Nocturnal Night

One of my closest friends Cheryl over at Primary Graffiti and I have been doing a thematic unit she developed 6 or 7 years ago called Nocturnal Night.  We combined our classes a few times in the beginning but we've been teaching on different grade levels for 4 years now so our versions of Nocturnal Night have morphed to meet the needs of the students we teach.  

Basically we black out our windows and learn out nocturnal creatures on Halloween (since the school we teach at won't let us celebrate Halloween any other way).  Neither of us have bothered making a unit to sell on TpT because there really is so much out there especially this year.  Check out the activities my students got into this year!

We kicked it off by casting a vote about whether or not we were afraid of bats.  Then we filled out the Know and Wonder portion of our KWL chart.  My favorite KNOW fact is the last one...."bats turn into human vampires."  We later corrected that misconception but it's always a fun one to list :).  We read a Nat Geo Bats book and labeled the parts of a bat.

Click here to check this book out on Amazon!

Next we read another Bat reader that I found in our reading series and completed the Learned portion of our KWL.  Before we went to lunch students separated into 6 groups and glued 100 mosquitos to a paper plate.  We hung them on the wall and discussed one of the bat facts we learned which was that bats can eat between 600-1000 mosquito's in 1 hour.  The visual of 6 plates full of mosquito's always leaves them amazed!  

After lunch we read Black Out and listed other animals that are active at night but sleep during the day.

Click here to check this book out on Amazon!

Then students rotated through a round of literacy and math centers.  For math we did some tally mark number matching and recording and the skip counting number puzzles from my Room on the Broom Book Companion.

For literacy centers students read bat books and did word building using the word "nocturnal."  They listed words on the recording sheet according to the number of letters in the word they built.

Finally, I snuck in another craft....ahem, what?  I mean they refined their fine motor skills making bats!

Nocturnal Night might be my favorite thematic day all year!  I love the rich vocabulary they get particularly from focusing on bats.  Echolocation comes up during report writing when we write about dolphins and nocturnal becomes a word they never forget!

Noah made this sign to hang on our door on Nocturnal Night....

The day ended with a vocabulary parade where students chose a word from our book of the month, Max's Words and illustrated or recreated it in some form (my students chose a word and created a sentence strip hat).  Each class got to parade through the halls.  It was loud but they had a great time!

Click here to check this book out on Amazon!

Last but not least, I just wanted to share our jack-o-lanterns this year!  I hope you all had a Happy Halloween and for everyone on the upper east coast, I hope you're drying out and life is returning to normal.

Rocking the Vote

Happy Election Day!

One of my most vivid memories from elementary school is a mock election in 1988 between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.  All students got to cast a vote for the candidate of their choice.  It was a wonderful and memorable experience.

Every year I have my class vote for a "Class President" to celebrate Presidents Day and learn about the electoral process.  This year I took advantage of the FANTASTIC Pick a President FREEBIES from Teacher to the Core!  I can't praise her Pick a President pack enough, my students throughly enjoyed using the resources she created to hold a mock election today!

We kicked our election off by watching a Nick News video called The Candidates.

Nick News: "Kids Pick The President: The Candidates"
Get More: Nick News Episodes,Nick News,Nick News Games

I thought Nick News did a great job presenting each candidate in a kid friendly manner.  Children and teens were taped asking some fun questions and some very relevant/important questions.

After learning about each candidate I encouraged students to think about who they believe would be the best person to lead our country for the next 4 years.  We discussed the meaning of a secret ballot and students prepared to cast their vote!

Each student cut off their ballot and lined up to vote behind the curtain in our voting booths!

After waiting in long lines to cast their votes they were rewarded with an "I Voted" sticker!

When all the votes were in we compiled our data!  We used the bar graph tracking sheet and colored a block in for each vote.  In the end we had Obama-11 and Romney-6.

We ended our electoral process with a discussion about respect.  Respect for our next President, regardless of who we voted for.  Respect for other peoples opinions even when they are different from our own and respect for each other always.

We had a great time with our mock election and I hope that this experience is as memorable for them as it was for me when I was a kid!

Blog-slacking and Room on the Broom

I'm sorry I've been blog-slacking for the last couple of weeks!   Thankfully I was able to knock out my Room on the Broom, Nocturnal Night, the Farm field trip, and my formal observation.  Check back for pictures from all of these events this week!

Today I want to share pictures from our Room on the Broom activities with you!  I originally posted my Room on the Broom Companion Activities here a few weeks ago.

The 46 page literacy and math companion pack was originally $8.00 in my TpT store but for this week only I'm putting it on sale for $5.00.  Check it out if you are still interested in teaching this unit this year or want to save it for next year!

After wake-up work and MTSS we read the story Room on the Broom.  Students completed one of the worksheets from the companion where they found words from the story and put the same words in alphabetical order.

When students finished the worksheet we met on the rug and discussed the 9 centers we were going to work through during the day.

Students worked in 2 math centers where they matched numbers to number words and recorded their matches on a recording sheet.

They also got their first taste of place value with a place value matching game.  Students matched the number card to the base ten block pictures then recorded their matches on the recording sheet pictured below!  I love exposing them to these things early and letting them practice with a concept before I officially introduce it to them.

Students also participated in a variety of literacy activities!

BA and his partner matched rhyming words from the story and recorded their matches below!

I never make time for my students to do crafts in class because we truly don't have a free moment to partake most of the time.  Since this was kind of a fun break from the learning schedule (SHHHHH!!!!) I decided to sneak one in!  Students made a broom and glued it to paper with a short excerpt from the first page of the story.  Very basic but they had a blast (which is really all that matters :).

I picked up a second book from Chamblin Bookmine (this fantastic book store we have in the Ville) for only $3.00!  I let students use the second book to help them complete the story map FREEBIE available in my TpT store!

Finally students got to do a Readers Theatre.....

...word building...

...and finally, a picture sequencing activity...

Overall it turned out really well!  On the way to lunch Noah said "Hey Miss Fun Time, this is the best day ever!"  Be still my heart!

Happy Halloween Sale!

Halloween is probably one of my favorite holidays!  We can't exactly dress up and celebrate in the classroom so we celebrate Nocturnal Night instead!  I black out all the windows and we learn about nocturnal creatures by nightlight and flashlight all day.  I will definitely post more about it later this week but for now I'd like to announce a Happy Halloween Sale!  All items in my TpT Store are 20% off Tuesday and Wednesday ONLY!

Click here to check out my TpT Store!

What do you do with your students to make Halloween special??

Lottery Update

Lottery tickets are still the jam, (see my previous post about lottery here) this year they seem more popular then ever!  I've had to repaint my tickets several times.  So I decided to add a few more rewards!

I added the things I've noticed my students enjoy but they didn't fit into my previous rewards.

The prizes are:
Computer-30 minutes of computer time before class each morning
Treasure Chest-choose 1 item out of the treasure chest
Lunch in Class-1 lunch in class with a friend and the teacher
Share a Book-bring a book to school to read to the class
Pick a Job-choose a class job to take over for a week
Candy-choose 1 piece of candy out of the candy drawer
Pencil-choose 1 pencil out of the pencil drawer (& sharpen it in class..OMG! Why is that so exciting?)
Teeny Tiny Treat-you know all that junk you get like stickers, book marks, crayons, erasers, etc...

This is what my teeny tiny treat drawer looks like:

The tickets are still free but now there are a few more "prizes"!  Check them out and if they work for your class feel free to download them today!

Click here to get these lottery tickets!

Tomorrow's Alphabet

B is for wood, tomorrow's bridge!

Q is for princess, tomorrow's queen!

Have you ever read Tomorrow's Alphabet by George Shannon?

Click here to check it out on Amazon!

Do you struggle with enrichment idea's for your highly performing students?

My "go to" enrichment is usually reader's theatre but that gets stale and this book is a great break from all those plays.

Student books look like this.

After reading the book with your students you can discuss idea's for different letters.  I tell mine to start by writing the alphabet into the first space on each page.  Then to go back and think of idea's for each letter.   Here are a few books we've started this year:

At the top you can see Imani has "A is for egg, tomorrow's alligator!"

"P is for egg, tomorrow's penguin!"

"D is for puppy, tomorrow's dog!"

I love using this high order enrichment activity with my high performing students during MTSS (formerly RTI, formerly 30 minutes of the day where I got to teach an actual subject, formerly a gigantic headache...I lie, it still is a headache).  Pick it up for FREE from my TpT store today and let me know what you think!

Click here to get this activity from my TpT store!

Finally, I wanted to share a new video with you for Fun Friday.  One of my favorite teacher friends found this one after she did the Dino Stomp one day.  We're thinking Flash Mob?!  Enjoy the Sid Shuffle with your class this week!