Hello Again Everyone,
I'm back for a second day in a row! Woot! Woot! It's worth celebrating since report cards are looming and I probably will disappear under a rock for a few days/weeks (let's hope it's not for too long). I did improve my method for making things a tad easier during report card season but let's face it, it's NEVER easy, regardless of how organized and prepared we are.
Today, I wanted to share my kiddies work. They are so awesome and make me so happy! We made some Love'Bots AND learned some new grammar concepts with this theme.
Last term, my students filled out a self evaluation. One of the components of this evaluation asked the students to write about themes and topics they would like to learn about. My kiddies wrote many interesting and fun ideas, one of them being ROBOTS. Now I am no science expert nor a mechanical engineer and the students do learn about robotics in science (not my department), so I decided to make it a Valentine's Day themed Robot. Needless to say, just like almost everything else, they took the idea and flew with it. They are so good like that, they are enthusiastic about EVERYTHING!
We started off with an anchor chart! I'm obsessed! I know it's not new but I never thought to use one before! What I love about it, is that the kiddies have a visual to help them come up with words AND a lucky winner gets to take the chart home! I apologize, I forgot to take a picture of the completed chart (I often do that!). Here is our class Love'Bot...
I know he's cute when my friend Val over at All Students Can Shine tells me she wants to marry him!
We filled it out with things we love and then got to work on our own Love'Bots!
I love them... Which works out well since Valentine's Day is all about LOVE!
The students had to fill out an "I LOVE" sheet and place it inside the robot's "belly" to make him "work."
I love how this cutie wrote that he likes to eat "stake" too cute AND that he loves to hug Ms. Nicole :)
After we made our Bot's we went to the SmartBoard room and read a Read Aloud about Love'Bot.
Here is a little preview of the story!
We looked at various words such as, adjectives, verbs, and nouns. The students circled the words on the Smartboard. We had great fun! Then we went back to class, and as a class read the story again. After each paragraph we stopped and underlined specific words (ie. verbs, adjectives, and nouns). This was spread out over a course of three lessons, with each lesson focusing on one type of word. Each time, we read the text again. This helped the students familiarize themselves with the words and the story. They were also asked to illustrate the story. Finally, we completed a reading response about this story. We read it again on the SmartBoard and then looked at the meaning, structures and features, and the students made connections to the text. It was such a great activity, which had initially turned out to be a total flop! I may have made an assumption that the students were VERY familiar with verbs, adjectives, and nouns when in reality they only had a basic knowledge of these concepts. I initially, gave the students task cards and they had to find the words themselves. It really did not go well and I found myself feeling like the world's worst teacher but when I revisited the lesson the next day and completed the entire activity as a class, it went MUCH better! Crisis averted! Hehe!
Here is a little sneak peak at my kiddies great work...
You can grab a copy of the Love'Bot Craftivity at my TEACHER STORE.
You can grab a copy of the Love'Bot Read Aloud at my TEACHER STORE.
Happy Love Day!
