Five for Friday - March 24

Another short week for me as today was a full day of professional development.  I'm linking up for another Five for Friday post... here are some highlights from our week! 

ONE: Pete the Cat

Next Monday the K-2 classrooms will be attending a Pete the Cat play!  I'm so excited to see my kiddos reactions as they experience live theater.  Some kids have never seen a play before and there's always a sense of confusion and wonderment as they try to figure out how this is happening on stage.  To prepare for the play on Monday we've spent the week reading some Pete the Cat books! 

TWO: US Symbols

We started one of my favorite units of study this week... US symbols.  The kids are always so engaged during this unit and this week was no exception.  We took it slow to start off focusing on what symbols are and what America means to them.  Here are a few of the responses I got!

On day two we talked about the US flag and my kiddos already knew or observed a ton about the flag.  We read a few short nonfiction books and then wrote down some of the most important facts related to the flag.  

After writing the facts we talked about what the flag stands for and we worked on two new vocabulary words, freedom and courage.  I find it helpful to have the kids come up with their own definition first.  If necessary I will tweak it and then I have them teach each other what the words mean.  This seems to be the best way for them to really understand the word to the point where they can actually use it in their conversations.  Whole brain teaching techniques are so helpful when learning new vocabulary and I am excited to see what they can do with these new vocabulary words next week!

THREE: Opinion Writing

This week our opinion writing unit took off and we've been using what we've learned about topic sentences and supporting sentences independently.  This year I slowed down paragraph writing and we've focused on each part of a good paragraph, discussing what each part is and then writing many topic and supporting sentences together.  

This week as my kiddos were writing opinion pieces they used these cheeseburger paragraph charts to help them.  I can't wait to read all their opinion pieces in the coming weeks.  

FOUR: Adding and Subtracting Tens 

Adding and subtracting tens is always a great topic to teach in math as it uses all the skills my kiddos have worked on throughout the year.  As we used these task cards the kiddos got to share their math thinking and I was so proud of their work!

FIVE: Vowel Teams 

This week we started learning about vowel teams and my kiddos loved my NY Rangers jersey and hat that I wore all week as they competed in sports-themed activities to help them learn about ea and ee.  I think their favorite part was the whistle! Getting them to buy in and keeping them engaged is the key to success and this really worked this week.  Coming next week... football themed activities!

Don't forget to check out Doodle Bugs Teaching for more Five for Friday posts!