Five for Fr-aturday and Sparking Student Motivation!

I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs just a little late this weekend to share some things we did this week!

Honestly, the work week was difficult to start because I was returning from a long weekend in Orlando! I got to see my BBB, Joanne, and went to Hollywood Studios, Universal, and Sea World. It was a jam-packed, awesome weekend!

So even though I would have loved to have stayed with Joanne and the minions and the dolphins, I put on my big-girl britches and had some fun with my kiddos! We are building up to writing about/describing a planet next week (we are currently studying the solar system) using precise language, so this week, we practiced describing food, amusement parks, and monsters! First, I displayed five pictures of hamburgers on the board and told them, “Last night, I ate the most delicious burger! It was so yummy I ate it all… do you know which burger I ate?” Of course, they all looked at me like I was crazy. So then, I showed them which one I ate:

…and they had to help me write about it so that someone would know what burger I had eaten. We just finished working with sensory details last week, too, so they immediately started using that language. It was perfect! I told them I didn’t want a list of things on my burger. We needed to describe it so well that someone would want to eat it when we were done! They came up with sentences like, “As I sank my teeth into the humongous juicy grilled burger, some of the sesame seeds from the bun got stuck in my teeth. It was a good thing I had a napkin because there was so much ketchup, it dripped onto my chin. The lettuce added the perfect amount of crunch.” I was seriously impressed!

I wanted them to write on their own, too, so the next day, I set up “stations” around the room with sets of pictures. I divided the class into four groups, set my timer, and they rotated every five minutes to each of the sets. They would choose one of the pictures to write about in detail, and do the same type of writing we did with the hamburger. You have never heard a class so quiet!! They absolutely loved this activity! There were pictures of sandwiches…

We spent the week doing some fun activities with the book, I Need My Monster, by Amanda Noll. I love using this book the week of Halloween! You may remember the monster writing activity we did last year– well it fit perfectly with using precise language, so we had to do it again! :o)

I am linking this activity to Head Over Heels for Teaching (Joanne!) for her Sparking Student Motivation linky, because my kids seriously loved this! The students had to write about the monster they created well enough that someone else could draw their monster without seeing it. It took us two days to do the activity in its entirety. The first day, they drew a monster and began writing about it. We have recess right after writing, so when it was time to go, I told them to wrap up the sentence they were writing and we would finish tomorrow. Usually, that is met with an immediate slam of the notebook closed and everyone jumping up to get in line… well not that day! No one stopped writing! I had to tell them to stop! I guess writing about monsters is better than recess?? 😛

The second day, they finished their paragraph and revised to make sure it was descriptive enough. Then, they got with a partner and read their paragraph while the partner drew- never showing their monster to their partner. Here are just two of the many successes from this year’s class!

We finished up using the paired texts for epidemics and germs this week (a freebie!). I explained a couple of weeks ago about how and why I have students annotate during close reading… I updated the post to also include this activity that I have my students do after annotating:

I have the students turn knee to knee and share their thoughts, what was important, and their questions with each other. This often prompts new thinking for the students when they hear each others’ thoughts. It is a great way to promote conversation in the classroom!

We have Book Character Dress-Up Day for Halloween at my school. My grade level team dressed up as Magic School Bus characters- I was Ralphie! :o)

So much fun!!

Everyone have a great weekend! Don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour tonight! WOOT!