Peek into my week(s)!

Yes, the title is plural because we are going to blast into the past (last week) and give you a glimpse of this week with my visual plans!

Last week my kids were all sorts of excited! We got to learn ALL about the sun! When I say ALL... I mean these kids wanting to know EVERYTHING! They were so intrigued with all the cool stuff that they learned. Let me tell you... it made this teacher super duper happy!!

We began the week with our schema! For the first time ever I broke students into groups and they talked about their own schema. We did not do it as a whole class (tear...they're growing up)! They discussed their schema about the sun and then we came to the rug and shared. Then, students were given booklet with general information about the sun. They read them together and discussed their new learning (another tear...)! :) A happy one!

We then came back and shared our new learning and I recorded it on our fancy dancy ancor chart! ;)

We referred to this all week during discussions and our writing!

In our All About the Sun unit we also broke into some close reading. I am not an expert on this by any means but I have been reading up on it and I am trying some of the strategies. The kids seemed to like it a lot!

I pulled these up on a flip chart on my interactive board to walk students through their close reading strategies.

We then focused a lot on our new vocabulary! We had a vocabulary book where we kept track of our new words and we did a few extension activities!

Students created a flipbook to show their understanding of how the earth rotates throughout the day. They were facinated by this! One little guy even said, "WE CAN'T EVEN FEEL IT!!!" ha ha...you got it bud... but, that's a whole other concept! ;)

Towards the end of our unit we used everything we learned to complete an informational writing!

Then, Friday students learned how to write a persuasive letter while combining their knowledge of why we need the sun. We got a letter from the evil sun villian, "SUNVADOR!" Yes, I even said it in a deep scary voice ha ha! Then, darthvador (star wars?) was brought up.