Know your Ingredients
Refrigerator Soup
My mom has a gift for cooking. She isn't fancy, but anyone who has ever gone to my parents’ house for dinner knows she’s a gifted cook. Her food (and her home) is full of love. My mom doesn't like waste and has a gift of using what she has and turning it into something extraordinary. I can't think of a better example of this talent than her “refrigerator soup.”
Many cooks have a recipe they love to follow, and with a few exceptions, they make it the same way every time. However, my mom is different. She looks at what she already has on hand, what vegetables are past their prime, and what ingredients complement each other, and then creates her recipe accordingly. If you sat at the kitchen table and watched my mom, I am sure you would wonder how on earth all the ingredients she pulls out of the fridge would work together. But every time, with love and patience, she makes it work. She would tell you that sometimes the results turn out better than others and rarely do the soups taste the same, but every time, my mom manages to make magic from the ingredients in our fridge.
My mom’s soup reminds me so much of teaching. Teaching isn't a recipe to follow; we don't get to pick our ingredients. Each year, our classroom fills with various ‘flavours’ ready to be incorporated into our classroom community. Just like with my mom’s soup, it’s essential to get to know the ingredients first; you’ve got to understand them before being incorporated effectively (and successfully) into the classroom. Each year, it will look different and will take some refining along the way. If we follow my mom's example, with lots of love and patience, we will look at the incredible gift of the students we receive in our classrooms and see what we can create together.
Getting to know our students is imperative to creating a classroom culture upon which our literacy structure can be built. Our students' interests, families, heritage, and culture are all essential aspects of who they are and meaningful ways for us to connect with them. Knowing more about who they are can help us connect them to texts and areas of interest that will support their reading, writing, and oral language skills.
Getting to Know you Activities
Artifact Bags
Read The Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleischman, highlight how the small items each told a story about the characters life. Show your students items that represent you and your identity (culture, family, interests). Have the students guess what these items tell about you. Ask students to bring a few small artifacts that represent them (their family, interests, culture, hobbies). Have the other students ask questions about the artifacts, or draw conclusions about what the artifacts may tell about the student. For younger students have them share what the items represent about their identity, for older students have them write about their identity and what the artifacts represent.
Same, Same But Different
Read the Story Same, Same but Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Have the students compare and contrast the two main characters in a venn diagram. Then, pair the students up and have them do the same activity finding the similarities and differences between them and their classmates.
My Identity
Ask students to brainstorm what they think makes up an identity. Have them create a visual representation of the different things that make up their identity. Use any visual representation they want to represent themselves.
Pieces of Me
Design a 6-10-piece jigsaw puzzle with each piece showcasing a different part of your identity. For younger students send the activity home with parents to get them to help create the visuals for their child to help show who they are.
What are some activities you do at the beginning of the school year to get to know your students?
