The end of Ember

The book is over and our movie day is complete!

Nooooooooooo!
This was the reaction as I read the last paragraph on the last page.
"How can the book end there? It just got to the good part!" - AJ
P3 somehow then convinced me to continue on and read them the first chapter of the second book so that they could have some peace of mind.

'The City of Ember' is an amazing novel study. It has encouraged a lot of my less avid readers to continue reading the rest of series and some have even rushed out to buy it so they can have it immediately.

P3 spent all term looking forward to being able to end our unit with a fun movie day filled with tons of snacks and sore tummys. They have had extensive discussions, create Ember in Minecraft, created a 3D mural for our wall and many more engaging activities.

We joined up with another class in our learning center and spent the first block and half of the second block viewing the film today. Students had two activities to complete while watching the movie. They had to complete a compare and contrast chart between the book and the movie. They also had to complete an excitement chart. Every ten minutes I would pause the film and the students had to write a descriptive sentence of what was happening in that scene and give it a rating based on how exciting it was. Students will now take this data and at some stage next week create a graph about how exciting the film was.

In the afternoon we broke down and analysed the work we had done together, we discussed and shared our excitement levels and why this was so varied. We began putting together a venn diagram between the book and the movie that will be going on display in our learning center.

Overall students have achieved great success in this unit and have thoroughly enjoyed the range of activities and tasks they had to complete. I am looking forward to 'Ancient Civilizations' next term and the new novel we will be reading.

Sample of student reflections on the end of the novel study:

Kayleigh - End of Ember Reflection

AJ - City of Ember

Natalya - City of Ember

Manaia - City of Ember Movie

Moenah - The End of Ember

Minecraft ubiquitous learning

Today we read chapter 10 & 11 of 'City of Ember' and my students continued to build the city. We hit a road bump last Friday when we realized our cave wasn't high or wide enough. One of my Minecraft experts took it upon himself to utilise his lunchtime today and Friday to rebuild/configure the cave location so that the students had enough space to build their assigned buildings.

 We had finished the two chapters with 30 minutes to spare so I allowed the students to go for it and just let them have free run to finish their buildings. I then heard an excited yelp of glee when one boy shouted "Miss Downard, I have built a clock and it is attached to a light, did you know you can set the time and we can have the light go on and off whenever we want". My response to this was pure excitement, before I could even put the idea for how we could do this on a larger scale another of my students said "Miss, we can set clocks up with lights all around Ember and then we can make them go off at 9pm just like in the book" another student then jumped in and said "That is going to be really hard because we have to work it out over a 24 hour period". This is when I jumped in and began and impromptu math lesson on time. The students were so engaged because it meant something to them right then and there, and they could then use that knowledge to begin putting it to use.

I knew Minecraft offered learning opportunities but I didn't think it would begin presenting itself with so many awesome real and meaningful opportunities so early on. Here are some awesome screenshots of the 'City of Ember' that the students have built so far. I am already noticing the progression of their skills and creativity within this and I am thinking of other learning areas I can start integrating this into.