Editing, Lowercase Letters, and Punctuation

     During Writers' Workshop, we have worked on writing up lowercase letters, capital letters at the beginning of our sentences, and punctuation. After working on lowercase and capital letters, we spent a day editing this story for our mini-lesson. They had to write the each work with the correct upper or lowercase letters. There was enough words so that each student had the chance to complete one word. This ended up being a little long for my first graders, but they did enjoy it.

 

     Then, we spent a week focusing on different types of sentences/ punctuation. My favorite activity was when we read Mo Willem's We Are in a Book! from his Elephant and Piggie series. I had the students raise their hands into a point if it was an exclamation, make a W with their arms if it was a questions, and cross their arms across their chest if it was a statement. They loved this book and remembered the motions. Sometimes, they were so into the book, I had to remind them of their job. Later that week, they continue to use those motions throughout the day to let me know if the sentence they spoke or read was a question, statement, or exclamation.

     Finally, we did another editing paper. This time, I wrote one sentence and gave each student a copy. Together, we found the letter and punctuation mistakes. Then, I had them rewrite the sentence on the line below. I knew rewriting it would be hard for them, and I can see that this is an area that they need more practice in. Unfortunately, this was one of the last Writers' Workshop lessons I will teach, so I will not have the chance to do this more. I am sad to stop this subject as it has definitely been my favorite to teach. I have seen so much improvement in my students since the start of the year!

     Last weekend, I was home for my mom's birthday, and we went to Dutch Fest with my cousin, who is in first grade, and aunt. While we were waiting, my little cousin pulled out a small bag with a pencil and paper, saying that she needed to write down what she saw so that she could remember it. My aunt looked at me and asked, "Is this normal for first graders? She just started wanting to take paper with her to write." I smiled.

     When encouraged, first graders love to write, especially about their own lives and ideas. I might just buy my students little notebooks for a good-bye present, so they can write about their adventures at home.

Challenging Students during Free Time

     When our first graders are finished with their morning work and other appropriate times, they are allowed to color in coloring books that are brought from home. I have found that one of the students does not enjoy coloring but could really use a challenge. One day for a review in math, I made a math matching game. She was pulled out for testing while we worked on it, so later she asked if she could keep one to play the next morning. After she played it, she wanted to take it home to play some more.

       I realized she needed a challenge and some games that would engage  her, so I made and found some for her to do instead of coloring in a coloring book. One I named Spill and Spell. There are dice, and she has to shake them onto the carpet. Then, using the letters she can see, the student will spell some words.

     My teacher also suggested that she could play on the computer since she finished so early. My class used starfall.com. Other students wanted to do it too, and now it has become an extended part of our literacy block. I did a few other games such as using pattern blocks to make different pictures, which I found online. I also did a math puzzle using addition and subtraction.

What do you do to challenge your high students?

Tales about Teaching Math and enVision

     The first subject I started to teach during student teaching was math. Growing up, I loved math. In fact, during freshman year I was a math major and took Calculus 3. Since then, I have been a peer tutor for math at my college. Last year, I took math for teachers and loved all the great ideas our professor gave us about how to teach math. He taught us so many different ways, we were definitely prepared. I found ways to make it fun with my fifth graders in the spring such as playing BattleGraph. I came in very excited to teach math to my first graders.

      Last year, the school I am at began using enVision. I had used enVision in my previous schools, and I was fine with it. It worked well with my small second grade class in fall 2011, so I figured it would be okay.

     The first unit for first grade is called "Understanding Addition." Each lesson has different parts you can use such as an online introduction to the lesson, a worksheet, a Common Core review, a workbook with differentiated pages (we assign homework from it), a lesson review page, and three differentiated games. Typically, my teacher told me that she starts with the introduction on the computer. Then, she completes the worksheet with the students. The front of the worksheet is always done together and uses manipulatives. On the inside, one page is labeled guided practice, and the other is independent practice. Finally, the back page has word problems.

     During the first math lesson, which was also the first lesson I taught during student teaching, our principal walked in to do a snapshot. At this point, the students were completing some problems independently with my teacher and I walking around to help. When his report came back, it said that 95% of our students were engaged, which is great for a first lesson in my book.

    Throughout the first unit, I noticed that my math lessons were not going as well as I would have liked. The same five or six students were always raising their hands to answer questions and participate. Most of these students would have been able to complete the lesson worksheet without my help. When I called on other students at random, they either were not paying attention or really did not understand what we were doing. Some of these students, I would pull aside the next morning to work with them in a small group on what they did not understand.

     Slowly, I became frustrated with having to follow our curriculum directly. We planned with the other math teachers, and I had to follow the curriculum and was expected to use the lesson worksheets. These worksheets are long and often confusing for my first graders. I did not have an issue with them in second grade, but in my opinion, they are not always appropriate for first. My students also had a very hard time with the manipulatives. They were not using them or putting them away properly, despite reteaching the procedures multiple times. I would love to use the differentiated games more, but there just is not enough time, plus it always leads to arguments or confusion.

     To finish the first unit about addition, I had a review day. Together, we worked on dry erase boards. Then, I gave each student a matching game. It had a problem, picture, and sum. I cut the pieces apart and put different amounts in different color bags. Then, I gave students who needed a challenge a bag with 15 matches, most students received 10 matches, and lower students received 6 matches. This worked well! First, I modeled how to make them and ways to make it easier such as sorting the three categories first. Then, I walked around as they were completing it to help students who had trouble with sorting. Most understood the math concept though!

     For the first unit, I did a pretest and post test, and I saw improvement in every student! Well, except for one girl, who actually understands it, but thought she would do so well that she did not listen to directions. Despite my frustrations, they really were learning. They may have not showed it to me in class, but they did understand it much more than before, especially the word problems.

     In my future class, I would love to set up some sort of math stations at least 2 or 3 days a week. This would allow me to challenge high students more, re-enforce lessons with students that need it, and review all of our skills through different engaging games and activities.

 

     If you have read this whole post, I am proud of you for sticking with it! Here is the addition matching game. It's not a colorful game because I don't have a color printer available to me, so I do my best by printing it on colored paper instead. EnVision uses a domino look for addition in unit one, so the pictures reflect that.

 

How do you teach math? What strategies have worked for you?

 

 

Update: After taking a pre- and post-test on the first section, I found that all of my students did improve and learn from this curriculum, even when I felt very frustrated with it.

Fun in First!

     Today was so much fun! Well, at least the end of the day was. During specials, we had a BIP review meeting. It was running late, so I went to pick up the students from specials. When we were back in the classroom, I knew my teacher needed to finish the meeting for a few minutes, so I picked up a book that I was looking for a time to read. It was Duck on a Bike by David Shannon. I have been trying to familiarize my students with David Shannon. We have talked about how he wrote his first David book as a young child and how he draws from personal experiences. I even shared how you can find his dog, Fergus, in each of Shannon's books. Anyways, this book was such a fun read aloud. I used character voices, and my students were very involved. They even found Fergus, and this is a harder book to find him in! When my teacher came back in the room, I saw her smile. Then, she gave me another book to read, Bear's New Friend, and she told the students to listen to my character voices. I love reading aloud!

     Tonight, we had a rollerskating party. I went and saw seven of our students there (plus my teacher and principal)! It was hysterical watching my students skate. I even put my rollerblades on and enjoyed skating with them. Some were begging me to skate with them more. I loved seeing our students outside of a school and meeting their families again.

     Another fun thing about today was that my students found pencils in their Writing Workshop folders that were left by Sam (see this post for more info.). There is nothing like a bunch of first graders trying to thank Sam the library mouse loud enough so that he can hear them.

    Of course, today had some frustrating parts, too, like math. I just feel like I am not able to meet everyone's needs and the curriculum is too confusing for them, but that's another post. For now, I will focus on the things that remind me why I want to be a teacher, which is mostly the students.

Teaching Writing with Library Mouse - 1st Grade Ed.

     Last week, I started teaching Writing Workshop. When asked who liked writing a few weeks ago, most students responded saying that they did not like writing. I knew this was the first thing we needed to work on if we were going to get anywhere in Writing Workshop. They cannot all hate writing, so I decided my first week needed to be spent motivating them to write.

    When I was in a second grade classroom, I used the book Library Mouse to inspire a writing project, and I thought that this may also work with my first graders. On Monday, we read the book Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk. I had them listen to find out what the library mouse liked to do and how he started it. In this book, Sam the library mouse loves to read and decides that he will write books too. He begins by remember what he read in a book about writing: "Write what you know." He writes his first book about the life of a mouse. This fits perfectly with what I need to be teaching in Writing Workshop, since the first unit is about small moments from their own lives.

     I sent my first graders off to write a book about themselves. I let them know that if they needed more paper they could get more since stories about yourself can get long. I also told them that if they wrote a story that was at least two pages, then they could receive a cover later in the week. They immediately got to work. It was hard to get them to stop writing so that we could go to specials! They were so focused it worked like magic.

     On Tuesday, I told them that when I came in, I found a book that Sam the library mouse had left for us. I downloaded it from Daniel Kirk's website. They could not believe that Sam wrote them a book. We read it and talked about what Sam had starting writing first in Library Mouse, and they started writing.

     On Wednesday, Sam left another special gift. It was the Meet the Author box! When they looked inside, they saw a mirror, just like in the book. Some students were so surprised. One girl squealed, "It's me! I'm the author!" I also introduced "When I'm done, I've just begun" on this day, since some students were beginning to stop writing during Writing Workshop.

    I was amazed to see the difference in my writers from where they were at the beginning of school to where they are now. Most did not like writing, and on Monday, everyone could not wait to start writing. My teacher said that she even had students coming up asking when Writing Workshop is. A little motivation goes a long way. I'm thinking Sam will need to bring everyone erasers when we start working on editing skills.

    What do you do to motivate your writers and help them to view themselves as authors?

First Weeks of School

     Wow! I haven't blogged since right before the first day of school (that's four weeks ago!). Time flies when you're teaching! I love my first graders. We have 23 now (just received a new one on Monday). It's fun to be able to get to know each student. In past labs, I felt that I never fully learned each student's personality, background, and how they were doing because I was only there two days a week at most. Now I know what each student's needs are. One girl is smart and gets in trouble when she's bored. One boy has Autism and is afraid to go into the bathroom, thinking that the fire alarm will go off. Another girl seems a little immature and unfocused, but she really is smart and learning. Another boy is the sweetest little gentleman and takes a long time finishing his morning work because he wants to do it perfectly. It's so neat to see where they are all at! After being able to get to know each one, I could not imagine not differentiating my lessons. The students are all so different and special!

     Anyways, back to the first couple of weeks. One fun activity we did was a skittles get to know you game. Every student was given five skittles (really if I did this with first grade again, I would give less). Each color had a different question to answer (What is your favorite color? Tell us something about your family. What is your favorite part of school?). Then, we went around the circle, listening to everyone answer the five questions. It was fun, but a little long for first grade.

     Another neat thing my teacher did during the first week was give the students a Super Duper 20x 100+ Invisible Thinking Cap. They were so excited. We tied them on tight. Turned the knob on and made sure that we could see their lightbulbs were on. My teacher explained that this cap never came off and eventually was absorbed into their brain. It really helped them focus during the next class! One boy started to cry, and when asked what was wrong, he explained that he did not catch a thinking cap when they were thrown out, so the whole class threw him one.

     The first few weeks have been spent mainly establishing our routines and procedures. We are doing the Daily 5, and this week I am going to start meeting with small groups. I have been working hard establishing Writers' Workshop this past week, but that's a whole different post.


How have your first weeks been? I will try to post more regularly, because I really do like sharing. Also, note that these pictures were taken from a google search and aren't my own (Isn't the thinking cap cool though?). Have a good week! Feel free to leave comments. I love reading each one.

Which Special is Today? - Fish Bowl Schedule

    After a few meetings this morning, the teachers had a chance to finish working on their rooms and preparing for the first day of school on Monday. My teacher, Mrs. D., was mostly finished with her room, but I helped her with a few last minute things like making sure the books were still in order and ensuring that we know how the schedule will work.

     The school just switched to having specials on a rotating schedule, where the same grade has it at the same time every day, but the special each classroom has changes every day. Due to this, we decided having a place to say which one was that day would be necessary, not only for the students but for us as well. I quickly noticed that her room had a fish theme. When she asked me to make a place where we can say the special of the day, I knew that I wanted to make a fish bowl. Here is the finished product! The fish with the names of the specials have Velcro on them and will be changed every day.

I'm Busy Beads

     Today was my first day at my student teaching placement. We were in faculty meetings all day, which were long at times, but I enjoyed meeting the teachers. During our meetings, we discussed the students' code of conduct, how the teachers are evaluated, Common Core standards, and their school improvement plan.

    I met my teacher, whom I will call Mrs. D., and learned a little bit about her classroom. One great idea that she uses in her classroom are "I'm busy beads." Basically, it's a cheap bead necklace that she puts on when she's busy. Students know that when she is wearing those beads they can't ask her a question or interrupt her. Mrs. D said that it has worked very well in the past and is great especially while she is working with a small group during the literacy block. I think I will definitely pick up a some beads to also use.

    I can't wait for tomorrow! We have a few more meetings and will spend most of the day working on the classroom. Students start Monday!

Author Study - David Shannon

     Last fall, one short author study I did with my second graders was on David Shannon. The students were very familiar with him as they love the David books and have a wonderful librarian. While doing research on him, I found that David Shannon hid a drawing of his dog, Fergus, in every book he illustrated (at least after a certain year).

    I read Good Boy, Fergus with my second graders. Then, we searched through many David Shannon book that they were familiar with to find Fergus. Some students found him twice in the book they were looking at. Here is one example from David Goes to School:

     Our class talked about how David Shannon draws from personal things when he writes his stories. Good Boy, Fergus! was after his dog, Fergus. His David books were based on a story he wrote as a young boy, when he only knew how to spell no and David. This is why No, David was the first book. Alice the Fairy is dedicated to his daughter, Emma. It's exciting for students to see how personal experiences can really play into their writing.

    This fall, I'm planning on using some of these ideas when I am teaching Writing Workshop to help motivate my first graders to write about small moments and personal experiences.

Click here to view a flier my friend and I made containing some more information that we found about David Shannon. Also, let me know if this link works well. It's the first time I have tried something like this.

A First Grade Summer

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written on this blog. I hope everyone has been having a wonderful summer. I know I have!

     I started my summer by working for a month at a summer school/camp. My class had just finished first grade. It was so much fun! Everyday, we had art, music, gym, language arts, math, and lunch. As a college assistant, I brought my class to the different rooms and helped out as needed. Some highlights were: helping one girl learn how to write her last name, reading books aloud, listening to the students sing our up-beat songs, throwing water balloons on unsuspecting students below on water day, and going on our many field trips. We went to the zoo, bowling alley, splash pad, and a nursing home to sing the program they were learning. There were also short trips to events at the library and special days like water day or really hot days (over 100) where we went to an air conditioned building to play games or watch a movie. Overall, it was a great month, and I loved having the experience with these students before student teaching this fall.

     Speaking of student teaching, while I was originally placed in second grade, that teacher decided to retire, so now I am... in first grade! First grade seems to be where I'm at this summer. I have first graders at summer school, babysit a girl who is going into first grade, and now I'll be there this fall! While I love second grade, I'm sure first grade will be amazing, and I'm looking forward to an experience I have not had yet. I start next Thursday with students the following Monday. Have a wonderful start to the school year!

A Long Way from Chicago - Inferences and Timeline

     With my fifth graders, I had the opportunity to lead one group during their literature circle time. We read a few different books while I was there including Ruby Holler and A Long Way from Chicago. My group of students contained all girls, and they loved Ruby Holler but were not as enthusiastic about reading A Long Way from Chicago.

      A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck is a book that chronicles a boy's week-long adventures with his sister when they visit their grandma during the summer. Each chapter is the story from a different summer. It takes place from 1929 to 1935.

      I found that my students struggled with comprehension with this book. Part of this was due to the fact that they did not find it as interesting as other books, but another huge factor was that this book uses inferences regularly. To help with comprehension, I decided we would make a timeline as a group. This worked very well for this book since each chatper was a different year. We would talk about each year, discuss any inferences, decide what they wanted to write for a short summary, and choose what to draw for a picture. Then, the students would work hard on it. This really helped with their comprehension and enthusiasm for the book. Making timelines to aid comprehension is definately something I would recommend and I will remember to use more in the future.

      A Long Way from Chicago is also a wonderful book to practice inferences with upper elementary, even if you just want to use one chapter as a read aloud ("The Phantom Brakeman" is a very good example)
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Thanks for reading this!!!

Have a wonderful end of the school year or beginning of summer!

Summer, Organizing, and Unpacking

      It's officially summer time! I finished my classes, packed up, watched my friends graduate, and returned home (well, to my parents' house). This summer, I will have a couple of free weeks before I start my summer job. I will be working for a month at something called Summer Clubhouse, which reminds me of a cross between a day camp and summer school. The group I will be working most with are the children who just finished first grade. I am so excited for this opportunity! Plus, I will be living at the same house I will be at in the fall for student teaching.

      Now I have the lovely task ahead of me of unpacking from college and repacking for my summer job. Yesterday, as I was unpacking, I found that I have collected a lot of children's books over the past year. In the first practicum I had during my freshman year of college, my teacher told me that the best advice she could give me would be to start collecting children's books for my future classroom library right away so that I could do it a little bit at a time. I took this advice to heart and have collected a few books at a time over the past few years.

       When I put them all together yesterday, I found that I was not sure how I wanted to sort them or record what books I had. How do you keep track of your children's books? How do you choose to organize your classroom library (topic, author, reading level)? For now, I reorganized them so that the chapter books were in one box, nonfiction in another, curriculum in the blue bag, and fiction pictures books in the last box. Later this summer, I want to record them, put my name in them, and organize them better. What ideas do you have?

Survival, Placement, and Currently

    I'm back, and I survived. The Praxis 2 was easy, but giving up time for it was not. Teaching my fifth graders all day one day last week went really well. The schedule ended up being very jumbled with ISTEP practice testing that none of the teachers knew about until the day before. The students were wonderful though and really seemed to enjoy the lessons I taught them. I'll tell more about it later as well as post about the mini-thematic unit I taught. 

    In other exciting news, I officially recieved my placements for student teaching in the fall! During the first quarter, I will be in a second grade classroom, and the second half will be in a 4th to 6th grade special education room. Second grade has definately been my favorite grade of the past experiences I have had, so I am looking forward to being in it again at a different school. I'm also interested to see what my special ed. placement will be like. So far I have been in an elementary life skills classroom and an emotional behavioral disorders classroom, and my fall placement sounds like a resource room. I can't wait for the fall!

Finally, I decided to join my first linky (hopefully, I did it right), Farley's May Currently.

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.

Chrysalis

My larva is now officially a chrysalis (has been for several days actually). Today, my roommate and I moved it from the plastic container she came in to a small cage I got.

Left: The larva on its last crawl to the top. She was so big that even when it was curved, it did not fit across the top of the container! Right: The chrysalis hanging in its container.

     On Tuesday I get to teach a science lesson about arm muscles. The students are going to build a model of an arm, showing the biceps. It's straight from the FOSS curriculum, but I'm very excited to teach it. Unfortunately, I have not seen much science taught because the days that I come always have an extra thing (library and DARE), so science gets left out (it's not on the ISTEP in fifth grade). Have a good week!

BattleGraph

     A few weeks ago, the fifth grade teacher I am working with asked me to teach a lesson practicing plotting ordered pairs on a coordinate graph. She had introduced the new concept the day before, and the students certainly needed more practice. I found this game online that is very similar to the Battleship I grew up playing, except it was adapted for teaching coordinate graphs. This awesome PowerPoint was made by Sarah Grabowski.

     Originally, I was going to change it a little bit so that my students only had to graph positive ordered pairs (that's all the standard asked for), but my teacher said she had taught them to graph positive and negative numbers, so I didn't have to change anything. One additional requirement that I did make was that they had to write on the blank part of their hidden board all of the ordered pairs of the locations of their ships. This allowed me time to walk around and see who was understanding coordinates and who needed more help. I also had them play on the same team as a partner so that they could figure out where the point needed to go together (they still each had to fill out their own board).

    The students loved this game! Unfortunately, it took a little while to get set up, so no one finished it before library time, but my teacher said they would finish it another day. I love math lessons/activities like this where students can practice and have fun with it. Too often I see these students hate math, which I believe is very sad as math was usually my favorite subject.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! The Lord is risen!

      This Easter, my mom and I tried our first pinterest-inspired recipe, Bird's Nests. I love haystacks, and they have been my favorite Christmas treat for several years. When I saw a picture of this I knew I wanted to make it. Not only are they cute, but Robin's Eggs are my favorite Easter candy, so combining the two is so delicious!

     Also, this weekend I went to Goodwill and found some good children's books to add to my future classroom library including Merry Christmas, Geronimo and The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too. I'm excited to read the Geronimo Stilton as I have liked others I have read, especially since several words on every page are written in a unique font and color. Sometimes, though, I have found words that are probably too hard for the typical transition literature book, but that's probably because these books were written first in Italian and then translated. I love Pigeon books!

Happy Easter!

Growing Larva

    The larva (butterfly necklace) I got at the NSTA conference last Friday from Carolina Biological Supply has been growing like weeds! It is three to four times the size it started as. It spends most of its time eating and molting.

         March 30                                          April 2                                                  April 4

     Today, I woke up to discover that my larva is being to form its chrysalis! At first, her webbing was only on the sides, and I started to worry that she would try to hang from the sides. A few hours later, I looked at her again, and the larva was getting closer to hanging from the paper at the top (like the sheet I recieved said she should).

     I'm so excited to see her turn into a butterfly. Hopefully, her chrysalis will be hardened enough for me to be able to safely bring her back to college with me. Also, I still haven't officially picked a name for it, so if you have suggestions, please let me know!

If you have any ideas for my thematic unit about prosthetics or any advice about thematic units in general, I would love to hear them. Have a good weekend! Happy Easter!

First Thematic Unit (Prosthetics) - Please Help

     I'm currently in the process of creating my first thematic unit (well, part of it at least). While my theme that would take several weeks would be the human body, focusing on bones, joints, and muscles, I only have to actually plan at least 5 lessons that I will teach the fifth grade class I am working with. For these lessons, my theme is prosthetics. This set of lessons comes at the end of my class studying the bones, joints, and muscles.

      The theme of prosthetics is based off of the Indiana Academic Standards under Science, Engineering, and Technology. The Core Standard is "Design a prototype that replaces a function of a human body part." Underneath the Core Standard is three other standards:

5.4.1 Investigate technologies that mimic human or animal musculoskeletal systems in order to meet a need.
5.4.2 Investigate the purpose of prototypes and models when designing a solution to a problem and how limitations in cost and design features might affect their construction.
5.4.3 Design solutions to problems in the context of musculoskeletal body systems. Using suitable tools, techniques and materials, draw or build a prototype or model of a proposed design.

    So far, I have brainstormed some ideas but am not sure how well they would work. Ideally, we would do a group project where they actually have to design a prosthetic based off of a problem (perhaps just draw, but actually building would be more fun). First, we would do some research and learn more about prosthetics through books. Then, they would have to determine factors to consider like cost, what function it should have,and how heavy it is. We would also study the history of prosthetics, making a timeline, to help them determine what technology has been used in the past that they might consider. Finally, they would draw designs of their prosthetic (and make, if I can find a way to do that).

    I have also found some books to supplement all of our learning about science. Some are just books about the human body, skeletal system, muscular system, and joints. Others were actual about prosthetics, whether on humans or animals. Some of my favorites were:

Artificial Limbs by Susan Gray

This book gives good information about the history behind artificial limbs/prosthetics. It tells how they had been made and what has spurred on new inventions. Prosthetics had only been designed by doctors in the past, but now a whole team of people designs them . It also discusses how artificial limbs have to be specifically made for the person who is going to use it, and they can be made for specific purposes. Several leading innovators are also featured. Overall, I felt that this picture book gave good information and was an enjoyable read. I would not expect most of my students to want to read the whole thing, but they would definitely be interested in parts, and it is a valuable resource for me.

Gretchen the Bicycle Dog by Anita Heyman

This book tells the story of Gretchen, who was an ordinary dog until one day when she jumped out of a bed. She landed awkwardly and hurt her spine, paralyzing her hind legs. She learned to scoot around using just her front legs. Then, her family got Gretchen her own cart, which gave her wheels for hind legs. On her new bicycle legs, Gretchen learned to get around and play like she always did before. Personally, I really enjoyed this book and think my students would love it, especially since it is about a dog. I'm looking into finding other books about animals with prosthetics such as Winter's Tale and Molly the Pony.

    If you have any ideas to help me with this unit, I would love to hear them! I would also be interested in any advice you have about writing thematic units in general. Let me know what you think.

NSTA Conference

     Yesterday, I went to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference. I attended several good sessions, which I will write more about later. In the Elementary Extravaganza and the exhibition hall, there were many very interesting lessons, books, and more.

This idea was teaching camouflage by using M&Ms and two different kinds of fabric. It's simple, cheap, and easy to understand as it would be much easier to grab the M&Ms from the fabric on the right. There was another idea which used newspaper to show how butterflies use camouflage. One the newspaper, they glued paper butterflies. Some were pink or yellow, but others blended in because they were cut from other newspaper. The ones cut from newspaper were hard to find, and I didn't even notice them at first.

I also saw these clay insects, which students built and then labeled the parts. This past fall, we studied insects, and they would have loved building it rather than just drawing pictures.








     Another cool idea was teaching the water cycle. We made bracelets with the beads in order to show how it is a cycle. It starts with a yellow bead for the sun. Then there is a clear bead for evaporation. Next, comes a white bead for condensation. Precipitation is represented by a clear blue bead, and the last bead is blue, representing collection.

    I also got a butterfly necklace, which is housing a little larva that I am anxiously waiting to turn into a butterfly. Hopefully, I can bring it with me to school one day so that my fifth grades can also see it. Finally at the NSTA conference, SeaWorld brought in two penguins!