President's Day

During our President's Day Unit, we learned about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  One day we wrote about what we learned about George Washington during interactive writing time.  Interactive writing is when the teacher and the student share the pen to write the story.  After learning about George Washington, we compared and contrasted the two presidents using a double bubble map.  We also learned about our flag as well as other symbols for the United States.  During math, we created fun Patriotic Cupcake Glyphs. 

Rain Writing

Our Big Book for this week was A Rainy Day.  We made a Tree Map of the good and bad things about rain from the book.  On one day, we wrote about good things about rain.  On another day, we wrote about bad things about rain.

Word Wall Word Activity

Each week, we have new word wall words.  One activity we do to practice reading and writing our new word wall words is to write a story using those words.  The leader gets to write the sentence on our big chart.  Others write on their white boards.  The white boards are extra big so that they will fit on top of knees while writing.  I purchased white tile board from Home Depot and they were cut in 12 x 18 inch rectangles for free.  We call this interactive writing because the teacher is involved in making sure the sentence is correct.

Retelling a story

 Our comprehension strategy for this week is learning how to retell a story.  We made a flow chart showing the life cycle of an oak tree.  Our key words for retelling the story were first, then, next, last.  We practiced retelling the story using the key words on charts.  If the weather permits, we will practice retelling the story to a partner, then writing and illustrating the story using a flip page (or what I call peek-a-boo page).