TPT Sale

I am participating in the site wide sale on May 7 and 8 with all of my activities %20 off. Check it out!!

Mrs. Dunn

Eric Carle and Spring Centres

This month's centres have an author focus on Eric Carle, of course so many of his books fit perfectly with springtime and the units we study in Science.

Puppet Centre

Students were making caterpillars, which also fits with building things as students need to make this kind of a puppet (accordion style)

Listening Centre

Students sequenced the story "Mixed up Chameleon" after watching it on the Smartboard. They LOVE this story, such a good one.

Thematic Book

Students wrote their own version of the very hungry caterpillar story. 

Journal

Students did some writing about spring time. I always give them a picture to glue on otherwise they spend the entire centre drawing pictures and colouring instead of writing!

Guided Reading

After reading and discussing with the guided reading group, they did a response in their booklet.

Working with words

I found this ridiculously cute word family craft on Teachers Pay Teachers from Susan Moran- TGIF here. Makes for easy differentiation just change the word family or the number of words they need to write!

Writing

One of my amazing partner teachers gave me this cool activity to go with the mixed up chameleon. The kids pick which creature they would be if they were the chameleon and then glue on the body parts and write about it. So cute!!

Last centre is just sight word BINGO nothing too exciting there.

Also, we did a little craft to do some retelling with the mixed up chameleon. The kids made coloured the chameleon and cut out the centre of his body.. I will laminate and put on popsicle sticks. They created the background with all the different places the chameleon goes for the retelling.

Mrs. Dunn

Another video! Skip counting

Every morning in math since about November I have played a flash it game with my students to develop subitizing skills and number sense. I put groups of objects, starting small in different arrangements and groups on the smart board, and flash three times. This way the children don't have time to count and must recognize arrangements quickly. After we practiced this lots, we have now started working on using flash it to skip count. Again, it forces the students to group and count because there is not enough time to count each individual object.
After we count the objects, student make groups of two students (peanut butter and jelly) and then tell each other how many they saw and verbalize how they know the number based on groupings and how they counted. 
I think this all sounds a bit confusing, watch the video below to see how it's done!!

Mrs. Dunn

Spring Art

It seems as though we have had all four seasons in the last week here in Calgary; it snowed last week, today is 20 degrees, I think it also rained a little while ago. So confusing, especially trying to teach seasons.

Anyways, we did a "spring" art project that turned out cute. As always, took step by step pictures and put on the SMART board.

Making different shapes we created this person, I cut out the umbrella, the kids made the rest.

Then we tore and glued ripped pieces of tissue paper, in different shades of blue for the background. After we modge podged it.

Mrs. Dunn

Gingerbread man story- Better Late then never

Well, this happened a long long time ago. And I meant to post about it, but didn't. And now it is spring. I suppose better late than never right?

So we did a super fun story writing activity based on the book:

Basically, we rewrote the story, but what was unique about this was that we used mapping skills (with a map of the school) to see if we could find him, and so after writing each page, we would go in search of the gingerbread man in that location.

 Title page, sorry for the blurry, I laminated and bound the books so the shine didn't quite work out.

 Beginning of the story. this was VERY scripted.

Here is where we used our social studies map skills. I copied a school map into the story, and before we wrote each page we went to see if the gingerbread man was in that location. Then we would come back and write and colour that page. This is a great way to make things interactive and get a little DPA in there too!

WARNING: I may have built this part up... a little too much... like ooo I think I saw him run past, we need to be super quiet so he doesn't run away. We also found notes that he left us in each location. I built this up so much to the point where when we got to the library children thought they had found him, and someone said they say him run past the library window. Why is this a bad thing you may ask, keep reading to find out.

We then made missing posters just before going to the office to look for him. We brought our missing posters to the secretary to see if she had found him, which by chance she actually had.

Here is the reason for the warning. The children were expecting a real, live, running, talking, singing, dancing, magical gingerbread man. And we found... a paper laminated copy. Needless to say, there was some seriously disappointed faces. What a let down.

Anyway, all in all it was a fun story writing activity. Although I know the season is over, if you are interested for next year, here it is to purchase:

Teachers Pay Teachers 

Mrs Dunn

Teaching Basic Mapping Skills

I find my students have a lot of difficulty understanding where we live in relation to the rest of the world, so I made these nesting maps out of different sized tin cans so they would all fit together.

We started with our school, and then put it into the Calgary container and so on. I used whole brain teaching to talk about each one, so we mirrored as we went and then the students taught each other. I think we are moving closer to understanding. I really feel that this skill is developmental, so I continue to look at different ways to present the concept throughout the year.

Mrs. Dunn

April Currently

Oh Boy 4th Grade

OOO I haven't done one of these in months, but since I'm off on spring break and have a little more time on my hands I figured I would link up with the wonderful Farley!!

My puppy is being silly and playing with his squeaker toy, running around like a crazy man. 

It has been so amazing being off on break; relaxing, sleeping in, not living by a bell, eating when I want without being interrupted because someone needs a key to the classroom or a meeting etc. Loving it!

Since we had a longer holiday, I went and visited my parents and brother with the hubby in Arizona. We had a super holiday spending time together, hiking, going to the pool, jeep touring and eating lots of wonderful home-cooked food. It was a great holiday, the hubby and I needed some time away so it was perfect.

I always want a snack, it seems to be something I do frequently throughout the day.

The house is total disaster it feels like a tornado has hit, so this week has also been a clean up time.

I'm always trying new things in the classroom, and in life I guess to try and make myself and my teaching better and I think that this is important. To continue doing the same thing over and over again when it is not working just doesn't work!!!

That's all for me, link up through the link above.

Mrs. Dunn