Recap of Dogs & Cats....peek at Storms!

Hey, hey, hey! I knew you would ask so, here it is…..44 days! Totally not that I was counting. I just knew you would want to know so I counted them for you! HA! Tomorrow though is a teacher workday…oh YEAH! Something about working in our rooms is so much fun…and especially when you are not abandoning our husbands at home to do it! Double win! For some reason I am feeling feisty today….so I better just get on with it!

Last week our close read was about Cats vs. Dogs. We spiced up our nonfiction close read with Froggy Gets a Doggy. Click below to download those plans….

Here is our can/have/are chart….for some reason pulling facts this week was a little difficult. Last week they were EXPERTS on tigers, and this week I got a lot of blank looks! I think it was because they were looking at me like….hey lady don’t you already know what dogs can do?!

And our schema chart….

And vocabulary…. I’ve been trying out some my new ideas for vocabulary and this week they DID deliver! I asked, “Boys and girls, who can tell me a story using the word, feline?” The student replied with, “My mom gets mad when our feline makes messes.” Good job! 😉

This week our big focus was to understand opinions verses facts. The other never tells us what is the best…he proves his point by giving lots of FACTS and lets us decide on our own!

If you haven’t read the Froggy book I mentioned above…you gotta get it! Well, we were making connections between our fiction and nonfiction text and the Froggy book mentions a pooper scooper….well that is ALL they wanted to write about!

In Kinderphonics we trucked our way through the digraph ck! {yeah I got a little red happy on the sack word – – don’t worry they called me out immediately}.

As I mentioned above we talked a lot about opinions this week…not in just reading, but also in writing! I made a quick little powerpoint slide show with some images. I then had the kids discuss with their partners which in their opinion was the best. They had to be able to state reasons as to WHY it was the best. Their reasons were so sweet….bananas are the best because they are easier to eat than apples 😉

I just loving hearing the buzz of the kids doing turn to your partner…

We when discussed on our opinions of dogs vs. cats. The kids turned to their partners and then went off to write their opinion writings….

Before going back to their seats to write we talked about the most important word in our opinion writings….because! Also, {maybe this is just a Missouri thing} but we also talk about the proper way to state the word, because….not beCUZ! 😉

Speaking of Missouri….it has been so gorgeous this past week! We spent an afternoon in our outdoor classroom area. We are very blessed to have a very large outdoor classroom with a shelter, tables, trails, and a pond! The kids thought it was the best thing ever!

Alrighty….this next week we are off to study storms! We will also be doing a service learning project on keeping our streams clean! You can download those plans below! 🙂

Have a great week!

Comments

Racheal Bohnert says

March 16, 2015 at 1:19 am

I love the PowerPoint idea to practice opinions!!! Totally using it! Thanks!

S Farrell says

March 16, 2015 at 6:37 am

Hi Tara, I have been following your blog for a few weeks now, and I can't believe that I haven't found it earlier. I love your visual plans and your descriptive posts. I'm definitely following you now
Sandra Farrell (
http://www.savvyteachingtips.blogspot.com

bpacemo2 says

March 19, 2015 at 8:28 pm

I love how you dive deep into a non fiction story each week and then compare to a fiction. I think doing this deepens students knowledge. I'm going to try this way next week. We use Journeys and I'm going to just focus on the nonfiction selection and follow your daily format.