Gallery Walk Reflections
This novel has some pretty important themes, so we've spent some time doing gallery walks to help us reflect on the spot. This type of gallery walk is usually silent and we are prompted with big questions. We circulate and take time to respond and read others' responses. Below are a few samples of this reflective activity.
We have connected with four other classes AND the author, L.S. Matthews (aka Laura Dron) through Skype and Google Hangouts! Three of these were Mystery Skype, which means each class asks each other questions and researches throughout the call in order to guess where in the world the other class is located. Our first one was pretty difficult because we weren't sure how to strategize, but we have gotten so much more efficient and better at working as a team. This week, we guessed the location of a group of student teachers in Martin, Tennessee! We were pretty proud that we could guess sooner than adults :)
We've also been blogging about themes from the novel "Fish" throughout the project. Since the novel is set in an unknown place where people are fleeing their country to escape war, we've explored a few articles about the Syrian refugee crisis. Examples can be found here and here and we've also a video clip from Doctors Without Borders below. You can find our blogs about what we would bring if we were refugees and what we think about the current refugee crisis here. This is a topic that we will continue to explore in Humanities this year as it relates to geography, government, and various global issues.
Lastly for today, we have been learning to use sketchnoting as a way of engaging with text during a read aloud. It's much trickier than it seems, as you have to be very attentive so you can capture key words and images as the reading is happening. Some of us love this activity and others have struggled a bit, but it has definitely helped most of us focus on important aspects of the story and we are all sharing our understanding in a visual way.
GRA 2015 has been a huge success and a really great learning experience. Stay tuned to find out what we do once the novel is finished in the next couple of weeks!