Learning is fun!
Posted in fourth grade, holiday, technology, and writing
Last week in the Jackson Library, fourth graders proofread a letter from a turkey. They worked in pairs on a Seesaw template I created to find the errors. I threw in a few extra ‘mistakes’ to make sure they were thinking! It was a fun activity and helped me gauge which skills need more reinforcing in the future.
ANSWER KEY
Posted in fun events, grants, and writing
The Plano Education Foundation prize patrol just visited the Jackson Library! I won the grant I submitted for The Masked Writer: Using Mentor Texts as Springboards for Writing and the group grant I co-authored with Connie Matthews for more EV3 LEGO Mindstorm robots. Woo hoo! So excited!
Posted in fourth grade, picture book lesson, and writing
Fourth graders used a Seesaw template I created to match dull “telling” sentences with their “showing”, descriptive counterparts. I found the descriptive counterparts in various library books. The kids worked in pairs to match the quality description from the books to their simple counterpart. To prepare them for the lesson, we read Moonlight and admired the vivid imagery the author created. Then we read a story I wrote about camp and discussed the ‘show, don’t tell’ strategy. For independent practice, they worked in pairs on the matching Seesaw activity.
Mentor texts used:
My Camp Story Sample Sneak in the Setting
Posted in fourth grade, picture book lesson, poetry, and writing
Fourth graders were inspired by a read aloud from the Eric Carle book, What’s Your Favorite Color? I found this gem at the last year’s Scholastic book fair. After reading the story, the kids thought about their favorite color and used my template to brainstorm how their color might sound, taste, and feel. I love the imagery they used! As they wrote, we played the video of Hailstones and Halibut Bones for more ideas, since it has a similar theme.
Green Example: Read Write Think
Posted in fifth grade, poetry, technology, and writing
Last week was a short three-day library week due to the holidays so during quick check out, fifth grade quickly created a spooky poem. They used the Chromebooks to access my Seesaw spooky poetry template. This was fun to create and fun for the kids too. Grab the template below!
Posted in technology, third grade, and writing
Third graders used their five senses when reading the story Twister! As we read the story, we emphasized finding the five senses on all of the pages, admiring the beautiful paintings. After the story, the kids dragged the phrases to the correct sense box in a Seesaw activity I created for them. “Natt’s eyes look big and round and full of tears.” This is a beautifully written and painted story! The kids liked how the illustrator painted the swing at the end of the story to match the text: “The sight of our porch swing stops me. An arm is broken, a slat is missing, it’s sloping on one chain.”
Posted in first grade, picture book lesson, technology, and writing
The week before STAAR testing, first graders created their own digital book based on Rosenthal and Lichtenheld’s book, The OK Book. The book shows the stick figure shaped like the letters ‘OK’ attempting different hobbies and activities. The figure isn’t very good at these activities yet, but that is ‘ok’ and one day they will find their favorite hobby and talent. The kids used DoodleBuddy to create their pictures and AnyFlip to publish. Check out first grade’s book!
