When we had our Pete the Cat week, we were still very much in the midst of learning routines and procedures, so we didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but we became better students. That's a win for me!
We began the week reading with our short a phonics lesson. I introduced 4 work families and the students helped create new words by placing letters in front of the word families. Students practiced writing the new words on their white boards.
The next day, we were introduced to our poem of the week. I get out phonics poems here. I use the sentence strips to write our poem because on day 2, I cut up the words and we work to unscramble the poem. Day 3, we see if there are any sight words in the poem. There was only 1 since we only had 5 new sight words to look for. It was our first week of words. On day 5, students read their poem to a partner to work on some fluency!
Since, we were at the start of school when we did Pete the Cat, I thought it'd be perfect to use the following directions craft from Teacher by the Beach's Cat Pack. I read, "Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes," and then we did our pete craft. When students finished they worked on number recognition with this coloring activity.
We also had learned all of our reading stations by the middle of this week. So, my students learned how to play the popcorn sight word game. They play this while they wait for me to come to the teacher table... while I'm managing the chaos of kids trying to get started at their stations with out talking (Oh, the struggle). lol
At the teacher table, we did a color word lesson. I read the book, "Pete the Cat, Too Cool for School" to the students. Then, using flash cards. We matched our crayons to the color word. Students laid their crayon on the flashcard that said the correlating color. Afterwards, students completed the coloring sheet you see below. You can grab that here.
Something to help manage students in each group that I came up with on the fly... and I think, someone else came up with it but I can't remember who? Anyway, I grabbed some graduation caps from a free table at my school and I picked 5 responsible students to be quiet captains. There is one quiet captain at each group. When their group gets too noisy, they just do the infamous, "SH, sh, SH SH SH" tune. Then, the group repeats the rhythm.
I also introduced the kids to Cause & Effect! We read the book, and identified cause and effect situations from "Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes."
Afterwards, students completed this reading response.
To end our week, we read, "Pete the Cat & His Four Groovy Buttons." Then, we made this adorable but simple craft that I found on Pinterest!
You just need, graham crackers, vanilla icing, yellow food coloring and M&M's!
Thanks for seeing what we've been up to in Mrs. Hursh's class!
I'll be back soon with details from our Fish Week for Short I!
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