Today I began my new inquiry. It is a week long topic looking at spiders. I began by asking students to draw me a picture of what they think a spider looks like.
Next we came together and talked about what we knew about spiders already. We added this to our KWL chart.
I then had a selection of books and pictures that I let students look through for 10 minutes - they could do this with a buddy or by themselves but by the end of it they had to have a question they wanted to find out about spiders.
We then shared questions and added them to the KWL chart. Some of the questions asked show that students are really starting to think about the topic.
Next I then shared a poem about spiders and we talked about what the author was telling us. We talked about where some places were that we might find spiders and children illustrated them. Children then got to colour them in. Children seem to be really excited about this topic which is great!
I had a relief teacher in my class who asked to teach about the body parts of a spider. My students then had to label their own spider.
Wednesday/Thursday
I incorporated a spider theme into each learning area. For maths students had to complete a dot-to-dot and a symmetry activity as their independent tasks.
For writing time we were talking about the features of a spider: what they can do, have and are. We did this as a whole class activity to talk about the vocab that describes a spider. Students then had their own sheet to fill out.
We then went over our Itsy-Bitsy Spider poem. I gave kids a copy with some high frequency words missing. They then had to put the words in correctly.
In the afternoon we did a word hunt to find some of the words that we had learnt over the last few days. Students did this in groups of 3's to help each other out.
We also started looking at enemies to spiders. We talked about what they are and why they would be an enemy. Each student made a little book which we are turned into a class one.
I found a really cool little fact booklet on Pintrest that had short facts. My students had to draw an image that matched the statement.
Thursday/Friday
On Thursday afternoon and Friday morning we have been doing spider art. My kids love glitter but we don't use it that often so I thought it would be a cool idea to use it to make our webs. I made a template with a spider web on it. Students then glued over the lines and sprinkled glitter on top. I taught this to 4 children who completed it then had to choose 4 children to teach it to and so on until everyone in the class had done theirs. I love doing this as students are having to communicate instructions to each other.
We let the glue dry over night and then on Friday morning we made our spiders. We made our spiders with hands - we pressed our hands into puffy paint and then pressed them onto the paper (if I did it again I would just use normal paint as it didn't create the effect I expected). I cooked them all at morning tea so they were ready to be finished after lunch. Children added eyes and any other detail they thought was important.
After lunch we made chocolate spider webs. First I melted the chocolate and put it into little snap lock bags. Next I had children make a web out of pasta. We then cut the corner off the bag and swirled it around. Children then added 100s and 1000s as a decoration. After they were done I let them eat the chocolate out of the bags. They loved it and we spent lots of time talking about why and how spiders make their webs. Was a great way to wrap up our spider inquiry!
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