I love St. Patrick's Day. It reminds me of when I lived in New Jersey on the Jersey Shore and attended the Belmar St. Patty's Day Parade. (I believe everyone in New Jersey was in the parade...not really, then no one would be watching...anyway it lasted about 2.5 hours)Fifth grade continued to work on their Iditarod PowerPoint presentation. I showed the students how to access the mushers and find some information about them along with the mushers' picture. I also showed a podcast of Lance Mackey, now a three time winner of the Iditarod races, who is a cancer survivor. His father was also a winner of the 1978 Iditarod by ONE SECOND!!!! for more info go to
http://www.mackeyscomebackkennel.com/About.htm
scroll to the middle of the page and click on the podcast. Watch his lead dog. He must know he is a champion.
Fourth grade enjoyed one of my favorite lessons about decoding words. We listened to the book Baloney by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. We used context clues and picture support to decode the words we did not understand. After listening to the book we guessed what the words meant based on the strategies we reviewed and checked for accuracy. Those strategies really worked! We then read the story with the "real words" ...it was hilarious!
Third grade listened to a book titled Personal and Confidential. The story is about a girl who writes to a pen pal, Malcolm, who turns out to be blind and uses a brailling machine to communicate by mail. When Malcolm writes back in braille, we used the braille alphabet to decode his letter. It was much harder than it looked.
Second grade enjoyed the story about a pig....no not Charlottes Web, Babe, or Olivia....It was Chester! The Worldly Pig by Bill Peet. Chester wants to run away and become a star, in a circus. He gets his wish but finds the circus is no place for him. He returns to life on a farm until he is bought by a traveling side show...because of his appearance. He is a worldly pig but not because of his travels. You'll have to read the book to find out why he is called "worldly"...You really didn't think I would give the story away did you?
First graders enjoyed a fiction and nonfiction book about St. Patrick's Day. Our fiction book consisted of Tomie dePaola's, Jamie O'Roarke and the Big Potato. It is an Irish folktale and Jamie is the laziest man in Ireland. You would think he learns a lesson...and he does. We all enjoyed this selection of gold, leprechauns, and praties...(potatoes).
Kindergarteners also enjoyed a fiction book about St. Patrick's Day. It was a tail-waggin tail of friendship with a leprechaun and a dog named Lucky as the main characters. As the story ends, we learn that real friends are better than gold! The Luckiest Leprechaun by Justine Korman.
