Writing, Synonyms and Reindeer

Friday, December 19, 2014

We can hardly believe it is time for winter break.  Where has the first part of the year gone?

Last week we made adorable sock snowmen.  This week we wrote an explanatory piece giving directions on how to make them.  For some reason the kids were super focused and wrote for over an hour!  It was probably because they loved the little snowmen so much.  They even wanted to include their writing as part of their gift to their parents.  It was nice to end the week with such quality work.

Yes, we know the border is upside down, but this student's writing was so well done we wanted to show-case it.  Also, this is only page one.

Another fun activity we did this week involved synonyms and antonyms.  The kids made synonym-antonym word strings. Each group of students was given a bag filled with six words.  They then had to arrange them according to their degree with the strongest opposites at the top and bottom. Before they could arrange them, they had to look up the definitions to determine where to place them.

In computer lab, we continued having fun with words. We used the program Tagxedo to create word art with synonyms or antonyms.

Our last activity of the week was making pine cone reindeer. To solidify the idea of following directions, we had the kids how to make the reindeer. If they followed the directions they ended up with an adorable reindeer!

Have a great Holiday Season!

Kim and Anne

Simple Machines and Main Idea

December 12, 2014

Hi everyone,

It is hard to believe that there is only one week of school left before winter break. There is so much to get done in these last few days! One thing we did finish was our Simple Machine Unit! We spent a little more than a trimester on this unit, but it was well worth it.

We thought what better way to wrap up this unit than to have our students become the teachers! Lately, we have spent much time focusing on main idea and important details with our kids. It can be challenging to find the main idea, and even more challenging to weed out the interesting details from the details that are most important to the main idea.  Students really have to think critically about the text, which we think is so important. The students' task as teachers was going to  focus on this skill.

Before we sent them off on their task, we once again addressed main idea and details in our shared reading. Together, we read the one page text, What Are Simple Machines? We had to find the main idea of the entire text, not just one paragraph.  It was a little tricky, because the main idea really was in the second paragraph. After identifying the main idea sentence, we charted important details, and interesting details.

Then it was time for the students to switch roles in cooperative groups! Each group was assigned a  different simple machine. First, they had to follow directions to make a quick three-dimensional paper model of their machine.

Once they finished making their model,  they moved on to reading a one page text about their machine. Their job was to read the text, identify the main idea, important details, and interesting details and create a chart about their simple machine. They would use this chart to teach the class about it. We were amazed with how hard they worked to dig deeper into the text to find the main idea. One group inferred a main idea that was much better than the one we had come up with! They also had great conversations about which details were the important ones.

After practicing their presentations, it was time to teach! The kids had a blast teaching to the class, and listening to the other presentations. It was a huge success!

During this unit, we visited two websites about simple machines during our computer lab time. One was a BBC website, and the other was Edheads. We thought you might like to check them out!

On another note, we found a super cute snowman craft online that the students made this week. This craft is going to serve two purposes for us- it will be our kids' parent gift and it will be used as a springboard for a writing activity that we will share next week!

Have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne

Evergreens and Oranges

Friday, December 5, 2014

This week we did a follow-up activity to our synonym lesson from last week.  Trader Joe had the cutest little evergreen trees that were covered in sparkly glitter.  We bought a bunch of them and used them to to write descriptive poems.  They were frame poems that used only adjectives and nouns.  We reviewed the fact that most synonyms are adjectives, so when the kids wrote their poems they needed to use at least two synonyms from our previous lesson.  Our students had a great time playing with words, and we felt great about expanding their vocabulary.  You can link to our frame draft here and our final copy here.

In math, one of our groups had fun with multiplication using the book Each Orange Had Eight Slices: A Counting Book by Paul Giganti, Jr. As it was read aloud, the students had to record and solve the multiplication equations for each page.  Then they had to write their own multiplication story problems following the same format as the story.  It was challenging, but they got the hang of it.  Doing activities like this, as well as Engage New York lessons, have allowed our students to have a deeper conceptual understanding of multiplication and division.

Once again we were pulled out of our classrooms for a math committee meeting, but all was not lost.  We got ahold of a great new resource that will help us as we plan lessons that develop deeper conceptual understandings of math concepts.  The resource is called ISBE Model Math Curriculum.   We are really excited with the direction our district is going in math.  We are excited to continue planning lessons that will meet the needs of our kids.

Have a great weekend!

Kim and Anne