Last week we compared fiction & non-fiction with snowmen.
The first day we read Snowmen at Night & made an anchor chart about the elements of fiction stories. {they have illustrations, make-believe elements, a problem/solution, a beginning middle & end, characters and you read it just for fun}
The next day we read How To Make a Snowperson on Reading A-Z and made an anchor chart about the elements of non-fiction stories. {they have photographs, teach you something, don't have to be read in order, may have a table of contents, labels, etc}
Then we wrote on snowballs to show what we learned! On the top snowball, they wrote to tell how they know that Snowmen at Night is fiction. On the bottom snowball, they wrote to tell how they know that How to Make a Snowperson is non-fiction. The middle snowball was optional and used as differentiation for students who finished quickly or I knew could be challenged with thinking on the next level. They wrote about whether they like to read fiction or non-fiction books in general, while providing a reason, of course.
Then I got out the scrap bucket of construction paper and let them go to town with hats, gloves, boots, arms, bows or whatever they wanted to create!
They're super cute hanging in the hallway and I figured you'd think so, too. Click the picture below for your free snowball template download!
After Christmas break we studied penguins, polar bears and other winter animals. I thought I'd already shared this with you...but apparently I was wrong!!!
The template is included in 2 different sizes. We used to the larger one above. Either way, your students {or you} can choose the animals to display because they won't all fit. A list of animals is included so you know who lives where without having to look them all up. I also put a short description of what they look like so you know how to color them...but I still recommend pulling up photos of the animals in Google if you can. Kids love seeing the pictures of animals that they may never have seen before! Poles Apart is a great nonfiction resource with fabulous photographs and direct comparisons of the north and south poles if you're looking for a text to go with it.
Get the packet in my TpT's store. Introductory 20% sale now through Thursday night! ;)
We also did this ahdorable activity I found on Pinterest when we moved into hibernating animals. So so cute. The printables are included in Amy's original post. There's another version going around Pinterest with the words already typed up as labels but I think the kids get a little more out of writing it themselves. Plus...look how cute. :)
Now it's time to celebrate the 100th day of school and Valentine's Day!! From one celebration to the next, right?! That's how I like to teach anyway! ;)
When I linked up with {Oh Boy 4th Grade} I admitted my bias of only reading other bloggers whose kids are the same age as mine. Then a 4th grade teacher in my school told me she had started a blog and I realized that I didn't have any great blogging buddies to pass along to her. Then I found {The Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher} and her linky party. What better place to find other great blogs than a linky party geared toward the upper grades?! Hopefully this will help Wendy {You Won't Believe What Happened at School Today} find some new blog buddies of her own. Go on over and introduce yourself! :)
And while I'm at it, I may as well link up. I hope she doesn't mind that I altered her image a little bit...I just don't wear sneakers in my classroom! Ok, I don't exactly wear Louboutins either, but a girl has to have a dream!
6am: Wake up. Well, my day is supposed to start at 6 when my alarm goes off, but this week it's been closer to 4:30 as Huxtable has decided it's the new time to wake up. We'll call 4:30-6 the trying to soothe the dog back to sleep start of the day. And before you call PETA on me, I'm not keeping him from going to the bathroom. He doesn't even need to go when I take him out, he just wants to play....not happening.
6-7am:Getting ready {in the hall bathroom so we don't wake up my husband} while drinking coffee, keeping the puppy from chewing the cabinet and listening to the Ace & TJ Show. So funny. I couldn't wake up without them.
7am:Getting out the door to beat traffic. We now live half an hour away from my school, which includes a drive through downtown. I could look for something closer, but I really just love where I work!
7:30-8am:Classroom time, which mostly includes printing out new recording sheets I downloaded from blogs or pinterest the night before. :) And switching out my schedule picture cards and objectives.
8:15-8:45am: Kids come in. This is a quiet time in my classroom as I see it as a chance to set the tone of the day. I have classical music playing on Pandora, they unpack quietly and sit down to some form of morning work {either a skill review activity or morning work journals to write & draw about whatever they want}.
8:45-9am: Morning Meeting! This is their chance to share fun news or tell those "Guess what?" stories. We always incorporate some type of song. Dr. Jean has great Good Morning songs for the kids to walk around and greet each other. I also really enjoy Wally Acha and Boom Chica Boom as "Getting our voices ready" songs to prepare them for participation.
9-9:45am: Workshop. {Guided Reading, Daily 5, whatever you want to call it.} I have 4 groups and do two rotations of 20ish minutes each. This is the only 45 minutes of the day that I have an assistant so while I'm working with one group, she's working with another group. Because I'm teaching inclusion this year, our EC teacher is also present for Workshop and she works with a third group. The fourth group is split into literacy centers...listening, writing, sight words, reading, alphabet...they change depending on the skills we're practicing and not all kids participate in every center. Half way through, we switch so each teacher sees a different group and another set of kids is in centers. I only see the kids every other day, but if they're not with me, they're working with one of the other teachers. {Confused yet?!} This week I taught this nonsense word game from Extra Special Teaching.
9:45am: ABC Dance Break & snack. While I clean up centers the kids dance to one or two songs that practice letter sounds, rhyming words, sight word spelling or some other literacy skill. Any song I use during this time has a specific dance or routine that I teach at the beginning of the year so it's very controlled. If they lose control, they sit out...and they don't like to sit out! After we finish a quick snack, its on to...
9:45-10:30am: Literacy. We use the Open Court curriculum so I go through that day's lesson. With whatever time I have remaining I'll read another book related to the unit, teach a new literacy center to use in workshop or get a head start on writing.
10:30-11am: Writing. This week we used the five senses to write about snow. Since we don't have any down here in the south, we make our own! :)
11-11:45am: Math. I teach the lesson in our Investigations curriculum and pull in other games that either relate to the skill or allow my students to practice areas they haven't yet mastered. This week we used this addition game from First Grade Fanatics. Instead of coloring in the squares, I laminated a few copies and the students used valentine M&Ms to cover their squares.
I'm also loving both of these songs from Harry Kindergarten. My kids love them, too! They're perfect for transitioning into or out of math.
11:45-12pm: Calendar. Days of the week, months of the year, your standard questions. We've also been looking at the weather channel online to predict and check the temperature to see if we need just coats or hats, mittens and scarves when we go outside.
12:00-12:30pm: Recess. Whew! Finally, a break. And my daily dose of Vitamin D.
12:30-1:00pm: Lunch. Sometimes spent in the classroom getting ready for the afternoon, sometimes with my team in the teacher's lounge. Really just depends on the day.
1:00-1:30pm: Reading Renaissance. This is our chance to read the books they checked out from the library or other books that aren't necessarily related to a concept. I like to use voices and read books here that make the kids laugh.
1:30-2:15pm: Specials. {sigh!} Music, Media, PE, Computer Lab or Art. On Tuesdays & Thursdays I have team planning. Monday, Wednesday & Friday I'm checking my email, changing out student work, trying to pick up the classroom, call parents...whatever has popped up that day!
2:15-3:00pm: Science or Social Studies. We're getting ready to make these cute little people from Pencils, Glue & Tying Shoes as begin a unit on the 5 senses next week.
3:00-3:45pm: Explore & Discover. Sometimes I use this time to continue our science or social studies lesson, especially if we're doing an experiment or big project. More regularly, since this is also the time struggling readers get pulled out for Intensive Reading Model {leaving me with only 8 students} it's time for Legos, K'nex, Blocks, Housekeeping, Puppets and/or SmartBoard to be opened for free choice. The kids naturally take our concepts from that day into their centers. If we read a book they like, they'll act it out in the puppet theatre or housekeeping. They've made menorahs from K'nex, built 3D Lego models of the classroom and used blocks to make dens for polar bears. They really like Highlights' hidden pictures or using the Digi-Color at Crayola on the SmartBoard.
3:45pm: Dismissal. Then setting up for the next day before leaving around 4:30.
5:00pm: Home. Time to play hide-and-seek with Huxtable, my de-stressor. :) I'm either pinning or blogstalking while I wait for my husband to get home. We eat dinner together, usually while watching something from the DVR {introducing him to LOST right now}.
Whew! That was a loooooooong post. No wonder I fall asleep this side of 10pm every night!
I have a workday tomorrow for more Common Core training. Hopefully I'll be able to chip away at my to-do list when the training's over. Have a great week ladies!!
Reading The Mitten last week and incorporating {ideas} on staying warm paired perfectly with our science unit, learning about penguins and polar bears! To help the kids understand how blubber works to keep both animals warm, we do this experiment. I've seen fancier blubber gloves out there but 2 ziplock bags filled with Crisco works just as well! The boys always think they'll be tough...but that ice is cold and they pull their hands out fast!
After the way this penguin project started {funny story here} I wasn't sure we were ever going to get it finished! But finally...we did. :) We took those white circle maps and turned them into these cute little penguins to display our research!
Some students pulled a word from their circle map to write a penguin fact sentence. It may be a little hard to see on the cream wall but it's glued to the feet.
The cute little snowmen in the middle of the penguins is an old, old estimation activity that I've had in my file for years. There's a picture of a snowman on the paper and the kids have to estimate how many snowballs {cotton balls} it will take to fill it up. After they estimate, they count and glue them down.
Here's a free {updated!} copy for ya:
We also used a {can/have/are} organizer to write down bear facts as we read various non-fiction texts.
Then the kids chose words from their lists to write their own bear facts. Strong writers were challenged to write additional facts not found with the starter, such as "Black bears are smaller than polar bears" or "If a polar bear stood up in your house, he would hit his head on the ceiling."
I made the bear heads by tracing the bottom of my globe :) and the kids added their own faces and cut ears from the scrap bucket. Glue the words underneath and voila! Lift the flap bear books!
And just think...this isn't even the end of our weekend!! Come back tomorrow {in your pajamas!} for some Martin Luther King Jr. ideas. :)
That's what we call the beginning of our school year when the students ease into the full-time school schedule. And that's how I feel about this post. :) Staggered....random...entry. Just a few pics I snapped today at school to get some topics started.
This is our diversity display that we made for MLK this year. In years past I'd gone into the whole race thing, but I really started to feel like kindergarteners didn't see color in themselves until we pointed it out to them in this lesson. (Not quite the point that Dr. King was trying to make, I'm pretty sure.) So this year I focused a lot less on how things used to be and a lot more on what the kids could do to make their world a better place. They created this "Celebrate Diversity" poster by cutting out pictures from magazines. We talked about diversity not only in skin color but also hair color, age, etc. I think it turned out pretty well!
Then they each expanded a standard worksheet (not originally mine) where the instructions were to draw a picture of their dream for making a difference. I had them cut off the border and add a sentence as well.
These are our "Heart People" that we made using a glyph. It took me a while to buy into glyphs and how they're actually an academic task, but I'm really starting to see them as a way to display information instead of just an isolated craft, especially when we use the directions to read information from each others' projects!
Here's a closer shot of one of the Heart People. My kids also wrote sentences using "Sparkle Words" (details) so the Sparkle Fairy would come and visit them.
These winter friends contained facts we learned while researching polar bears and penguins. The polar bears are actually books that have pages underneath. We created a class chart as we read about polar bears and students used those vocabulary terms to write fact sentences.
After we read about penguins, I showed my students March of the Penguins in short snippets throughout the course of the week. I've used this video for 3 years now and my kids are amazed every time that these are "REAL LIFE" penguins!!! As they watched the video, they took notes in a Circle Map, a graphic organizer from Thinking Maps Inc which we use in our classroom regularly.
Each student then chose 1, 2 or 3 words from their Circle Map to write about (assigned by me, based on ability) and then put those words or ideas into full sentences. Students who were assigned multiple sentences had extra bellies pre-stapled to their penguins, making it into a flip book. We then painted the penguins using Q-tip dots.
These are snowpeople we created after reading Lois Ehlert's Snowballs. I got this idea from my neighbor, Mrs. Love, whose done it for years. Although I will admit that the project itself was a bit of a headache (I may get out less items to choose from next year!) the projects in the end were adorable. Like always, I also extended the project with writing. The kids wrote what kind of snowperson they'd made and what materials they'd used to create the clothing and accessories. We also use "snow paint" to make the fluffy snow around the snowpeople. My dear friend Mrs. Sink taught it to me and I love love love it! You mix Elmer's glue with shaving cream so it's sticky but still nice and fluffy and then...voila! Snow paint that literally fluffs in 3-D from your artwork!
One of my beginning of the year activities is - like most kindergarten teachers! - to readChica Chica Boom Boomby Bill Martin. The students tear paper strips to make the trunks, cut slits in the leaves to have that palm tree fringe and write their name dancing up the tree using different colors of crayon. I used to keep this display up inside my classroom only until our Curriculum Night, but I decided I love it so much that this year I put it in the hallway and am leaving it up all year!
I also wrote each students' name on a coconut when I got my original class list so they'd see it on Open House night while trying to find their classroom for the first time! The flowers hanging from my doorway also help and have become my definitive decoration. You can get them at Party City and it's the whole rod is just hot glued above the door!
This is another beginning of the year projects that I keep up all year. We read a lot of stories about starting school, making new friends and being a good friend. We also talk a lot about being yourself and accepting people who they are. Then we read A rainbow of friends by P.K. Hallinan and create our own rainbow of friends! The t-shirt is a reproducible (not originally mine) that I cut out and help students glue under their heads. I provide circles of various colors and allow the students to choose whichever color they think best represents their skin tone. Sometimes they choose accurately and sometimes they couldn't be farther from reality...but I let them choose whatever they want! Then I help them glue down their yarn hair. We keep the display up all year and refer to it in our weekly class meetings. We also read our answers aloud to help get to know each other before I hang them up.
This is my discovery table. It's part of our provided school furniture for kindergarten and I haven't really used it much in years past (mostly because I didn't know how!). The sand was too messy, the rice had a weird smell, the pasta was too noisy...I couldn't get past the items IN the discovery table! Then I had an epiphany...pom poms!! They are quiet, soft and make zero noise. I bought the shovels at the dollar store and my students love visiting this literacy center. At the beginning of the year, they just had to scoop a letter and name it. As we progessed, they named the letter and the sound. At this point, the students name the letter, say the sound and write down a word that begins with the word on a piece of paper to hold them accountable for their learning while at that center. I also have this table near the Word Wall for students who may still struggle with coming up with a word for some letters. I think I got the letters from my friend Mrs. Belk when she moved away (we miss you, Friday DJ!!) but I'm sure you can find them at any teacher store or probably even the dollar store.
As Harry Wong said, "Effective teachers can be defined with a single word...they steal! Those who beg, borrow and steal good techniques are teachers whose students will achieve." Happy looting. ;)
