The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Matthew Needleman requested that I share what I will be doing to open the second units of Open Court. First, I am not a regular classroom teacher, but instead I teach computer lab for grades 1-6. I support the inquiry part of Open Court in the lab with the students, so I do a lot of work with the themes, but that is in addition to what they get in their classrooms. My links can be found at my Diigo account the links for each theme are also listed here. I have not added all links for the unit yet. Here is what I have planned so far:

Grade 2 Kindness: I will recycle some materials I used on the first unit for third (friendship) and fifth (cooperation) grades. I will likely start with an organizer in Inspiration, and do projects to help build emotional knowledge. I’m picturing a PowerPoint done with small groups where the kids describe what kindness looks like, sounds like, feels like and we add clip art and sounds they provide. Maybe even a small video with them acting out kindness. Later in the unit we’ll explore being unkind, and how to deal with unkind people and behavior.

Grade 3 City Wildlife: I will ask students to talk about animals they see and to distinguish between pets and wildlife (likely using Inspiration). I may try to do some city wildlife observations as the unit progresses. I will have them visit sites on bird counting, and other projects like this online. If the text is at too high a lexile level for them, I will use Diigo to annotate the text.

Grade 4 Dollars and Sense: I will ask students to share information about how they make money or get things. They have already done some writing on goals for the school year, and that included some links about careers in their future. I will likely discuss the difference that college can make in their future earning power, and they different paths they can take to college (in case they get sidetracked along the way).

Grade 5 Astronomy: Since I taught this grade last year, I know the most about this unit and have the most materials. I will do a baseline assessment about seasons, the sun and moon to see what they know already about the motion of planets and satellites. I will then use some online sources to show a map of the universe and our solar system to put things in perspective. We may do a pace-off model of the solar system and discuss the distance proportions involved. As an ongoing project, I will be doing a stop-action movie with the third, fifth, and sixth graders on shadow clocks (it ties-in with science in third, and the sixth graders will have movie making experience by then). My favorite resource for this is the Hubblesite with the movie Revelations.

Grade 6 Ancient Civilizations: My introduction will mostly be on establishing time-lines and the scale of time. I’m thinking a calculator tape based time line to put the length of time in perspective (much like the map of the universe with fifth grade). They will be doing a research project as directed by their teachers with this unit. I will introduce them to WikiJunior, and to Wikipedia and how to read the discussion page and understand its limitations.