Pretend It's in the Lesson Plan

Do you ever have activities just jump into your brain? 

I'm not sure if it's inspiration or just my pregnancy brain but I've made some last minutes adjustments to my lesson plans lately. 

We had been working on inferences and deductions. It was the Friday before Easter. 

I had been reading some "What Am I" riddles to my reading comprehension group and one boy said, "These are fun! I want to make my own." 

*Spark*

Pulled out the construction paper… whipped up an example… let them try it out

I thought they turned out decent for spur of the moment. Next year I will have it actually planned and we'll spend a little more time on it. Enjoy!

(Close ups of a couple eggs and their clues coming soon… I forgot to take them and if I don't get this posted, it may not happen.)

Once a week we specify one of our homeroom blocks as geography. We've been spending a lot of time on learning the states. I have one puzzle of the whole US. I wanted the kids to have to place the states but didn't want to make paper puzzles. 

What do I do? 

I gave each student 2 puzzle pieces. (I have 27 students but a couple were absent so it worked out.)

They then had to put the puzzle together as a class, silently. They could only touch their own pieces, but they could suggest where someone should put their pieces by pointing. They also had to step out of the inner circle if they didn't have any pieces in their hands. This kept 1-2 student from taking over the whole activity. I also timed them. It ended up being a great class building activity. Everyone was involved, most of the students were pretty positive with each other. That is a huge plus as this has been a rough year with the way our students have been treating each other.

My future plans for this… acquire 3-4 more US puzzles and have races with smaller groups. 

If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Anchor's Away- Point of View

Now I feel a little silly and embarrassed to admit this, but this is the first anchor chart I've done this year. I blame it partly on me having to embrace and do three different scripted reading programs during my reading class (we level and split the whole grade up). I was pushing it to get all three done in the time period, let along do anything extra. 

Well, we finished one level of one of the programs and I decided to do some review before our big state tests next week. One of the topics was Point of View. I found this great freebie from Buzzing With Mrs. B and it came with an anchor chart idea and a practice packet. It came out great!

After we created the chart and talked about it, we practiced identifying what was what using the practice packet. It is the same story written three different ways. We highlighted the words that were clues to us and then identified what point of view it was written from.

This ended up being a great lesson. My kids even made connections to stories that we've read together!

Next, we are going to write our own paragraphs based on this photo...

The kids will get to choose what point of view they will take.

1st person or 3rd person (limited or omniscient)

and

Bear or Fish

Check out other anchor chart ideas at Deb's Crafting Connections.

Topic, Main Idea, and Details: Ice Cream

Topic, Main Idea, and Details is one comprehension skill that my students had a hard time with this year. When asked for the main idea, they would usually give me a 1-2 word answer. I actually won this creativity from Deb Hanson at Crafting Connections last fall, through one of the many giveaways I enter. I had it set aside ready to use, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it with my students and to work it into our reading program. My school levels for core classes so I have one group of kids for reading, one group of math, and another group for homeroom/science/social studies.

With only 4 reading days left, I decided to just plunge in and try it. I needed a change of pace and if I needed it, the kids definitely needed it! My students were excited that we were going to be doing a craftivity, even though they had no clue what it was. I had my own example started to introduce the activity. Each ice cream cone had a sentence on it. That was the main idea. Each ice cream scoop had a sentence that was a supporting detail to one cone. I then asked what was it that each ice cream cone was talking about. Ice Cream! The topic of all of them was ice cream! Yum!

Once I set the kiddos loose on their own, I did have some frustration due to the fact that the students have very little patience. This was a great activity to help them work through that. There was a lot of cutting, glue, and coloring for them to persevere through. It was great to hear the conversations between the students on what details went where or a reaction to some of the unusual ice cream flavors. 

This was a fun first go at this activity. I'm really excited for the possible extensions in the future! One extension that a student actually came up with will be great for my intervention reading class next year. She suggested that we take all of our ice cream cones and rewrite them into paragraphs and decorate it with an ice cream border. My jaw almost dropped because I think that is a great idea! It will help highlight the writing process. You start with a topic, come up with the main ideas of each of your paragraphs, and then add details to each. Ta Da! You have an essay!

You can get the product here.

There is actually a bit more to the product then I have talked about. 

What do you do to help students separate the concept of Topic and Main Idea?

*Steph*

A Book A Day {Day 6}

with Confessions of a Teaching Junkie

It's Day 6! 

One of the comprehension strategies that is taught in my 4th grade reading program is Cause & Effect. Not just that one thing causes another, but that that effect can become a cause of another effect. Essentially, forming a cause and effect chain. When we get to that concept, I like to pull out books by Laura Numeroff. Her books are great for cause and effect. Visit her website for some other ideas on how to use her books.

The school version is fun to use at school, but I prefer to use one of the pig versions. Pigs are my favorite animal! My students enjoy the moose version because here in Alaska, we run into a lot of moose!

This is a great *FREEBIE* from Fun in Room 4B to use in conjunction with the "If You Give A…" series!