Besides the fact that, at least at my school, soccer is a big deal, I find that tying reading into other subjects, students not only learn more, but go deeper. The book, The Floating Field: How a Group of Thai Boys Built Their own Soccer Field is the perfect book to link in other content areas. Let me explain how I use this book in my classroom.
First of all, most students in elementary have probably never even heard of Thailand before, so this is the perfect opportunity to expand the reaches of your classroom to include a more global world view. In this book, students will learn a bit of culture as well as differences between the way they live and the way children in developing countries live. They will see the discrepancies and will learn about determination and not giving up when working toward a goal.
Speaking of goals, this is an absolutely great book for teaching goal setting. In the book, some boys set a goal to create their own soccer field and despite the fact that others in the village do not believe in them, and make comments about it, they set about to reach the goal, working tirelessly to make it a reality. While most teachers and classrooms set goals at the beginning of the school year, it is important to set goals throughout it. We just finished the first quarter of the year. I talked with my students about ways they can do even better next quarter, whether it be in a certain academic subject of a study habit or in general behavior. Each student set a goal for this coming quarter, just like we set a goal at the beginning of the year. Setting goals is important and gives students something to strive for. We used the soccer theme of this book to create a craftivity explaining our goals and how we can reach them. Then we posted them up on a bulleting board.
Reading through this book together and stopping to ask questions a discuss is a great way to get students thinking and comprehending what they are reading. I created a set of comprehension questions to guide our thinking as we read. The questions led to some great observations and conversations.
Bringing in another content area, besides just reading, was a cinch with this book. The book is about boys who dream of a floating soccer field. So bringing in the idea of floating and density is the perfect way to tie in a bit of science. After reading the book we did two different science activities that has to do with density and floating. In both activities, we followed the scientific process as we went. First we did a science experiment using eggs. We put an egg into a cup of water to observe whether if floated or sank. Of course it sank. We then removed the egg and added in some salt, allowing it to dissolve before once more adding in the egg. This time, the egg floated. We documented our learning and talked about what happened and how the salt made the water more dense and how it was then able to keep the egg afloat.
The second experiment we did was to create a floating rainbow (density column). In this experiment we started with four cups of water and colored each of them using regular food color in different colors. We added increasing amounts of sugar to each of the cups and carefully poured some of each color into a graduated cylinder. When done correctly, you see each color separately, hence the floating rainbow. The students were truly amazed at this one. Again we talked about density and why the colors did not mix.
As a final project for this book, we did a S.T.E.M. challenge. Students were placed in groups of four and each group had to use the supplies we had to create a model of the floating soccer field. Their field had to be at least one foot long and in the end had to float while holding a team of soccer players, weighed down with rocks to add some weight. For building the soccer fields, students had supplies like these: Styrofoam sheets, bubble wrap, aluminum foil, wax paper, cardboard, large popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, fruit netting, etc.
This challenge was great and all of the students were successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment