Here are some activities/projects we did during the last weeks of school after reading Where the Wild Things are.
Text to Self connections: When I feel Wild
and of course I had to make my own Max face:)
We also made Wild things masks
this craft was simple and involved paper plates, construction paper, yarn, and foam sheets
The kids loved them.
I was very disappointed in the movie as I had hoped maybe doing a compare/contrast lesson afterwards. After previewing it myself I was very let down with the quality of the movie.
First I'd like to say that I am pooped, exhausted, oh so tired. We are into the 4th day of school and my body is not adjusting well to the changes. I have pictures of my classroom on my camera and will hopefully get them up and running soon.
Yesterday, we read:
I started by activating what they already knew about a principal (what they do, their responsibility in the schools, etc). They obviously did not really know a whole lot as they were only able to tell me 2-3 things they knew a principal did. (Yikes)
After reading we took a reading comprehension quiz using our
Because my students did not have a lot of prior knowledge regarding the principal's job, I decided to invite our principal to our class so that the students could interview him.
Before he came we devised and created questions that would help us get to know his position a little bit better. Then we all go in our interview circle and I had the students practice reading their questions into the microphone and making eye contact while interviewing.
The kids were super excited to interview our principal and did a great job with their questions. I know they gained a lot of knowledge about him that was not there before.
Our last follow up activity will be a compare and contrast of the principal in the book versus our very own principal. They already decided today there would be a lot of differences:)
As my eyelids are droopy I look forward to doing this
I had every intention of recreating these bad boys for my students.
I also saw on Pinterest how these are used to help students leave adequate spacing in writing so I decided that mine would function for both reading and writing.
Summer break= blog stalking which I have had a lot of time to do. I am super excited at all the resources I have came across and wanted to share a few that I am excited about using this school year.
1. http://storylineonline.net/
This site has lots of books read by various actors as well as follow up activities to do in the classroom.
Some examples of books that are featured include:
I can't wait to use this for my word study block. Students can enter their word lists and then complete various activities such as practice spelling tests, games, etc.
Our class had a wonderful Read Across America celebration day back in March for Dr. Seuss's birthday! I made this t shirt to wear for the birthday celebration:
We spent a chunk of our day journeying through various centers and activities to promote reading and the celebration of the man himself: Dr. Seuss. The following are some examples of things we did in case you want to incorporate them in your celebration for next school year.
Students were given Cat in the Hat shaped "passports" which they carried to each station. I have 2-3 students per station and they rotated every 15-20 minutes. After they completed each station they had to be signed off by me. At the end of our celebration they turned in their hat passport for their daily reading participation grade.
Station examples:
1) Computer station: I had the students get on http://www.seussville.com/ and explore. There are tons of things for them to do on this site. For teacher ideas for lessons and activities go here: for teachers
2) This photo shows the cat in the hat passports that students took to each station. This station is a Tic Tac Toe Dr. Seuss birthday game (students would play multiple rounds and keep track with tallies of the winner) then they would be able to pick a Dr. Seuss illustration to color.
3) the READING station. Students were provided with Dr. Seuss books from the classroom library or ones they brought from home and just enjoyed time reading the books with their partner or individually. They really enjoyed this quiet time especially my emergent and beginning readers who used their decoding strategies to sound out the rhyming words. The discovery of learning to read is life changing.
4). The Cat and the Hat Rhyming words: before I began our station rotation I read aloud the Cat and the Hat to the class. This station had the students using ripped pieces of red paper to create the stripes on their cat in the hat..hat. Once they covered their stripes to their liking they had to come up with as many rhyming words for the word cat as they could. These were written all over the hat then later totaled up by Mrs. Hawk. The winner with the most words won a special prize.
5) the Foot Book: I also had a station where the partners would read The Foot Book. Then they were given construction paper 'foot" template pages. Their job was to create their own "foot book". Students could use examples from the book or be creative and come up with their own kind of feet.
I also found this video of Justin Bieber reading the Cat and the Hat.
How did you and your class spend Read Across America? Feel free to share your comments below.
