Point of View and Perspective

One of my favorite lessons this year has to have been Point of View/Perspective. After studying the CCSS and debating with myself how to approach point of view vs. perspective, or point of view AND perspective, or just perspective I finally won and decided to teach BOTH.

I began by building off of prior knowledge of point of view. This took two lessons. We reviewed/discussed first person and third person. (I'm so awesome that I forgot to bring home my Reading Journal to show you pictures of the notes we took, but hopefully will post some soon). We did mention second person, but didn't go in to too much detail.

When teaching the definitions I used picture books to help, we discuss how does that point of view influence the description of events in the stories. Here are a few books that can be used to introduce point of view (remember this is NOT perspective).

First Person:

How Many Days to America by Eve Bunting

Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack

Third Person:

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg

I also broke the students up in to small groups, gave them poster board, and short stories. They had to determine what the point of view of the story was, and how they knew it...giving key words, and using the text to support their answers.

I used this packet from Nicole Shelby from TpT

The next step was to discuss/define perspective, and then put it ALL together in a few lessons using non fiction text. 

Here is my topic poster (anchor chart) I used in my classroom. 

I choose one topic for our nonfiction texts (written in different points of view, and from different perspectives), so that we could compare and contrast them all at the end. The topic I used was D-Day. The kids were SO in to it.

Huber Mark Alvater (1st person, fighter pilot) 

George Kerchner (3rd person, led D-Day maneuver...actually stormed the beaches)

Finally we read a simple nonfiction book from our library about D-Day (3rd person)

After reading each article/book, we took notes about them in our journals. Writing down important information, interesting details, and our thinking. After reading and discussing each article/book, I gave each student this compare/contrast worksheet, and had them fill it out for a grade.

I would say that is all, but the students were so in to the topic and different perspectives they asked to make Animoto videos and interactive posters using a site called tackk.com. I am still learning about tackk and not 100% sure I really like it (more because of the privacy side of it all), but the kids do!

Finally I MUST brag on one of my students! Check her out on the local news!!!

I'm So Lucky

The little leprechaun is finished filling little baggies with Lucky Charms for her class in the morning (and may have eaten just as much as she packed).

When I get to school in the morning I'll print these little stickers and put them on the baggies. Nothing big, just a small little treat. I am constantly reminded that this is the last year these kiddos get to do the "fun" stuff. So I try to do small things and keep it all to a minimum.

Click here to retrieve the stickers below! 

We will watch the awesome BrainPOP video about St. Patrick's Day:  http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/culture/stpatricksday/preview.weml

Finally we will complete the Criminal Leprechaun. I love the Criminal... series that can be found on TpT here! (and so do the kids).  

I hope you have a WONDERFULLY DELICIOUS St. Patrick's Day!

It's Not A...

This week my school set aside 45 minutes on Friday afternoon to do Fun Friday. Now this was not my normal Fun Friday for my class, this was a school wide Fun Friday (I'm trying to see how many times I can type Fun Friday).

Because we are such a small school this was a school wide activity that was pretty manageable. Each teacher, including special areas and special ed. came up with an activity to do in their classroom. A few of them were: charades, friendship bracelet making, windsock making, reader's theater, board games, computer time, etc. Once all the teachers had an activity one of our secretaries came around to each classroom and had the students sign up for an activity (only three people from each classroom could sign up for an activity).

Each of the teachers got their "new" class list the day of Fun Friday. At 2:00 the students were sent to the class they signed up for. I know I know I was flipping out about them going all over the place, but once again we are a very small school. The kinders were "delivered" by a parapro so they wouldn't get lost.

The hard part was coming up with an activity for all age ranges K-5th.

My activity was reading a book (or two), then doing an art activity.

I chose to read the books It's Not a Box and It's Not a Stick. Well I didn't actually read them, we watched them!





When we were done I gave them the choice of creating art with a stick (small twig actually) or a box (cut out brown squares and rectangles to look like cardboard boxes).

Here are my supplies (I made the printable and printed them on card stock, you can get it here!).

Here is what they came up with! (I attached the twigs with hot glue, some of them drew the pictures first then let me hot glue the twigs, we simply glued the "boxes" on)