Spooky Houses, Apple Races & Snap Word Power!

As a celebratory Halloween math activity, the kiddos made their annual Spooky Houses!

This year, we used milk cartons as our base (just like with the Gingerbread Houses at Christmas).

We talked about the square and rectangle graham cracker pieces, and students had to roll a die to count how many pieces of candy they added at a time.  They were surprisingly good about sticking to this rule! They panicked when they couldn't find a die.

When the decoration was complete, each student got a candy corn pumpkin to manipulate based on given positional words.  Each house had an icing door, so it was easy to tell where the front/back of the house were.  

Today, we explored gravity with some apple and pumpkin races.  Students manipulated plastic rain gutter slides ($7 for one 10' piece at Lowe's, cut in half) to see what would make the apples reach the ground faster.  Then, students raced an apple and a pumpkin at the same slide height.  They wrote about their conclusions.  They had a BLAST with this activity!

In reading, Spiderman brought us another package teaching us about SNAP WORD POWER! In it, he included Pop Rocks to remind us that we should know Snap Words in a "Snap! Pop!" He taught us that we can check if we're pointing at the correct words based on if we're saying the snap words aloud while we point to them.  Sure, we might not know ALL the words in the story, but if we get to a word we DO know, we should be saying it correctly as we point to it.

Teachers! (And Parents, if you're interested in reading them!) I've scanned copies of all the letters I use from Spiderman in our Readers Have SuperPowers unit! GET YOUR COPY HERE or by clicking the picture below!  You can also find the comic I made HERE and the book for reread power HERE. Enjoy!

A Visit from Spiderman!

We started our Readers Have Superpowers unit on Wednesday!  This is such a fun unit because Spiderman visits our classroom and brings the kids tools to enhance all of their reading powers.  Usually when he visits, he runs past our room, bangs on the door, and leaves a cobweb-covered package outside of our door.  Sometimes he visits at night and leaves the package hidden in the room for us to find in the morning.  Other times he just sends us a text or email. ;)

So far, the kids have Pointer Power and Picture Power!  They got finger flashlights and witch fingers to practice highlighting words they know and pointing at words as they read. For Picture Power, students got a hidden picture activity to remind them to look closely for text clues in pictures.

For more information on the first two lessons, please READ THIS POST. 

We've started our Writing for Readers narrative unit in writing.  This unit began with the kids sorting their own writing from the previous unit into a readable pile and a non-readable pile.  As a whole class, we took a look at a piece one child said she couldn't read.  She said "I know what it was supposed to say, but it doesn't say that."  We worked together to sound out what she was actually trying to say to the reader.  It helped all of the students focus on what makes writing easy for others to read: applying as many sounds as possible, adding finger spaces, writing legibly.  After this lesson, students began work on a true story.  We're still working on stretching a story across pages with a solid beginning, middle and end.  I expect we'll have lots of story topics after Halloween!

In math, we've been working on modeling addition and subtraction with objects and pictures.  We've been using number bonds a lot to show the part-part-whole relationship.   We've also been using our Math Mats for addition.  It clearly shows two groups which you slide across to combine, and has a space for students to write the number equation.  You can grab your own copy HERE.

We've got a lot of fun planned this week, with Spooky House creation tomorrow and some Apple Races in Science! Stay tuned! :)

Reading Education Assistance Dog (R.E.A.D.) Visit!

This morning, we were fortunate enough to have a visit from a R.E.A.D. team.  From the website, "The R.E.A.D program improves children's reading and communication skills by employing a powerful method: reading to an animal.  But not just any animal.  R.E.A.D companions are registered therapy animals who volunteer with their owner/handlers as a team, going into schools, libraries and many other settings as reading companions for children."

Even the kids who aren't very excited about reading on a typical basis were so excited to read to Katie, a beautiful black poodle.

Katie's owner began by coming into our classroom and showing us a few of her best tricks.  Then kids walked over one at a time with their books to sit near Katie as they read to her.  It was pretty cute how they tried to find a book that the dog would enjoy... Harry the Dirty Dog, Dogs and their Puppies, etc.

The students did such a wonderful job on their reading, Ms. Patty (and Katie, too, probably) said she thought they were 1st graders! ;)