Last week, first grade students learned all about stars and constellations as activities were integrated across content areas into this one central focus.
Through partner reading, students read The Solar System, which provided them with a brief overview of the topics to be discussed this trimester. This nonfiction text exposed first graders to various text features including a table of contents, glossary, captions, headings, and bold faced words. We will continue to point out, discuss, and utilize these features to enhance our understanding throughout the trimester. Key terms included asteroid, classify, comet, meteor, universe, and vast. After reading, comprehension strategies of factual recall and comparing were addressed as students wrote the answer to given clues and matched planets with their corresponding facts.
Students also partner read Stars and Constellations, and a similar pattern was followed as features of nonfiction texts were identified and the following vocabulary terms were introduced: constellation, gaze, humongous, ladle, Orion, Sirius, and universe. Subsequent comprehension strategies addressed factual recall and true false distinction.
In addition, students parter read a fictional text, Friends in the Stars. Targeting the reading strategy of visualization, we discussed how good readers make pictures in their minds as they read. After reading, students were asked to categorize parts of the story into reality and fantasy and identify and create interrogative sentences.
Many other centers last week also featured stars and constellations. This included students self selecting books on the topic, creating constellations mobiles complete with facts about stars, making constellations using geoboards, sharing in read alouds, and viewing star related videos. The true highlights were conducting scientific experiments as we simulated twinkling stars through light related experiments and used flashlights and aluminum foil to replicate and create our vey own constellations. This week, we will examine a specific star, the sun.
