SEVECEN Sayı: 29 - 2019

S E V E C E N 2 0 2 0  59 Ebru Hamarat G m ş NATUREWALK REPORT Grade 1 students continue to improve their literacy skills in English. We have been providing various hands-on experiences for our students to make writing process meaningful and fun for them. We are happy to announce that first graders are already star writers at their own levels. It is so exciting and rewarding for us to see this bunch of enthusiastic writers . We are proud to share with you the very first writing project Grade 1 students completed: ‘Nature Walk Report’. At the beginning of the ‘Nature Walk Report’, every Grade 1 classroom had a teacher-guided Nature Walk in ACI Campus Garden. During the walk, students were given the opportunity to observe nature with their peers and complete their Nature Walk Observation Checklists. In the following lessons, students were asked to use the information from their observation checklists, the nature vocabulary they had previously learned, familiar sentence beginners, high-frequency words and prepositions to generate sentences and write these sentences in their reports. Also, students did a good job at illustrating their reports with appropriate drawings and sketches of their nature walk experiences as well as of the animals and plants in nature. Moreover, our students used a Writing Rubric for the very first time to self-evaluate their writing in terms of quality and neatness. Hence, students learned how to consider the academic writing criteria as they edited and revised their reports. At the end of the project, students orally presented their reports to their peers and teachers. They asked and answered questions in pairs and groups. Overall, the project was full of learning experiences, sharing and fun. We, as Grade 1 teachers, believe in our students and cannot wait to see our students to continue improving their literacy skills even further in the following months of Grade 1. Nehir ÇIM ‘I liked drawing pictures about nature because I LOVE nature!’ Sinan DAĞISTAN ‘It was fun to have a nature walk with my friends. We saw many living things in nature.’ Levent GÜNEL ‘I used the Writing Checklist to correct my work. I really enjoyed doing that.’ Su ÇELIKLER ‘I liked writing about nature. My favorite thing to do in nature is to play in mud.’