IDIOM ACTIVITY

I typed up a list of popular idioms- one for every student. They had to create an illustration for the literal meaning of their idiom. Just like a laffy taffy joke you have to unfold the flap to find out what idiom the illustration represents.

See photographs:

I'm shaking in my boots.

I have butterflies in my stomach.

I'm all ears.

I'm keeping an eye on you.

Give me a hand.

You broke my heart.

You're pulling my leg.

I'm sleeping like a log.

I'm in a pickle.

I'm a couch potato.

It's raining cats and dogs.

The cat's got my tounge.

I'm feeling under the weather.

They turned out AMAZING!

Hand Signals

Want to cut back on 

"Can I go to the bathroom?"s

"I need to sharpen my pencil."s

?

Try this:

It works like a charm!!

PRESIDENT'S DAY Poetry

I read the book So You Want to Be President to the students on President's Day morning. We had studying Presidents using various President books from the library the whole week before we sat down as a class and read this one out loud. When we were finished the students were to complete an ACROSTIC poem (we are in our poetry unit) with the word PRESIDENT. Students were given the freedom to decide if they wanted to:

* "become the president" and create a poem about themselves as president

* choose a specific president and discuss them

* speak about presidents characteristics and traits in general

* use all information they learned about any of our present or past presidents and create the poem using that information.

Powerpoint on Acrostic Poems-

•Is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message

•Example:

▫C-reative by nature.

▫O-riginally designed.

▫R-idiculously awesome.

▫I-nvolved with helping others.

Final Products:

The follow-up writing activity was the following:

If you were the President of the United States (or the leader of your country if outside the U.S.) what do you think you would do to change your country for the better? Who would your top advisors be? How would you deal with all the tough problems?

MLK Day

For MLK Day we watched his I Have A Dream speech (found online). Half of the students were given pencils that were sharpened perfectly with a full eraser. Whenever their pencil broke during the activity they were given a brand new perfectly sharpened pencil. The other half of the students were given 1/4th of a full pencil sized pencils that had dull tips and little to no erasers. If their pencil broke they had to share with a friend or they were left without anything to write with. 

The activity for during the video was that the students had to tally mark how many times they heard the following words on an activity sheet provided for them:

Freedom

Free

Rights

Dream

Hope

America

American

Nation

Afterwards we discussed the video but only allowed students who had sharpened pencils to answer and provide insight and reflection from the video. The students who were given the poorly taken care of pencils started to get frustrated, they got loud, and some even gave up. After about 2-3 minutes we opened it up for a whole group discussion and focused a lot on the challenges that were faced with the pencils throughout the activity and how that can relate back to the I Have A Dream speech.

This activity really hit home to the students.

When we were done with the video activity and discussion students were given a dream bubble (picture above) to illustrate their dreams for: Themselves, Their Country, and Their World. I challenged students to think outside of the box and to get creative and personal with their dreams.

Ecosystems: Food Chains

This is an informal assessment to make sure the students understood the differences between producers, consumers, decomposers AND the steps of a food chain. The students were directed to complete the following:

Create a food chain that follows the correct order. It must include a source of energy, one producer, two consumers, and a decomposer. It must also have labels, a picture, and the title of the organism (producer, consumer, decomposer).

Yellow paper- sunlight

Green paper- producer

Orange paper- consumers

Brown paper- decomposers

Here is what they came up with:

Word Work

As a word work activity I created my own classroom BOGGLE board. Every week I start a new one on Friday and the students have until the following Thursday to turn it in to me. 

Rules:

Must be at least three letters.

Every word must be numbered.

There needs to be a total count on their page.

It is MANDATORY that you turn in SOMETHING (at least 25 words) by Thursday at the end of the day.

This is a GREAT activity to work on word work AND a great classroom filler in between tasks or if someone finishes early.

On Friday morning after I've "scanned" the list for any words that are NOT words there are two people who win: 1. Most Words   2. Longest Word and they pick from the prize bucket.

Tall Tales

Objectives: 

The Student will be able to:

1.           identify characteristics of a tall tale

2.           locate examples of exaggerations in a story

3.           plan and draw a tall tale character made on paper

4.           design and create paper props to accompany tall tale character

5.           write a rough draft of an original tall tale

7.           peer edit rough draft checking for inclusion of exaggerations

8.           revise rough draft

9.           type and print final copy of revised tall tale story then attach to the drawing

After a few read aloud stories of tall tales in the classroom the students were given time in the library to check out tall tales that were of interest to them. We spent a week reading various tall tales during independent reading before starting the WRITING portion of the activity. The stories were extremely creative and the drawings were fantastic to accompany them.

Here are some of the STORIES:

How the Waves Came To Be

                                                             Written by: Maegan
                                                  5^th Grade, 2011-2012

                        It was early in the morning when Mae woke up. She shines her beautiful orange tail with a jellyfish. She combs her hair with a dead sea urchin. Mae heads off with her best friend, Blue. After about 3 minutes they reached the school. After school Mae and Blue walk home together. Blue says “after school tomorrow come to my house, I need to tell you something.” So Mae did as Blue asked of her.

                       The next day Blue didn’t talk, play or do anything with Mae. To Mae she looked very down. She wondered if it had to do with what she was going to say after school. After school Mae walked over to Blue’s house. When she got there she saw her mom and dad. “What are they doing there?”, Mae said to herself? Mae caught up and asked if they knew what was going on, but they said “no.” They went inside and sat down at the table. The first thing said was “We’re moving!” by Blue in a hushed tone. Mae then got out of the seat. She started crying out “It’s not far, it’s just not!” and darted out the door.

                       When Mae’s parents found her in her room, they said they wanted to talk.  So Mae went down to the kitchen.  They said that before they left they set up a video shell.  This would allow them to talk to each other whenever and wherever they want.  The next day Mae went over to say goodbye to Blue and her family.  Blue promised that when they migrate she will go spend a week with Mae.  It was hard for Mae because they were practically sisters.  Every day they would talk to each other after school.  Whenever they would talk to each other waves would form and pound the surface of the ocean.

                                                   Mr. Rainbow

                                                                        By: Hannah
                                                                   5^th Grade, 2011-2012

          One day Mr. Rainbow woke up really early to watch the sky change colors, but this day Mr. Rainbow got bored of the same dark black sky turning into blue.  He thinks, as an artist he should experience more colors.  Mr. Rainbow is a lonely guy that has no friends, so he just talks to himself all day, but this was too big of a problem to just sit inside all day.  So that day he planned to visit his favorite spot in town where his “friend” named Mr. Hill.  Mr. Hill is a hill, but not just any hill but the highest of all the hills surrounding him.  On Mr. Hill Mr. Rainbow talks to Mr. Hill about everything and it’s like Mr. Hill talks back.  So today when Mr. Rainbow got there he went right into his complaint about how the sky is boring.  “Mr. Hill have you ever noticed how the sky is always blue”.  Of course Mr. Hill didn’t answer, but Mr. Rainbow went on, “I have and it is really boring to look at, don’t you want to have a different colored sky each day?”  Even if Mr. Hill could talk Mr. Rainbow wouldn’t have given him enough time.  “You know what Mr. Hill? I’m going to do something about this, tomorrow I’m coming to the president”.  And that is what he did.

          “I want to speak to the president.”  “Ok sir, he is right in that door.”  Mr. Rainbow followed where the secretary pointed and opened the door and walked in.  “Mr. President I have a complaint about the sky.”  “Sir I can’t change they sky.”  “Well I, Mr. Rainbow think you can.”  “Sir I’m sorry but I can’t change the sky so I have ask you to leave.”  “I’ll be back Mr. President!”  At that Mr. Rainbow stormed out of the room with nothing but frustration and discourage.  Mr. Rainbow went straight to Mr. Hill.  “Mr. Hill, Mr. President didn’t do anything to help.  All he said was that he can’t change the sky!  Can you believe this!  There was silence until Mr. Rainbow said, “You know what Mr. Hill I need someone who works with the sky.  “Another silence, again Mr. Rainbow interrupted it.  “Tomorrow first thing in the morning I’m going to an astronomer.”  Again that is what he did.

          Now today he was visiting the astronomer in town.  When he got there he barged right in and said “Mr. Astronomer, I have a complaint about the sky.  That is Sir; I am sick and tired of the same blue sky.  I want it to be different colors each day, can you do that?”  “Sir, I study the stars and no one can change the color of the sky.”  That reply got Mr. Rainbow very frustrated. “Are you saying that you can’t change the color in the sky, when you know everything about it.  If you can’t do it, the president can’t do it, who can?”  A little annoyed the astronomer said, “No one can change the skies color!  You are going to have to deal with it, now get out of my lab!”  Again frustrated and discourage Mr. Rainbow stormed out of the lab and went straight to Mr. Hill.  Mr. Hill can’t think, talk or do anything but somehow he knows that Mr. Rainbow wasn’t happy and that he was going to hear about it. It looks like Mr. Hill’s prediction was right because Mr. Rainbow came storming up the hill. “Mr. Hill the astronomer was no help at all; apparently Mr. President and the astronomer think that you can’t change the skies color!”  There was a silence while Mr. Rainbow was thinking of another way to change the sky.  “Hey, Mr. Hill you know how the astronomer and the president said that no one can change the sky.  Well I’m going to someone who can do anything.”  There was another silence until Mr. Rainbow said, “tomorrow I’m going to the best magic store in town. “  And again, that is what he did.

          So that morning Mr. Rainbow visited the best magic store in town.  This time Mr. Rainbow walked in calmly and went to the desk and said, “Excuse me I’m Mr. Rainbow and I want something that you can make it happen in real life? “The magic store employee said, I have just the right thing for you, but I’m out of stock of them but they’ll be more tomorrow.”  “Thank you I’ll be back at 8:00 tomorrow morning.”  This time Mr. Rainbow left happy and hopeful. Mr. Rainbow woke up at the crack of dawn and waited for 8:00 anxiously.  When it came around he walked to the magic store with a skip in his step.  When he walked in he went straight to the counter and it was right there waiting for him with directions and all.  What he got was a magic canvas that whatever you draw on it, it shows up in real life. Since he was an artist he was jumping for joy, he grabbed the canvas ran to Mr. Hill, read the directions and started to paint the sky.  Next he painted red his favorite color then orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and purple, his least favorite color, in nice perfect strips.  When he looked up he saw the exact same thing he painted, he screamed with joy and ran home with his painting. He called the president and the astronomer and bragged to them.  The next day the strips were gone, while he was lying in bed he thought, “I haven’t thought of a name.”  There was a thinking silence when he burst out, “I’ve got it!  It will be called Rainbow after me!”  That is the story of how rainbows came to be, and whenever Mr.Rainbow got bored of the blue sky he just got out his canvas and painted his rainbow.

Mr. Rainbow on the RIGHT

Other Pictures drawn for stories-

Totem Poles

We started off with studying about Native Americans and their culture. We discussed family history and included the history of totem poles. We then did a little research about their own individual backgrounds and created miniature totem poles.

After they created individual totem poles we constructed three classroom totem poles. See below:

Native American Totem Poles

Through this lesson, students will learn about Native Americans from the northwest.  Students will study the culture and artwork of these native people.  The idea of stylizing artwork will also be addressed as students work together to make a three dimensional version of a totem pole.
  Finally, students will learn about symbolism and what various animals mean to the Native Americans of the northwest.

Vocabulary:
Totem Pole – A carved tree used by Native Americans to tell a story.
Stylize – To alter natural shapes, forms, colors, or textures in order to make a representation in a preset style or manner.
Positive Space – An actual object that is drawn.
Negative Space – The area around an object that is drawn.

The large Totem Poles:

Close up pictures: