One of my favorite teaching strategies is to integrate science and social studies into my ELA lessons. If I am also able to incorporate thematic holidays into my teaching, that is an added bonus. In this case, I am able to tie this lesson into celebrating American Heart Month in February. I was able to teach a reading lesson about schema, with this science lesson on heart health.
Sharing our schema about the human heart! What better time to teach this unit than during February (Heart Health Month) and Valentine’s Day!?!
Ask your students to draw their schema about their heart. No, really, ask them. What do you think they will draw? 26 out of my 28 students drew a “Valentine’s” heart that was very cute and colored with red or pink.
So then my students gave their PARENTS homework! Look at the schema the parents had about the human heart! My students were shocked!
One adult’s schema about the heart:
And one student’s schema about the heart. He also wrote, “My heart is full of nice things. I like giving people things and stuff they want.”
The focus of our reading workshop for this week was to EXPAND our schema about the human heart through close reading. We EXPANDED our brain files by reading lots of informational texts about heart health. We also did a True/False sorting activity. I printed up statements in which the students identified as either being true or false.
For example, “Your heart is located between your lungs.” TRUE!
Or “Your heart stops beating when you sleep.” FALSE!
Students expanded their schema with this new information. They loved learning more about their hearts.
At the end of the week, we reevaluated our schema and identified how it may have changed. My students really understood how their schema changes and grows as they learn more about a topic with this engaging lesson.
This idea is part of my Valentine’s Unit on TpT: Valentine’s Unit
Or, you can save 10% by purchasing this unit directly from my website: Valentine’s Unit
Next Lesson: Citizenship Unit- Role Model Writing
We finally finished our role model writing!!!! We used the writing process to write our first draft, revise, edit/peer edit, conference and finally publish! 
We published our final draft with our role model art project. I integrated this writing with our social studies unit on citizenship. 
So cute!
And..next…our classroom library makeover!
Bye- bye leveled Fountas and Pinnell library and HELLO to my new and improved classroom library…
NO more levels “M,N,O,P”
Nope! We spent one week of our reading workshop time doing a complete makeover for our classroom library.
Time well spent!!!
I plan to blog about the classroom library makeover (more about WHY we made this change) in more detail in a future post!
Wheew- what a week! I need to rest up this weekend- we have a very busy week at school next week. Staff meeting Monday, professional development meeting Tuesday, grade level meeting and annual reviews on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday conferences. I am already tired just thinking about all those lovely meetings. I hope you are having a wonderful relaxing weekend!
