Chickens In The Classroom - ELA Lesson Plans #20

If you want to teach your students about chickens you have come to the right place!  I have links at the bottom of this post to other chicken posts that I have written as well as my week's lessons on chickens here.  These posts will detail how to hatch your own chickens and other lessons that I've taught on chickens.  This year I also put together some of my chicken videos so that if you don't want the hassle of chicks in your classroom, you can show your students videos of the entire process.  Nothing says science literature connections like first reading all about hatching chickens and then hatching them.  Students will learn how important it is to read and obtain information carefully because they will need the information to hatch and raise our chicks.  We will continue learning about influential African Americans by writing biographies in writing.

For more lesson ideas, click on the photo below.

For a how-to guide on hatching chickens in the classroom click on the photo below.

If your are interested in purchasing my chick videos and resources, click on the photos below.

Retelling - ELA Lesson Plans #19

I don't know about you, but I am definitely glad Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days! Even though I'm a little late getting it on my lesson plans we always have an amazing time learning a little about the Chinese culture.  We will celebrate on Tuesday by taking key details from the text to put together a Dragon Parade.  The kids always have a ton of fun and they love learning about the holiday and culture.  We'll also take a look at Run Away Rice Cake in order to recount the plot and lesson.

During the week we will have eggs in an incubator that we will be journaling about. You'll see more of my lessons next week.

This week during writing we will be writing an autobiography.  I'll use Ruby Bridges as a mentor text and modeling with. my autobiography.  The students really connect with Ruby and it's a great way to learn about another influential American.

Click below for a free Chinese New Year graphic organizer.

To find my Chinese New Year lesson materials click the picture below.

Asking and Answering Questions - ELA Lesson Plans #18

We have a lot going on this week and not a moment to waste! It's pretty amazing that the kids are self sufficient enough to work on projects in small groups together.  We will continue learning about influential African Americans this week through a shared reading project.  If you missed it last week, our independent workstations focused on  Bessie Coleman and Mary Bethune Cookman.  Each day I will model the day's objective using a mentor text about Rosa Parks.  After my short model, students are broken up into groups and assigned to a text about an influential African American.  Each day they will work through the book gaining new information, using reading strategies previously learned in order to put together a poster that they will share with the class on Friday.  Any groups that finish early may present to the class on Thursday in order to save time.  Our writing block will be used in order to edit last week's task performance and we will use extra time for Valentine's read aloud every day.  We will also be finishing our social studies unit on maps by taking part in a big

Polar Bears - ELA Lesson Plans #17

 This week is all about a close read of polar bear texts.  Last week's penguin unit was no mistake.  It built a schema for the kids on climate, polar regions and climate change.  This week we will delve into two main texts reading them over and over as we focus on asking and answering questions, finding new vocabulary, discovering author's point, compare and contrast and responding to text dependent questions in length with adequate support. While my normal shared reading texts last 20-30 minutes, this week will last 45-60 minutes taking up our writing block.  Students will respond to a question each day with a short answer with the exception of the fourth day.  On the fourth day they will respond in length.  Below level students will be expected to answer the question "Why is ice important to polar bears?"  On level students will be expected to answer the "Why is there a serious possibility that polar bears could become extinct?" with a three part response including: topic sentence, three supporting pieces of evidence and closing sentence.  Above level students will answer the same question with a four part response.  They will include the information from the on level response and add in a response that rebuts any climate change hoaxes.  For independent reading time, students will work on influential African American reading stations in anticipation for next week's lessons.

 This book is put out for students who need to extend their learning.

 On Thursday students will answer the question "Why is there a serious possibility that polar bears could become extinct?"  If time allowed, I would use Friday to conference with them.