Goldilocks and Bears

One of my favorite units to do during the year is Goldilocks. When I say we're doing Goldilocks, usually my boys groan, but then they see all the books I bring out and they get excited about it. ha!

 

I usually read A LOT of them throughout the week, and they can always read them on their own, but I usually pick 3-4 to actually compare and write out on the comparison chart.

Then, by the end of the week (usually day 4), we have a mock trial for Goldilocks! We have prepped for a few days, learning the terms and such....

I bring out my old graduation gown from college to turn into the judge.

And the kids become the different positions of the trial. 

After both sides present and we get to the end of the arguments, the jury deliberates... I usually have one or two kids who always bring up the argument that she is NOT guilty, so we usually have a hung jury. I love it!

To finalize, I have the kids write down THEIR verdict. 

As we're going through the week, we're also researching bears - the nonfiction component to our Goldilocks week.

I use Reading A-Z books, Bookflix, ,Discovery Education, and other nonfiction bear books.

The students are filling out their Bear Research Booklet as we go throughout the week. 

We talk about animal adaptations, where they live, important body parts and how each one is important for the bears. 

Then, at the end of the week, they can make a google slides presentation or a BoardBuilder on Discovery Education. This is new to me this year, so I've been trying these out lately... 

Here's a closer look at what's included in the the Goldilocks Unit.

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Teddy Bear Day

So, after YEARS of reading about Jodi's Teddy Bear Day, I finally did it! It was so fun! All the kids loved it! I will definitely be doing it next year.  Although, since it was my first time, I will be tweaking some things, for sure.

So... This particular day, I happened to wake up with absolutely NO voice!! That was great. Luckily, I had a parent that had offered to come in and help the day before. I wasn't going to have anyone come in, but sure! I can always use help, right!??  THANKFULLY I did, because she read the Teddy Bears' Picnic to the class for me - and the other book, I happened to have on CD, so we just listened to that one...so my other Teddy Bear books did not get read that day. Oh well. 

Then we did our Teddy Bear Adjective chart.

And put together our folder...

Most of the activities come from Jodi's Teddy Bear Day pack, but I added some other ideas too...

like the directed drawing page.  This one comes from THIS book. My kids are really into the drawing activities this year. I'm so glad!!

In the box under the step by step, they drew and measured their bears. On the page to the left, we drew it again and labeled the parts of a bear.

My parent volunteer did the Teddy Bear Math activities. So glad - because I would NOT have been able to talk to all my groups and do this activity with them. 

Some didn't have teddy bears, so they brought whatever animal they did have....this dinosaur is so fitting for his owner. lol

Later on in the day we compared real bears to teddy bears. I would have read a book first, BUT I had no voice.

And I wanted to do a science experiment with Gummy Bears, but I didn't have a voice, so I skipped that and we just did the Estimation Station. 

Oh Nelly, we've got a long way to go with estimating - hahaha.

So that was Teddy Bear Day. We did it during our Little Red Hen week, AND a 4-Day week. Oy! What a week! It was so fun though. Definitely give it a try! Even if you have Kindergarten or TK that does it - because I guarantee, it won't be the same, and the kids will love to do it again.

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Our week in picture summary

Here are just a few pictures of what we've been up to - this week... I've been trying to get better at taking pictures again.

We finished our bear writing! We used my Bear Snores On Pack and they used the organizer in the pack to help plan out their thoughts (forgot to take that picture), and then wrote out the sloppy copy, and after I conferred with them they wrote their neat copy. 

But what I really love about these writings is HOW they did the bears. I just put some paint on the paper and they painted the paper. Then they took a plastic knife (I would've preferred a fork, but I didn't have one of those..lol) and they scraped the paint to make the hair.

After is dried, they traced the bear and cut it out and glued it down on paper with their writing.

We also started my Robert Munsch activities. We listened to Aaron's Hair on Robert Munsch's website.

Then, they did problem and solution in their learning journal.

Then, they did a SWBSF and summarized the story. I LOVE SWBSF because there are many different waits to write it out. But it also makes them think if they can take that thought all the way to the end. I asked one kid who the "somebody" should be and he started with Aaron's Hair...everyone thought he was wrong, but I asked him if he could take it all the way to the end...

"Aaron's Hair, WANTED to be liked, BUT no one did, SO he kept running away. FINALLY Aaron caught up with him and told him he liked him and he went back to Aaron."

See??? Most people would've started with Aaron. That's why I like it. 

And I wanted to show you a little trick....you know I use cards a lot to teach math.

WELL...the only technology I have in my room is a doc cam. Which I'm totally thankful for, but it's no smart board or iPad or anything....ha!

WELL - you know the perfect little cards to put on the doc cam???

TRAVEL size! 

Look how TINY these are! 

(Teeny - these are perfect for you! ha!)

Here are a few more things we've been doing in math - that come from my Deck of Cards pack.

and also, we've been TRYING to finish our pen pal letters...omgosh these kids take FOREVER writing letters our friends in Japan...but I just want to show you Suzy, they ARE writing them!!

And, you know how I tell you in my visual plans that we use the phonics poems book for fluency throughout the week?? Just wanted to show you a little snippet of what we do with them. 

I retype them so they can't see the bold-faced words (the book bold-types the phonics words). We do a series of fluency and partner reads and choral reads and such through out the week. They circle words that follow the phonics rule. Then they illustrate it. 

Whew! ok - so that's a summary of our week.

On my FB page, I shared the cover to my evidence log I have to do for my evaluation

I got a few requests to show what's in my binder. I took a few pictures today. So I'll post about it tomorrow for you. 

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All this writing leads to a celebration!

So here's a quick picture update on my class this week so far!

We've been working out my Bear Snores On pack....

We listened to the non-fiction bears on Bookflix (did you see my video on it!?)

They've been doing some labeling - with caption writing....

And word sorting - with sentence writing....

And some sentence scrambles - which they LOVE!

They also did their "Pictionary" lol...(remember that game!)

They choose only FOUR words from the vocab list...

That's what I use to hold my words that we're working on

red section is the sight words

blue section is the spelling words (they're gone right now - in the center)

yellow section is science/social studies/reading words (the go hand in hand a lot of times)

green section is the math vocab (right now we're doing my fraction pack)

So they chose 4 words to do the definition on - here's rumbled...

So, I'm sure you noticed a pattern?

Yep - there's A LOT of writing going on.

Let me tell you why.

In the beginning of the year, I had 

16% of my kids score a level 3 (out of 6) or higher on the writing test.

Really???  I was beating my head against the table...almost EVERY day.

Could you hear it from where you are?? 

I wanted to cry. Literally. lol. 

I mean, I've ALWAYS loved teaching writing. It's always been one of my favorite things about teaching. But not with this class....lol.

But I turned to one of my writing gurus, Lori 

(Teaching with Love and Laughter) 

and asked for her help, used lots of her ideas... and LOOK what they can do now!!!

This, my friends, is a score of a 5!!!  

Our whole county did a writing test (since 4th grade FCAT Writes was today).

And look at the planning page they ALL did (all by themselves!) - I got the idea from Lori, but changed it a bit... but this 4-square planning works GREAT!

Topic sentence in the middle... details 1, 2, and 3 and in box 4 is the closing... so easy for them!

So - are you curious as to what my on grade level writers is now?

65%!!!!

And almost all the ones who didn't score 3 or higher, were at least at a 2, so they are ALMOST there! You have no idea how SUPER excited I am about this!!!

Speaking of writing... LOOK how cute these are!

We read Molly Lou Melon on Friday...

I just ABSOLUTELY love this book!!

And we are still hounding in those adjectives, so I thought this would be the perfect activity.

I'm sure you've seen the cute picture of me with adjectives around it floating around blog-land....

I took that a step further and added a writing component to it (yep - more writing!)

Click HERE to get the writing paper freebie!

AND

Click HERE to get a freebie for another version of this activity, from my writing guru, Lori.

And in math, for our Numbers Every Day folder we do, we're working in 3-digit numbers now, 

so I've upped the mystery number clues... these were the clues for this week...

four tens

three more hundreds than tens

two less ones than hundreds

They're getting better at them  - I'm impressed! And today, in the addition/subtraction section of the folder, I added in subtraction with regrouping - they got it like "THAT!" (envision finger snapping). I'm so excited! So, I can check that chapter off the list in the book - CHECK! And that's what I love about that folder. I don't have to teach them as chapters in the books.

While I'm teaching 3-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping, my kids are doing my fraction centers from my Hands-On Fractions pack.

Here are just a few activities in the pack...

This is the "Grab Bag" center

And the matching center.

And I have to show you a funny.... Monday, my teammate/friend and I showed up in the EXACT same outfit! lol. So funny! Totally not planned - and what's even funnier? We both usually wear different shirts with our red pants, but we both decided to change it to a black shirt on the same day. lol. It's the little things in life, right!?

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