Build a Fence, but Don't Get Over It!

I was super excited to do this activity with my kinders when I thought about it. I got the idea from doing a similar activity with preschoolers a few years ago during undergrad... sort of. I looked back at my lesson from that time and it doesn't say I did this activity but I remember doing it so I'm sure it happened

... probably.

Anyway right as I was planning this I got an email from some of the district principals that said something to the effect of "If you'd like us to visit at any time let us know." So I responded asking them to come because I knew this would be one of my better lessons.

We started off by reading the story Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candance Fleming.

It's a story about a man who wants to plant a garden. One day he finally decides to but these little bunnies keep getting in and eating his crops. He tries a bunch of outrageous different ways to keep them out.

After reading the story, (and discussing it), we broke off into teams. Luckily I had a teaching assistant for the whole day today, I usually only have one for the morning. The kids worked together to draw a garden on the page provided to them. Before we read we talked about what things can grow in a garden. They drew things like carrots, tomatoes, even watermelons!

Once the gardens were drawn I told the kids they had to build a fence to keep the bunnies out. They were super excited when I told them their building materials were in my "mystery bag". I felt like I was reliving so many of the things I learned in my undergrad days like using a mystery bag as a hook. Inside the mystery bag was:

• marshmallows
• pipe cleaners
• toothpicks

They were only allowed to use those items to create their fence. The real kicker was what we were using for our "bunnies" to test the effectiveness of our fences.

I scored these little monsters at party city. They're these little pop up toys with suction cups on the bottom. When you push them all the way down they stay down and jump up into the air whenever the suction cup releases. The kids get a kick out of them.

Now I did tell them we were going to use them but I did NOT give them to the kids until the fences were built and they were ready to test them. As an added incentive to stay focused I told them they could eat the leftover marshmallows if they didn't eat the ones we were to be working with.

I tried to preset them that this was a teamwork activity and they should talk to each other and work together. Telling each other their ideas and listening to one another. My group did a great job at this but I didn't know until after we were finished that my TA's group had a much harder time with the sharing. I should have paid better attention to the way I grouped them I guess, I grouped them randomly. The only thing I did intentionally was not put the twins in my class in the same group.

Here are a few pix from the building and testing process.

 

 

 

 

They came up with some pretty interesting ideas. One groups even said they built in traps to catch the bunnies 🤣. It was really wonderful to watch them interact and use their minds in a different way. Then I let them take home their "bunnies" so overall it was a great project.

Out With the Old, In With the New

I've still been working as a Teachers Pay Teachers seller for the past few months and it is a lot of work, especially since I don't have my own classroom to test my products in.

However my colleagues have been pretty supportive.

I recently have been embracing the power of social media, not only for marketing my products, but for networking and receiving feedback.

I didn't jump into this thinking it would be easy or that I would just know how to do everything and I still don't think that. I'm learning everyday, particularly on facebook and the TpT forum. I have learned a lot about design and what catches the eye of a potential customer and how to make my story stand out simply by asking for help. While TpT is a very competitive marketplace, I have found that most of the other TpT authors are a very helpful bunch and willing to share their knowledge! Thank you to everyone who has helped me thus far!

Since you're already here, have some exclusive access to my new products, free for the first 48 hours!!

Punctuation Project!

I am working with a fifth grade student for tutoring and I noticed in her writing she could use a bit of a refresher course in punctuation.

I began by making an anchor chart with four basic punctuation marks, period, exclamation point, question mark, and comma.

Each mark had a short phrase addressing what their job is in writing.

After that, we discussed what each one does and came up with examples. I modeled some and let her write some as well. Then I hung it up in our tutoring room!

The finished product is kind of a jumbled mess if you weren't there to see how it was made but my student was very engaged and able to verbalize what each punctuation does as well as come up with examples. She loved being a part of making the poster as opposed to me just making it and telling her what's what.

DAB ON EM

I'm starting a research project with my second graders soon and I was trying to figure out a way to get them excited about it. I've seen those posters that make acronyms out of popular dances like Hit the Quan and Dab On Em so I jumped on board.

Our classroom is Minion themed so I try to incorporate Minions whenever I can. Lucky for me I happened to find a Minion doing the Dab on the internet. #Score

So our research process is as follows

Decide on a topic - Pretty self explanatory, pick what you're going to research

Ask questions - Figure out what things you want to know about your topic

Brainstorm answers to your questions - Make educated guesses and predictions about the answers to your questions. Also take this time to think about where your could find the answers.

Open a book - Look for information in books (a good excuse to get kids into the library as well as show them how we had to research before the internet was as accessible to kids as it is today)

surf the Net - Use the internet to search for answers on reputable websites

Evaluate your answers - Here's the step where we actually start answering the questions we want to know about our topic

Mark notes on paper - Don't forget to write down your answers!

Agent P teaches Pronouns

My students were having a problem remembering what a pronoun is and frankly I couldn't remember what they were off the top of my head when they asked. So I made them an anchor chart starring Perry the Platypus aka Agent P.

As I always tell my students, he may not be perfect but I tried my best. Anyway, I started the poster with the definition of what a pronoun is. We talked about it and I gave a few examples, then had the children come up with some examples and write them on the poster. I thought it'd be more meaningful if they got to help me make it instead of me just listing a bunch of words to them.

Author's Purpose

In a few days I will be taking the students to see Freckleface Strawberry. So the teacher I'm in for asked me to do a lesson on author's purpose using the story. Of course I came back with another anchor chart (Damn Danielle back at it again with the dope anchor charts).

I teach my students that "easy" is a math swear word, but in this case we'll make an exception. To help remember the parts common answers to "Why did the author write this story?" we say "Author's Purpose is Easy as Pie" but then I decided to add "Tea" as well.

So the choices are persuade, inform, entertain or teach also known as PIE with Tea.

After we read the story once to get the gist of it, we went over the choices again. Then we listened to the story again and the students wrote on post it notes which one they thought was the author's purpose and why. Then came up and stuck their post it on their choice.

As you can see most thought the purpose was to teach. However I preset them that there could be more than one right answer and just because the majority were on one choice doesn't mean their answer is wrong and to be confident in what they wrote and thought.

Suffixes

So back to second grade we go. I'm still in for that teacher that broke her foot. I know I'm posting all of these on the same day but that's just because this is the first free minute I've had, they didn't all take place on the same day.

Anyway during one of the stories we read this week the associated skill was suffixes so I made yet another cute chart to talk about suffixes and how they change the meaning of a word.

We talked about how when using a suffix you add it to a base word and it changes the meaning of the original word.

1. Slow + ly = slowly "To do something in a slow way"
2. Hope + ful = hopeful "To be full of hope"
3. Teach + er = teacher "A person who teaches"
4. Tall + er = taller "I am taller than my son" (enforce that it is important to compare to something. I got a lot of "The car is heavier" and "The teacher is taller" ... ok heavier than what? taller than what?)
5. Visit + or = visitor "A person who visits"
6. Child + ish = childish "To be like a child"

Capitalization

During one of my lessons I realized a fourth grader I was working with could use a reminder of when to capitalize letters when writing so I wrote a lesson for her about it. We started with a paragraph I had written, full of purposeful capitalization mistakes. We read the paragraph together, then went through it sentence by sentence. She located each capitalization error, then replaced it with the proper letters using post it notes.

 Some of them were obvious to her, while others were a struggle which brings me into my next lesson but we'll talk about that later. She was able to tell that "I" needed to be capitalized but unable to tell me why besides that it looked funny. She was very engaged however, she even asked if I would write her a new paragraph so we could do it again!

Main Idea and Details

While working with a fourth grader for a graduate school assignment we discussed finding the main idea and details in a story. We talked about why good readers find the main idea. We read the first chapter and a half of Brittany the Basketball Fairy by Daisy Meadows.

We used this fancy anchor chart I made to talk about it. Why do readers find the main idea? How do good readers find the main idea?

After the reading of the story as well as a few comprehension questions. My student filled out this graphic organizer identifying the main idea and 3 details supporting her main idea.

She didn't realize she was supposed to write each detail in one box at first. :-P

Mo Willems - Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

This week is second grade we've been reading some Mo Willems books. Well the teacher in the classroom had been. She recently got injured so I have been taking over for her. I read with them "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!"

I read the book, making sure to use funny voices for each character. After we read it I kept score on a smartboard scoreboard (just because using the smartboard always gets their attention) of how many kids would or would not let the Pigeon drive the bus.

I decided to mix a little fun with a following directions activity. The kids had been wanting to draw the pigeon so I decided to do a how to draw the Pigeon on the smartboard. So on the smartboard I had them follow me drawing the Pigeon one slow step at a time. A lot of them felt they couldn't do it but I reassured them that when you go one step at a time and take your time it becomes much simpler. After each step I had the children put down their pencils so A. they wouldn't try to go ahead of me then complain when their Pigeon was jacked up and B. so I could scan the room and not go forward until everyone was ready. Their Pigeons came out great and they were surprised at how well they did with their own hands and a pencil. When they were done I let them color them in.

I also thought I could cross it over into the math we had been learning which is about bar graphs. So I drew a cute chart and had each student come up and place their newly drawn Pigeon pictures on a bar graph for whether or not they would let the Pigeon drive the bus.

Prediction Board

Last week I conducted a lesson with two 6th grade girls from Thailand about making predictions. Basically what we did is read a story and make predictions.

What you'll need:

• Poster board (or easel paper)
• Different color post it notes for each child
• Pencils
• Crayons (or colored pencils)
• Enemy Pie by Derek Munson
• Paper

What to do:

1. Do a picture walk using Enemy Pie with the students. Have them make predictions every few pages using only the pictures. Have each student write their predictions on their own colored post its and stick them to the "I predict" column.
2. Have the students tell you why they came to their predictions on another post it note and stick it to the "Because" column (or the "evidence" column).
3. After the picture walk go back and read the story with the children having them make (but not write down) new predictions with the evidence of the words and pictures. When you come across the sections the students wrote predictions about, have them stop and go over their original predictions and write new post its about what actually happened.
4. Extension activity- Have the students create a poster advertising the story in a way that would get their friends and peers to read the book.