All About The Wampanoag

November 11, 2016
 When we learned about the Pilgrims at the beginning of this month, we also learned about the Wampanoag tribe.

One activity we did was complete an "All About the Wampanoag" book.  Basically we would read about a new topic of the Wampanoags and/or do an activity with that topic.  Then we wrote some things that we learned about the topic.  

The first topic we do is about their homes.  We complete the note taking page & what we want to write together as a class.  We do the illustrations too.  


We then do another topic.  This time I share with the class what I would write and illustrate but then they get to choose their own facts & pictures to write based on what they learned. 


 If you want a copy of this book, you can get it here.

In the Spring, we have a research unit.  I like to do this Wampanoag book as a way to prepare for that research project. 
Andrea Sign

Two Peas In A Pod

November 07, 2016
Today we read a class favorite and as we were reading we were reminded of our own likes & dislikes. 

After reading, we talked about how Little Pea doesn't like to eat candy.  We then shared one thing we do not like.

We also thought about what Little Pea does like and what we like. 


Andrea Sign

C'est la vie!

November 03, 2016
Each month, I host an after school club.  This club meets once a week for about 30 minutes and we spend time learning all about cultures.  Last month, October, we learned all about the French culture!

We started by learning all about French landscape - how it is known for the beautiful flowers and gardens.  We learned that a lot of people like to chat, picnic, read, relax, and even paint in the gardens.  We learned about once famous painter in particular: Claude Monet, who painted one particular place in France over 200 times!
Add some finger painting, remove the tape, and Voila! 

The next week we learned about the Love Lock Bridge.  We then went on a scavenger hunt around our school for love locks.  We ended up finding some french chocolate at the end of our hunt!

The 3rd week we learned that each country has their own flag.  We then created the French flag.  This year we put our flags on popsicle sticks and folded them on the lines so they looked like they were waving. 

Here are pictures of the ones we made last year (I apologize it is upside down...the flag's colors are blue, white, then red).  

Last year, we did not do the scavenger hunt.  Instead, we talked about the shape of each country and made our own shape of France & got to decorate it however we liked - some kids drew flowers, some drew the French flag [correctly ;)], etc! 


We then ended our learning adventure by making French nutella & banana crepes.  We learned what a crepe is, the different types there are, how they are made, and how to fold a crepe. 

Throughout the month we also learned these French words!
  • Bonjour - Hello
  • Je m'appelle - My name is
  • J'adore - I love 
  • Je voudrais - I would like
  • Au revoir - Good bye
  • Merci - Thank you
  • L'eau - water 


Andrea Sign

Life Of A Pilgrim Child

November 02, 2016
Today we learned all about the Life of a Pilgrim Child.  The lessons we did happened to be an extension of the last post, BUT I have done these as stand-alone activities before.

We started off today by reading some of our favorite Pilgrim books.
If I had a copy, I would have also read the book "Samuel Eaton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy" by Kate Waters.

Then we added to our pilgrim boy and girl venn diagram.

We then went back into our character roles that we did as part of our Mayflower lesson which you can find here.  

To refresh your memory: we finished watching the first 10 minutes of Charlie Brown Mayflower Voyage and they are now at the part where they are about to get off the ship & explore the New World. 

I told the students that before they can get off the Mayflower and explore the New World (w/ Charlie Brown), they had to write an expert piece about children living in Pilgrim times.

After they finished their writing, they created themselves as a pilgrim boy/girl.   

You can get the pilgrim writing paper & templates here.
Andrea Sign

Life on the Mayflower

November 01, 2016
It's November!!

This November I had to go ahead and restructure my plans...normally I do election stuff around President's Day but with the election happening I decided to rearrange and talk about elections in November.  Also, we have a full off for Thanksgiving rather than 3 days...ughhh.  Anyone else have this happening this year?? How do you feel?? I'm feeling like those 2 days before are also a nice time with my students and also that no one else in my family is taking the whole week off so I'm just hanging around for 2 days until we are all ready to go on our family trip on Wednesday.  But may be that's just me...    

Anyway, so I restructured my November plans...
Week 1: Past/Present: Mayflower, Pilgrims & Wampanoags   
Week 2: The forming of America & Elections
Week 3: Thanksgiving Traditions

We started off this week by reviewing the past and present by doing a past and present sorting activity. We did a lot of Past/Present work when we learned about Christopher Columbus so this is just a continuation of that & America's history.

We started by learning about the Mayflower today.  We began by picking up & [[skim]]  reading one of our favorite book series!!

As we read a section of the book, we would jot down fact onto our "Life on the Mayflower" anchor chart.

After we had researched about the Mayflower, what life was like on the Mayflower, and why the Pilgrims went on the Mayflower I told the students it was time for them to pack their chests because they were about to go on their own Mayflower voyage.  They were SO EXCITED!  We reviewed what things the Pilgrims were allowed to take with them & then they were each handed their own chest to pack with things that they would have had in the Pilgrim era.  
Click on the pic above for a free copy of the template.
Once they all had packed their chests, they were told to meet at the carpet.  We happened to do this entire lesson in one day; however, it can easily be split into 2).  We talked about how we were going to pretend the carpet was the Mayflower.  As we sat aboard the Mayflower, we watched the 1st 10 minutes of "Charlie Brown - Mayflower Voyage" - while I do not watch video often, there are so many benefits of using this one!! 

1) It is pretty historically correct
2) Charlie Brown is pretending he was on the Mayflower Voyage - just as the students were
3) The sounds within the media often changed based on the emotions happening - so we paused & talked about what the purpose of the sound was (TEK #16B)
Note: Before we watched, we did talk about how this is a tool to enable us to learn more about long ago & reiterated that they did not have technology back then.
Andrea Sign

Rocktober & More

October 29, 2016
Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him! 




We spent the month of October learning all about rocks! 


We spent the last few days of our unit exploring all about caves - from how caves form to the parts of a cave to cave formations to animals that live in caves.  We then wrapped up our rocktober fun by taking a field trip to the Inner Space Caverns.  If there is a cavern near you - I would definitely suggest taking a trip there.  The students LOVED it! And totally connected it with their learning - a few things I heard during the field trip...

"Are we in the twilight zone?"
"Oh, look! We are entering the mouth of the cave!"
"I hope we see some bats!"
"Oh cool! A stalagmite, a stalagmite, a column!" 

It was so fun to see their learning being connected to a real life experience!!

We did some fun cave activities (which of course I did not take pictures of...whomp, whomp...)

Here a some fun bat/cave activities we did
Top left: Text to Self Connection.  We read a bat book and on the back of that craftivity we included our text to self connection written response.
Top right: We began our unit on addition by creating a visual, a math sentence, and a word sentence to show the addition that was happening.
Bottom left: After learning all about bats, we wrote about what it would be like if we were a bat.  Then we drew 3 pictures of different things that we wrote about.
Bottom right: BME activity after reading Stellaluna.

We then spent the remaining few days of October learning about the history of Halloween, themes of Halloweens - including pumpkins, and completing some "spooky" Halloween projects!

You can get this spider here.



Andrea Sign

All About Me! {presentations that is!}

October 24, 2016
Building a sense of community is one of the most important things to do in the classroom.  It is such a focal point at the beginning of the year and I feel like it needs to continue through the rest of the year too.  

Letting students share about themselves and learn about others is one of the best ways to do this! 

Each Wednesday morning after the announcements (starting about the 3rd week of school) we have an All About Me presentation.  I remember having All About Me presentations growing up and loving them so I wanted to make sure to incorporate them into my classroom as a teacher.

Each child has a week assigned to them.  The students LOVE this time! The presentation lasts about 5-15 minutes and during this time the student's family members come and watch the student tell the class about themselves - from what their favorite food it to what their favorite color is to their favorite sports team to introducing the class to their family members, etc.  The student creates a poster at home with all of these favorites on them and the students use this poster to guide his/her presentation.

After this presentation, the class creates a book for the student. The book consists of a page (or more) from each classmate about what he/she learned about the week's presenter.  The students love writing all about their classmate! 
 It is also great because it is a time the students are often using common words like "like," "favorite," "color," "is," & "has."

After we finish the book, I read it to the class.

You can grab this freebie here.

Andrea Sign