See. Think. Wonder.

This is another fantastic Thinking Routine.  In lower grades, they call it see-think-wonder.  In upper grades, we often call it observe-think-question.

What do you see?

And that's exactly what we did.

As we were readying to do some close reading, I remembered an old game we used to play at camp.  You know the one I'm talking about?  The one where one person stands in front of the group for a minute, and the group has to "memorize" that person.  Then, the person steps out of site of the group and changes ONE thing.  Just one.  They return to the group, and it's the groups job to try and notice (see/observe) the difference.

Well, it did wonders for helping the kids start to NOTICE details in their reading.

It was a short, but extremely engaging way to kick off a new reading unit!

Graphing

I love integrating technology into as much as possible (if you couldn't already tell!)  Therefore, when I found the Create A Graph website, it was a natural connection to our culture unit, where students were researching how "The movement of people has an impact on culture."

Students worked in pairs and researched another country's impact on the culture of the United States.  (You can see their presentations HERE.)  One of the components was looking at waves of immigration, finding the largest wave, and uncovering the push/pull factors that were present during that time.

 Enter Create A Graph.  And calculators.  And rulers.  And lots and lots of thinking!  What you have at the end are very well done, clear graphs, that can, in addition to the project, be used for a plethora of problem solving pursuits!