We Need The Blowhole!

Learning Story for Cooper Date: January 2, 2013 Setting: Choice Time The Story After comparing butterflies and dragonflies, the students learn to understand the differences in meadow and pond. In addition to what kind of animals live in the meadow and pond. After months of learning topic to topic, the students were asked what animal they would choose to do a research on. Students chose different animals other than animals in the pond and meadow. Cooper chose to learn about dolphins. He would often get books about dolphins during independent reading. Being that the students, as well as Cooper showed interested in the animals; an activity was set up for the students to prolong their learning. The use of natural materials to create their animal was part of the project. To create an art piece was not only to display the beauty of art but to promote the students creativity. Cooper started his project by picking a pinecone as the body of a dolphin. He added natural materials to indicate the eyes, snout, fins, flipper and flukes. After he constructed all the body part onto the pinecone, he was asked if he was done. He looked at his dolphin and felt that something was missing. He then looked at the toy dolphin to make a comparison to his masterpiece. He was able to detect that he was missing the blowhole! He kept saying we need the blowhole, we need the blowhole! As Cooper was looking for something to represent a blowhole, I questioned myself to how could he create a blowhole when the pinecone would be hard to indicate its blowhole. Cooper surely figured it out! He found a round closed natural material and punctured the top part with a stick. He glued it on top of the body. There he created the blowhole! He was asked what a blowhole was. He explained how the dolphin uses it to breathe.

What Make learning Visible? Cooper demonstrated confidence when he constructed his masterpiece. His creativity was not only based on how he could use natural material to create the body parts. His creativity was also based on how he solved the problem by using natural materials to change its form to create a blowhole. He was very persistent with his task. He was able to tune out distraction and interruptions in the classroom to follow the steps of what he needed to do to create his project. He followed the precaution of using the hot glue and how to assemble the materials without touching the hot glue. Most importantly, because he had read various books about dolphins, he was able to indicate the importance of each body parts of the dolphin. He used his prior knowledge to answer what a blowhole was. The Next Step With prompting and support, encourage Cooper to use his creativity in various of setting in the classroom. His strength in creativity has been used in art. For instance how he created the birds and its nest with clay to create a story. Encourage Cooper to use the same strategy in the blocks and dramatic areas.

Pre-Kindergarten Common Core Standard Domain 1: Approaches to Learning Persistence Demonstrates persistence. Maintains focus on a task.

Domain 5: Cognition and Knowledge of the World The Arts Visual Arts Uses materials to build and create pieces that represent another item (blocks become a castle; clay becomes a snake). Paints, draws and constructs models based on observations. Science Living Things Observes and describes characteristics of living things. Observes and discusses similarities, differences, and categories of plants and animals.