So Term three began with a staff development today and the day was filled with numerous presentations, one of which was on blogs and glogs. It inspired me to begin my own. Last term I decided to dedicate 90 minutes of a Friday's learning time to re-reading The Unhappy Golfish by Paul Dallimore. The kids love this story. It is very cute, but a lot of their enjoyment is derived from the fact that the goldfish says "poo". However, it has a great storyline allowing for some good discussion. As the text was so engaging, I then allowed the students time to write a simple response, ranging from 'I like the little fish', to texts retelling the story using ten sentences. After this, I did a directed drawing of the unhappy goldfish (cartoon style) and then the students cut out their drawing and glued it onto a piece of patterned paper. Finally, they glued on fish bowls which I had cut out for them (clear cellophane) and used a brown oil pastel to add some rocks to the bottom of the bowl. The final product was very cute and definitely something the children could be proud of. I had release that afternoon so I cut out their writing and displayed their works in the corridor. When the kids came back before home time they were so happy to see their wonderful work and after the weekend I had several students tell me how much fun they had completing this activity. It was at this point that I decided I wanted to do something like this every Friday.
