A Peek at My Week-November 10, 2013

I am linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek at My Week.
 
Because of Veterans Day, this next week will be short of course, but it will be even shorter for me since I am taking the GRE on Wednesday! And although I should be working on sub plans as we speak, I am blogging instead! LOL!

 Daily 5 (Reading and Writing Mini-Lessons)

 We are finishing up our poetry unit and will continue to work on reading Love that Dog and using mentor texts to write our own poems.  I will be posting more about this later on this week and next week, but I am loving how their work is turning out!  My reluctant writers are turning into poets!  

 Math 

 This week begins our division unit.  Most of my kiddos are still struggling with the concept of division and their basic division facts, so this week will be an extensive review before we dive into the processes of long division.   I just started small math group instruction two weeks ago and I am LOVING it.  I really loved when one of my struggling kiddos said, "The best part of math rotations is working with the teacher!" (My other rotations are seat work and games). I feel like I can really give each student what they need and ALL of my students are making progress instead of just a few.  

 One of the games I will be adding to the rotations this week is this division bump freebie game from Games 4 Learning. 

Social Studies

We will continue learning about the Pony Express.  We had a re-enactment done a few weeks ago sharing letters from our school to another local elementary school which the kids loved!  We have been reading a few pages of this book everyday.

We will then start learning about Native Americans in our state.

Science

This week starts our unit on systems of the human body.  

Seems like an awful lot to cover in a short week, but somehow we will make it all work!

Teaching Subjects and Predicates With Mr. Morton - FREEBIE

‘Mr Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says he does.’

 

That song is ingrained in my brain after I used the Grammar Rock anthem to teach some of my kiddos about subjects and predicates.  Several of them were having difficulty with  writing complete sentences, and most of them were thrown into a tizzy when we were working on some of Jivey's amazing grammar lessons when they were asked to identify the subject and predicate in her mentor sentences.

 

So... a mini-lesson was in order.

 

First we watched the video:

 

 

 

 

Then we practiced identifying the subject and the predicate in the sentences from the video. They really got it after I modeled a few of the sentences.

 

 

 

I also found this picture from Doxie House that I will definitely incorporate next year or if I have a few strugglers.

 

I made a free worksheet for you to use with your students if you would like.  You can download it here. 

While you are there, be sure to follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers for the chance to win a $25 TpT gift certificate :D

Failing to Plan is Planning To Fail - Creating Your Long Term Plans for the School Year

 

 

You have probably heard this adage a time or two, but have you ever followed it?  This will be the second year in a row that I am switching grades (last year I switched from 7th grade math to 3rd grade and this year I am moving up to 4th), and I don't want to feel like I don't know where I'm going.  So, I used the curriculum map we have from our school district, and added the things that aren't there (science, social studies, grammar, and writing) to create a set of Long-Term plans for the year.  Even if I don't stick to it 100%, I feel better having a plan to cover everything I need to during the year.

 

 

It didn't print out 100% perfectly, but since I' m the one who is using it, I'm ok with that.  If any of you know how to fix it, I'm all ears :)

 

I have put the plans in the back of my lesson planning notebook for future reference as I start working on individual units.  The front of my lesson plan book is for my weekly plans and monthly calendars where I will list out everything including special events, assemblies, etc.

 

I will be sharing my complete book in a little bit - I bought the Staples Circa I had my eye on and am working on customizing it to fit for me. 

 

I have uploaded the Excel version of this document so that you can edit it and use it if you would like - setting it up took forever, so I thought I would save you some time. It is a freebie, and all you have to do to get it is to like my Facebook page here.  It is in the Facebook Fan Freebie tab.

 

Do you make long term plans?



Why We Shouldn't Waste Water - FREEBIES

We have been working on a unit our unit for Common Core Standard RI.3.3 - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
We had previously compared the amount of water and land on the Earth.

Today we learned why we shouldn't waste water even though there is so much of it on the Earth.

I started by asking the kiddos to name all of the ways that they used water.  I had them come up to the SmartBoard to write their answers (for some reason writing on the SmartBoard has been a great motivator).

Here were some of their ideas (please forgive their misspelling - I wanted to get through this part without correcting them).

Then I had them look at the inflatable globe to remind me how much of the Earth was covered with water.  I asked them, "If there is so much water on the Earth, why do we always talk about saving water?" I used the inflatable globe as a discussion monitor.  They couldn't talk unless they were holding the globe which I threw to them if they raised their hand.

 

After we discussed their ideas (which included because water costs so much - in our town it does), I asked them to make a prediction about how much water on the Earth is drinkable. 

 

 

 

They wrote their predictions on index cards.

 



 



Then we talked about how much it really was.  They were surprised to see that we really have a small amount - just a drop really!

 

 

 Then I had them write a paragraph comparing their original prediction to the results from our model.

 

 

 I will be putting this unit together in a complete unit, but, for now, here is the lesson plan from today including how to model the amount of water on the Earth. 



Here is the lesson plan for this activity. 

Learning About Frogs - Carousel

We are beginning a research/non-fiction unit on frogs (since we will be getting a class pet soon!). Before I told the kiddos what the unit was about (and what pet we were going to get), I had them complete a carousel activity.  I set up 6 stations around the room with pictures and chart paper. The chart paper was pre-labeled with "What I Notice" and "What I Wonder".

The students worked in groups of 3 and had 3 minutes at each station to talk about what they noticed.  Each group had a different colored marker and wrote down some of their observations and questions.

It was really fun to see what things they noticed (and what things grossed them out!). It was a great way to introduce the unit and get their brains engaged.  They did eventually guess that we would be learning about frogs.

I am working on the complete unit as they work on it, but I will eventually post the final unit to TpT when it is done.  In the meantime, you might want to check out my Can We Get a Pet Unit which kicked off the whole project you see here!

Have you used a carousel in class before? What other engagement ideas do you use?