Super Seuss Day!

Busy week! We had report cards due this week, which as I am sure you all know is just oh so much fun! I can't believe there is only one trimester left in the school year...times a flyin'...

Thought I'd share a few activities we did during our Seusstastic Day yesterday with you all! Don't worry- there will be more throughout the month ;).

We started off the morning listening to Justin Bieber read "The Cat in the Hat".
Here is it below if you are interested (although I am sure most of you have seen it!)




After this, we created the lovely little Seuss hats we would be sportin' the rest of the day. But of course, I had to tie them in to the story we just listened to somehow, so the kids did a retell of "The Cat in the Hat" on the white stripes of their hats.

For independent reading time, all of the kids were asked to bring a book or two from home written by Dr. Seuss (if they did not have any they borrowed one of mine). We spent 20 minutes dedicated to reading Dr. Seuss' work! So much fun, and some of the kids brought in books that I had not read yet myself!

On Thursday, we had read "Huevos verdes con jamón" (Green Eggs and Ham) and discussed Dr. Seuss use of rhyme, word families, etc. I alternate spelling units in English and Spanish, and I was looking for a lesson I could do to introduce the suffixes "-ísimo/a" in Spanish to kick off this new unit. Thus in an attempt to be creative (and use my students schema from the Seuss book we had read the day before), I created a short story I entitled "Feliz cumpleaños Dr. Seuss", all about how he does not want a cake for his birthday (no matter where or what kind), similar to how the character does not want the green eggs and ham in the story. Instead of "Sam I Am", I had it refer back to "superniños" (superkids) which is what I call my students. After reading the poem, I asked my students if they noticed anything about the words I chose to use. They immediately share that similiar to "Huevos verdes con jamón" there were a bunch that rhymed. We then identified the rhyming words and the suffix that they contained.

To conclude the lesson, each of my students had to select one of the items from the story for instance "un hombre viejísimo" (a very old man) or "el pastel sabrosísimo" (the very tasty cake) and draw and illustration of it for us to add to our poster. For those who don't know- your little Spanish lesson for the day - when you add "ísimo/a" to a word it is as if you add "very" to it , or make it "more so" that the original meaning.

In social studies/Writer's Workshop we have been studying and working on a biography unit. So of course we had to read a biography on Dr. Seuss. One of my students found a book in our school library  actually that was a wonderful English biography (we used the pictures from this one), but of course...no Spanish. Wikipedia in Español to the rescue- it wasn't quite as exciting, but I read the key facts I thought would be relevant to them. Ahh the joys of a dual language teacher.

While I read, the students each had to write down three facts they learned about Dr. Seuss on a birthday cake activity sheet I created.  I am going to put them up on our "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss" bulletin board that I will be creating next week. They turned out pretty cute! (We used tissue paper for the candle flames.)

Super Sunday tomorrow- and I have a Super award to deliver to some well deserving blogs!