President's Day

    We read Celebrating President's Day by Kim Jordano. Then we completed a nonfiction reading response. The students copied the word presidents and illustrated themselves as President. Then we talked with our partners about what we learned about the President's job from the book. We shared out and choose three facts to write. We stretched out the words together and I filled in the chunks you can't hear or they didn't know. 

   We created Uncle Sam hats. Then we rolled dice and used the students to act out addition stories. Then students went to their seats and played President's Day roll and cover addition with their partner.

Polar Bear Research and Nonfiction Book

    We began by sharing our schema (what we thought we knew) about polar bears with our partner and then adding it to our schema chart. We rolled a question die and then listened for the answers while reading. We finished by drawing the topic (polar bears) on one side of a sticky note and then drawing/writing one fact on the other side of the sticky note.

    We reviewed nonfiction text features like diagrams and table of contents.

     We completed a tree map by listening for things polar bears are, can do, and have. We filled in one branch of our tree map each day. I wrote on our class tree map as students wrote on their own. We stretched out the words and I filled in the word chunks.

    We illustrated and wrote two facts about polar bears for our book. Each day we wrote to inform about polar bears during our writing time.

 
  Here's a picture of our class diagram, schema chart, and tree map.

Research on Walruses

   We started our walrus research by discussing our schema about walruses. I wrote down every "fact" that was shared and put under our schema. As we were reading, we would review our schema and move any incorrect information to the misconceptions section of our chart. We added information learned to the new learning section daily. We created a diagram of a walrus and discussed what the purpose of their parts are. We also created a walrus tree map with facts we learned.

   
Throughout the week, we worked on the tree map and facts part of our books. Then on Friday we finished the rest of the book and put it together. The fact we learned that almost every student wrote about was walruses look pink when their hot because their blood vessels expand until they are close to their skin surfaces. The students thought that was so cool! Here's a look at our All About Walruses books.

Pumpkin Time!!!

We started by talking about what schema is and then discussing with our partners our pumpkin schema. We corrected misconceptions and added new learning throughout our study. We also reviewed the characteristics of nonfiction/informational text. We reviewed identifying the topic and details of informational text.

We learned about the parts of a pumpkin and each part's purpose. Students worked in small groups to paint a part of the pumpkin for our pumpkin brace map. After the paint dried, students work together to build our brace map and label the parts. Students then shared a part of the the pumpkin and it's purpose with their partner.

We used pumpkin candy to create positional patterns. Students identified and extended patterns I modeled for them. Then they worked with their partner to create a positional pattern. Then we shared and extended patterns partners made. Of course what's the fun of working with candy if you can't enjoy a little bit of it! Then we created and recorded patterns using our thumbprint as the pumpkin shell and our pinkie print as the stem. We labeled our patterns and identified the core (the part of the pattern that repeats).

We also sequenced the pumpkin life cycle. We illustrated and labeled the life cycle on a flow map.

We created a circle map using descriptive words for pumpkins as a class. Then we created our own pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns and used words from our circle map to write a pumpkin poem.