Blog Anniversary and Prosthetic Unit Freebie

     My blog is officially one year old! Actually, it was a few weeks ago. To celebrate, I decided to publish my prosthetics mini-thematic unit that I made last year. I first mentioned it here and here. I originally made this unit as a project for one of my classes and taught it during one day to the fifth grade class I was in. Well here it is! Click on the picture to check it out. Please leave me a comment telling me what you think about it.

 

     When I taught this to my fifth grade class last year, our day was very chaotic due to some last minute practice testing. We still had fun, and the lessons went well. My favorite part was showing them some of the nonfiction books about animals with prosthetics. See the children's literature list in my unit for more information. Using those books, the students found answers to questions on the following pages:

 

     Part of this unit includes a project where students build a prototype of a prosthetic, choosing the animal (or human), body part, and purpose of the prosthetic. Unfortunately, since my practicum ended I did not get to see their final projects, but they had some very creative ideas such as a prosthetic ear for a dog that is necessary to help bring scents to their nose.

 

     If you want to hear more about this project, please email me or leave a comment below, and I would be happy to share more about it. I look forward to another year of blogging!

 

Columbus Day Writings and Bulletin Board

     On Columbus Day, my teacher wanted me to do a lesson about Christopher Columbus. Usually she has the students complete a writing, which goes in the hallway. I was fine with doing something for the hallways, but I wanted it to be something the students would enjoy too. Looking for ideas I came across a pin like this one. I thought that doing a picture like this would be fun for the kids because they rarely have the chance to use paint (my teacher did not even have any). Since this was the only lesson I was teaching, I knew that I could pull them out earlier in the day for their handprint.

 

     First in the lesson, I talked about Christopher Columbus, showing them where he was from, wanted to go, and actually landed on the globe. Then, I made a story web with key details they remembered from what I had said. Next, the students completed their writing. I required them to have two well-written, complete sentences in their neatest handwriting. I used the pictures as an incentive. They needed to do their best work on the writing before they would receive their handprint to complete the picture. The boats were their handprints, and they colored water and other things with their crayons or markers. Finally, we added three paper sails that I had cut out. I love that this illustration uses a variety of mediums. The projects turned out very well! Here are a few of my favorites:

 



 

     When I hung the writings in the hallway, my teacher asked me to use our bulletin board as well. I titled it "Sailing with Columbus" in white like a cloud and wrote the objective "We can write in complete sentences" in blue for the water. Then, I added a big ship as the Santa Maria and two smaller ones for the Pinta and Nina. I also put the work of three different students on the board.

 

 

     Overall, this was a very fun project. My students loved the pictures, and I did too! Let me know what you think. This project could also work for learning about the Mayflower or other ships.

Butterfly!

       My butterfly is officially a butterfly! I came back from school on Thursday to find that it was out of its chrysalis. Below are some pictures of it. The blue mesh sponge contains sugar water, its food. When its wings are folded up, it would camouflage with bushes very well, but the other of its wings are actually orange!

 

      My roommate and I let the butterfly go the next morning since its cage was so small. It was fun to watch this small larva grow, turn into a chrysalis, and then become a butterfly. I would definitely love to do this in my class someday. It can teach some many different things, and it would be fun to do a whole unit about butterflies and their life cycles.

    Speaking of units, I am currently still in the process of working on my thematic unit about prosthetics. I'm teaching it to my fifth graders all day on Tuesday, which I am really nervous about. It will be the first day I have taught everything where I wrote all of the lessons. Below is a bulletin board I put up to encourage curiosity. We will be adding more to it this week, but I thought putting the title and some pictures up would get them to start talking and thinking about it. After I teach about it, they will have a project that they have to complete, where they design a model of a prosthetic. I'm still figuring out how to make this manageable for them. In the meantime, have a good week! I will let you know how Tuesday goes as soon as I can, but I have to take the Praxis next Saturday and have a large presentation the next week, so it might be a little while before I can blog about it.

Author Study - Mo Willems

       Last fall, I was in a second grade classroom, and we did a short author study on Mo Willems. The students already knew many of his books, especially the Pigeon books. I introduced them to some they did not know as well like Leonardo the Terrible Monster. We discussed how Mo Willems is also an illustrator but has not illustrated all of his books such as City Dog, Country Frog. If you have never visited Mo Willem's website (http://www.mowillems.com/), you need to. One of my friends and I also made a bulletin board to go along with this author study.

     The second graders were working on subjects, predicates, and punctuation, so we decided to make the bulletin board interactive (even though it was in the hallway) and give each of the characters have a speech bubbles, where the students could stick different subjects, predicates, and the punctuation on to make sentences. The really enjoyed this, especially since we had some very funny predicates.

     My favorite Mo Willem's books are his Elephant and Piggie books. I have been reading one of these with my 6-year-old cousin each time I see her, and we love them. They are hysterical! My favorite is We Are in a Book!, where Piggie explains to Gerald how they are in a book and can make the readers say things. At the end, they ask the reader to read it again, and my cousin always wants to in order to make them happy. As a beginning reader, my cousin often has a hard time focusing on reading, even though she loves reading, when there are too many words or when she is overwhelmed at the length of the book. I found that these books were perfect for her. There are few words per page, and it repeats the same words throughout the book. It is also nice that there are usually two parts, so she can decide which character she wants to read for, and I can read the other. The text is so engaging we want to read them over and over again. Mo Willems is an author that children definitely love.