Good Snowy Morning! The snow is really coming down here today so we will have the perfect setting for our snowflake similes and winter poems activities we are planning for next week.
This past week and next week we are doing a hodgepodge of activities to try and wrap up our social studies, guided reading, and math units. Here are a few things we did this past week.
We listened to the story Pearl and Wagner Two Good Friends by Kate McMullan from our reading series. This is one of the cuter stories in our series and went along perfectly with our science fair kickoff. We decided this was an ideal story to review the very challenging skill of comparing and contrasting. As we were reading the story to prepare for our lesson, we realized that we could easily compare and contrast the two main characters. This was easy for us, but not so much for the students. We had to guided them through with our questioning. Hopefully when we compare and contrast two winter poems next week, the students will have a bit more of an understanding of this concept.
As a follow-up activity, the students will partner read Pearl and Wagner Two Good Friends by Kate McMullan and do an extended response on Monday. This is one of our free activities that you can find at our teacherspayteachers store.
The kids are getting "squirrely" as our winter break approaches, so we decided to do a favorite word study activity by Pat Cunningham. The activity is called Does It Look Right? and we used it to solidify some long o spelling patterns. To begin, we spelled a word with three different long o patterns and the students needed to decide which spelling looked right and record it on their record sheets. Then, they looked it up in the dictionary. The first person to find the word got to spell it to the class. The kids have turned this into a race and have loved the competition.
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| Teacher's Sheet |
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| Student Sheet |
This week the perfect Aims lesson came through Kim's Bloglovin' feed. It mirrored a lesson we do in Everyday Math. It is a hands-on math lesson that provides students with a concrete, real-world way to add two-digit numbers together. It was also a fun way for students to count back change. It's worth checking out if you have time.
Finally, we thought we would share a fun winter craft we are doing with the students. It is a wreath made from sandwich baggies, a wire hanger, and a ribbon. This is a gift they take home to their parents. We have been making them for years and they are always well received. The students manipulate a wire hanger into the shape of a circle, and then they tie on about 150 sandwich baggies. When they are finished you just need to tie a ribbon around the top of the hanger. This is a great way to get them to learn how to tie. Most kids get the hang of it after a few tries.
One more week to go before winter break! We are planning to take a few weeks off from blogging to to spend time with our friends and families over the holiday season. We will also be working on lessons to gear up for the new year. You may see some of them on our teacherspayteachers store.
Happy Holidays!
Kim and Anne
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