Enemy Pie and Kindness

     I always love when we read Enemy Pie by Derek Munson. It's a story about a boy who has a new boy move in down the street from him and how they go from being best enemies to best friends. Our character focus last month was kindness, and this story has some perfection examples of how kindness can change everything.

     After reading Enemy Pie, we discuss examples of kindness and unkindness in the story. Then students wrote about the ways the boys showed kindness to each other in the story. We also did a directed-art drawing of the main character. We glued our writing and our illustrations to a sheet of construction before hanging them in the hallway. The students did such a great job-I'm so proud of how they turned out!

     This activity is from my Character Traits: Kindness unit.

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.

Groundhog Day

    We watched a Discovery Streaming video about the history of Groundhog Day. Then we created a puppet and used our puppet to share what we learned from the video about Groundhog Day with our partners. 

    We read Go To Sleep Groundhog! Then we reviewed the lesson they had with Mrs. Riggins in the science lab about shadows and what makes a shadow. Then we graphed our prediction for the groundhog and analyzed our data. 

    We read Punxsutawney Phyllis and then voted on a name for our class groundhog for Project Groundhog. Then we went outside to look for shadows so we would know if our class groundhog "Smiley" saw his shadow. When we first went outside it was cloudy and we couldn't see shadows. Right before we went back inside, the sun came out and we saw our shadows. Most of the student predictions were correct.

Celebrating Similarities and Differences

    We read The Crayon Box That Talked and then discussed how differences make each of special and allow us to do bigger and better things together. Then we illustrated ourselves on a crayon and colored our crayon.

    We read Elmer and discussed how sometimes when we feel different, we try hard to be like everyone else, but it's really better just to be your self. We colored our own Elmers and shared how we are different.

    We read Whoever You Are by Mem Fox. We talked about how our skin may be different colors, but we all have feelings, likes, and dislikes. Then we examined a brown and white egg. We looked at the outside and compared/contrasted the two. Then we cracked our eggs and compared/contrasted the inside. We recorded our observations on a Venn Diagram. We made the connection between the eggs and people; the only difference is on the outside. Then students shared a way they the same with their partner and wrote a rebus sentence about what they both like.

    We read The Peace Book by Todd Par. Then we wrote a five senses poem about peace through interactive writing.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    We learned about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of our study on ordinary people who had a great impact on our nation. We watched Martin's Big Words and talked about his dream and what it meant. Then we wrote together about Dr. King's dream.

    We read Martin's Important Lesson and then discussed our dreams. We wrote about our dreams and put  together our I have a dream projects.

    To finish up our study of Dr. King, we read Martin Luther King, Jr. Then we created a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting our class with Dr. King.

Firefighters

We started our firefighter unit by making a KWL chart about firefighters. We started by sharing what we know and wanted to know. We read I'm a Firefighter.

As we learned throughout the week, we added the information we learned to the learned section of our chart. We also read A Day in the Life of a Firefighter and Clifford and the Firehouse.

We also created a class bubble map about firefighters, and illustrated fire safety rules.

We've been working on identifying the topic and details from informational texts, so we read Russ and the Firehouse. We illustrated the topic and wrote/illustrated 3 details from the story.

Christopher Columbus

We started by reading Deanna Jump's If I Were a Pirate and taking about explorers. We made a bubble map as a class about explorers. Then we wrote about what we would explore.

We started a schema chart on Christopher Columbus to see what we knew before we started our study. Then we went back and moved stickies to the misconceptions sections or added stickies to new learning the rest of the week.

We read A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus and created a tree map about Christopher Columbus.

We read Christopher Columbus and created a circle map about Columbus as well.

All About Me

In social studies, we've been talking about ourselves, how we want to be treated, and seeing how we are similar and different from each other.

At the beginning of the week we focused on how we want to be treated by each other and created our class promise. Then we created our faces as our signature around our promise.

We spent the rest of the week with getting to know each other activities and focusing on ourselves. We created an All About Me book and then our self. We stapled our book to the shirt of our person. The students had so much fun working on this project!

Ponds

We researched the physical characteristics of ponds: landforms/bodies of water, weather, plant, and animal life. We worked on creating a mural of a pond all week. Then in the computer lab, we wrote about what we learned.