Mission History Freebie

Know what I love? FREEBIES!  Click the link above to snatch up this Mission History Freebie with you.  It's a peace offering because this little blog has been sitting pretty empty for a while, and I'm sorry about that.  This school year has just done me in... between teaching 32 kids and carting my own 3 boys to school with me... and then homework, grading, cooking, laundry, cleaning, and... and... and... I'm just tired.  

I sometimes wonder if anyone ever comes over to check to see what I've been up to, wonders where I've been... or if everyone already sees my posts over at IG or FB and knows I haven't jumped off the bridge (yet).  ;)  Just kidding...

So, let's talk for a moment about how my classroom is going this year.  This Fall at our PD we were told that we would be doing RCD - ELA (SS) this coming year.  I didn't even know what that was... the acronyms change all the time, but I've learned it's Rigorous Curriculum Development, and my grade level would be taking our Social Studies curriculum and diving deeper to apply our reading standards in a new content area... to make the units integrated.  Sounded great until the part that we needed to find resources to do that...

So I started researching our different units and created reading passages for what my students need to know.  Those informative, interesting, and fun facts that glue their attention year after year.  The passages led to spiral strategy grids... which led to thinking maps... which led to comprehension questions... which led to unit tests... which led to research opportunities for my students to grow deeper with their knowledge.  

California Regions

California Native Tribes

California Explorers

California Missions

California Famous Men of the Gold Rush

California Reading Passages Bundle (5 Reading Passage Products)

I have always LOVED teaching my kids about our California History, but this year it has really flourished with these passages in addition to the research, writing, and activities that we were already doing.  

California History Bundle (Activities and Writing 8 products)

Reminder: this Monday and Tuesday everything will be on sale over at TPT.  Don't forget to use the code (though if you do forget you can contact their customer service to get some help).  

  

Have a great day!

Owl Week

Wanna see something gross?  Yes, please!

I love focusing on owls during the month of October.  We have a full week of everything owls - we read the mentor text Owl Moon, do a paired owl passage, and then complete Owl Pellets.  This year my class was fortunate to have Donors Choose donors fund this project for us.  We were given a class set of pellets, forceps, owl posters, gloves, and a nonfiction owl book as part of our project.  

Once again it was a hit. The kids got down and dirty, and some wonderful parents were there to help the kids.  Some parents spritzed the pellets with spray bottles, some parents offered encouragement.  I always do this project outside - 2 huge pieces of butcher paper create a "table" for the kids.  Each partner group has a styrofoam plate (because of all the water that is used to break up the pellet a paper plate just won't do).  Each student also received a little bathroom cup to collect their bones and a pair of those blue forceps.  I used to use metal tweezers, but these blue ones do not get lost as easily.  I switched this year to the little bathroom cups since with big bowls they never clean the gunk off as well.  When done, they dump their little batch of bones into a snack size ziplock bag and then head inside to sort and label their bones using the information sheet from Ideas by Jivey... Who am I kidding?  I use a lot from Ideas by Jivey during this owl week of learning!  

        

Hope this helped!

Charlotte's Web Dialogue Practice

Remember that time I tore a book a part to use it in a lesson? Yeah, I did that last week.  

We have started really working on narratives, specifically we were looking closely at dialogue and the kids needed to see ALL the different parts - the quotation marks, the punctuation, the REST of the quote...  so I tore up a Charlotte's Web book (that was already ripped in half), and each student ended up with a different page.  

Charlotte's Web is the novel we have been reading for the past 3 weeks anyway, so they were familiar with the story and the different chapters. I had them glue the page to the middle of the colored copy paper, and they had to rewrite 4 different quotes - one had to be from the page that they were given, the others could be something that stuck out for them in the book.

 

The kids really GOT this activity.  As they turned them in, so many of them had to go back to look at it once again... to fix this or that.  Did you know that quotations marks need 2 sets?  That you can't forget the comma or the punctuation mark before the second set of quotation marks? That usually there is more to the quote, for instance how the character is saying it?  So many little things that the kids learned.  I counted this as really good practice that was relative. I've already seen improvements in their narratives.  Win win!