Celebrity Story Saturday 30

One of my favorite people... the first grade writing guru... newly engaged... Ms. Leahy!

I grabbed...er... persuaded her to be our reader before she left for the day yesterday. She will be reading a wonderful story about... UNDERPANTS! (We do love underpants in my class!)
Notice- she even wore animal print to celebrate the occasion!

Click {HERE} to hear the story, or watch it below!

or

Now we can start our spring break in style! Thanks, Ms. Leahy!

Day 142- How It's Made...PB&J

I don't know if you've ever experienced the show How It's Made, but it is fabulous! Mr. Russell uses his Netflix account to be able to watch it at school- the kids ask for it! It's wonderful for when students ask, "How do you...?" It teaches science, technology, future life skills, and good American manufacturing. Who could ask for anything more?

In science this we reviewed states of Matter: solids, liquids, and gasses. Of course, we needed a visual of a manufactural enterprise that incorporated all three. What better than the Coca-Cola company?

Part 1 is about creating the plastic bottles, then filling them. The plastic for the bottles is the solid, the drink is the liquid, and the bottles are moved around the factory using air- a gas! Just watching the bottles move is amazing. It's so fast! Did you notice how the video said that 800 bottles of coke are made every minute? That's 13.3 bottles every second!

Part 2 is about cans of Coke. Cans can be made 3x faster than bottles! Holy cow! I think my students were more impressed with the cans. They were very happy to see the thorough cleaning the cans received before being filled. No one wants to drink dirty Coke!

We didn't watch Part 3, but you can if you click on the link. It's about glass bottles. We have talked bout the properties of Coca Cola the drink- it is a liquid and gas combination. And we have done science experiments with it, you can see the posts {HERE} and {HERE}.

I decided to take our love of How It's Made to the next level.
We combined:
1. Science- following a plan (just like in science experiments)
2. Writing- sequencing
3. Our love of a certain tv show (check the title)
4. Our love of snacks

All together, we have the perfect way to end a day: How to make a PB&J sandwich.
We charted out our plan of attack first through sequencing the steps.

We made sure we had all the ingredients.

We called in our wonderful Ms. Smith to be our camerawoman, and we were ready to roll!

(the camera wasn't the greatest- the other camera we usually use had dead batteries)

I hope you enjoyed watching it! We certainly had fun making it! Don't worry, everyone in the audience received a sandwich of their own. :)

**Reminder- Spring Break is all next week! NO SCHOOL! Be working on your math packets!**
** Check back tomorrow for the next Celebrity Story Saturday!**

Day 141- I can hardly stand it!

Just one more day of school until Spring Break! I tried telling my students that there was no school tomorrow, but no one believed me.

Today grades 3-5 were treated to a Science Fair hosted by Parkridge Medical Center. Ms. Williams from Williams' Winners made sure to get pictures so she could update her blog. Check out her SCIENCE FAIR post!

Since our related arts teachers were needed to help with the Fair, we had extra time this morning. We decided to get into the healthy spirit of the day by completing our health fair activities from yesterday. I passed out paper plates, magazines and newspapers and my students were given these directions: create healthy plates!

Of course they had a great time. I heard things like, "Don't use that! That's a whoa food!" Thanks, Mrs. Custer and Mrs. Blowe!

During writing we worked on summarizing a story.

I have a confession to make... teaching writing is not my favorite. I'm a good writer, but teaching it gives me anxiety. I fully depend on the writing gurus Ms. Leahy and Mrs. Brock. I had Ms. Leahy walk me through a writing lesson and I started feeling more confident in my teaching. We'll see how long that lasts. :)

I made sure we worked on a story that we were familiar with. We've done a previous post on comparing and contrasting The Three Little Pigs and the True Story of the Three Little Pigs.So, today we reread the 3 pigs' story and worked on writing a summary using the 5-Finger retell.

I told my students that we only had one sheet of chart paper to use, so we wouldn't tell every detail. We only needed the most important details.
Here is what we came up with!

Ms. Leahy shared that the key to good whole-group writing lesson is reading each sentence as it gets written, that way we can make sure the sentences flow together. Each student who added a sentence also got to choose the color the sentence was written in. That made for a colorful summary!

Here's a little video of us reading the final product. Um... it might be a little shaky. I was filming with one hand and pointing to the words with the other.

One of these days I will sneak into Leahy's class and get video of a writing lesson. I'll be totally ninja, she won't even know I was there!

Math was also taken from Ms. Leahy. Yesterday she had her students conduct their own surveys, create tally charts with their findings, then create a bar graph with their tally data. Awesome!
So, my students received a post-it and were told to choose two things to compare. Most students chose to survey favorite colors, some chose different video games. Girls surveyed the girls and boys surveyed the boys.

 blue or white

 cupcakes or cookies

 red or blue

 puppy or cat

 Chipmunks game or Phineas and Ferb game

Literacy center pictures:

 spelling texters

 adorable kindergarten student who got to spend the day with us :)

word wall

**Tomorrow is the last day before Spring Break! It is game day during our Fun Friday time- students who received a purple paper get to bring a hand-held game or board game to play in the afternoon.**

Here's a fun little video for the Three Little Pigs!

Day 140- K-2 Health Fair

Tomorrow Parkridge Medical Center is putting on our second annual Science Fair for the students in grades 3-5. We didn't want our K-2 students to feel slighted, so today was our first Health Fair.

The Health Fair covered the topics of:
1. Physical Fitness
2. Heart Healthy Living
3. Healthy Eating Habits
4. Dental Hygiene
5. Body Hygiene
6. Hand Washing

I tried to get pictures and video of each segment.

Physical Fitness by Mr. Burney

Mr. Burney started by giving us 4 tips to living a longer, more enriched life.
1. Eat healthy
2. Gets lots of sleep
3. Be happy
4. EXERCISE!

The fourth one is the one that he focused on. Exercise is important because it helps blood flow through your body and keeps your heart healthy. Here is an activity where we checked out heart beat before exercising, and then after. The students were to run in place for 20 seconds.

But it's not all about one's heart rate. Exercise should also test your mind. In this video, Mr. Burney gives the students a task with the stacking cups.

Then they had one last challenge:

*Phew* That was some workout! Thanks Mr. Burney!

Heart Healthy Living by Mrs. Overton

 Mrs. Overton shared how important it is to keep our hearts healthy. She began by having the students make a fist, then study it. Did you know that your heart is about the size of your fist? I'll wait for a moment while you check it out for yourself...

Then she told my students that she wanted them to make a hypothesis about what would happen if we started exercising. Would there be a difference between a heart in a person who is resting and a person who is exercising?
Of course, as soon as she said hypothesis my students' eyes brightened because we know all about making hypothesis!

My students hypothesized that the heart would be beating faster after exercising. 

Of course we had to test this, and I was the guinea pig. First we tracked my resting heart rate- 70 bets per minute. Then I 'exercised' for a minute. (I cranked up some music and danced around the room. Thank goodness no one had the camera for that!) My heart rate after exercising was 110 beats per minute. Our hypothesis was proven correct!

Healthy Eating Habits by Mrs. Custer and Mrs. Blowe

No picture, but good video! Our wonderful Lead Math and Reading teachers shared with us how to make sure we are eating healthy foods. First we created a tally chart of how many people were already eating healthy.

How wonderful is it that they included our math topic into the lesson? Love it!

Did you know that the Food Guide Pyramid has been changed? I didn't either! Now students can track their healthy foods by just thinking about their plate. Check out Choose My Plate.gov for more details!

 

The best part of the lesson was when Custer/ Blowe told the kids that there are 3 types of foods:

1. Go!

2. Slow! 

and 3. Whoa! 

GO foods are foods that give energy and vitamins. They are healthy foods that are good anytime.

SLOW foods are foods that are ok to eat sometimes, but not all the time,

WHOA foods are foods you need to stop and think about before eating. These foods are not healthy, full of sugar or fat, and fill up your tummy so you won't feel hungry to eat healthy foods.

Here's a little video of the lesson. Click {HERE} or watch it below.

Dental Hygiene by Mrs. Hughes

Mrs. Hughes introduced the lesson by sharing with us a little experiment she conducted at home. She used apples to illustrate the importance of dental health.

This apple was part of the control group. This apple was treated well and not damaged by gross germs or too much sugar. (just go with it)

This was the experimental group. This apple was damaged by having too much sugar which caused a cavity. Gee, I wonder what happened to the inside of the apple after being damaged with a cavity?

Oh my goodness! The cavity caused the apple to turn brown and tender!
I guess this goes to show, we should make sure to eat the right foods and treat our teeth nicely by brushing and flossing regularly to make sure that our teeth don't become brown and tender too!
(Mrs. Hughes also shared an awesome video, but I left the website at home. I'll post it here tomorrow.)

Body Hygiene by Mrs. Barnes

 We've talked about taking care of our bodies on the inside, but what about on the outside? Mrs. Barnes reiterated how important it is to eat healthy foods because it keeps your insides healthy, but it also helps your skin, hair, nails, and vision. 
Past that, physical hygiene is also about making sure that your body stays clean. It's important to wash your hands throughout the day to kill germs and it is important to take baths or showers regularly to wash away germs and odors. 
Just like not cleaning your car can cause rust and decay, not cleaning your body can cause disease and sores. I know we don't want that!

Hand washing by Me! 
This was originally to be taught by Nurse Burney (our wonderful school nurse, and Mr. Burney's cousin) but she was out sick today. So, each teacher was to teach this lesson to their class during the time Nurse Burney would have been in their classroom. 

I actually didn't have to do much, it was my class that taught me! 
Did you know that you shouldn't eat right after you sneeze into your hands? Apparently sneezing spreads germs and if you sneeze into your hands, the germs will be on your hands! So I had my students walk me through washing my hands properly, and we all practiced washing our hands in the bathroom. 
Fun times! 

Thank you, everyone for sharing such wonderful information! Let's do this again next year!

Day 139- Tour Guide Barbie teaches math

Remember in Toy Story 2 when Andy's toys were in the toy store and were being driven around by Tour Guide Barbie? Remember the over-enunciation of her words and the constant smile? Now imagine Tour Guide Barbie teaching a math lesson on graphing.

Everyone knows that teachers are 50% information and 50% stage production. What is a classroom if not a stage with a captive audience? So, it was on this 'stage' where I let my acting ability shine. I taught the entire graphing lesson with Barbie's voice.

I didn't get video, because I don't feel the world is ready for my theatrical debut, but I will say that my students were enthralled. So, I encourage other teachers who may be reading this, or parents who wish their kids would pay a little more attention to them, to try an accent.

Tomorrow I think I'll go with British. I'll start practicing my Elizabeth Bennett tonight.

Here are some wonderful compound word activities we did today for review.

 Cut and paste on the front, and sentences on the back when they finished.

We did a few science experiments by finding and charting items that were magnetic and nonmagnetic. Here are our findings:

Literacy Center pictures:

 Rhyming word match-up

Spelling Texters

** Tomorrow is our first ever Health Fair- just for grades K-2! Different presenters will be coming around to the classrooms to teach us things that will keep us healthy. I'm feeling lots of pictures and possibly videos!**

Day 138- Paula Abdul teaches science

That's right, our science lesson was brought to us by none other than Paula Abdul! My students were thrilled! My fellow teachers were in awe! And all I had to do was go to youtube and fine {THIS} handy little video!

What a blast from the past, right? I bet you're wondering what we were studying. Well, if you listen to the chorus, (which is what we listened to in class)  I bet you can figure it out for yourself.

That's right! MAGNETS!

Opposites attract! Magnets have two poles, north and south, and they connect with each other. They won't connect to the same pole!

Check out this video for proof!

My students had the best time watching the magnets chase each other on the ELMO. I let everyone hold one magnet and I let them feel the 'push' from the other magnet.

We went on to talk about how magnets were attracted to metals what had iron and steel in them. In this video we see how strong a magnetic hold can be.

How fun! And who knew that Paula Abdul could be educational?

Here is our vocabulary for the week:

 Our 8-squares during center time:

I wonder which celebrity will teach us tomorrow?!

Our Daily Brain

Celebrity Story Saturday 29

Welcome to the Celebrity Club, Ms. Hawkins! You might recognize Ms. Hawkins from her blog Figurin' Out Fourth. Ms. Hawkins was a third grade teacher last year and she was fortunate enough to get to loop with her students this year.

Hawkins is one of my favorite people at the Hills because she allows me to pick her brain on a regular basis. She is a wealth of information and know-how. One of these days I will master how to make videos with more pizzazz. :)

Today, Ms. Hawkins is going to read the book Officer Buckle and Gloria.

We read this book in class waaaaaay back in August when we talked about amazing animals. Gloria is one amazing dog!
Thanks for sharing with us. Ms. Hawkins!

Click {HERE} to hear the story, or watch it below.

 It never fails, during  reading there's an announcement!