Going on Safari in South Africa with 5th Graders

Going on Safari

I discovered Wild Earth’s Safari Live over my Winter Break, and immediately became a fan, both personally and as an educator. WildEarth streams Safari Live, a live, interactive broadcast of a safari drive in South Africa twice daily for three hours each day. The guides are super knowledgeable and entertaining, and we loved that we never knew what we were going to see! Thank you Erik Moore for posting about it in the Google+ Community Connected Classroom Workshop.

About WildEarth WildEarth Mission Statement: “Our mission is to provide people around the world with immersive experiences in nature. WildEarth is a dedicated LIVE wildlife platform that focuses on connecting people to animals.” Info about WildEarth: WildEarth streams Safari Live, a live, interactive broadcast of a safari drive twice daily for three hours each day. The broadcast is streamed on four platforms: Wildearth.tv, Ustream, YouTube, and NatGeoWild. Viewers may submit questions to the presenters via email, Twitter, and YouTube Chat. wildearth.tv - moderated chat Ustream - moderated chat Youtube - unmoderated chat NatGeoWild -moderated chat

My first thought was a science connection, but I quickly realized the potential to expand across disciplines. In 5th grade, we focused on the following as a base academic layer.

Essential Question: How does energy move within an ecosystem?

Standard: 5-PS3-1 Use models to describe that energy in animals’ food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.

Product: Make a model of the food webs you discovered on Safari Live. Show how the energy was once energy from the sun.

I made the students a note page and pushed it out through Google Classroom so that they would be interacting with the content as we watched. The beauty of having a live safari is that you don’t know what content will end up on your page. Talk about releasing control! We initially didn’t sign up for a specific school slot because of our time zone, but we could easily tune in through their YouTube channel and watch the last hour of the sunset drive.

Vocabulary

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.5.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 5 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.

I wrote vocabulary words up on the board as they came up, and the students researched the definition right then so that they would have a greater understanding of the information the guides were sharing. Here is an example of the vocab we covered. (I only gave the definitions after they had a chance to grapple with the meaning in the context of the safari.)

Here is what the vocab portion of their notepage looked like from a different day. I liked it because they had to show their own understanding of the words, and we came back to them each time we watched safari.

Let’s build our knowledge! Collect words that are important to know while you are watching Safari Live. Figure out the definition and add an image if appropriate. Add more rows as needed by pressing Tab when in the last cell.
Vocab Word	Definition	Image
Mud Wallow	To lie or roll in mud.
Predator	An animal that naturally preys on another.
Stalk	To pay a very close attention on someone or something.
Thicket	A dense group of bushes and trees.

Science

5-PS3-1 Use models to describe that energy in animals’ food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.

To keep focused on this standard, another portion of their student note page was devoted to who eats what. I wrote notes on the board for them to copy, but it would be up to them later to categorize and connect it all.

After students had watched for several sessions, I taught them the terms that would help them make connections within this habitat. They had to pull from their note page and fill in the following food pyramid. They were given the titles for the sections, and they had to figure out where each plant and animal went. They worked in groups to do this, so there was a lot of great negotiation in language going on.

After this step was completed, they formed different groups depending on which category they wanted to work in. Their task was to create a bulletin board that was a combination of all of their information. I drew the outline of the pyramid, and they did all the rest. Each group was tasked with agreeing on what truly belonged in their category, and deciding who would be responsible for creating each piece. They had to have both vocabulary and images on the board. The energy that went into this creation was exciting!

Writing

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3.B Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.2.D Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.

The writing that students engaged in along the way covered multiple standards. I used images that viewers posted on Twitter as a visual prompt each morning. Students were asked to write descriptive sentences about the images, create dialogue between two characters in the image, read facts about the animals in the image and write a quick paragraph about it, and complete writing pieces that I started for them. They practiced using evidence from sources, matching the author’s purpose, narrative writing techniques, and including domain-specific vocabulary in their writing.

Missing Introduction and Conclusion assignments were great mini lessons that helped students focus on one area of their writing at a time.

Speaking and Listening

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1.A Come to discussions prepared, having read or studied required material; explicitly draw on that preparation and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1.B Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and carry out assigned roles. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1.C Pose and respond to specific questions by making comments that contribute to the discussion and elaborate on the remarks of others

Students had multiple opportunities to share ideas with each other throughout our time using Safari Live content. They shared their writing with each other in order to get new ideas for themselves and get feedback on their skills, they had to negotiate and agree on how the bulletin board was formed, and they helped each other figure out vocabulary and relationships among plants and animals.

Thank you Wild Earth for making this amazing opportunity available to us! #safarilive

Feel free to reach out if you have questions about implementation in your own classroom. @sallyhoyt

The First Week of School

First Week of School

Welcome to my brain.

Source: http://www.speech-therapy.com.au/assets/uploads/brain.jpg?415a70

I found out I was going back to the classroom on April 14th, 2016. I had been away from my own class for the past 4 years working at a district and county office, supporting teachers from TK-12th grade. I knew immediately that coming to Westlake Charter School was going to be a good move for me. I immediately started smiling more thinking about getting back to the ground level with kids.

At first, I didn’t know if I would be teaching 4th or 5th grade, so I just started collecting. My collection looked like this:

It was a spew of ideas with no focus or structure. I knew a few things for sure.

• I wanted to have students help define the culture of the classroom.
• I wanted to integrate student choice.
• I wanted to be clear about my academic expectations, and I wanted to gather feedback from students.
• I wanted to create an atmosphere where reading was exciting and prolific.
• I wanted to scaffold my teaching of academic conversations.
• I wanted to fully integrate technology in ways that weren’t even possible when I was last in the classroom.

I started fleshing some of the ideas out and made a First Week folder. I fully wrote out some of my lesson plans, and the ideas began to take shape a little bit more.

I found out for sure I was going to be teaching 5th grade, and started working with my team. We spent 2 days defining what it meant to each of us to teach, lead, guide and facilitate 5th graders. It was exhausting and exhilarating. Our day ended looking like this:

I was also able to go to a Google Summit with the Tech Team at Westlake and we all discovered BreakoutEDU. We discussed throwing in a breakout the first week of school as a teambuilding activity. I started designing, and came up with this:

Now things were starting to take shape. I had a student and parent survey crafted, a website put together, and my list of things I wanted to teach the first few weeks.

Then came four days of Responsive Classroom training. My whole team was involved in the training, so we were able to have a few concrete conversations about how to implement the ideas.

Responsive Classroom is based on creating a culture where students feel involved, included, safe, and able to learn.

I had a chance to meet and work with some amazing educators from all over the state for these four days. We brainstormed, tested out ideas, tried out different components of the program, and helped each other see how implementation would be possible. As we processed each component of the workshop, my first week started becoming more crystallized.

I now have a plan for how to facilitate student hopes and dreams, which will lead into class rules. The products created from that series of activities will go on the board to the right where I was going to have students define what they would contribute to the class culture. What was a vague idea has now become clear.

In the center board, students will be collecting lines from their reading that make an impact. They will write them directly on the blue paper so that we have a collection of quotes from a variety of great books (Thanks for the idea Carly!). We will be doing some Growth Mindset work as well (Don’t worry, I have the missing T to add to the title!). All of the boards are blank so that the students can contribute the content. I am excited to see the transformation of my ideas become their reality!

I knew that I wanted to teach students to have high-quality Academic Conversations that were focused and built upon each other’s words. I now have a plan for how to introduce the concept using Instructional Modeling.

I knew that I wanted to teach my students about how to gather evidence from sources and talk about them in a meaningful way in order to get to deeper production of work. I had started collecting sources to build this skill from, and I knew I wanted to work on this a little bit each day as part of a routine.

Now I have a plan for building this skill within the structure of a Morning Meeting.

It’s all starting to come together, and it’s feeling fantastic. I can’t wait to see how I have grown as a teacher in the past four years. Thank you to everyone I have learned from and all those that will continue on the journey with me. Westlake Explorers- Let’s go!