Measurement, Paragraphs, and Green Kids!

This week we have been focusing on measuring area and perimeter and nailing this concept down! Today we had a little fun with it. I gave all of the kids a piece of centimeter graph paper and they had to create their name out of the paper. Then they glued all of the letters to a piece of construction paper and had to find the area and perimeter of each of the letters in their name. I must say- I was a little nervous as to how difficult it would be for them to visualize the letters in "square" form. But i was beyond impressed- most of them could do it better than me! Here are a few examples:

During "Writer's Workshop" today we did a bridging activity. For those not familiar with the "dual" world, after each unit, in a dual classroom, one may do a bridge to connect the concepts already learned in one language to the next. For instance, I just finished teaching a unit completely in Spanish about the 4 types of sentences and how to use them to write great introductions and conclusions. Thus, today, because I had finished the unit, we did a bridge lesson in which I connected the content they already knew to the English language. First, we bridged the vocabulary ie: declarativa/declarative, imperativa/imperative. As you may notice, the words appear very similar. Those are cognates- words that sound the same and mean the same thing in two languages. My kids love finding those during our bridging lesson, and they are so important to point out as it helps strengthen that linguistic connection!  

After bridging the vocabulary and concepts, I usually do a little activity to go along with the vocabulary we have just bridged in the other language. To do this today, I gave each of students a strip that had a sentence on it. The sentence was part of a 5 sentence paragraph on a specific topic. They had to locate their friends around the room that had the other sentences in their paragraph, and then work together to put them in order. 

After all of the groups had put their paragraphs in order. We took an in depth look at the intro and concluding sentences of each paragraph. The groups had to read them aloud and then as a class, we determined which type of sentence it was using that new vocabulary we just bridged in English! If you think this activity could be useful for your class, click on the image below for a free copy of the paragraph strips I used!

Finally, we spent all this week learning about what it means to be "green" as part of our science/social studies combined units on goods/resources and natural resource conservation. At the beginning of the week, we discussed what it meant to be "green". I had the students do a little schema writing before hand and asked them to write down what they thought it meant.-whoo hilarious! Had everything from aliens to wearing green clothes and dying our hair!

Needless to say now I think/hope they have a much better idea. Each day I read them a different book about a way in which we can be more "green". After reading they completed a reflection sheet to add to add to their "How to be a "green" Kid" poster we created the first day. Here are some of the finish products. (They don't look quite as cute because I had to block out their photos...but you get the idea!)

I plan to finish getting this combined unit (in English and Spanish) up for you guys during my break this week! Just need to add some finishing touches!

And Spring Break has officially begun! Anyone else off this week? Have any exciting plans?