Our first grade classes were working on our language arts unit entitles Information Finders. In an effort to give our students a real reason to do research, Mrs. Heban, Mrs. Postlethwait and I decided to join the Whale Tales project and design a multidisciplinary differentiated unit about whales for our students.

We worked together to design tic-tac-toe boards that would include activities for learners of all abilities, interests and learning styles. The activities on these boards were divided among the three rooms with each teacher responsible for planning and executing the activities in her room. Since research was the main focus of this unit, we designed the boards so research was in the center and each tic-tac-toe had to go through the center. Research materials (books, magazines, computers) were available in all three classrooms.

Download .pdf of Book Report form

Download .pdf of Whale Research form

One of my activities was the “movie.” This was the Reading Rainbow video called "Whales Watching" on week one and a different informational video about whales the second week. I made movie tickets with specific showing times and the students could choose a time to view the movie as part of their research.

Download .pdf of Movie Tickets

Another of my activities was the “Whale Mobile.” During the making of this project, students learned the shape, color and specific physical characteristics of the blue, beluga, humpback and orca whales. They had to color and cut out the whales. We made “whale sandwiches” by gluing the whale cutout and its reverse together with a piece of yarn in the middle. Then the whales were hung from wooden embroidery hoops. The students labeled the whales. The designs for these whales were found at:

www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/whales

Another of my activities was a whale shape which the students filled in with pattern blocks (triangles, trapezoids, hexagons and parallelograms.)

Dowload .pdf of Whale Shape activity

 

When asked what they thought of this unit, the students responded:

“It was really cool!”

“Let’s do it again!”

“I liked choosing my activities.”

“It was fun to get to work in different rooms.”

 

I’d say our unit was a whale of a success!