Monster Match 3 week Project

1. Monster Match 3 week Project 1st grade Pbl By elementary teachers Cassie Davis &Brittany Dorris

2. Driving question: • How important is it to express myself clearly so others will understand?

3. Project description: • Students will create their own unique monsters and then write a descriptive paragraph about their monster so that a student from another class can recreate their monster based on their description • Each student will also get the opportunity to recreate another students monster • Before creating their own monster the students will explore different descriptive tools through various lessons

4. Entry Event: • Read “The Judge” by HarveZemach • Have student predict what the monster at the end will look like • Discuss what words the author used to allow us to create our versions of the monster • Discuss why we see things differently

5. Pre-Lesson on descriptive writing: • Have students listen to descriptive and narrative phrases describing a monster • Have students create the monster based on the teachers description • Discuss the difference between descriptive and narrative writing • Discuss which type of writing was more helpful in recreating the monster

6. Pre-lesson on adjectives: • Go over a definition of adjectives and give examples • Read “Where the Wild Things Are” and have students use adjectives to describe the monsters • Record all adjectives students say on a giant notepad • Encourage students to add more through out the unit

7. Lesson on vibrant words and comparison: • Read three pre-made descriptions of Mike, Sully, and Randall from Monsters Inc. that include the usage of vibrant words and comparison • Have students recreate each monster based on the descriptions without knowing what character they are creating • Reveal actual characters to students and have discussion about their interpretation versus the movie • Discuss the use of vibrant words and comparison to describe the monsters

8. Lesson on vibrant words and comparison continued…

9. Forensic sketch artist • Invite a forensic sketch artist to come in and explain their job in relation to descriptive writing • Students partner up and try to imitate a forensic sketch artist job by having one person give a description of a pre-sketched face and the other recreating it based on that persons description • Have a class discussion about students’ experience with this activity

10. Field trip to the aquarium: • Go on a field trip to the Aquarium • Have students use previous learned descriptive tools to describe and draw their top 5 different sea creatures • Next class day have each student share their favorite sea creature description

11. Creating monsters: • Introduce the main project to the students of creating their own monsters and descriptive paragraphs and sharing with another student in a different class • Encourage students to create monsters that are descriptively unique

12. Creating descriptive paragraphs: • Students write a rough draft of their descriptive paragraph • Students partner up and give each other feedback • Students alter their writing and edit to create a final draft

13. Exchanging descriptive paragraphs and Recreating a monster: • Students exchange their descriptive paragraphs with another student from a different class • Students try to recreate their fellow school mates monster based on their descriptive paragraph

14. End discussion: • Have class discussion about what they learned throughout this unit making conclusions about the power of language • Answer the driving question during this discussion: How important is it to express myself clearly so others will understand?

15. Formative Assessment during Pre-Lessons: • Assess whether the students understand each different descriptive tool and know how to use each one • This can be accomplished by: • the end group discussions at the end of every lesson • and by looking over students work after each lesson

16. Formative Assessment during project: • Formative assessment involves examining each students rough draft • Each student must be using the different descriptive tools they learned about the past two weeks • Each student should not be using narrative phrases

17. Culminating After school event: • Host an after school event where each students descriptive paragraph, their monster drawing, and their school mates version is displayed in a PowerPoint. • Allow community members to participate in the PowerPoint by trying to recreate the monster based on just the descriptive paragraphs

18. Formative/Summative assessment after project: • Formative assessment portion includes the end class discussion • Summative assessment portion include the students reflections on the driving question: How important is it to express myself clearly so others will understand?