SUMMAHHH + a New QR Code Adventure

I can't believe June is already over! I hope July really slows down because I still have SO much that I want to do!

The highlight of my summer so far is definitely the 5 days I spent at one of the Texas beaches! Now, I have been to Hawaii before so I KNEW the beach experience wouldn't be the exact same. For instance, Texas has A LOT of seaweed in the water and on the beach. Still fun, nonetheless!

There's the seaweed--not even the worst of it.

The Gulf of Mexico (with my mini soaking it up)

Beautiful weather!

One of our MANY awesome castles we built!

We did do some sightseeing, but mostly spent EVERY DAY at the beach! And I am SO glad to be back in my own home. :)

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Also, last night I finished up my newest QR Code Adventure, which is just like the Animal one I posted a few weeks ago.

In this pack, students will read a description of an insect and use prior knowledge/evidence to make an inference about what insect they think it is. Here is a sample page (see if you can figure them out!):

And here is one of the recording sheets:

Check out a preview and the product itself in my store:

Have a great one!

QR Code Adventure: Animals

Happy summer! Hopefully, all of you are out of school by now!

So I made this product a loooooooong time ago and it just sat on my hard drive. And sat. And sat. Annnnddd sat. A few months ago I came across it and updated it. And then it sat some more. Then I came across it a few weeks ago and actually used it in my classroom. And then it sat some more. Well, I am proud to announce that I FINALLY posted the product!! :D Here it is:

Now, I originally made this with 4th graders in mind (back in 2012 when I was teaching 4th grade--told you it was old!). The product has evolved since then and I believe that it is now appropriate for 1-5th grade. (I can attest to using it in 1st because I successfully used it with my 1st graders!)

In this pack, students will read a description of an animal and use prior knowledge/evidence to make an inference about what animal they think it is. The animal descriptions include information about the animal's body and/or habitat, so you can also discuss what kinds of things the animal has in order to survive in its environment--perfect science connection. Here is a sample page (see if you can figure them out!):

And here is one of the recording sheets:

Looks like fun, right?! It is! Check out a preview and the product itself in my store:

Have a great Tuesday! :)

Plants, Plants, Plants!

This is a JAM-PACKED plant post--are you ready?!?

Plants unit, week 2 ended yesterday! We have had some GREAT fun so far and have learned so much about plants! The kids have just been so excited about it all--makes a teacher feel pretty good!! ;)

In this unit, we are covering not only plants and their parts, but also some ELA objectives, such as main idea, making inferences, compound words, expository text, parts of speech, research, letter writing, revising and editing, and media and its purpose/techniques.

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LAST WEEK
2 weeks ago, I introduced our new unit (we had just finished penguins) to my students by doing this:

Before the unit introduction, I checked out some plant books from our school library and displayed them on one of the counters in our classroom. I also put the plants book box from our classroom library on the counter next to the library books. Here are just a few selections of the many great plant books that we will be using during our unit!

The kids noticed the books early in the day.

I also picked some pieces off of the bushes outside my classroom door and put them in a tote bag to use for our lesson. We passed the tote bag around and felt inside the bag without looking. 

The students quickly started making inferences about what we would be learning about next! The plant books around the room (which they know I do for every unit) and the familiar feel of the items in the tote bag led them to believe that we would be studying plants--and they were right!! :)

Below is a little freebie page for recording inferences that would work well with this lesson that I used in a previous inferencing lesson.

We made a schema chart that we add to/adjust daily.

We will also keep track of new words that will eventually move to our vocabulary wall.

After we made the schema chart, we grabbed some hand lenses and our journals and went outside to write/draw about the plants at our school.

We used a classic book, Chrysanthemum, to review main idea. Main idea is SO hard for most of my kids. We have been working at it for a few months now and are getting better and better! Here is an image of the flipchart I made to go along with the book based on a lesson plan I found online.


We did the flipchart together across 2 days and then spent the rest of the week reading/studying short fiction and nonfiction passages about various plants for main idea. Again, we are getting better and better at it.

We also briefly discussed living and nonliving. I used this fabulous PBS video to kickstart a discussion about what those words mean.

We then did this super-fun activity that I posted about on Instagram a few days ago!

We made little cards that said "living" and "nonliving", went outside, placed the cards on living and nonliving things, and took pictures using an iPad. This was great fun! The kids then shared their photos with a partner and the whole group.

I wanted to print some of these pictures so we could add it to our living and nonliving anchor chart, but we (currently) do NOT have an easy way to print photos on the school iPads. We also had to turn them in right after this activity. Oh well.

THIS WEEK

This week's plant fun was motly about main idea (still) and the parts of a plant. We read this WONDERFUL Eric Carle book to jumpstart a discussion about parts of a plant (seeds):

This book is also for teaching about the life cycle of plants.

We drew what we already knew about plant parts...

...and then studied the parts of a real plant! The kids really picked them apart--they wanted to see and know everything about them.

We concluded the lab with drawing another diagram of the parts of a plant, in case they learned anything new.

The next lesson was about comparing the parts of different plants. Does every plant have a stem? Does every plant have roots? Does every plant grow the same way? This is a great book to start with:

We headed back outside to compare the parts of flowers to other kinds of plants, like grass, trees, and bushes.

Friday's activity about parts of a plant that we eat was fantabulous--we had a Plant Tasting Party!!

We sorted several types of plants by what part of the plant they are and then got to eat them! They did an AMAZING job at this and were obviously elated to get to eat and learn at the same time! :D

We concluded thew party by watching this book on TumbleBooks and discussing why the bear kept feeling cheated. We will read it again next week.

Finally, we planted some grass seeds and are hoping that they turn out as great as these ones did last year!

NEXT UP

Next week we will start a big plants research project that will include some wormy fun! I made a little journal for us that I will share after I get it just how I want it...

Soooo, what fun things are you up to in your classroom?

I'm Baaaack! + Making Inferences

So, for a number of reasons, I took a two-week social media hiatus exactly two weeks ago--best two weeks of my life!! Well, not the best actually, haha, but I did learn a lot:

• It is possible to let go of social media.
• Not checking Facebook and Instagram every five minutes actually WON'T kill me.
• However, if you abandon social media, you WILL find something else to fill the void...like online shopping. :/ :P :) (not a good idea!)
• And along the same lines, no FB or IG = MORE texting. That counts as building relationships, right???
• My phone battery lasts WAY longer when it isn't dinging with notifications all day long! I left school one day last week with 96% battery--what!!! :O
• The Bible has much more interesting stories than Facebook.
• Planning a four-year-old's birthday party is LESS stressful when you have more time to focus on it!

As you can see, I had a lot of realizations! ;) I am grateful for the experience and will be definitely be doing it again every now and then!

Now, on to my classroom happenings--

Yesterday, I introduced our month-long penguins unit with a little inferencing activity. After that activity, we filled up this little guy with schema about penguins:

The aforementioned inferencing activity went pretty well, but most just weren't exactly sure what making an inference meant! They were having a hard time communicating their conclusions. Thankfully, I already had another inferencing activity for science lined up...

Tuesday afternoon for my class means computer lab time--yay! This means that I get a solid 30 minutes of alone time in my classroom right before the last hour of the school day. :) This time was PERFECT for setting up Case #235B: The Mystery Visitor.

Right before I brought my students back into the classroom after computer lab, I told them that someone came by to visit while they were gone. The person that came by had to hurry out and forgot to put his materials away! In order to figure out WHO came by, the students had to study the clues and make an inference about who the mystery visitor was.

He left his very stylish IKEA umbrella open on the floor. Tsk tsk.

Weather books strewn all over the floor. Clearly, this person is not a teacher.

Some tools on the back table.....

And this map was left up on the Promethean board.

Who could it be??!! My Super Sleuths got right to work studying the clues and recorded the clues and inferences made on this sheet.

They ate up this activity. As you can see, they did a FAB job! Now, as they understand making inferences more and more, we will write more in our sentences. For now, this is super.

Grab a copy of this recording sheet to use in your classroom by clicking below! You will also see one without "Who has been in our classroom?" so you are able to use it for other inferencing activities.

Thanks for coming by! Enjoy your freebie!! :)