50 Followers and Fractions...O my!

To my delightful surprise, I signed on today to see that I have reached the 50 follower mark! As all of us new bloggers (or for those who once were) know- this is a very auspicious occasion to be celebrated! I can't tell you all how much I appreciate your support! I am just jumpin in my jeans over here!

To give back to all of you and to undoubtably celebrate a bit, I believe my first GIVEAWAY, must be had! Check back tomorrow for details (and to enter of course!). Thank you ladies! I feel that I have grown so much as a teacher by being part of this wonderful, crazy, blogging world with you already!

Enough of the mushy gushy now...and on to fractions. We are wrapping up our Fraction unit this week, and my kids have been working on solving fraction number stories. Today, I thought why not amp up the fun and write some of our own. And while we are at it, lets do a literature tie-in to Dr. Seuss...after all it is his month. Thus, I present you with "Our Fish Fraction Stories", inspired by Dr. Seuss' "1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" (or in my class "Un pez, 2 peces, pez rojo, pez azul").

We started our lesson today by reading the story and discussing the ways that Dr. Seuss used different adjectives to describe the different types of fish (and other pets) in the story. I shared with the kids that I wanted them to use this understanding to develop a "fish fraction story" involving 2 opposite types of fish. For instance, they could pick slow fish/fast fish, or skinny fish/fat fish, etc. Some of them ended up using ideas from the book, and some of them got creative. It was a great lesson in practicing adjective placement in Spanish for my Spanish language learners as well, as the adjective comes after the noun in Spanish you see. 

After the kids wrote the stories, they had to draw the picture that went along with it. Then we put all of their stories in page protectors and each kid got a Expo marker and an eraser and we had some fun! The kids left their stories at their tables and walked about the room then solving one anothers' stories. I am going to put them all in a book now so that they can use them for further practice during their independent math work time! Here are some of the finished products:

(The translated version- There are 9 fish swimming. 7 are strong and 2 are weak. What fraction of the fish are strong fish?)

(There are 9 fish swimming 3 are green and 6 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are green?)

(There are 6 fish swimming. 4 are red and 2 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are yellow?)

Cute right? (Sorry for the glare...page protectors.) I can't wait to put our book together!

Here's the freebie if you are interested! Graphics by the lovely The 3am Teacher and my friends over at Scrappin Doodles.

(No worries- it is in English too!)

Thanks again to my AMAZING followers. Don't forget to check back tomorrow for a GIVEAWAY in your honor!

The Sneetches

Just a quick little post for a quick little cross-curricular activity we did today. We finished up our unit on Black History Month last week, so I was looking for a way to briefly review the key ideas from this unit. Furthermore, we have been focusing a great deal on making deep connections, and I love to tie in this reading strategy whenever I can. AND....March is the month of "Seuss" therefore, I had to make sure he was involved as well. And where did this all lead me....to "The Sneetches"

This book helped me create a short, 20 minute lesson, that incorporated all three of these things!

First, we read. I asked the students to share any connections they were able to make with the class orally while I read aloud! I can tell you that within seconds they were all connecting it back to what had taken place in the all the biographies we had read during our Black History Month study.

After reading, the students had to decide upon one of their deep connections to write down and reflect on how it helped them to better understand the story. Here are some examples (one connected it to Martin Luther King Jr., one did her own thing!:

You can download the connection sheet I created here for free!

(Border is by Scrappin Doodles :))

To finish up the lesson, I created a poster with the heading "How to (NOT) be like the Sneetches". We briefly brainstormed different things we could do to be the opposite of the Sneetches. For example, talk to someone/play with someone new, go out of our way to help someone, make sure we include people in the games we play etc. I told the kids that throughout the week I would like them to try to do some of these things. After they do, they can come to the classroom and share what they did to be "NOT" like the Sneetches on a small post it note and attach their post-it to the poster. At the end of the week, we will read and reflect on what we have done/written. I'll try to remember to post a picture of our completed poster at the end of the week for you guys, so you can see how it turned out!

Happy Monday! Whoo!

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!