three are called easy, the 4th, Fall is not. It has to "change" and that's "not easy." Clever on many levels. Fall trees are shown quite creatively becoming things that are actually symbols, like a smiley face or rainbow. As I'm bridging in 1st to symbols, all the time and facing some kids with real deficits in that understanding this book was useful. Here is a very simple site to start looking at trees with primary students as you take a closer look at leaves this fall.

You know, I found a really interesting Tree Identification guide here. One that worked great for us as I projected it through my computer. Try this with a document camera or if you have the opportunity to have a white board you are really in business and your life, the kids lives, will change in the way you can access now content and be more actively engaged.

If you want to teach about trees one way is to lecture, read and show books ( I love this way) but an effective alternative is to go out and OBSERVE a tree, make drawings, collect a leaf and use a guide system. My kids are bringing in colored leaves. If you take the time and do this a few goes with your class, in no time they start to employ it themselves. I happen to have book guides in my class, but I do STRONGLY ENCOURAGE using a web resource like this one VERY EARLY ON. I recently read research ( one interesting article is here but not the one I now cannot find :() ) that talked about how young children that got hooked by birding, by field guides, by the science bug in say, rocks and minerals, become far, far more ready to classify and to differentiate. amazing how that changes everything. They demand attention to this then. It was important this was embedded into something they can do. And are able to a much higher degree to succeed in school and better still find relationship to learning in life. If not provided by parents we can shift what we do a bit and build this within the classroom. What I am suggesting is embed doing this into a real, really active experience.

(student taken photographs, so be patient that was a hilarious thing in and of itself with 6 year olds)

Inspired by a series of baobab tree pictures we decided to start looking at trees as a part of the science going on in our room (we are studying plants in our Houghtom Mifflin) and I'm havig the children start pine cone seeds in pots in our window for later planting, in the spring we will buy a tree to plant on a treeless site ( coming soon), now we are collecting leaves, you might go to this wiki if wanting to plant a tree at your school, we are going to do leaf rubbings, all those old "HUG A Tree" activities so that we can learn about oxygen, our Earth. This fantastic array of beautiful beings we call "Trees" inspires us. This is an EXCELLENT book to check out, please do here.

Hug a Tree, by the way is GREAT book, and a bit dated, as I guess I am now too at almost 50 :-(. It's seeming to me a time to think about trees in this coming fall with our lessons related to seasons. They might be a part of some serious realizations generally as we think of relating to the Earth. Get this poster they'll love it:
//z.about.com/d/forestry/1/0/S/F/state_trees.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

My six year olds are only just beginning to think about states, maps, state attributes like state birds or trees and the poster as well as the state flower poster fascinates them. One way to start thinking about other places, other states is through the wildlife found in that place. It is as natural a way as I know. And as far from rigid test based education in areas like ours as you get, so it matters to put it in the room.

Here is a good Baobab article. We were looking at boababs because they are so utterly unique.

But we were also doing many tasks related to seasons, do you know the way all schools talk to seasons?

They look at trees. Yes, they do.

The winter trees.

The Spring.

This came from a set of seasons pictures done by my ELD class. Illustrating the seasons.

An unfinished artwork we are assembling this week with suns in the center and a rotation pattern, and a tiny earth.

(Isn't this wonderful, he worked with such intensity.)

My kids are bringing in leaves, we start to look at their shape, look into a guide, look at tree shape, discuss the types of trees and then narrow. By teaching these skills you are teaching the classification way of seeing rather than preaching it. And if they very early see it has on-line places to go find out and use, they can do this independently. That's a marvelous thing to teach. They are empowered into a great deal of learning. I try to think of this, the sketching and the looking, as ways to reach into journaling and into a child connecting to a "process."

Just think a bit activity based, trees to you!

Let me share some more of the on-going documenting pictures from several kinds of ways we dealt with this and then some follow up books and plans.

My children on Friday afternoon informed me they "wanted to paint" so we decided to look at the Baobab book and make trees. But they had the morning ELD book on their mind too, here is what they did. I honestly found this work exquisite. It was so independent, finally, I was able to sit at a table, watch, interact, listen, write down their thoughts. And that's pretty wonderful too. I dearly love trees.

Of this she said," My tree brings you a rainbow so you can think about beautiful times."

And he said, "My tree is a tree of the colors of life."

"This is a pumpkin tree that is very, very happy and fat."

No to be dramatic but I have never seen this child smile before, he is an excruciatingly somber fellow with serious language difficulties, he speaks Mixteco, then went into Spanish here a year, with the change in the school due to our "failure" in Under-performance schemas imposed on us, so "all" children are now SI(Sheltered Immersion), no bilingual ed. He is in English with quite a bit of serious issue ( especially so for the kids caught in the decisions). Just the same he is a very hard worker and it was good to see this joy. Really good.