Topics

1:1 Learning (1) 9/11 (1) ABC (5) Adjectives (4) Alliteration (1) American Government (7) Animals (1) Art (12) Artbotics (7) Australia (1) Author Study (1) BIG PLANS (16) Biographies (8) Black History Program (4) Blog love (18) Book Love (33) Boot Camp (2) Capacity (1) Celebrity Story Saturday (71) Charlotte's Web (25) CHEScompetition (1) ClassDojo (3) Common Core (6) Conservation (2) Contractions (2) Doubles (1) Dr. Seuss (8) Fact and Opinion (2) Family Night (1) Fiction and Nonfiction (1) Field Day (2) Field Trip (2) Food Chains (2) Fossils (1) Fractions (1) Friendly Letters (1) Garden (3) General Delk (5) George Washington Carver (2) Get It (3) Grammar (23) Guest Bloggers (1) Harriet Tubman (2) Health Fair (2) Holiday fun (9) Homophones (1) Inferring (1) Informational Writing (1) International Reading Association (1) iZone (4) Jan Richardson (1) Junior Achievement (3) Just for fun (36) Landforms (4) Lapbooks (3) Learning through play (7) Life Cycles (1) literacy centers (7) Literacy Night (1) Magnets (1) MakerSpace (1) Martin Luther King Jr (3) Math (34) Math Minutes (1) Mini Math Lessons (11) Mini Word Walls (3) Multiplication (3) Mythology (1) Natural Resources (1) Nouns (2) Parts of speech (1) Perimeter (1) Persuasive writing (1) Poetry (10) Power Points (20) Presidents (3) Printables (38) Professional Development (36) Projects (9) Public Library (1) QR Codes (2) Read 20 (6) Read Across America (5) Reading (28) Reads and Seeds (8) Reminders (15) Research Projects (6) Royalty (4) Science (38) Science experiment (12) Science Night (1) Sentences (3) Shapes (8) Shout Outs (35) Simile (4) SIOP (6) Small Groups (7) Social Studies (10) Solar System (3) Songs and Chants (6) songs in lessons (8) Space (2) Subject/ Predicate (1) Synonyms (1) Tall Tales (1) Tasty Text Tuesday (9) TCAP (2) Teach Like a Pirate (8) Time (1) Up-Cycling (1) Verbs (4) Vocabulary (19) Writing (15)

Monday, August 29, 2011

Day 14- "I had fun at school today."

Once again we started the week on a high note. The week is fresh; new poems, new stories, new activities. It might be the chocolate I just ate, but I love Mondays.

Today we started with a new poem. It's called "5 Little Apples". It's like the poem "5 Green and Speckled Frogs" or "5 Little Monkeys"- it's a poem that starts at 5 and slowly goes down to 1. We worked on fluency as well as recognizing number words.

After we introduced the poem, we looked at "I Saw It" and watched the video of Mr. Evans reading A Color of His Own. I had a few students tell me that they already heard Mr. Evans reading it to them over the weekend! Yea!

In reading we are still working on using ABC books. We have moved past using them as informational texts and have started using them as ways to begin questioning. We didn't use a story today, we used a picture that Common Core Curriculum (what Hamilton County has adopted) wanted us to use to start our brains thinking about questions. The picture is called Children's Games by Pieter Brueghel.

We started by making a list of question words that we know. That took a while. The kids are so used to asking questions that they don't even realize it! I would prompt them by saying things like,
"How would you ask me when we go to lunch?" 
And a student would reply, "When are we going to lunch?"
"OK, what was the first word you just said?"
"When."
"That's right! When is a question word that is asking about time!"

We went through a few more prompts until we had a good collection of question words. From there, I had the students put on their thinking faces and look at the picture while thinking of questions they would like to ask about it- using question words from the chart. Here are our questions.

For the word "Can" a student was wanting to ask one of the characters in the painting if he could flip.
For "Where" I had the kids take a quick poll of who thought it was set in the country and who thought it was in the city. One student replied that, "It has to be the country because no one in the city would dress that way." That comment prompted our "When" discussion, and we decided that the picture had to be made in the past.

The best discussion came from asking "Who" was in the painting. When I let the kids have a closer look, they saw that the characters in the painting looked more like adults than children. That confused the kids a little and prompted the "Why" question of why adults would be playing with children's toys. The same student raised her hand and said, "If they're in the country, maybe there's nothing else to do." What a brilliant mind. :)

To extend our lesson, we made a list of games that children like to play now.


I then told my students to choose an activity from the board and illustrate someone, or a group of someones, doing that activity. The end result will be all of their activities together in one picture for a modern version of the painting. I'll let you know how it turns out.

In math our lesson was on ordering three numbers. We used our number cards and practiced putting numbers in order from least to greatest, then from greatest to least. * This would be an easy activity to do with a pack of cards at home. Choose 3 cards, not face cards, and practice putting them in order.

In science we are moving on from categorizing living and nonliving things and are focusing on plants and their needs. Today we played a game called Science Questions for Tickets! I asked the students questions about the previous unit and their team got tickets for every right answer! It's amazing what kids will remember when a ticket is on the line.
After the game, we working on learning the parts of a flower. We started by making sure the students were familiar with the song Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.


After practicing, and wiggling, we turned ourselves into flowers. Our heads turned into the flower. Our arms turned into leaves, our legs into stems, and our toes into roots. Tomorrow we will focus on learning the jobs of each part, but for today just the parts were enough.


I will put the video of us as flowers in another post. :)
I know that by Friday our minds will be mush and we'll be ready for the weekend, but I'm glad that we seem to be having marvelous Mondays!

p.s. At the very end of the day, after I had taken the car riders to the cafeteria, one of my little soldiers looked at me and said, "Mrs. Delk, I had fun today." I gotta admit, that made me smile. :)

Our Daily Brain

No comments:

Post a Comment