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K - Act. 14: I Grow

Main Core Tie

Social Studies - Kindergarten
Standard 1 Objective 1

Authors

Utah LessonPlans

Summary

The "I Grow" activities in this lesson will help students understand the abstract concept of time passing.


Materials

Attachments

  • When I Was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis
  • copies of blackline book When I Was Little for class
  • chart paper
  • markers, crayons, pencils

Additional Resources
See How I Grow published by Dorling Kindersley


Background for Teachers

The passage of time is an abstract concept for kindergarten children. They can, however, be assisted to identify some personal changes, such as differences between themselves now and when they were babies.

The children can use their personal knowledge of how they have changed to write a book about themselves. They may "write" using letters or pictures. Their writing can fall into any of the stages of emergent writing. The most common will be writing some consonant sounds they hear in the word. They can be taught to stretch out the word to hear the sounds in the word and then write the symbols for those sounds. A predictable pattern of text can be used to reinforce high frequency and content related vocabulary words, such as "When I was little, I _______. Now I ______."


Intended Learning Outcomes

Process Skills
Symbolization, prediction, classification

Intended Learning Outcomes
1. Demonstrate a positive learning attitude.


Instructional Procedures

Invitation to Learn
Read the book. Allow the children to share experiences about when they were babies versus now.

Instructional Procedures

  1. Ask the children to give responses to complete the sentence, “When I was little…” Write their responses on chart paper with their initials beside them.
  2. On another sheet of chart paper, record their responses to “Now I...” with the same procedures. Use a different color marker to give the children a visual cue that this is a different time period we are describing.
  3. Give the children a book with the patterned sentence printed on it. Children will draw a picture of their ideas, and then “write” their responses, either from the chart or on their own.
  4. You can even have the parents send in a wallet size baby picture and school picture to mount on each side of the page of the illustrator.
  5. Allow the children the opportunity to read their books to the class.


Strategies for Diverse Learners

Differentiation of Instruction

  1. For those children not ready to “stretch” a word out and write the symbols for the sounds they hear they can use the charts the teacher created from the students’ responses. The chart can be cut apart and the child’s response used at their table to copy from. Remember that initials were put by the children’s responses to aid in this process. Having the sentence physically on the child’s table is easier than trying to copy from the chart in the front of the room.
  2. To develop oral language, picture cues can be used to identify certain vocabulary words that might be helpful such as pictures of a baby crawling, eating, sitting in a car seat, etc. (especially useful for E.L.L., low language learners).


Extensions

Possible Extensions/Adaptations
Create a compare/contrast chart to show the differences between being a baby and a kindergartner.

Compare various measurements for each time period such as weight, height, number of teeth, and length of feet or hands. Nonstandard or standard tools of measurement may be used.

Family Connections
Parents can write a short paragraph about what their child did as a baby and can do now. Parents can also help in the measurement of items comparing baby and kindergartner such as how long they were as a baby, and how tall they are now, how much they weighed versus what they weigh now, or even the size of their hand or footprint if they have one.


Assessment Plan

Analysis of the children’s text can indicate where the children are in their sound/symbol development. You can tell if they understand sound/symbol relationships, beginning sounds, ending sounds, or middle vowels.


Created: 08/06/2003
Updated: 02/05/2018
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