Hi everyone! Check out our free weather idioms at our Teacher's Pay Teacher's store!
Monday, June 27, 2016
Weather Idioms
Monday, June 27, 2016
Hi everyone! Check out our free weather idioms at our Teacher's Pay Teacher's store!
Hi everyone! Check out our free weather idioms at our Teacher's Pay Teacher's store!
Sunday, June 26, 2016
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
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
Friday, June 17, 2016
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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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
Friday, February 26, 2016
February 26, 2016
This week, we reviewed nouns and verbs to get ready to write our cinquain poems. We wrote them about our favorite fairy tale or folktale character from our shared reading and read aloud books. Then the kids made their characters out of construction paper. We loved this project, because the characters look so cute hanging on our boards, and the kids had fun making them.
Our students are becoming so successful with identifying and writing about the theme and the lesson of a story. We have spent a lot of time getting evidence from the text to support our ideas and thoughts about a story, so when it came time to find evidence to support the theme and lesson of The Rough Face Girl, our students were able to manage this task. They were able to decipher which events in the tale best matched the lesson.
Throughout the fairy tale unit, we have talked to our students about symbolism. They love identifying the symbols in stories, and now whenever they see something that is red or dark, they immediately think it is a symbol of danger. In The Rough Face Girl, we identified the theme as humbleness. To go along our writing, we decided to create a symbol that represented this theme, as well as the protagonist of the story. We came up with a heart. We know the illustrations of a story can give us lots of information, so we wanted our students to look closely at the illustrations in this book and find ones that represented the protagonist's humbleness. They then drew those illustrations on their heart.
Have a great weekend! It is supposed to be close to 55 degrees here in Lombard! Yea!!!
Kim and Anne
This week, we reviewed nouns and verbs to get ready to write our cinquain poems. We wrote them about our favorite fairy tale or folktale character from our shared reading and read aloud books. Then the kids made their characters out of construction paper. We loved this project, because the characters look so cute hanging on our boards, and the kids had fun making them.
Our students are becoming so successful with identifying and writing about the theme and the lesson of a story. We have spent a lot of time getting evidence from the text to support our ideas and thoughts about a story, so when it came time to find evidence to support the theme and lesson of The Rough Face Girl, our students were able to manage this task. They were able to decipher which events in the tale best matched the lesson.
Throughout the fairy tale unit, we have talked to our students about symbolism. They love identifying the symbols in stories, and now whenever they see something that is red or dark, they immediately think it is a symbol of danger. In The Rough Face Girl, we identified the theme as humbleness. To go along our writing, we decided to create a symbol that represented this theme, as well as the protagonist of the story. We came up with a heart. We know the illustrations of a story can give us lots of information, so we wanted our students to look closely at the illustrations in this book and find ones that represented the protagonist's humbleness. They then drew those illustrations on their heart.
Have a great weekend! It is supposed to be close to 55 degrees here in Lombard! Yea!!!
Kim and Anne
Friday, February 5, 2016
Friday, February 5, 2016
Hi Everyone,
Sorry we've been gone for so long. We've been doing lots of activities with tales, character motivation, character perspective and theme. It has been really exciting to see the students grow in their reading after participating in this unit. Next week we are going to make characters from different folk tales, fables, and fairy tales and write diamonte poems about them. Hopefully we will be able to share them with you next week.
Have a great weekend.
Kim and Anne
Hi Everyone,
Sorry we've been gone for so long. We've been doing lots of activities with tales, character motivation, character perspective and theme. It has been really exciting to see the students grow in their reading after participating in this unit. Next week we are going to make characters from different folk tales, fables, and fairy tales and write diamonte poems about them. Hopefully we will be able to share them with you next week.
Have a great weekend.
Kim and Anne
Sunday, December 6, 2015
One Great Day of Reading
Sunday, December 6, 2015
What is Earth's most precious resource that keeps all living things alive, but is not readily accessible to all people? Water! After many weeks of studying water and its properties, our students have recognized how important water really is, and how lucky they are to have it at their fingertips.
On Friday, we did something that we have never done before. We had a reading marathon, called One Great Day of Reading to raise money to give to The Water Project.
Leading up to this day, our students did many reading and writing activities to learn about water and our global water crisis. One of our favorite sites that gave us a lot of information about what causes the crisis was eschooltoday:your cool basics on water shortage.
Our science unit on water and weather led us to recognize the scarcity of water in places on Earth. The students made a mural of the water cycle that they visualized while reading The Water Cycle Adventure, which can be found on Enchanted Learning.
One of our last activities in this unit was to write about the importance of water. We used The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown as our mentor text. The students used all of the notes that we had taken in our water readings to find a topic and supporting details about why water is so important to our lives. They then wrote about it using the pattern we discovered in The Important Book.
We were thrilled that our One Great Day of Reading led to giving over $800 to The Water Project. As we continue to read A Long Walk To Water, we recognize that there is still a great need to give people around the world access to clean water.
The next time you drink a glass of water, remember how precious this resource is!
Kim and Anne
One of our last activities in this unit was to write about the importance of water. We used The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown as our mentor text. The students used all of the notes that we had taken in our water readings to find a topic and supporting details about why water is so important to our lives. They then wrote about it using the pattern we discovered in The Important Book.
We were thrilled that our One Great Day of Reading led to giving over $800 to The Water Project. As we continue to read A Long Walk To Water, we recognize that there is still a great need to give people around the world access to clean water.
The next time you drink a glass of water, remember how precious this resource is!
Kim and Anne
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
We're feeling lucky today! It's going to be a great day. Hopefully we will have as much luck as the boy in Lucky Leaf did. Lucky Leaf is a fantastic picture book to teach the reading strategy of inferencing. There are few words on each page, but the author gives many clues through the illustrations and the simple text. Students can make meaningful inferences. Our students kept track of what was happening on the pages and the inferences they made in their reading notebook.
More luck came our way when we ran across the poem "The Magic in The Moment." It is a complex text that requires students to understand the meaning behind the figurative language. Not only did our students have to infer they also visualized what was happening in the poem.
This poem was a great paired reading with Lucky Leaf. We had the students complete a venn diagram to compare and contrast these two texts. This was a challenge, so we provided the students with support. Completing this venn made writing our compare/contrast paragraph a huge success. We topped it off with a fun chalk leaf project.
We can't believe there is only one week left before Thanksgiving break and Parent-Teacher conferences! Have a great break.
Kim and Anne
We're feeling lucky today! It's going to be a great day. Hopefully we will have as much luck as the boy in Lucky Leaf did. Lucky Leaf is a fantastic picture book to teach the reading strategy of inferencing. There are few words on each page, but the author gives many clues through the illustrations and the simple text. Students can make meaningful inferences. Our students kept track of what was happening on the pages and the inferences they made in their reading notebook.
More luck came our way when we ran across the poem "The Magic in The Moment." It is a complex text that requires students to understand the meaning behind the figurative language. Not only did our students have to infer they also visualized what was happening in the poem.
This poem was a great paired reading with Lucky Leaf. We had the students complete a venn diagram to compare and contrast these two texts. This was a challenge, so we provided the students with support. Completing this venn made writing our compare/contrast paragraph a huge success. We topped it off with a fun chalk leaf project.
We can't believe there is only one week left before Thanksgiving break and Parent-Teacher conferences! Have a great break.
Kim and Anne
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