At the beginning of the year, we always do Getting to Know You interviews. We concentrate on asking "fat questions" not "skinny questions". We want the student being interviewed to give a lot of detail when answering so that their story will have meat to it. So we work really hard on avoiding questions like, "Do you have a dog?" because the interviewee could say "no" and that would make their story super short. A way to rephrase that question might be, "Tell me about your pet." (This Getting to Know You activity comes from Patricia Cunningham) This also turns into the student being able to ask themselves the right kind of questions to prompt their own writing later.
It is a great way to get to know each other at the beginning of the year. We practice many handwriting conventions, principles of phonics, automaticity of high frequency words, conventions of print/sentences, etc... all SHARED during this time. This is not a time for students to be doing worksheets cringing over tracing dotted letters...they are pointing out and noticing correct handwriting and talking me through writing my letters the correct way. I intentionally make mistakes so that they can practice what they know about correct letter formation. I show them sloppy writing so that they know how difficult it is to read. I always tell the story of someone I know who was supposed to be named something beautiful but because of someone's sloppy handwriting, ended up with a much different name. We focus on all the reasons why handwriting has to be legible. Notice I said legible, NOT perfect. That is actually in our TEKS- LEGIBLE. We use fun chants, the word wall, and kinesthetic practices to learn how to spell high frequency words. There are no spelling tests or assigned homework for this. We learn this in class together in as fun a way as possible. Most of all we do all of this IN CONTEXT not isolation. This learning happens with in authentic writing and reading that makes it memorable and more valuable.
ANYWAY ON TO OSMO THE FANTASTIC APP----
After the interview each child is able to draw a picture of the person we interview that day and write a sentence about them. I let our person of the day use this fantastic app to do a self portrait. I think she really enjoyed it! It is kind of tricky at first to keep your hand out of the way- similar to the Smart Board but she did a fantastic job.
I can't wait to see the rest of the kids' self portraits. Thank you Osmo!!!! Be sure you check out their other amazing apps- all free!!! The base and the reflector are available for purchase here and when you buy one, they donate one to a classroom!
