Back to School

We started back to school this past Wednesday. I have most of the same students from last year, so we pretty much picked up where we left off.

We started off by reviewing the classroom/school rules by reading David Goes to School. It was a great way to talk about appropriate and inappropriate school behavior. We made two anchor charts for what good students do and what they do not do. We discussed all of the literary elements of the story and all sorted 'dos' and 'don'ts' in terms of behavior.

After discussing behavior the students wrote about the school rules they will follow this school year. They even made this adorable little David craftivity. I love how each of them are so different, even when given the same pieces.

We're off to a great start for the new school year. It's going to be an interesting year with the kiddos I have. The dynamics are very different that last year. We're going to have a lot of fun this year!

Popcorn

We recently finished up reading The Popcorn Book by Tomie DePaola.  I wanted something fun for our last classroom read aloud of the year. We learned all about how corn is grown and harvested for popcorn.  We had a popcorn taste test by sampling four varieties and graphing our favorite flavor. We did this fun popcorn adjective activity. Then we wrote about popcorn.  I'm sure this was my student's favorite book to read and activities we did all school year. Food seems to keep them motivated! :)

 

When we read the book, we kept our anchor chart of vocabulary. The students made these cute little popcorn boxes to store their vocabulary words they wrote on popcorn pieces. They turned out adorable and it was a great way to practice reading our new vocabulary words.

 

For our final activity, we wrote about popcorn.  It was perfect to be able to differentiate the levels with the same activity. The older students chose a few adjectives to write on their popcorn pieces in their popcorn buckets. They also had a higher level writing template to use.

The younger students wrote three simple sentences about their popcorn taste test. It's been a challenge this year being able to differentiate for all levels of students I have in my class. At times it wasn't perfect and I felt like I had to pick the middle and run with it. But I know that each and every one of my students made excellent progress this year, so I'm happy with that.

Here are some of the resources I used for this unit:

Let's Get Poppin' with Adjectives!
Popcorn and Movie Day! Theme Days for End of School! -Free
Popcorn Prepositions!
Popcorn! A Five Senses Mini-Unit- Free
Math - Popcorn Graphing- Free
Popcorn Box Template- Free
 

Author Study: Doreen Cronin

 

This afternoon we finished up our Author Study on Doreen Cronin.  I really enjoy her books and they are fun to read with the kids. We recently read Diary of a Worm and then Diary of a Spider for our classroom read aloud.  They were the perfect books to tie in some science concepts.  We worked on living/non-living, and insects vs. spiders.  The younger kids labeled parts of an insect and spider and learned a lot of new insect vocabulary. Since the books were written in a diary format, we also focused on sequencing the months of the year.

I found this cute paper plate Venn Diagram on Pinterest so we made our own. We compared our two stories that we read. The older kids are getting really good at understanding where to place concepts that are the same and different and how to use the Venn Diagram.

A few days before we had compared insects vs. spiders using post-it notes and hula hoops. They really enjoyed this activity.

I am loving Teachers Pay Teachers. I found great resources there to help with our literature and science. I am especially loving the premade Power Points that people are willing to share. I might just have to open up a TpT seller account so I can share my vocabulary Power Points that go with our read alouds. For free. =)

Here are some of the resources I used:
Diary of a Worm Sequencing/Timeline Activity- Freebie
Worm Farm Video on PBS
Diary of a Worm Literacy Mini Unit
Incredible Insect Literacy Centers- Freebie
Label an Insect- Freebie
Insect Invasion Listening Worksheet- Freebie
Insect Invasion! Vocabulary Word Wall Cards- Freebie
Insect or Not?- Freebie
Insects PowerPoint- Freebie
Insects Write the Room- Freebie (Write the Room is seriously one of my younger student's new favorite activities!)