All Kinds of Bears: An Integrated Unit for Elementary School

By Ron Thomas and Shirley Sydenham

There are eight kinds of bears: nine if you count teddy bears! All Kinds of Bears: An Integrated Curriculum Unit for Elementary School is a practical guide to inquiry or project-based learning about bears, all kinds of bears. The book will be useful to teachers who want to try inquiry based learning in their classrooms, extending the work on bears into all curriculum areas.

All Kinds of Bears: An Integrated Curriculum Unit for Elementary School offers a basic guide to the inquiry learning process for those teachers who haven’t tried it before, or as a framework to aid students who have not used it. Or even, giving a new slant or perspective to teachers who have used it in the past.

In addition, there are many ideas given for complementary activities about bears in all curriculum areas, including math, creative writing, science and technology, drama, music and art as well as health and physical education.

There’s an introduction to simple debating, there are games and songs, a drama lesson plan for older students and a simple one for young ones. There’s even a fun unit for the early years when students bring their teddy bears to school, during which time much of their work is centred round the teddy bears in the room. Worksheets for classroom use are included.

A chapter on evaluation completes the unit, giving sample rubrics for assessment and an outline of higher thinking skills to observe, facilitated by the inquiry learning process. A sample for student self-evaluation is also there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: kidcyber
• Release date: Nov 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463630648

Ron Thomas

Ronald G. Thomas, aka Ron Thomas, was born in the early part of 1975 in Maryland. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with two bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics as well as a minor in GIS (Geographic In-formation Systems). When it comes to experience, there is no better teacher than life. Where there is life, there is hope.

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All kinds of Bears

An Integrated Curriculum Unit for Elementary School

Shirley Sydenham and Ron Thomas

Copyright © 2019 by Shirley Sydenham and Ron Thomas

All rights reserved. Graphics used in this book are licensed iStock Getty Images. No part of this book or this book as a whole may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or means without written permission from the publisher.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Curriculum focus, key learning and outcomes

Chapter 2 Inquiry learning

Chapter 3 English/Language Arts (speaking, listening, writing, reading) Activities

Chapter 4 Mathematics Activities

Chapter 5 Teddy Bears at School

Chapter 6 Science and Technology Activities

Chapter 7 Arts (music, visual arts, drama and music) Activities

Chapter 8 Social Sciences (history, geography, study of society) Activities

Chapter 9 Health and Physical Education Activities

Chapter 10 Evaluation

Index

Introduction

This book contains cross-curricula activities based on bears for elementary students K-6, in the areas of language, literature, reading and writing, math, science and technology, social sciences, health and physical education, the arts. There is even a unit for Foundation/kindergarten based on teddy bears!

The topic ‘BEARS’ includes a research/inquiry study of the eight species of bear, traditional cultural beliefs about bears, and even extends to teddy bears.

The activities are not graded because you as teachers know best which activities will suit your students based on their experience, skills, and learning styles, whether in a classroom or in an English as a Second Language teaching unit. Some of the activities are suited to a ‘buddy’ or cross-age system with older students working with young ones. All provide a valuable guide for home schoolers.

Reproducible worksheets are provided at the end of the relevant chapters.

The final chapter contains evaluation rubrics that can be adapted to suit your purposes. Some are for teacher records and some are for students to use as a reflection of how they worked, and encouragement to note areas they think they could target for development in the next project they undertake. Even if they use emoticons rather than comments, it is a valuable exercise for students to learn how to look objectively at their work, to be proud of it while still being able to acknowledge areas they can work on next time. It is a skill worth developing and one which will stand them in good stead as they progress.

Chapter 1 Curriculum focus, key learning and outcomes

English

Outcomes: from listening and reading a variety of texts, students will have the opportunity to:

- Identify and discuss some features of text including the sequence of events in story and characters, and retell events from the texts

- Replicate the rhythm and sound patterns of stories, rhymes, poems and songs

- Retell familiar literary texts through performance and through illustration and images

- Read and listen to a variety of myths and legends to explore how they are interpreted at different times and places.

- Create short texts to record and report ideas and events found during personal inquiry

- Construct texts using software including word processing and publishing programs

Drama

Outcomes: students will have the opportunity to:

- Take on role in drama to explore familiar and imagined situations

- To create, develop and sustain a realistic or stylised character through the use of