Exploring Play Everyday!

Elephant & Piggie books by Mo Willems are a huge hit in grade one, and a great introduction to comics. I haven't seen this amount of engagement in writing since the Peeps STEM unit we did at Easter time!    Students had 3 choices of comic paper. One choice had elephant and piggie, as well as speech bubbles already places, so students had to fill in some words. The second had no illustrations, but speech bubbles already on the page and the third was a blank comic template for the students to design their own illustrations and speech bubbles. Many students began with the Elephant and Piggie paper and went on to one of the other choices.  Some students chose to cut out the comics and make a mini book.  Overall a great little lesson and literacy time-- and I have a feeling there will be a lot more comic writing in the weeks to come!  Rainbows & Sunshine, Mrs. Lloyd

Where do I begin? It was only a few years ago that our school board brought in Play Based Learning for the Kindergarten level. I was one of the lucky few who were trained in the pedagogy at the very beginning. However I didn't teach K right away, so I didn't have to dive right in. This year, the PBL idea moved up to grade 1. I was excited... Scared... sceptical.... unsure.... But I did it, I jumped right in! I learned what I could, did webinars, read blog posts, searched online, spoke to colleagues. I felt like I was back in university again! Will it work? Will my students be able to read and write by June? Will it really minimize behaviour issues? Is going outside almost everyday in Canada really feasible? Will it be a lot of work? Well.... the answer to all of those questions is YES! Here is a graphic I designed- I wish someone would have told me these things before I started. This is geared more to preparing for writing in Play Based Learning (which I found...