Happy St. Patrick's Day! We hope you had a great week of school. It was another busy and fun week for us. So, we thought we would just jump right in and share some of our favorite activities from the week.
Now that our animal unit is finished, we began a quick thematic unit on maps and landforms. During shared reading, we read Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney. Then, students recreated their own Me on the Map books. Each page of the book showed a different map of where we live, just like Joan Sweeney's book. They really enjoyed using Google Earth to find their own neighborhoods, and the computer program, Kidspiration, to create a graphic organizer of the different maps of where they live for the last two pages of the book. Here is a sample of those pages.
After completing our Me on the Map books, we spent a day to focus on Washington D.C. because it is our nation's capital, and we wanted to see where this important place was on the map of our country. For this shared reading, the students read about the different monuments and important buildings in our nation's capital. As they were reading, they completed a Fact Swap page by Rachel Lynette. Students chose three interesting facts from the social studies text. Then, after reading, they walked around and swapped facts with each other. This activity really helped the students learn the facts in a fun and engaging way. If you want a full explanation about this activity, you can find it at Rachel Lynette's website. Here is the link: http://www.rachel-lynette.com
Then, we had some fun! The students made models out of clay of five of the monuments and important buildings in Washington D.C. They needed to google a map of Washington D.C. to accurately place the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument, White House, and Capitol Building. Here is the finished product!
Continuing our thematic unit, we wanted to talk about our earth, so we focused on landforms and natural resources. First we read about the different landforms and bodies of water on earth. Then, we made a collage depicting the different types of landforms and bodies of water.
Next up was the shared reading of Soil, by Sally M. Walker. Wow, was this a difficult story. We brought in soil for the students to observe before, during, and after reading. The words erosion and weathering were introduced, and students used Notebook to create a four square vocabulary project on one of the words.
We really used our voice in writer's workshop this week. We read the book, Dirty Laundry Pile: Poems in Different Voices by Paul B. Janeczko and discussed the voices we heard from the vacuum cleaner, crayon, wind, and snowflake. We talked about the mood and feelings of each character because once you know the correct mood and feeling of the character, you can choose the correct words to convey their voice. Then, we looked through National Geographic magazines to find a character, examine their mood in the situation they were in, and write a speech bubble about what they might be saying. It was a challenge to come up with just the right words to portray the voice of the character.
Finally, we wanted to share with you one of our new and favorite free apps. It is called Show Me. It is an interactive white board for the iPad! We love it because it creates higher level thinking as students choose something that they want to explain how to do. For example, one of our students chose to explain how to chop words into syllables. As they record their explanation, they show the steps on the whiteboard. Then, students can then go and watch the explanation. Over Spring Break, we will try to share some of these on Facebook, as well as some Podcast ideas.
One more week until Spring Break, and as it approaches, everyone's mood is lifting, and excitement is in the air. We hope you have a great week. We would love to hear about the exciting things you are doing in your classroom!
Kim and Anne
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