Sunday, August 4, 2013

Five For Fri......Sunday....

fiveforfriday2


Umm, yep. I'm a little late to the party. Better late, then never!

I've been doing lots of fun things in my classroom lately but always forget to take photos! I'm anxious to put pictures of kids and their work on my blog so I try to do what I can...

1. In Science, we are looking at life stages of living things. We drew our own life stages using the template below. Click on the images to get your own copy!
 
We are observing the growth of mealworms. I know. Not the cutest thing to watch grow but the kids LOVE it! We had to buy wood shavings and the mealworm larvae. We keep them in a little plastic container and feed them bits of carrot.
 
The picture below shows the larvae on the left and the pupa stage on the right. I think they look like little aliens...
2. We learned about homophones and made these adorable 'pair of pears' from Sarah Cooley's homophone packet.



3. I'm trying something different with my rotations this term. Monday and Tuesday I do 'Writers Workshop' rotations with 3 different levelled groups.
I don't run it like the typical Writers Workshop. I have three activities - Teacher Time, Handwriting/letter formation and Journal writing. For Teacher Time, I decide on a focus for the two days. It may be a genre, it may not. The past couple of weeks it has simply been 'stretching sentences' where we look at starting with a simple sentence, making it descriptive, then compound and complex (for those smart cookies).

My TBB (Teaching Buddy Bestie) in third grade came up with the most FABulous idea!

1. Write a word on the board for the 'theme' of a sentence. For example, I wrote 'beach'.
2. Tell the students they can write any sentence they'd like, as long as it is about that theme. Some will write simple sentences, some will write compound, etc.
3. Have them swap books and rate each other using the following: (1) They used a simple sentence. (2) They used a compound sentence. (3) They used a complex sentence.
4. As a group, discuss their sentences and provide feedback.
5. Students give books back and then get a chance to earn more 'points' by changing their sentence.
6. Swap back and rate books again.

4. At the end of last term, we did some reflection of the things we learned so far this year. We made these super cute ice-cream scoops. They look great hanging in the classroom. Click on the pictures to check them out.
5. I don't have a picture of this one, but to link with our Science we are going to be creating our own insects for Technology. My teaching partner's student teacher found this super fun YouTube clip to teach about the different parts of an insect. For some reason the YouTube clip isn't working through Blogger, so click on the image below to go to it :)
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After we watched this, we go down on the carpet and created 'human insects'. As we revised the different parts of an insect, I had some student create that part with their bodies. There were many laughs and they had so much fun!

That's it! I'll hopefully be back soon with some more useful posts ;)

8 comments:

  1. I like your writers workshop Shanyn, I think it is great that you have focussed small group writing. I almost had heart failure on Friday when I got 3 word sentences from some of my grade 2's, I like your idea and I am def going to *steal* borrow it!
    Tania
    Mrs Poultney's Ponderings

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  2. I love the title. You had me laughing before I even started to read the post.

    Mealworms. Ew. I'm sure the kids are obsessed with them though!

    The ice cream scoop activity is BRILLIANT! It's so great for the kids to digest and reflect on their learning.

    It seriously sounds like your classroom is so much fun. Can I be your student???

    -Caitlyn
    Fourth Grade Lemonade

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  3. P.S. except for the mealworms. I'll be your student once the mealworms are gone.

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    1. Heheh, Caitlyn! If you're willing to travel to Australia, you are more than welcome to join my clas :D Thanks so much for your kind words!

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  4. Love the look of your writers workshop - how long does it take you to go through 3 rotations each day?

    Looks like you are doing some great things in your class!

    Kylie
    Down Under Teacher

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    1. Thanks, Kylie! I give myself an hour max. I like to do 20min rotations if I can. If I'm running behind, though, they get cut shorter.

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  5. It is better late than never! Always good to see what others are doing!

    Alison
    Teaching Maths with Meaning

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