Weather, Writing Partners and Schema (and oh yeah! A little skydiving, too!)

Hello Everyone!
Happy weekend!! And it is a beauty here!! Great weather for some baseball, some yard work, and some skydiving! What?? That's right!  On Saturday, I went with my hubby to watch him take his first jump.  He's been so anxious to skydive with a friend of his. I went along to take pictures!  Well, while we were there, guess who decided to jump as well????!!!  Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it!  ME! It is something I never thought I would ever do.  I am the one who gets queasy just floating on a pool float. But I actually sucked it up and jumped out of a plane at 13,500 feet!  It was simply one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life! I really can't even believe I did it!!

My husband and son, Toby went as well!  

We are all still kind of on cloud 9!

Toby and I before...

and after!

Very empowering!  I can't wait to do it again! I feel like I can do almost anything!  Even teach first grade!!  :)  

My jump actually came in handy at school because we were talking about wind/air/weather in science. I was able to tell the kids how cold it was way up there, and how it got warmer as we got closer to the ground, and how the wind was helping to guide the canopy all the way down. We ended our unit on weather by making our Flutterflies.  I have posted about these little gems the past couple of years, but here are a couple of pics anyway.  

Cloud shapes are loaded with weather vocabulary and made colorful with rainbow streamers!

They add so much color to the room!

In writers workshop this week, I introduced another writer's tool for the toolbox.  Writing partners.  Lucy Calkins gives lot of suggestions for this.  I put all the kids names on cards with a 1 or a 2. Paired the cards up and set them on the floor.  Kids sat with their new writing partners.  We talked about the rights and responsibilities of writing partners, and the fact that all authors have partners. I shared the mini poster and talked about what the 1 and 2 meant. (taking turns) I showed the kids how a friend helped me with a piece I was writing. Then I sent them off to meet with their new partners.  I loooved how they got busy right away and worked to help each other make their writing even better!!  

Such a precious sight!

You can click HERE for my collection of writer's workshop posters

Next week in reading we will focus on using our schema to help in comprehension.  Some kids may not have ever heard that word before, or even thought about thinking about their thinking. I love opening that door for them and helping them make connections.  I put together a few little visuals to help me help them.  This little unit introduces kids to what schema is and how good readers activate that schema to help understand their reading.

If you need help teaching schema, CLICK HERE for the mini pack!

I will have more info on using schema to make text to self, text to text, and text to world connection a bit later.  For now we will work on realizing that we have, will grow,  and can use our schema!!

Well, have a great rest of the weekend!!! 

Thanks for stopping by for a peek! Don't forget to take a second to leave a comment!  I love hearing from you!

Joyfully!

Nancy

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Cloudy with a chance of .....

Hello Everyone!!
We had a fantastic week!! Integration all the way!  In science we were studying weather and clouds.  I shared my cloud unit a few days ago, but I wanted to show you how things turned out and more!
After a study on wind, we made our "Flutterflies," and took them outside to compare how the moving air affects even the lightest of materials.

We celebrated cumulus clouds and Charles Shaws book, "It looked like Spilt Milk" by creating our own clouds. Mix shaving cream and white glue, plop, swirl, dry and write using the patterned text! Thank you, Charles Shaw, for the inspiration! 

We made out "cloud watchers" and went outside to study as scientists. After discovering those amazing clouds we recorded out observations in our science journals.

We tried to understand what happens in clouds for rain to occur.  We were amazed by the "Rain in a cup" activity.

It's raining!!!

One of the last things we did was read, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," a favorite of kids.  We used this text as a springboard for our own weather reporting. The kids created a picture of themselves and we used the amazing AP "Chatterkids" to make a mini movie of our weather reports.

This was a great way to have fun with language, weather, practice fluency and creativity- all wrapped up into one lesson!  The kids had a blast and will remember this for a long time!!

All these activities (except for the Chatterkids) are available in the Clouds unit. You can get that

 IF YOU CLICK HERE!

Up next?  Our Cinderella unit and a study of the moon!!  Hold on and thanks for going on this ride with us!!

Thanks, also, for stopping by and don't forget to leave a comment!!

Have a great weekend!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

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