Wump World Environmental Extension Activity

Sunday, July 10, 2016

While reading Wump World, the students were able to relate the pollution and destruction that was happening in Wump World to their own world. To show how companies are trying to keep our environment clean, we did an experiment with cornstarch packing peanuts and regular styrofoam. When both items were placed in water, the students discovered that the packing peanuts were able to dissolve. They made the connection that these packing peanuts are better for our environment because they will dissolve in rain, and not remain on earth for over a million years to decompose like styrofoam does.

The kids had so much fun with the experiment that we decided to use Magic Nuddles, which are essentially the cornstarch packing peanuts, but colored, to create sculptures. All they had to do was use a tiny bit of water, and the Magic Nuudles would stick together. They were very creative in their designs.

From there, we extended the activity even further.  We had been learning about propaganda in language arts, and the techniques that advertisers use with it. To practice some of these techniques, we had the students create their own advertisement for Magic Nuudles. We required them to incorporate some of techniques we had learned, such as bandwagon, cute characters or celebrities, or slogans and catch phrases. We knew this would be an engaging activity for the end of the year, but we were pleasantly surprised at how well they accurately used some of the propaganda techniques. This was the first time we have ever done this activity, and we will for sure do it again in the upcoming school year.

Have a great week!
Kim and Anne

Free Amelia Bedelia Organizers for Common Core

Friday, July 8, 2016

We just posted a freebie on Teachers Pay Teachers. We included the graphic organizers that we used during our Amelia Bedelia unit of study. These will help you implement two standards of the Common Core. You can refer back to an older post from last November to see how we used them in the classroom.

New Product on TpT: Implementing the Common Core with Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

We just finished uploading our latest lesson plan to our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  It is a great bundle of three lesson plans using the folktale Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We used these lesson plans as part of the process in getting ready for our evaluation this past school year.  It went along with our unit on tales.  The students enjoyed all the activities and were successful with them. 

Soon we will put up our Lon Po Po lesson plans, which mirror the above plans.  Both of these lesson plans focused on character motivation and distinguishing a character's perspective from our own perspective.  These concepts, from the Common Core State Standards, are very challenging for third-grade students and cannot be mastered after one lesson.

Kim and Anne

More Wump World

Sunday, July 2, 2016

We really got "a good bang for our buck" using this book. Along with our other activities, we also had the students extend the story of Wump World. This is one the requirements of the Common Core Narrative piece.

To begin their story, the students needed to use information from the original text to describe the characters, and to write their exposition to the extended story. From there they had to decide whose point of view they were going to choose, either the Wumps' or the Pollutians'.

To help the students with their writing, we gave them guidelines to follow. To extend the story from the Wump's point of view, these were the guidelines:

*Include how the Wumps cleaned up their environment

*Include what the Wumps did to prevent this from happening again

*Include how they planned to protect their world

*Include how the Wumps' attitude changed

The guidelines for the Pollutians' point of view were:

*Include a new setting- describe where it is (name), what it looks like, sounds like, smells, like, and who lives there

*Reintroduce the Pollutians and give some background on them

*Introduce the new characters living on the planet- describe what they look like, and how they act

*Tell what the Pollutians try to do, and the problems they create

*Create a new way for the main characters to deal with the Pollutians, and how they stop them.

*Have a solution or resolution

*Do the Pollutians learn a lesson?

*Have the main characters helped the Pollutians change their perceptions?

*Did the Pollutians now see what damage they have caused everywhere they have been?

Below are some of the finished products from the students. They did an amazing job, and we are so proud of them. Feel free to try this with your students because it was fun and rewarding for both the students and for us.

Students illustrated the summary of their extended story on a six-piece summary wheel.

Happy Fourth of July!

Kim and Anne

Weather Idioms

Monday, June 27, 2016

Hi everyone! Check out our free weather idioms at our Teacher's Pay Teacher's store!

Wump World Part 2

June 26, 2016
We are back to share two more of our activities that related to our study of natural resources and Wump World. One is a literacy activity, and one is a hands-on social studies activity.

We spent a lot of time throughout the year identifying the theme and author's message of various stories. The kids have become quite confident in picking out one or two words that relay the theme of the story, and then using that word or words to generate a sentence that is specific to the author's message of the story. We had our students do this after we finished reading Wump World. Some of the words they generated for the theme were respect, caring, and kindness. When we took a closer look, we wanted to decide which of these words was the best one to represent the theme of Wump World. That word was respect. Students then wrote their sentence of how respect or lack of respect was portrayed in the story. They also had to find the best evidence in the story to support their sentence. After that hard work, the students created a water color scene to go along with their picture. This whole activity was fun, but was still a challenge for the students, even in April.

We always like to sprinkle in hands-on activities to go with our social studies units. We found an exciting, hands-on activity to go along with the nonrenewable resource--fossil fuels. It was all about respecting our earth while we dig for fossil fuels that we need to make our everyday lives more comfortable. The activity came from a natural resource unit written by teachers from Texas. It was called, "Cookie Mining." You can find the activity if you download the packet from the link. It was an effective way to help students understand the necessity for preserving the land while digging for fossil fuels. Reading Wump World first helped make this activity more meaningful and effective.

Hope you are enjoying your summer. We will be back next week with some of our final activities from this unit!

Kim and Anne

Wump World Part One

June 17, 2016

Happy Summer! We hope all is well with everyone. We are so excited to blog about some of the fun, thematic activities we did during our last trimester of school.

Right after our water and weather unit, we rolled right into renewable and non-renewable natural resources in social studies. We paired the fiction text of Wump World by Bill Peet with nonfiction resources online to start this unit.

We learned the definition of renewable and non-renewable resources from the Encyclopedia Brittanica site for kids. We took notes on the information, and then organized the notes into a web.

The students loved using Kidspiration to create a graphic organizer of their notes on natural resources.

After this, our kids had a great time connecting what they had learned from our reading of this text, as well as prior nonfiction reading from our water unit to the fiction text of Wump World. The emotions ran deep. They were appalled at what the Pollutians did to to Wump World, and could easily make the connection to what humans are doing to our planet now. They immediately saw that the Pollutians symbolized the humans. It was nice to see them make that connection as well. 

With this text, we wanted to give the students a challenge to take the skill of cause and effect to the next level. Instead of providing them with either the cause or the effect, and having them identify the missing element, we had them identify both the cause and the effects in the story. What was great about this, is that they soon realized that one cause could have multiple effects in the story. 

This student looked through Wump World and found an effect.  Then he looked for the cause.

These are just a few things that we did with this unit. Next week, we will share more…Wump World Part 2.

Kim and Anne