I meant to write this post Friday night, but other things came up. When the last few weeks of school is upon us, I get crazy busy. I am trying to plan really engaging lessons for those last few days. I also have all that awesome paper work to complete. In between all of this madness I am getting some pretty fun teaching in as well. I really enjoyed reading the story Hey, Little Ant. We read the story, watched a quick video of some talented singers singing the story, and then we wrote a persuasive letter to the ant bully. It was a really fun lesson. Here is the video we watched:
Here are some of the letters. I loved their thinking!
If you can't see it, one of the last lines says If you squish the ant her career will be ruined, so don't squish the ant!
Be a ant lover instead of a ant hater.
Be a leader. Be a lover!
That is a comb on top haha!
This has to be the cutest display ever! Ok I know I am a little biased haha!
If you want the cute template, go check out Erica Bohrer! In the next few weeks we will be learning about literary nonfiction, The Wizard of Oz, and Greek Myths. It should be a very busy couple of weeks!
Last I want to share some pictures from a really fun festival we attended last weekend. It was a blast!
Oh my word! My brain is totally fried. I was rereading this post I wrote last night. I titled it with apples to apples in the title. I totally forgot to add that whole part in. So one more try haha.
My babies earned some game time. Little did they know that my games were sneaky learning games. They had a blast playing Apples to Apples Junior. If you have never played, it is a really great game for reviewing adjectives and nouns. The judge lays down one green card. The other players have their red cards. They have to pick one of their cards that would fit with green adjective card. One example we had was: The green card said magical. One of my babies laid down their red card which said power rangers. I totally agreed they were magical and he won that round. Super Fun! If you do not have this game, go get it!
This is my 50th post!!!! That is very exciting for me. It only took me a couple of years to reach that haha. This is a quick post. We worked on our John Henry poem today. My kids loved it so much. We started the lesson off with reviewing who John Henry is. We watched a short video about John Henry. After that we listened to Margaret Walker read the poem she wrote. We then performed the poem, found the rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. After all of that they drew an image of what they thought of after reading the poem. I loved it! If you would like to read the poem,you can find it here.
I wanted to check in and share quickly what we were up to today. I have absolutely loved studying tall tales. We extended them today by describing the characters and creating a scrapbook page about them. They kids totally loved it! Check out some of these characters
If you want to do this super cute activity click the link provided: http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/scrapbook/
We are continuing with tall tales a few more days. We have to hit poetry before our unit assessment this week. So we are going to do poetry about tall tale characters. It should be super fun. Tomorrow we are reading a poem about John Henry. We will identify rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. We also will create an image of the poem.
Finally, I have been researching teachers pay teachers a lot here the past few days. I have been really excited about creating some units for my store. I am a little discouraged though. Does anyone else feel this way? I can't imagine anything else I can create that is not already out there. I am so afraid that I will create something that someone else has put out there already. I sure don't want anyone to think that I have copied their work. Just a little discouraging....
I want to end on a positive note for the evening! I still love Class Dojo. I finally finished my reward list. My kids are really excited about it as well. I provided the freebie below. Just click the picture. If you are wondering what a orange slip is, it is a little slip that they can go to the office and get a treat from the principal in the evening. Happy Tuesday!
I am linking up with Doodle Bugs this week for the Five for Friday! I am pretty excited for my first Five for Friday.
I am exhausted! The week seemed to go by quickly. I love that kind of week. As always we were extremely busy this week. I love this part of the year when you see the light bulb come on. They are able to do so much. I really enjoy watching them take off. This may be a long post, so you may want to find your favorite drink or snack before you start reading.
We started the week with an invitation from one of my best friends in Kindergarten. Her babies were starting a research project on animals. They chose their animal and their animal book from our library. The next day my little ones went down to kindergarten to help these sweet babies. We allowed a kindergartner to pick one of my second graders to read their book to them. My kids and the kindergartners loved it!
We were invited back down on Friday for popcorn, and we were able to hear some amazing research papers about animals. I thought this was really neat. My kids really enjoyed it as well.
We continued working on fables this week. We read one fable this week that was extremely cute! I have never read the Monkey and the Crocodile until recently. I found a site that has a ton of readers theater scripts on it. I read this script and my brain went to town. This little fable had poetry in it which is another skill we are currently working on. My kiddos loved reading the fable. We were able to perform it for our curriculum coach as well. So here are some pictures from this lesson. We read the fable and talked about dialogue and informal plays. We identified rhyme, rhythm, and repetition in the poems. We described each character from the fable as well. When we finished all of these things, I showed them a small clip on youtube that was entitled the same as our fable. The video was totally different from our readers theater. Then we had to identify the similarities and differences between the two. It was a jam packed lesson!
We ended the week with Tall Tales. I love tall tales. The characters are larger than life and usually portray wonderful character. I knew that I wanted to hit as many tall tales as I could. I am running short on time so I knew I couldn't focus on one character forever. I decided to break my kids into groups again. I put all of the tall tale characters on the board. The students chose which character they would like to study. After each group chose their character, I gave them some small reader theaters and books. Each group was to become the expert on their tall tale. They then created a poster where they describe the main character, the setting, the problem, and the solution. The students worked hard on their posters. I love for my students to share and showcase their work. We ran out of time today, so I decided I had to make time for this. My students will have a Tall Tale Fair on Monday. They are going to act out their tall tale and share their poster. I am really excited! They started practicing some of their acting skills today. Let's just say I have many that were born to act haha. Our curriculum coach found these awesome readers theater scripts last year. I am so glad she did. They were a total life saver with these tall tales.
Last thing to share this evening! I finally created a Teachers Pay Teachers account. I know I am way behind the times. I have uploaded my first item to the site. It is free! So go check it out! My students are working on learning about their community. They are going to create a travel brochure about their community. I made a rubric to help them set goals on what grade they would like to make and what I would like to see. Click the link below to go to my store!
Have a great weekend! I plan on finishing up this cute little table and chairs. I love a project.
I recently found one of the coolest behavior management tools I have seen in a while. I am pretty excited about it! I have been using many different things here lately. You guys know how creative we have to get at times. I have been using my quiet critters, positive praise, and in the past I have used my positive clip chart. They all have been wonderful and work. I recently found Class Dojo. I was not sure how this would work, and if my students would even be interested. They LOVED it!!! I know that this could always change. SO check his out! It is totally free!!! You can enter more than one class. I have two different classes everyday so I have two classes entered. You put in your class list and each student is given an avatar. I have this site pulled up on my teacher computer. I also have it pulled up on my Ipad. If you are wandering they have a free app that goes with the site. As I catch my students doing something positive, I award them a point. This is super easy and fast. I just select their avatar and push the button of what I noticed. I can choose teamwork, participation, helping others, on task, hard work,and persistence. You can also give them a negative point if you catch them off task. I have been focusing on the positive for the most part. As I reward students points my computer dings every time I award a positive point. They are currently working towards changing their avatar. Check out my cuteness!
Here is a super cool introduction for your students:
Click the picture below to go and set up your free account!
Good Afternoon! It is Friday! Woo Hoo! Anyways! My babies worked all week to present their glogs to their peers today. This project was so neat because these second graders did every bit of it. They downloaded images and saved them. They uploaded them to the website. They created their backgrounds, frames, and text boxes full of text. It was pretty awesome! I deleted the videos off of their presentations to keep their identities safe. Enjoy!
Below is a blabber that was created to insert into a glog. We could not get it to convert to insert into the glog. It is super cute. All you do is upload a picture and then record your voice. It was going to be a short clip on this little girl's poster. We ended up videoing her and putting it on her poster since she was one of those early finishers.
This afternoon I was sitting in the doctor's office when a idea for a post hit me. If you are wandering I am fine.(Just a touch of pink eye. Awesome, I know.) Anyway, on to my idea. I have learned over the years that brain breaks really make the difference in behavior and participation. I use to be nervous that someone would walk into my classroom as we were doing one, and have to explain. Now I know that 3 minutes could be the difference in the mastery of what I am teaching or total bomb! I also have been posting about keeping kids engaged during spring is difficult. This is a challenge every spring, but I have a few tools in my toolkit to help! Get excited!! Haha I want to start with a super cool website that one of the hospitals in our area purchased for us! The cool part is you can try the site free! My babies love it! Everyday we train with an Olympic athlete for an event. The students then participate in an event an earn medals. After recess we do another break from the site. They do yoga with a talking monkey! I like this because it calms them down after recess.
Now on to the freeness you can do if you are able to access YouTube. I found this one this summer and I believe it is the favorite. Check out the Sid Shuffle!
The guys below seriously crack me up. They have a whole slew of dance videos on YouTube. Search for Koo Koo Kanga Roo.
This next guy may be my favorite. He calls himself Mr. Eco. He is a recycling super hero. He has lots of cute videos with some dance moves. These are perfect for April and Earth Day! Enjoy!
I really love getting my babies up and moving. This makes a huge difference! I also use this as an incentive. The next thing I found was very interesting! I love Just Dance for WII. My kids do too! Just dance videos are all over YouTube. If you plan on doing some of these be sure to preview any of them first! I usually use the ones for kids when I do use this one. Enjoy! Feel free to comment any others you may know!
