Cooperating While Sorting and Matching Pictures of Interactions in Grade 1

EAL teachers and grade 1 homeroom teachers collaborated this week as we asked students in groups to practice the interaction of cooperation in order to construct meaning of new vocabulary through closed sorts and matching activities.

We gave student groups pictures of various interactions and non-interactions and asked them to work together politely as a group in order to first sort the pictures into groups of interactions and groups of non-interactions. We went over key sentences frames that we wanted students to use like:

Words for cooperation and agreeing/disagreeing:
I agree. I don't agree, because...

Words for sorting (classifying):
This goes into this group because...
These go together because...

Students did tend to use these language structures as the four teachers in the classroom circulated among groups.

After students sorted, we then discussed what made interactions interactions and non-interactions non-interactions. Students volunteered that interactions had to involve two or more people.

Students sort interactions photos into interactions/not interactions.

Then we asked student groups to sort their photos of interactions into a positive/helpful interactions group or a negative/hurtful interactions group. We also began to elicit vocabulary from students as to what the interactions in the picture showed, and how the people felt while involved in these interactions.

These students have sorted their interactions photos into helpful/positive interactions on their left and hurtful/negative interactions on their right.

Finally, to begin attaching meaning to the actual written names of these interactions, we asked student groups to match labels to various interactions that they could identify, making use of stronger readers within each mixed group. 

From here, in the grade 1 classes we are going to move into looking at interactions and how they can create conflict or harmony in a few different ways. Ms. Rachelle and I plan on having her students review some videos they made from two weeks ago. Students will analyse the interactions they see in these videos, deciding if they are positive interactions or negative interactions. Students will then see the results of these interactions and decide whether the interactions created conflict or harmony, all the while a teacher uses annotexting to record the group discussion. 

In Mrs. Corey's class, students will be: planning a series of interactions to either escalate conflict or reduce conflict, photographing themselves staging these conflicts, and then creating a Comic Life story to show these interactions and their results. 

Plan for Comic Strip (above) and Example Finished Comic Strip (below)