Raki's Rad Resources: ISM Spotlight

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

Since Monday was Earth Day, the students at the International School of Morocco have been celebrating Earth Week all week long. Here’s a peek at some of what we have been doing:

Whole School:

- We watched the movie of the Lorax and created a list of things that can be done to take care of the earth.

- We started a school recycling program for plastic bottles and newspaper.

- We encouraged students to bring fruit and vegetable scraps in for the school rabbits.

- Learning the Jack Johnson song – the 3R’s.

PreK (3 year olds)

- Created crayon shaving globes by:

1.) Sharpening blue and green crayons.

2.) Sprinkling crayons onto wax paper in a circle shape.

3.) Ironing wax paper (done by teacher, obviously)

4.) Cutting around the outside of the circle.

5.) Hole punch on the top and string up with a ribbon.

- Created a tissue paper globe and poster for their door. The kids have been reciting the rhyme each day.

- Painting paper paint globes by:

1.) Squirting blue and green paint onto a paper plate.

2.) Flipping the plate upside down on a piece of paper.

3.) Twisting the plate around.

- Free painting their own globes with blue and green paint

- Coming up with ways to take care of the earth. Here are some of their ideas:

Kindergarten - K4/K5

- Exploring their natural world for things that are dangerous for the earth, including chemicals.

- Exploring the earth and rocks. They’ve gone on a hunt for rocks and talked about how rocks belong to the earth because they make new soil when they break into little pieces.

- Creating crafts with recycled items. They have created “precious stones” from old newspaper by:

1.) Tearing the newspaper into strips.

2.) Dipping the strips into a papier mache mix of flour and water.

3.) Creating “stone” shaped balls.

4.) Letting the balls dry.

5.) Painting their stones.

1st – 4th grade

- Doing internet research about the 3r’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The students are using the information they have found to create a video about this topic. For more information about this project – visit the Collaborative Projects page at Global Teacher Connect.

- Creating “Unless” statements, modeled after the quote from the Dr. Seuss book The Lorax: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, then nothing is going to get better, it’s not!