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Monday, September 24, 2012

Wow.. Time flew

I can't believe it has been over 3 weeks since I posted last.  I have to figure out how to teach, be a mommy, a wife, a maid, a chef and now a blogger :) 

To catch all of you up, after the first day of school, I did a few more get to know you activities that first week. 

I had my students write a book last year called How To Survive Mrs. Kunst's Class.  Each student got a letter and had to come up with a rule or advice for the next class on how to make it through their year.  Since I have the same students, it was even funnier to read it to the kids this year.  I especially liked reading the one about making sure to compliment my outfits and bring me coffee :)

I did a great lesson using The Important Book.  First I read the book to them and we noticed how the author wrote details about the important things to them.  Then we interviewed partners in the class and found out the important things about our new friends.  The students then filled out a page for our own Important Book.  I took pictures of the partners and then put together a class book.  They loved it!
 
I also read Oh, the Places You'll Go for our theme this year.  We took large pictures of Hot Air Balloons and wrote 3 goals on them, anything from this trimester to when we were 35.  Then we wrote what we wanted to be when we grow up on the basket of the hot air balloon and added a person into the basket that looked like us dressed up as what we want to be when we grew up.  They turned out so cute.  I put them in teh hallway with some whispy clouds for all to see.
 

 

The last book I read that week was The Worry Stone.  It is such an amazing book with beautiful pictures.  After reading the story, I passed around a basket of "worry stones", aslo known as dollar tree rocks, for each student to use as a worry stone.
 
 
The next week we got into curriculum and I tried to get used to my new schedule.  It is really diificult to teach in half hour chunks all day.  It makes teh day go by fast but I feel like all we do is get things out and put them away.  We use Scott Foresman for Reading, Reading Street and Envision Math.  I'd love to share ideas of how other teachers use these programs :)
 
Our skill of the week last week was Cause and Effect.  I did a great lesson on this using clouds, rain drops and rainbows.  All week referring to this visual.  Then on Friday, I read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and we kept track of all of the Cause and Effects we heard and then drew pictures of each one and put them on a poster.  I thought the book might be too childish but my students LOVE stuff like this.  I want to do it every week if possible.  Which brings me to my next question.... what books do you use for teaching Theme?  Such a hard concept for my students to grasp :)  Please share your ideas with me! 
 
Thank you for sticking through this big gap between blogs and this super long post!  I am really going to try really hard to do this more often!

1 comments:

Jennifer Jasewicz said...

Wow, you have so many great ideas to share. I'll have to check out those books!

Liliris
Fourth Grade Garden

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