Saturday, June 8, 2013

Well, Tuesday was our final day of school.  As we mentioned in our previous blog, we knew the last day would be bittersweet.  This year, both of our classes were amazing.  The students were happy, eager to learn, and seemed to love most of the activities we did.  It's always appreciated when seven and eight year olds enjoy the lessons we worked so hard to plan.  Our students pushed themselves to their limits and achieved goals we could not have dreamed for them.  Hopefully they are as proud of themselves as we are of them.  We truly believe our kids have become mature, serious students who are ready for new challenges.  We will miss them tremendously, but we know we will see their happy faces in the hallways waving to us as they scurry to their new classrooms in the fall.

Even though we only had a day and a half of school last week, we still planned fun, yet academic, activities.  Let us share a few that our students really loved.

On Monday we did a shared reading Wanda's Roses by Pat Brisson.  This story went along with our Natural Resources theme.  It's about a third-grade girl who finds what she thinks is a rose bush in a trash-ridden area.  She thinks the rose bush isn't blooming because it doesn't have enough sunlight, air, and water.  So she cleans up the trash thinking this will help.  When the rose bush still does not produce blooms, Wanda comes up with an idea to solve the problem.  In the process she receives many surprises.  Things turn out better than she could have ever hoped.

After reading and discussing the story, we found the turning point in the story to help us decide on the theme.  The kids came up with amazing ideas even on the last full day of school!!!!  Such ideas included:

When you have a problem get creative and solve it.

Staying calm and positive helps you solve problems.

Sometimes things work out better than you could have planned.

When you believe in your ideas you can make them come true.

This really is a book worth reading.

We then did a science experiment to show how two different types of trash, styrofoam and packing peanuts can affect our earth.  The question was, What will happen when a piece of styrofoam and a packing peanut are dropped into water?  What we discovered was the styrofoam stayed in the water and did nothing, but the packing peanut dissolved.  This is because the packing peanuts were made out of cornstarch.  We had a lengthy discussion of which product would be better to throw away in the trash and be better for our earth and the animals.  We discussed the idea of trying not to buy styrofoam products because they fill up our landfills and never go away.  We also discussed how some companies are becoming more responsible about the products they use making sure they are good for our environment.

Here is the video that inspired this science experiment. 

Then we used Magic Nuddle Building Blocks from Steve Spangle to create beautiful sculptures.  These nuddles are made out of cornstarch just like the packing peanuts we used in our experiment.  However, if you just add a little bit of water to the nuddles it acts like glue, and rather than melting them, it makes them stick together.  

Butterflies and a Flower

A Dinosaur

A Flower By A Lake

A Sword

A Bird On A Fence

Our final fun activity for the year was inspired by our favorite second-grade teacher, Amy Lemons.  We encourage you to check out her blog.  It is loaded with effective reading, writing, and math lessons.  

This lesson was called Measuring Olympics.  We did this activity during the final hour of the last day of school, and the kids were engaged the entire time.  The objective was to use meter sticks to measure the distances pom pons traveled.  We gave the kids a list of events such as flicking, dropping, blowing, tossing, spinning, and kicking to do with their pom pons.  We modeled each event and how to use the inch side of the meter sticks to measure the distances.  Below are pictures of the activity.

Thank you Amy Lemons for helping to make our final day of school fun and exciting for our students.

We hope you all had a wonderfully fulfilling final day of school.  Have a restful and relaxing summer.  Be sure to stop by our blog and checkout lessons we are creating for next year.  

Kim and Anne

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