I am enjoying my final week of summer! I know many of you are already in your classrooms. I hope everyone has a great Back to School 2015! I am Deniece from This Little Piggy Reads. I have a great recipe over at my blog today!
I am very excited to share my post with you today. I don't know about your classroom, but in mine it seems that well over half of my students are kinesthetic learners. This idea popped into my head one day during a design challenge. A light bulb went off in my head. Why not incorporate building and writing?
I had a vision, students were given a prompt, they made a Lego creature and then wrote a story as if they were they the creature! Wow, great idea...why hadn't I thought of it before?
So, I ran to Target to get Lego's. Um....Lego's are EXPENSIVE! I decided to ask for donations from parents and from my family.
Once you collect enough Lego's, store them in cheap dollar store containers. I have 10 containers and an "extras" bucket. If I find any stray pieces I put them into the bucket - that makes for easy clean up.
Normally, I post a prompt, we read the prompt as a whole class. I give students about 3 minutes to brainstorm ideas by sketching, listing or making a web. Then, my students get into groups and they have 15 minutes to build.
It's very important to set a time limit for building. My students would seriously spend HOURS building, taking apart and re-building Lego's. So, I set a 15 min. timer for my build time. After they build, tables share their "ideas". Then, my students spend 30 minutes writing. Since my students are bused to my classroom daily, we don't normally get to go through the whole writing process. However, this year I plan to allow them to choose their favorite writing and present it for Open House. I want students take a picture of their Lego structure and make a bulletin board with the writings. I think kids and parents will both like it!
If you want to engage your kinesthetic learners, I just added my Lego Writing Prompts to my TPT Store. They will be a Dollar Deal for the month of August!
How do you engage kinesthetic learners in your classroom?
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