Learning Carpet Vocabulary

I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but I have the most amazing Learning Carpet in my classroom. It doesn't sound fancy- a 100 square floor mat, but it's been an integral part of my classroom this year. My principal purchased the alphabet and number cards to go along with it and we use it for both reading and math. During Daily 5, a couple of kids will use the cards to make their spelling word lists. At the beginning of the year, I have a couple kids at a time make a 100s chart with it so I can get an idea of their number sense. This past week, our reading story was about bees and some of my early-finishers asked if they could make their robust vocabulary words on the carpet. (Yes, they asked. I'm in teacher heaven!)

Beauty and the Beast Read-Aloud

In anticipation of the new movie coming out in March, I've been reading Beauty and the Beast to my students. My school-bestie picked this up for me from the book fair a few weeks ago (I don't know how I could've possibly over-looked it!) and I actually had no intention of sharing it with them, but one of my kiddos noticed it on my desk and asked if that would be our next read aloud. Scholastic recommended Grades 3-7 (ages 8-12), but since I'm reading it to them and there was a high-interest level (we voted), I decided to go for it.

Here are my thoughts on reading a higher-level book to younger readers:

1. Because of their age level in regards to the book, we watched the classic Disney cartoon on the Friday afternoon before we started the read-aloud. We discussed "painting a picture in your head" as we read, and I wanted my students to have a good idea of what was happening.

2. We also talked about how a movie plot sometimes diverge's from a book's storyline, so we make a point to stop every time that happens and discuss the differences. (For example, in the book Maurice makes music boxes, in the movie he was an inventor.)

3. I'm reading the book slow and steady. Usually I try to read a novel in a week, but since this is a 16-chapter somewhat heavy-reader, we are taking our time and reading one chapter a day.

4. We vote and make charts quite frequently in my classroom, so it was no surprise to them that each day I pose a question (sometimes from the story, sometimes a 'what would you do?', etc.) for each child to give their thoughts on. Below is an example of a picture graph we created yesterday. I think it's important that kids feel connected to the text, and if they know I'll be asking questions they'll have an even better reason to listen along.

Famous American: Jackie Robinson

Our new Social Studies SOLs feature 10 famous Americans (Well, 9 plus Christopher Columbus...) Although we are slated to teach them as part of our curriculum until next year, we decided to get a jump-start.

As it turns out, my kiddos wanted a teacher-directed drawing for every.single.one. Unfortunately, I couldn't find lessons on how to draw all of them, but I did my best and the ones we were able to do turned out pretty awesome.

Here is Jackie Robinson. We made our own baseball cards using 1/4 sheet of construction paper. They had to write an interesting fact about him on the back, then together we learned how to draw his portrait on the front.

Pizza Fractions

Here is a collage I added to our Class Dojo page about the pizza fractions we made this morning. It was a hectic day (1/2 day sub, observed this morning, remembering all of the ingredients but forgetting plates!!!) and everything turned out great. 

We have talked about fractions for a few days, spent some time with fraction tiles yesterday, and today brought out fraction circles. The kids made various fractions, we discussed equivalency, and then they came to the carpet. We read Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza and discussed how the pizza would be split among the number of characters. Then we passed out ingredients to make our own mini pizzas (canned biscuit, shredded cheese, tomato sauce, and mini pepperonis, along with a fork and plate) and discussed the fractions involved (1/20 of the sauce was on Abbi's pizza, Braelyn used 0/20ths of the pepperonis.) They had an activity sheet to do as the pizzas were cooking, and then they had to split their pizzas into halves, thirds, and fourths before devouring! 

1st Grade Harcourt Storytown Spelling Activities

I don't teach first grade, but my school-bestie does and she asked me to create a weekly HW booklet to send home for her kids to practice spelling homework with. Of course I said I would love to! Okay, I'll admit it, though. I had an ulterior motive... if I could train the first graders to do homework a certain way, when they got to second grade (and used the Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe Boards I created for my kids) they would already know how to do some of the activities.

1st Grade Harcourt Storytown Spelling Activities

Every Monday they will write their words 3 times each. Unlike the boards, these words are already written and give kids a clear, concise space to do so. Also, the clipart is adorable ;-)

The activities vary from week to week otherwise, so kids won't get bored and feisty. Here are a couple examples:

I CAN Statements for Virginia SOLs

In order to post daily objectives for reading and math (in a way that my students can actually understand what we're learning) I create these "I CAN" posters to hang in my classroom. They use the current Standards of Learning for each subject, and break down the SOLs into separate (and sometimes multiple) pages for sub-SOLs. I used the Grade 2 Curriculum Framework as inspiration, but used kid-friendly wording.

In addition to posting them, I think I'm going to print them onto address labels to stick to file folders containing the activities that correspond to each lesson. This way I can be sure that EVERY SINGLE PART of every SOL is covered.

National Children's Dental Health Month

This month, my students had several fun activities planned around TEETH, and ended the month with an egg-citing experiment about the effects of drinks on children's teeth.

I love that movie! But I digress... What Effects Do Drinks Have On Teeth? is a fun week-long experiment where students will collect data on what happens to eggs when exposed to various drinks. I will warn you that the cups smelled bad by the end of the week, but my kiddos really enjoyed it. The parents at our Academic Fair enjoyed it, too. So did our school nurse. She gave each of my students a toothbrush and toothpaste, and our school counselor used an entire lesson to teach the proper procedure. In my packet, I also included a how-to writing prompt on brushing teeth.