Radical Robots Meet Close Reading

Grade two has been hard at work on some absolutely radical robots!  Our first marking period is set up to be all about shape - geometric shapes, organic shapes, different sizes, different types, overlapping them, arranging them...well, you get the idea. 

This lesson focused on Geometric shapes.  We started with a close reading activity all about what a geometric shape is.  Close reading is the new educational directive in line with Common Core.  We read the material closely - or multiple times - to ensure comprehension.  You may have the class read out loud with you, then re-read on their own while they underline or highlight words they didn't understand or put stars next to words they do know and could share the meanings of with the class.  Then you go over it all one more time - addressing any underlined or stared words. In this format you have Tier One Words like at, the, dog, cat, etc which are commonly known words that appear often. Tier two words which are words that appear less frequently and are often multi-syllabic.  Then the Tier Three words which are content specific.  In my case they are the art vocabulary I want them to know and be able to use by the end of the lesson. Our district actually has leveled art textbooks, even here at the elementary level.  So I used a photocopied page from our book and we learned that:

1. Geometric Shapes can be measured.
2. Geometric Shapes can be used in math.
3. Geometric Shapes are 2-D or flat.

After the close reading (which if you haven't had to do it yet - takes up pretty much a whole class on its own) the students were given a worksheet to answer the question; What are three things a geometric shape can be?  Hopefully, I get the above list back and then I can tell who has "closely" read and comprehended the material.

That's just day one - close reading about shapes.  It's rough on second graders because they only last year started to actually read. So to be asked to pour over something with this amount of attention flusters some of them.  I actually had one poor boy cry because he thought this was too hard and another get angry because we didn't get to actually MAKE something in art that day.  I feel bad, but this is what we're expected to do now so I tell my classes, "Sometimes art isn't about doing.  Sometimes it's about learning about an artist, or art history, or in this case art vocabulary."

Day 2 is a bit more fun.  A while back I had someone donate a TON of chipboard - that thin cardboard that's easy to cut and comes in men's dress shirts to keep them unwrinkled. :) I literally have six giant boxes of the stuff.  Every kid gets a cardboard piece, writes their name on it, and then sets up their spot with a paint brush and painting place mat. I haul out the metallic paints for this one.  Students have their choice of gold, silver or copper paint.  I go around to every spot and drip a glob of paint onto their cardboard and let them spread it out - top to bottom, left to right. Once they have the whole thing covered it's brush washing time.  Painted cardboard gets moved to the drying rack and place mats get put away.

Future Robots

Day 3 is the day these cardboards actually turn into fully formed robots.  The first step is a "monkey-see, monkey-do" step.  I call it "drawing tag" where I draw a line and then they draw that line and we go back and forth until it's done.  Originally, I just showed them the steps in a demonstration but found once they got back to their seats none of them had a clue what to do.  So the second time I did the demo but also drew it on the board - that got about a 50% success rate.  So the last times I taught it I feel back onto the drawing tag routine and had no mistakes (well, except for the one boy who was busy trying to cut a crayon in half with his scissors instead of paying attention).

Cutting on the lines was next.  Once they had their pieces cut they were allowed to chose a background color from an assortment I had set out and glued their pieces down to form the robot.  I let them trade pieces with other kids so you'll see a lot of robots that are gold and silver or copper and gold, etc.

Day 4 was detail day!  I pulled out the pipe cleaners, beads, buttons, the scrap box, anything I thought they might want to add as details to their robots.  This was by far my favorite day!  It was great seeing the personalities of the robots really spring to life.