Still Plugging Along

We only have 8 more days but we're still working hard. I am amazed with the growth most of my students have made this year, but I'm also freaking out because I keep finding new things that they haven't mastered yet AND I don't want them to leave me without knowing these things. Anyways, I'm teaming up with Doodle Bugs' Five for Friday Linky to share 5 things we did this week. 

We finished life cycles this week. I love teaching animal life cycles, but I'm also always so excited when the unit is over. I think it's because we go full force into animals and that's basically what we talk about, write about, read about, and do math about for an entire month.

This year we spent a good about of time on the frog. I found this cute poem/song from Super Teacher Worksheets. The best part is that it's FREE -- you don't need a subscription to grab this goodie. CLICK HERE to download it. 

I created this worksheet to go along with the poem. It touches on several Common Core Reading Informational Text Standards that we've already learned this year.  This was a great review for many of my students.  CLICK HERE to download the worksheet. (border is from Krista Wallden.)

We also spent some time on folktales this week. We've already read fables and fairy tales, but somehow skipped folktales.
We started by reading Anansi the Spider and made predictions about what we thought the book would explain. We wrote our predictions on post-it notes and stuck 'em to the board. If you don't have a copy of the book, CLICK HERE to watch it being read.  

We also read two different versions of Stone Soup (ok, to be totally honest with you, I never knew Stone Soup was a folktale . . . did you?). I had one of the original versions (I also didn't realize how many different versions of this story exist) so we read it and then watched a second version on PBS Kids' website.

Y'all NEED to check out this website, especially the section Between the Lions  because they have 13 short videos of different fairy tales and fables. Each one includes closed captioning too so the kiddos can read the words while they watch.  CLICK HERE to check them out. My kiddos could watch them over and over again -- ALL DAY LONG. 

 

We also wrote (I should say attempted to write) our own folktales. THIS WAS HARD, but they actually had a lot of fun. We had some good laughs when some of the folktales were read. 

 We folded a large piece of white paper in half and everyone wrote this on the front cover. 

Then on the inside, each student wrote their own folktales. Some students wrote one folktale that included lots of details and other students wrote several short folktales. 

We're also still working on adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers with regrouping. I tried to switch it up a bit and gave each pair of kiddos a deck of cards. Each person was required to make a 3-digit number with cards, then they put the cards next to each other and added the numbers together. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done.

Each person completed the work on their own paper. When they were done, they checked to see if they got the same answer. If they did, they moved on to a new problem. If their answers were different, they reworked the problem to discover the mistake.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.