This week I spent time with each class promoting our upcoming Scholastic Book Fair. In addition, I continued with lessons on the following:
Fifth Graders watched a DVD, titled Sacajawea. We used this to document information on our Lotus Diagram about Lewis and Clark's expedition.
Fourth graders enjoyed listening to Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies written by Carolyn Crimi, in support of their upcoming annual Pirate Day. We compared this story to the facts we have learned about Blackbeard. What a blast!
(From amazon.com: Henry is not a typical buccaneer bunny. Instead of performing his proper pirating duties, he would rather read the books that he took from other ships. His father, the captain, is not proud of his son and the rest of the crew makes fun of him. When they are shipwrecked on a deserted island, however, it is Henry and his book smarts that save the day.)
Third graders learned about alliteration by listening to Super Hero ABC. Students then chose a letter of the alphabet, made up a sentence using alliteration and illustrated their own super hero. What a fun way to learn about alliteration!
Second Graders continued with a Jannell Cannon book titled, Crickwing. Crickwing is tired of being bullied. He wants only to create food scuptures to eat himself...not by others...so he sets out to pick on others smaller and more vulnerable than himself....what an ending....you will have to read it yourself to find out how his life changes. Reading this book was not only enjoyable, but had a valuable lesson in character education.
First grades read Ox-cart Man, written by Donald, and is the 1980 winner of the Caldecott Award. This lesson supported the past and present objectives in the classroom. The book focuses on the yearly passage of one man selling his goods only to do it all over again the next year. We used a diagram of the seasons and placed what happened each season with the specific months. This book can be used for various cross curricular objectives.
Kindergarteners began their lesson with a nonfiction text about owls. We learned about what happens as they grow older after being hatched from an egg. After learning about their life cycle we picture walked through a harder nonfiction text which had excellent photographs of different owls with their common name and where they lived. We listed several facts about owls that we learned during our special and followed up with a fiction story about three little baby owls named Sarah, Percy, and Bill. The book was titled, Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. It was hilarious. Most students wanted to check out this book to take home. I was so sad...I only had two copies.
