Friday, March 31, 2017

Good Morning!  We are in the final days of our Spring Break, and we just wanted to take a moment to share a few of the final activities we did with our Amelia Bedelia unit.  The students had such fun reading about Amelia Bedelia and her antics, as well as engaging in the writing activities we planned for them.  Keep in mind, each of the activities met at least one Common Core State Standard.  Anne and I are all about having fun with the standards!

After reading many, many Amelia Bedelia books, the students chose two books to compare and contrast.  We supplied them with a Venn Diagram to complete with a partner.  Then, they used their diagrams to write a compare and contrast paragraph about the books.  Writing this type of essay is still a challenge for even our most advanced students, so we provided them with a frame.  This made the task a bit easier, but they still needed much support from us.  We always tell the students, if you need support and you are challenged then you are learning.  So, this struggle felt great!

There are two pages to this essay.  I've only shown one page.

 On a whim, we decided to throw in a little technology!  To help the students learn about character perspective, as well as get a deeper understanding of homonyms, we had the students create Amelia Bedelia comic strips.  Each pair of students pulled out a homonym from a hat.  They had to think of a situation involving Amelia Bedelia getting confused with their chosen word.  The students were so engaged they did not want to stop for a break.  They worked until the comic strips were finished and printed.  Our students loved this activity so much they chose to write more during Daily Five.

Idioms prove to  difficult for our students to understand and use properly when writing and speaking. Reading Amelia Bedelia books gave them several opportunities to identify this type of figurative language and use context clues to try and determine their meanings.  Anne and I also read aloud several books about idioms to help our students become more familiar with them.  As a fun activity, we had our students write idioms in a sentence and illustrate the literal meanings of them.  They turned out really cute.  Now, whenever we come across some type of figurative language, the kids are always asking if it is an idiom!!!  They are so cute.

This weekend we will be hanging all of these lovely projects in our hallway and on our classroom doors so the parents can see the exciting, but challenging activities we do.  We are so proud of the kids' accomplishments.

Anne and I have uploaded free Amelia Bedelia lesson plans which include the Venn diagram and compare and contrast page in our TeachersPayTeachers store.  We hope you will check it out.  It says it is a cause and effect frame (I just noticed that); it's not it is compare and contrast.  I will fix that soon.

Next time on our blog we plan to share with you the activities we created for  Brave Irene by William Steig and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.

Until then, happy teaching!

Kim and Anne

More Amelia Bedelia

February 26, 2017

Last week we told you about the character traits slideshow that our more advanced students created. Our more guided group also focused on Amelia Bedelia's character traits, but in a different manner. Here is what they did.

The students read the books Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia, Thank You Amelia Bedelia, and Amelia Bedelia, in a shared reading format, where they recorded and discussed their thoughts while reading. Most of this time was spent with Anne modeling her own thoughts while reading because this is still a struggle for students.

For their project, they created a character trait web in their notebooks. Then, they selected three of Amelia Bedelia's traits and used a notecard to find the best evidence from one of the books to support that trait. We did the first trait together, and then they had to independently find the next two.

The kids also wrote their opinion to the question, 'Would you want to work with Amelia Bedelia?'
To begin we started with a Tug-of War activity from the book, Make Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison to debate our reasons for answering yes to this question or no to the question. Once the students decided on their opinion, they wrote a paragraph on it.  In their paragraph, they needed to begin with a lead, state their opinion and give support with two or more reasons and evidence from the text. After working hard, they had fun making their Amelia Bedelia craft.

Great book!!!

To wrap up our unit on Amelia Bedelia, we will be comparing and contrasting two different books using a Venn Diagram, and then we will write a compare and contrast expository paragraph.

We will share these with you next week.
Kim and Anne