Ark: Week 6

Oh my, the little 3rd  graders have been busy constructing away with their building blocks. Ms. Molly really emphasized how she is looking for students who are creative and who don't create animals that reflect the ones that are on the display shelf.  (I thought this was a great move on her part!)  Students seemed to really respond well to this and there was only two giraffes that were assembled (compared to the 10 that were previously assembled last week).

One student I worked with was an absolute sweetheart.  This student was determined to make an elephant and he was such as sweetheart about it.  The student perfectly imagined how he wanted to assemble the animal and would always say comments to me like, "Ms. Samantha, you have a good point", or "Ms. Samantha, I believe we should assemble it this way not that way". He was so delightful to work with and after we glued most of his animal together he gave me the biggest hug.

I also worked with a lot of other students and we were all having a lot of fun.  Gluing the blocks together kept the students focused and under control. The school had a meeting in regards of the 3rd grade's attitude and highly needed discipline acts due to poor behavior. It seems as if the students finally understand that bad behavior and attitude will no longer be accepted or tolerated in the school.

Last class session I helped some of the students assembled their animals.  While helping the students I instructed them that in addition of writing their name on their pieces that they should also write on the block descriptive words such as body, head, tail, leg, body 2, leg 3, etc. I noticed that the students who wrote down the descriptive words didn't need my assistance with reassembling the animal back together this week. Reflecting back on this project and if I was teaching it I would have instructed all students to do this just so the students had a better mental recollection of their animals.

The animals are really coming alive and anyone can tell that the students are having a lot of fun! I even gave into my temptation and started building with the blocks. It's really funny to see how the students visually depict the animals and how out-of-whack some of the proportions are! I can't wait to see how the students paint their animals in camouflage patterns.