St. Patrick's Mischief

I have to report that we had some mischief happen in our classroom before Spring Break.  After reading a story about St. Patrick's Day, we decided to set a trap for a Leprechaun and use bits of gold jewelry to lure him into our trap.  The next morning, we discovered the Leprechaun had come into our classroom and messed everything up, stole our snacks, and took our gold.  Not only that, he left his footprints behind.  We immediately wrote a note to the principal to let him know what happened in our classroom.  Later in the day, we thought that maybe we should not have tried to trick him and wrote him a note.  Magically, after specials, our snacks were returned and the Leprechaun left special snacks.  Luckily, I checked over spring break and the Leprechaun brought back all of our gold.

Them Bones

In science, we are learning about healthy practices.  Excercise is a healthy practice that requires healthy bones.  Take a look at our macaroni sketelons.  What a wonderful vocabulary builder it was to talk about all of the bones. 

Blends

Here is our chart of blends that we created after reading the big book, Splash in the Ocean.  We discovered that we only have one student with a blend in his name, Braylon.

Texas

We studied some of the emblems of Texas this past week.  You can see Texas' small mammal, the armadillo.  We researched facts about these interesting animals and did an interactive writing  about what we learned.  Note our drawing and watercolor of the Texas bird, the mockingbird.  What artists I have!  Not shown are the Texas flags we made and the Texas flower, the bluebonnet.  Come to open house the week after spring break to see those displayed.

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).