Mrs. Garrabrant's Classroom: March 2016

This week we began learning about poetry and the students have really been enjoying it so far.

Here are a few of the books that we have been reading. We can't wait to continue to read more poetry after spring break!

Last year my students published a book through Student Treasures and I couldn't wait to share their work with the class! The students were very eager to begin writing their own poems and enjoyed getting some inspiration from past students work.

We began writing poems with words ending in -ing. You can see 2 poems below that we wrote together as a class. We worked on sounding out the words and I wrote the sounds that we heard. The first poem called "My Dogs" and says, "Sleeping, playing, chasing, running, eating, licking, wrestling by Mrs. Garrabrant's Class". The second poem is called "School" and says, "writing, learning, running, playing, counting, reading, working by Mrs. Garrabrant's Class".

Below are a few examples of student -ing poems written by Raegan, Ayden and Phoenix about their pet cat, fish and dog.

We also learned how to write ABC poems where each line begins with a letter of the alphabet. You can see 2 examples of different versions that we discussed as a class. The one on the left is called, "Our Alphabet" and says "Alligator, Banana, Cookie, Duck, Elephant, Frog, I like my ABC's! by Mrs. Garrabrant's Class". The one on the right uses a sentence for each line. I started the poem in order to give the students an idea of how to write it but I wanted to let them be creative so I didn't finish it! Below you can see a few of the student's examples of ABC poems.

We learned how to write color poems as well. Our poem that we wrote together is called, "Red" and lists things that are red such as. "shirts, apples, strawberries, bubble gum, shoes, indian corn, Swedish fish, paper, American flag, tent, envelopes, lipstick". On the last two lines we wrote "I like red! by Mrs. Garrabrant's Class". Below you can also see some student examples of color poems titled "colors, rainbows, red and blue".

Lastly, we learned how to write an All About Me Poem. The poem below that I wrote about myself is titled "Me" and says, "Brittany, pink, dogs, football, Garrabrant by Mrs. Garrabrant". The only requirements for this poem is the first line should have their first name on it and the last line has their last name. The rest of the poem should include things that are special to them or are their age, favorite such as favorite color, animal, food, sport. On the left you can see Raegan's All About Me poem that she wrote as well.

My friend Isabella came to visit us again on Friday to help us with writing our poetry. She helped the students come up with ideas for their poems, sound out words, and provide encouragement for them. The students really enjoyed her visit!

I haven't updated about our workstations for a while so here are some of the workstations that we have been working on. Below you can see the students on the right practicing writing sight words. Brayden is matching the correct letter tile to the picture that begins with that letter.

One of the stations is a math survey where the students go around and ask their peers a question and record their answer. Right now we are working on graphing what pet the students in our class have at home.

On the left below is addition and subtraction number puzzles and on the right the students write numbers on their number scrolls.

On the left, students use pattern blocks to make different pictures. On the right, students are putting together number puzzles that include the numeric number, number word, that many objects and the number on a dice.

Left: Students put the words together to make a sentence and then write their sentence on the white board. Right: Sorting read words and nonsense words.

Below you can see Raegan, Jaslyn & Layton working together to put together a hundreds chart puzzle.

We have been working on story comprehension in literacy lab and activities such as this in order to help the students focus on their comprehension of what they read.

We also began reading a new chapter book as a class: The Rescuers.

In order to wrap up our ocean study, the students worked on creating projects to show what they learned about their animals. Here are their creations below! The starfish group created a song and I forgot to get a video of them singing it!