Here is a picture of an example story map. I seem to have lost my camera cord, so I've been relying on my iphone to take my pictures. Anyways, as I mentioned in an earlier post, in my learning support class, my group and I designed a lesson that was tiered (3 groups of students for different levels of learning). The lesson was intended for Grade 3 students, and we used the story
If You Give a Moose a Muffin. The outcome of the lesson was to have all students create a story map. My example is for the group of students who were performing at Grade 3 Level for Language Arts. My story is called
If You Give a Flamingo a Cupcake. I made graphic organizers for all 3 of the groups, and this one has students writing their own sentences and drawing their own pictures.
Some highlights of the lesson:
- Read If You Give a Moose a Muffin
- Talk about order in a story and cause-and-effect
- Divide students into respected groups (each group has their own packet of materials and instructions to fit their needs/level)
- All students create a story map, their process of getting there just differs.
So, to repeat myself, this is a lesson based on Differentiated Instruction, and the groups are tiered based on level of ability. Our lesson actually ended up being about 10 pages in length because we included students on IEPs.
:)
Recently, in my Prosocial Behaviour class, we were asked to designed a newsletter. We could either make the newsletter for our practicum class for this April, or we could make a mock-newsletter for the beginning of the year. I chose to make mine for the beginning of the year for a Grade 1 class. This picture doesn't do it justice (another iphone pic), but the colours are really spectacular. Obviously, I know I couldn't send home a coloured newsletter (too much money and a teacher's salary), but I thought it'd be cool to hand in my assignment this way. I had fun playing around with newsletter templates in the mac program Pages. It's really easy and straightforward, but everything looks really professional. 
This is me in November 2010. In our Science Methods class, we had to make a shoebox activity. I decided to make a bridge building activity, and titled it, Bridging the Gap. It was intended for Grade 3 students. In my shoebox, I had information on bridges, activities leading up to building, full instructions for using the shoebox, and an assessment piece at the end. For the challenge, students had to build a bridge using only one piece of paper, and then place it on two stacks of textbooks. Students tested their bridges by placing pennies on the bridge to see how many the bridge could hold. We had students come in from an after school care centre, and they got to try out all the shoeboxes. It was fun to see how my activity actually worked! I think these activities are great for the classroom and to be used for centre or choice time. . All materials fit right into the box, and stay organized and tidy. 
