Officially In The Halloween Spirit

Sunday, October 13, 2019

October 13th!?!?  This month has flown by faster than a wicked witch on her broomstick!  Anne and I love the month of October and don't want it to end so quickly.  We have a myriad of Halloween and fall activities to keep our students engaged, excited, and challenged.  We are excited to pack in as many as we can in the next few weeks.

Last week, we introduced the students to Haiku poetry by reading aloud the adorable book, Boo! Haiku by Deanna Caswell.  Needless to say, the kids went crazy for this book.

To deepen their understanding of this type of poetry, we showed a PowToons video and a slide show.  Then, we dove right into writing some fall haiku.  We wanted to guide them in writing a few haiku poems and help them feel secure before sending them off on their own.  Once we were confident they understood this genre, we allowed them to find a partner and begin writing Halloween haiku poems.  Their drafts are great and need to be published.  As soon as they are we will upload some examples.

This is the outside of the Haiku.

This is the inside.

 We had an impromptu SEL lesson that focused on Habit #1 Be Proactive due to  a video I saw on a social media site. It is important for Anne and me to help the kids understand that, for the most part, they can choose their moods, attitudes, and actions each day.  We feel that having students understand this will give them a sense of security and control over themselves and their lives.  It was also important that the students realize the can impact others' lives, positively or negatively,  depending on the mood/attitude they choose. 

We read the lovely book I Am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness by Susan Verde.  (I loved the book so much I bought the other two--I Am Human and I Am Love.)  The lesson took two days.  The first day, we had the kids brainstorm a list of positive mood and attitude words.  The following day, we watched the kindness video, linked above, and had an amazing discussion. To follow up, the students wrote what attitude/mood they chose to have that day and added details about their chosen word. Lastly, they drew a picture of what they would look like having that mood.  Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the kids' work, but I will upload my sample on Tuesday.

The above SEL lesson will be a perfect flow into our writing lesson.  We are going to read aloud the book Crankenstein  by Samantha Berger.  It's about a boy (Crankenstein)  who wakes up in a cranky mood.  Throughout the book, the author details the character's negative, grouchy behaviors.  By the end of the story, Crankenstein is motivated to change his mood and attitude.  We anticipate an amazing conversation before, during and after our reading making connections back to Habit #1.  Our students will then write a focused personal narrative about a time they remember being "Crankenstein."  We will focus on adjectives, elaboration of details, first-person point of view, and narrative elements.

This is just an old sample of mine.  We will share the students' writing soon.  This project was inspired by Amy Lemons.

Lastly, these little gems will be displayed in our classrooms for the next week.  Hopefully, igniting curiosity and wonder in our students.  We will let you know the fun, but rigorous reading and fluency activity we will be doing that connects to them.  We also have a super cute project to go with the reading rigor.

We are so excited about these little critters.

Have a fabulous week and enjoy the beautiful month of October.  It is quickly slipping away.

Kim and Anne