Teaching Teamwork with Tops and Bottoms

Tops and Bottoms is a quick read that would work for grades k-5, but is best suited for grades k-3.  It does an awesome job demonstrating how teamwork and hard work are much more effective than laziness.  In the story the character Bear inherits property and wealth that he is way to lazy to take care of.  Down the street from Bear is a family of hares who got into a little trouble and have a hard time getting what they need to survive now.  So the father hare tricks Bear over and over again to feed his family.  At the end Bear wises up and starts to work his land and the Hare family no longer has access to food because they tricked Bear so many times.

If you have been following along to our Back To School series then you might have read the post "Say Hello" which showed how I introduce Think-Pair-Share to my classroom.  Now that students have been practicing and know how to work with a partner it's time to launch expectations and procedures for group work.  It's really nice reading a book before hand that demonstrates so clearly what benefits might come from teamwork.  After reading the book we fill in a Venn diagram as a class that explores the character's traits in the book.  Then I pose the question:  What would have been a plan that worked best for all of the characters?  After we have a class conversation I then pose the question, "What's the best way for everyone in our class to work together?" We fill out a Do's and Don't anchor chart that can stay up all year.  Once our anchor chart is filled out, students need a break and we move onto something else.  After the students have a break I will teach another lesson that requires group work and we will develop our procedures from our expectation chart. Then I will have the students work together in a group.  The lesson that we use for practicing group work really doesn't matter.  It's so nice to be able to teach standards, procedures and character education all in a 30 minute lesson.  Be sure to check out the video below and come back tomorrow for another post!

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.

Cause and Effect - ELA Lesson Plans #16

 Hi everyone! I hope that your new year is off to a great start! This week is all about penguins and informational text.  I love this time of the year because we can tackle several standards in one week and the students are well on their way to working effectively and independently.  Their third grade teachers will be pleased.  We start the week off by bribing a staff member to deliver a frozen or very cold package that is marked "URGENT".  Inside is a letter and penguin articles.  The letter is from my "good friend" Dr. Hanson who is noticing effects from climate change and wants our class to investigate whether or not penguins could move to a warmer climate.  The students are so excited to not only receive the package, but also to help solve the cute little penguin's problem.  We'll be exploring key details, compare/contrast, connecting events and response to text.  The students will carry their learning over into writing where they research and choose a topic about penguins to write about.  Students who finish their work on time will get to make a penguin cover for their writing.  They love that part.  I'll post pictures below that show some of the activities will have during our independent time.

For the materials that I used this week, click on the picture below.

Arctic Animals - ELA Lesson Plans #13

It's that time of year again.  You know the time where you have a ton on your plate, the kid's lose their minds and all your interim assessments come due.  Yet we still want to make everything in class as magical as possible.  It's because of all of those facts that I make my lessons as engaging, simple and short as possible.  My lessons will be 20 minutes to hold student's attention.  My text will be available in my classroom library or print and teach because I need to keep extra work to a minimum.    Below you will find my December calendar.  Can you believe I've planned a month out?

Each day this week we will be learning about a new arctic animal. I'll have differentiated text for the students and a graphic organizer.  You can see them in the picture below. On Friday students will get to chose an animal of their choice to research and make a poster about.  They'll have a graphic organizer to help guide them when creating the poster. Each lesson is short, meaningful and engaging.  Click on the picture below if you want to see the resource that I'm using.

 

Writing is getting serious. Students have come a long way since the beginning of the year.  Now it's time for some of the students to learn how to structure a paragraph.  We will extend our reading into writing where students will write about an arctic animal of their choice.  We'll make book covers to put the writing in.  I'm using a fabulous resource by More Time 2 Teach.

Each day my students who don't lose Dojo points will get to make a page marker like the ones shown below.  Most of the easier ones take under 10 minutes to create. The first couple of days we will start with simple plain ones.  The students will be able to sell their page markers at our classroom market day with classroom currency.  It's a great way to tie in behavior and social studies.  The how to video came from Red Ted Art on Youtube.  You can link to her account by clicking on the link in my Instagram post.

My lesson plan templates can be found at TPT by A Modern Teacher.

Cultures From Around The World - ELA Lesson Plans #12

Here we are in week two of one of the best units EVER! The students are having a great time learning about cultures from around the world, how those cultures affect us, all while incorporating reading, writing and social studies standards together.  This week will not disappoint! All teachers know that learning just before a break can leave students a little less motivated, distracted and it may feel a bit like herding cats.  This is why I up the engagement of my lessons so that students keep on going until the minute they leave on Friday.

We will be diving into comparing and contrasting again on Monday.  The students will have a host of H.O.T questions to guide their thinking.  On Wednesday we will take a break a break during shared reading from cultures and dive into Thanksgiving.  We do not learn about a sugar coated Thanksgiving, rather we learn an age appropriate approximation of the events.  Students will look at the cause/effect relationships between these events in order to connect each event through a timeline.  Students have been discussing and learning about an author's point for weeks now, Thursday will have them reading three passages, determining the purpose and finding evidence to support the different points.

So much going on this week that every minute counts.  Our shared reading lessons will run between 20-30 minutes.  We will have fun read alouds ever day.  (I'll list some of them below for you.). We will also be incorporating fall fun into our guided reading.  Students will continue to write their Sweden pieces to display for their culture fair.  If you are interested in details to any of the extra events that I have listed, please look for links below.  You can find my lesson plan outlines from A Modern Teacher here.

Click below to see what a culture fair is and how to run one.

Here are my read alouds for the week.

Need a freebie for bellwork? Click on the picture below.  Check out last week's lessons for a couple other freebies for a culture fair.

Click below for some of the materials that I'm using this week.