Traveling Around the World - China

Social Studies
We recently "traveled" to another continent - Asia! We began by singing the countries of Asia. 

We then focused on the country of China and the five strands of social studies. We started with a Scavenger Hunt to see what prior knowledge we possessed. We then examined the flag and map of China and where it is located.  Your child should also be able to tell you the population, native language and most common occupation in China. We read the book We Come From China and learned some important information about Chinese people and their culture. 

In partners, we also read Postcards from China and filled in a guided reading sheet. In addition, we read an Around The World Time for Kids about China and then made a postcard highlighting a landmark, important event or everyday activity on the front and wrote a message on the back to a friend as if we were visiting China. We even created a travel brochure to demonstrate all that we had learned about the country of China.

We watched several videos about life in China and we able to compare and contrast that to our lives. We learned many fascinating facts about The Great Wall of China. We read a story about the legend of the Chinese Zodiac Symbols and learned what animal sign we were.  

We also read Grandfather Tang’s Story and used tangrams to make the animal characters in the story.

 Lastly, we read the book Look What Came from China to discover many of the things we use today were invented in China. The students worked with a partner to create a poster to present to the class. We took notes to be sure we were active listeners. 

We made Chinese Lanterns to use for our Valentine holders. 

We played China Jeopardy to “test” the knowledge that we acquired in this unit of study. I hope you and your child will explored his/her China Folder when it comes home on Monday.



 Our next destination is Africa. We are going to focus on the country of ... Kenya!

Our Biography Celebration

The students told me a biography is a true story about a person’s life written by another person. This person usually did something significant or important. Each student chose a famous person of interest to them. We started doing research on that special person and finding out facts about their early life, important dates and events in their life, contributions to our world and personal connections to that person. We wrote  and published a piece on this person.

 Much of our reading the past few weeks has focused on reading to gain information about our biography person. This type of non-fiction reading is very different because the students need to sift through information and decide which facts or important events are most significant and how to record these events in an organized manner on the research grid. I used Martin Luther King, Jr, as my biography person and modeled each step as we moved ahead. This has been helpful for the students to go through the process with me and then try it independently.

Each student created a time-line on the computer to represent important events in the life of their biography person.

 

 We also used our chrome books to create a Google Slides presentation about our biography person. They were especially thrilled by the i-movie in which we utilized the photospeak app and recorded a famous quote spoken by their person with the student's own voices. In their own words, it was a little "creepy"! Click on the link below to view.

https://youtu.be/jpKc4Jyl0sw

 Thank you so much for attending Our Biography Celebration. The students were so proud and enjoyed sharing all of their expert knowledge.