Kings Pride Studios Fall Production Fall is All Around Us

Introduction: The students have spent all fall studying about seasons, weather, mushrooms, trees, leaves, squirrels, apples, and pumpkins. It is time to show what they have learned.

Task: Develop a production company and produce a "fall event" to showcase what you have learned in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. The class will be divided into 6 groups: actors in a play, musicians that write and perform songs, artistic interpreters that perform a movement piece, curators of an art museum, authors and poets and technology crew that create and show slide shows.

Process:

1.  The teachers present all of the concepts to form background knowledge using a variety of activities.
2. Samples of activities:
   

   Language Arts Create stories using autumn, apple, pumpkin, tree, squirrel words Work with word families (ie. fall _all, tree _ee, pick _ick) Flip books (fall things, animals and their homes, seasons of a tree) Mini books (leaves, apples, trees) Poetry Guided reading		Science Bring in signs of fall from home Venn diagram clothing for fall and summer Leaf hunt Field trip-Huntley Meadows Adopt a tree Bread mold experiment Growth of pumpkin
   Math Patterning (leaf hats, ten apples up on top) Number sense/sort and classify (leaves, apples, pumpkin seeds) Measurement (using nonstandard measurement with apples) Graphing (sort and classify apples, seeds of pumpkin, ways to eat an apple, weather)		Social Studies Johnny Appleseed Mapping (use "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marion Priceman (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, NY, 1994)
   Technology Video about how trees grow KidPix lab lesson: trees in different seasons KidPix lab lesson: label the parts of a mushroom Learn about Science:Weather CD by Sunburst		Art Create a squirrel drey out of leaves and grasses 3D tree Collage of tree during different seasons (to go along with "Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree") Pumpkin character contest

3. Teachers also used an activity entitled Fall Think Tac Toe designed by the G/T teacher and technology specialist to encourage higher level thinking. These nine activities were choices during center time.
4. Then students are asked to choose a group to join. The class is divided into six groups.
   

   Authors and Poets Work with teacher and instructional assistant to create individual books of their stories and poems that can be shared. They also write book reviews for books that are read to the class. Authors give autographs and copies of their work to parents and friends on the day of the production.		Artistic Interpreters This group works with the P.E. teacher who creates a poem and then designs a movement performance to go with the poem. The P.E. teacher practices many times with the group to make sure they are ready for the performance.
   Actors and Play Producers The teacher creates a simple play and the actors are given parts which they learn. A first grade reader is the narrator. The teacher practices with the group.		Musicians The music teacher works with this group to create fall songs set to simple tunes. She practices with them several times.
   Technology Crew The school-based technology specialist works with this group to design and display slideshows. One was a quiz on leaves and trees and the others were student stories set up in slide show format. For the leaves and trees slideshow, the students took digital pictures and used the Internet to identify their leaves.		Curators of the Art Museum The art teacher works with this group to choose appropriate works for the gallery. The students assist the teacher in setting up the gallery and then learn how to interact with viewers. They encourage the visitors to leave comments for the artists.

Opportunities to share:

1.  Students work together in groups and share their knowledge with their peers and adults working with them.
2. The day of the production, each students has specific duties that include sharing what they have learned during the fall unit.

Assessment:

1. In addition to anecdotal records taken during the unit and observations during the performance, teachers worked closely with specialists to assess students knowledge of the subject matter.
2. A multiple choice and fill in the blank test was also used and administered by the teachers.

To see pictures from the unit, click on the takeboard.

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Unit designed by Kathy Leith and Yolanda Atkins
Page created by Brooks Widmaier
December 16, 2002