May 24, 2013

Hi everyone! We are going to be short and sweet this week because we flipped what we did last week- Anne's room completed the A New Coat For Anna activities, and Kim's room did the Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain activities. If you want more details about those activities, please refer back to last week's blog.

We thought we would start this week by sharing two of our word block activities. To help review the suffixes -er and -est, we read the book Things that are most in the World by Judi Barrett. Then we brainstormed adjectives that ended with -est and the students used those words to create their own -est page. It was very fast and simple lesson. The book was enough of a model for them to write creative, enteretaining sentences. We found the student page we used online, but we can't remember where it was from.

Another word block activity focused on homophones. We read the book, Dear Deer  by Gene Barretta and played Homophone Bingo. Then, we brainstormed an enormous list of homophones. To raise the bar a bit, we put up a ready made list of homophones we found online, and suggested that the students might stretch themselves and select homophones that they may not know the meaning of to use for their book page. We made a Pair of Pears class homophone book. The students had to use each of their homophones correctly in a sentence, and then illustrate.

On Friday, we had a beautiful day for our walk to the Prairie Path to culminate our unit on natural resources, and to review our plants and animal concepts, as well as our measurement concepts. The students had their iPads to take pictures, and a booklet to record their findings. They were so engaged and enthusiastic throughout the walk. Next week, they are going to use their pictures to create a story in Book Creator on their iPads.

Getting a tree bark rubbing.

Add caption

Measuring the circumference of a tree.

A Rolly Polly!!! We are so excited.

A snail found under a log.

Recording our work in our booklets.

Putting forth our best effort.

One full week left of school! It is kind of bittersweet for us. We both really had amazing classes this year. It will be hard to see them go. Next week, Anne's daughter is getting married so we will not be blogging. The following week, we intend to begin intensely working on our teacher's store lesson plans. We can't wait to share those with you! Remember, we will be blogging through the summer, so please stop by to download some of our free activities.

Kim and Anne

May 18, 2013

Hi Everyone,

You probably wondered what happened to us last weekend.  Well, Kim wrote our blog on our practice site.  We are so sorry and didn't mean to have a blank week.  It was a busy weekend full of celebrations because Anne's daughter graduated from college, but we are back on track now.

Let's get back to our Natural Resource Unit, which lead us into our Astronomy Unit.  Kim's class read the book A New Coat For Anna by Harriet Ziefert.  It is a story of a little girl who needs a new coat, but cannot buy one due to the war.  She and her mother trade their valuables for resources to make a coat. Through the story, the children learned how sheep's wool and berries were needed to make this beautiful coat. Before reading, the students were given ten sentences from the story. They needed to predict the order these sentences would appear. As we read, the students had fun recognizing these sentences. Then after reading, the students had no problem going back and sequencing them in the proper order.

The following day the students were given a challenge activity. They had to go back and partner read A New Coat For Anna, and then tried to decide the six most important events of the story. We came back as a class and listed these six events. From this list, the students had to write their own summary of the story and make a summary wheel. They really rose to the occasion! We can't believe how independent they are becoming.

Due to time, we couldn't do our next activity. However, a great book to compare to A New Coat For Anna is Charlie Needs a Cloak by Tomie De Paola. Another fun activity that we have planned to go along with this book is to dye cotton balls using plants, such as spinach, blackberries, red cabbage, beets, and red onions. You can find this activity in the AIMS Fall Into Math and Science book. It is called, "Leaf the Dying to Us."

Anne's class read Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema. This is an African tale about how a herdsman named Ki-pat solves the problem of the drought by shooting an arrow into the big black cloud over Kapiti Plain. We first focused on the vocabulary word drought, which they could all define because of our reading of Anansi's Feast.  As we read, we discussed the effects the drought had on the natural resources in the area, including the bodies of water, the plants, and animals.

This book is great to teach cause and effect, as well as summarizing the plot of the story. After the first day's reading, we completed a cause and effect graphic organizer. On the second day, Anne's students also had a challenging activity. They, too had to partner read the story and complete the Crayon Conversation organizer by Christine Boardman Moen. With this organizer, they had to identify the main character, three important plot events that affected the character, and how the story ended. After completing this organizer, they published and illustrated their work.

To reinforce the concept of conserving our natural resources, and to continue our focus on persuasive writing, we watched the Dr. Seuss movie, The Lorax. Afterwards, we wrote persuasive paragraphs answering the question: Is it important to take care of our natural resources? We found a cute activity from Amy Lemons to go along with this.  Ours did not turn out as adorable as Amy's, but we'll try again next year!

Our natural resource, the sun, allowed us to flow into our next science unit on astronomy. Our first key concept in this unit was the sun is a source of heat and light. We made heat catchers out of tin foil to capture the sun's heat rays. The students had a great time feeling their fingers getting warmer and warmer. Some even extended our lesson on hyperbole by claiming their fingers were burning! Ha ha!

Then, it was important to talk about the ultra violet rays that come from the sun, and how we need to protect ourselves from them. We completed an Energy Beads Experiment using beads found at Steve Spangler's Science Store.  We put SPF 4 sunscreen on some beads and SPF 50 on others, and watched the effects the sunscreens had on the beads.

We can't believe we only have ten days left of school! This year has really flown by! This summer, our blogs will be about the lessons we are creating for our teacher store. We will be putting up some freebies on our blog!

Again, Kim apologizes for the mix-up last week. Have a great week!

Kim and Anne

May 4th,

This week was all about persuasion in writer's workshop. We continued to refine our persuasive writing voice through a variety of activities. Our first inspiration came from a teaching colleague. She shared with us a persuasive text story map that could be used with the story, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems. Here is the link to get this organizer.persuasive text story map

Before reading, we gave the students the purpose of listening for what type of writing Mo Willems used in this text. After reading, they immediately identified it as persuasive writing. We then reviewed what it means to persuade and completed the story map.

The next day, we reread the book, but this time we listened with a writer's ear. We noticed that the author used speech bubbles when each character was talking. He also had the character speaking to the reader, even filling in the reader's thoughts through the voice of the pigeon. He only used two characters, and the one character was only at the beginning and the end. Willem used capitals and punctuation to portray the feelings of the pigeon. These are only a few of the craft ideas that the students identified.

Now, for the really fun part, we decided to make our own pigeon books using Willem's writing craft ideas. We brainstormed different "Don't Let the Pigeon....." ideas for our own book. After rounds of voting, Kim's class decided on "Don't Let the Pigeon Go to the Zoo" and Anne's class decided on "Don't Let the Pigeon Go to the Movies." Once that was settled, the students got into small groups of two or three and started brainstorming arguments that the pigeon might have. This took two days.
On the second day, we reminded the students that they needed to have a beginning and an ending from the second character's point of view.

After the brainstorming was done, we worked as a class to write a draft of our story. The students were highly engaged in this activity, and were readily willing to make revisions, until the words were exactly the way we wanted them to sound. Then, each student took one argument, or the beginning or ending, and typed a speech bubble for the character. They made the pigeon or the man out of construction paper, and we published them.

The next persuasive writing activity was inspired by the book, Hey Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose. We read aloud this story and then charted arguments the kid would have for squishing the ant, and that the ant would have for not being squished.

Then, the students could choose to write from the kid's point of view or the ant's point of view for their persuasive writing. We were really pleased with their writing. They really do understand how to persuade an audience.

Next week, we will share more of our reading activities with you. Have a great week.
Kim and Anne

April 27, 2013

Well we survived MAP testing this week, and we are thrilled with the results.  Our students put forth their best effort and were successful (thank goodness).

This week we tried to keep our lessons filled with hands-on activities since they used all their energy in the mornings taking their MAP tests.  We had fun reading Lisa Blau's reader's theater script called "Talking Trees."  The students got into small groups to read this nonfiction script.  Then they created a graphic organizer to record the main ideas and details.  This was difficult, but the students enjoyed the challenge and were eager to it.

The end of the script informed the readers of the importance to conserve trees, which is one of earth's most valuable resources.  To connect with the script, as well as celebrate Earth Day, we decided to make our own recycled paper.  This simple project elated our children.  Below are the step-by-step instructions.

Tear a strip of toilet paper into small pieces.

Add water to cover the toilet paper, and shake until it becomes pulp-like.

Pour it into the square frame which is placed on top of a screened can.

Use a sponge to push out all extra water.

When all extra water is out, lift it off of the screen and let it dry on a paper towel.

After the paper completely dried, we decorated them and made them into magnets.

The next activity included writing an extended response.  In the script the Redwood Tree says, "Trees are one of earth's most valuable resources."  Forming an opinion and supporting it with arguments is an important writing component of the Common Core.  So the students had to decide whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement and support it with evidence from the script.  Below are some of their responses.

Brain Pop Jr. has a great video called Reduce, Reuse, Recycle that we showed our students.  We just wanted to solidify the importance of conserving our natural resources.  

Our next hands-on activity came from Steve Spangle science.  We recommend checking out his site if you have a chance Making Science Fun.   Below is his video that we used to help our students make their own growing newspaper trees.  We did modify his instructions by only using two pieces of newspaper rather than ten.  It was super simple and again elated the students.  One student was overheard saying, "This is so cool I am so doing this tonight at home."

Here are some of our trees.

These are the main reading, writing, and activities that we did this week.  We look forward to sharing more with you next week.  Have a great week.  If you are in the same boat as us, good luck with MAP testing.  We wish you well.

Kim and Anne

April 20, 2013

Hi Everyone,
Unfortunately our home town of Lombard, Illinois got pummeled with rain last Wednesday and Thursday.  The weather was so severe many towns, including Lombard, cancelled school.  This is unheard of in April in Illinois.  It seems like everyone is underwater and trying to clean up.  Therefore, we need to put our blogging on hold until next week.  We promise exciting reading, writing, and science activities that go along with natural resources and recycling.

We hope you have a wonderful week and were not impacted by the horrible rainstorm.

Kim and Anne

April 14, 2013

Good morning!  This week we spent an abundant amount of time getting ready for Open House.  We wanted to make sure we finished up on all of our exciting projects so our students' parents could see how hard they work all day long.  It seemed like a whirlwind, but it was worth it.  The kids were so proud of their accomplishments and their classrooms.  The most popular attraction was the podcast the kids performed of I Am The Dog I Am The Cat.  If you remember, that was the book we used for our lesson on adding voice to our writing.  Unfortunately we cannot upload the podcast due to several children not having permission for their work to be on the internet.

This week in math we introduced the students to fractions.  We did many fun activities and projects with fractions, but our favorite was making fraction pizzas inspired by Amy Lemons.  We gave the students two ten-inch circles to make their pizzas.  The bottom red circle was the "whole" and the top yellow circle was divided into six equal parts.  Each part need to be decorated with different toppings.  Then the students wrote fractions that described their pizzas.  Below are pictures of our pizzas, but if you would like a more detailed lesson plan you can visit Amy Lemons' teacherspayteachers store.

We could not let this project be completed without incorporating a bit of writing.  We asked the students to work in groups to brainstorm endings to this sentence starter: Numerators and denominators go together because... The students did a great job persevering through this challenge.  We felt it was important for the students to engage in this activity to solidify the meanings of these two words before we move on to fractions of a set.  These fractions always prove to be more difficult than fractions of a whole.

Our reading theme continues to go along with our Social Studies concepts.  We introduced Natural Resources this week.  We began with a concept mural as a pre reading strategy to front-load the students with information they would be reading about in their Social Studies texts.  At the end of the lesson students wrote about what they read.  

The concept mural is a strategy developed by Pamela Farris and can be found in the December/January 2006 issue of the Reading Teacher.

The following day we showed a Brain Pop Jr. video on natural resources as a review.  Another student came up with a brilliant idea.  He suggested we take notes on the video.  The kids were really excited to do this, and we were really excited that they wanted to incorporate writing while watching a video.  Writing notes reinforced the concepts of natural resources more effectively than just watching the video.

We are now in the middle of reading a reader's theater script titled "Talking Trees."  Our focus for this reading lesson is on determining the main ideas and details.  After reading the scripts in small groups, the students had to decide what the main idea of the entire script was, as well as what smaller main ideas were embedded in the script.  We are recording the main ideas and details on a graphic organizer, which we will share with you next week.  We have not decided if we are going to perform and podcast this script.  It all depends on if our students suggest it or not.  We are really interested in letting them lead the direction of the lessons.

Have a great week. We will see you next Saturday on the blog!  

Kim and Anne

April 6, 2013

We had a fun and relaxing Spring Break, and we hope you all did as well.  It was good, however, to get back into our routine.

We had an exciting breakthrough this week.  All year long we have tried to encourage our students to become independent thinkers, to take lessons to another level, to take ownership of the lessons, and to kind of run the room while we facilitate.  And it finally happened!!! We read the book I Am The Dog I Am The Cat. The purpose was to reinforce the idea of voice in writing by having students identify the voices of the two characters in this book.  In the middle of the reading one of our students said, "Hey, I have a great idea.  Everyone could read a dog part or cat part.  We can try to sound like them."  You could have knocked us over.  It was one of those moments of "Why didn't I think of that?"  We have been using this book for years!!!! So our lesson plans took a turn.  We typed the book into a reader's theater for the kids to perform.

To ensure students used voice in their performance, we needed to have a discussion about the moods, feelings, and attitudes of the cat and the dog.  The students chose their character and then practiced their parts in two separate groups--the dog group and the cat group.  We had to model a lot to try and help the students become their character.  This was a challenge, but it was a fun one!  After three days of practicing in separate groups and as a whole group we were ready to perform.  The students recorded their performance in a podcast.  We will be doing some editing this weekend by adding sound and pictures.

To take this voice lesson one step further we went back to our original writing lesson.  We brainstormed a list of other pairs that could go together such as cookies and milk, fish and worm, brother and sister, bird and worm, rabbit and carrot etc.  After choosing their character pairs, students worked in groups to discuss what these voices might sound like and words the voices might use.  Then it was time to write.  We are still in the middle of our rough drafts, which you will find below.

Students are also working on the flap books they will use to publish this writing.  Below are samples of that, too.  You can find our complete three-lesson writing plan called Writing With Voice at our Teachers pay Teachers store.

This week we decided to keep the blog short and sweet.  Talk to you online next week.  Have a great week.

Kim and Anne