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It is pretty sad when 35 degrees seems warm! Last week, we had -40 degree weather with wind chills. The schools shut down for two days. Here are some fun polar bear teaching resources. Note: This blog post contains resources from our TpT store and our Amazon Associate store. --------------------------------------------- I have a collection of many resources; unfortunately, I'm not sure of all of their original sources. Please let me know you recognize any and I need to give credit where credit is due. Let's begin with a cute song, sung to the tune of "My Bonnie." The polar bear lives in the Arctic, He never gets cold in a storm, He swims in the icy cold water, His heavy coat keeps him warm. Warm, warm, warm, warm, His heavy coat keeps him warm. Warm, warm, warm, warm, His heavy coat keeps him warm! A lesson on camouflage: Step 1: Prepare pre-cut shapes of a polar bear ready - cut out of white paper. Step 2: Each student receives two polar bears. Step 3: The first one is glued to a totally white piece of paper - I used about a 5 inch square. Step 4: The other one also gets glued to another square of the same size but first the students draw a habitat that would be different than the Arctic. For instance, they could draw a jungle, forest, city or farm scene. Step 5: When the students glue the second polar bear down he stands out like a sore thumb. On the first, all-white square, representing the Arctic environment, he blends right in. This gives them a very good understanding of how natural camouflage works. Who Has the Ice Cube? Game Sit in a circle. Enclose an ice cube in a small plastic bag. On child is chosen to be Jack Frost. He/She goes to the center of the circle and hides eyes. Remaining players pass bag around circle while music is playing. When music stops, payers stop passing ice cube. Jack Frost tries to guess who has ice. Child with ice cube becomes Jack Frost. Repeat. Bear in the Winter - Brain Break (Movement Activity) Walk like a bear by bending your knees and touching your hands to the floor. Look for a warm cave because it is becoming colder. Curl up and go to sleep until the weather is warmer. Now awaken slowly from your winter's nap. Stretch your body. You are very hungry. It is time to leave the cave to hunt for food. (Let the students brainstorm actions as well!) Winter Walk Go for a walk and try to identify animal tracks in the snow. Note differences in size and depth of tracks. Another fun action rhyme: Polar bear, Polar bear, Turn around, Polar bear, Polar bear, Make no sound. Polar bear, Polar bear, Dance on your toes, Polar bear, Polar bear. Touch your nose. Polar bear, Polar bear, Show your paws. Polar bear, Polar bear, Hide your claws. Polar bear, Polar bear, Reach up high Polar bear, Polar bear, Wink one eye. Polar bear, Polar bear, Say good-night, Polar bear, Polar bear, Shut your eyes tight. Polar bear, Polar bear, Wake up now, Polar bear, Polar bear, Take a bow. The students could make their own puppets to help act out the story: Now for science... Blubber Mitten Experiment You'll need: Crisco (or other fat) 2 zipable sandwich bags A bowl of ice water with ice cubes Procedure: Fill one of the zipper bags about 1/3 full of shortening, then turn the remaining zipper bag inside out. Place it carefully inside the bag with the shortening so that you are able to zip the one bag to the other. This creates a "blubber mitten" for the students to put their hand in. Have the students take turns putter their bare hands in the bowl of cold water and see just how cold it is! Next, students place their hands in the "blubber mitten" and then place the mittened hand in the ice water. How cold does the water seem with the "blubber mitten" on? Do you think a nice layer of blubber would be great protection against cold? Have the students research other animals that have a layer of blubber to keep them warm. ....and don't forget math! Step 1: Brainstorm a list of arctic animals. Step 2: Survey the class to determine favorite arctic animals. Step 3: Students use graph paper to create a graph of the data. Other ideas include moving the desks around to create a "live" graph and/or create a whole group graph for a bulletin board. Step 4: In groups, students create a list of five true facts and five false facts from the graph. For example, "More students like penguins than polar bears." Step 5: Students participate in teams in a trivia type game to answer "true or false" to the facts created. ------------------------------------- You may also like the polar bear and winter activities from our TpT store. Free Winter Writing Papers Free Winter Writing Prompts Task Cards Polar Bears Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Activities Polar Bears and Penguins Little Book and Reading Activities For 45+ printable winter activities, click HERE. --------------------------------- You may also like these winter-themed resources from our Amazon Associate store: Melissa & Doug Polar Bear Plush ------------------------------ Polar Bear Rubber Stamp ------------------------------ Polar Bear Hand Puppet ------------------------------ Polar Bear, Polar Bear Book ------------------------------ Polar Bear, Polar Bear Sound Book ------------------------------ Polar Bear, Polar Bear Bulletin Board ------------------------------ Safari Ltd Arctic Animals Fun Pack --------------------------------------------- Click HERE to view our Teachers Pay Teachers Promoting Success store. Click HERE to follow us on Instagram. Click HERE to follow us on Pinterest. Shelly Anton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ** This means there are Amazon affiliate links in these blog posts. This does not mean you pay a dime more when you purchase a product through the link. It just means I am trying to save you valuable teacher time by making it easier for you to find great resources for your students, and I earn a few cents for my research and time. Thank you for all you do for kids!
Fourth grade students are using Ivory soap to make interesting sculptures. Creating negative space and adding texture were some guidelines for this process. Changing each side of the soap was the n…
Your 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade upper elementary students will grow their sentence and paragraph writing skills by using these engaging writing prompts! This word-building and creative writing activity, Building Words, allows students to create as many words as they can from 12 letters. They will have to generate sentences and/or a story using the words they built. Building Words is a writing activity from The Daily Writing Disguise in Collection 2. The 10 writing activity slides in this product are different than the slides in Collection 2. There is 1 additional exemplar slide that is pulled from Collection 2 to accompany the lesson plan, totaling 11 writing activity slides. The best part?? All the activities in this series can be completed in 10 minutes or less! Daily writing will increase students' confidence in writing by allowing them to practice writing skills, writing strategies, and different genres of writing! Guaranteed - you will see your most reluctant students wanting to write! Check out these individual writing activities! Make a Choice writing activities Offer a Solution writing activities Step-By-Step writing activities Picture This writing activities Give Your Opinion writing activities ...and find EVEN MORE of the individual writing activities on TPT here! Copyright © The Literacy Dive www.theliteracydive.com https://www.instagram.com/theliteracydive/ Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.
Upper elementary classroom tips and ideas with a focus on classroom management, student engagement, & cooperative learning.
Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller is a game changer book. Check out this post to see how YOU can make your readers wild about reading.
quotation mark practice along with introducing dialogue is engaging with this activity! See how to have your students laughing and learning!
I had some teacher epiphanies during this crazy-busy time of year. The kind that make you want to veer off the lesson plan, follow a kid’s lead, and learn with your students. A teacher’s dream right?! Three times a year we were required to give our students the DRA2 Reading Survey/Inventory. I honestly never took...
One of the best things that I did in my classroom was start using a Reading and Writing Notebook. Each of my students has a composition book...
Keeping students engaged and motivated, especially at the end of the year, can be quite a challenge. For this reason, I have been evaluating the best ways to keep students excited to come to class and “work” (well, to them this seems more like playing). You may be wondering if this works with older students, ... Read More about Classroom Transformation – Roots and Affixes Surgery Room
Happy Thursday, friends! Today marks the third week of our Reading in the Wild summer book study. If you are just joining us and missed the first week (Wild Readers Dedicate Time to Read) or second week (Creating a Workshop Schedule that Works for You), make sure to check them out! In Reading in the...
I love the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are. Mr. Maurice using such wonderful texture throughout the entire book! His monsters are morphs of all kinds of different creatures. I use my zoom on my Elmo Projector to read and show the kids all the different textures and parts combined in each monster. We fill out the worksheet together after reading. It has them observe and practice visual texuture, and then shows them how to create it with colors. I teach the kids about tints and shades of one color (pink is red with white, burgundy is red with black) I also teach them about lighter or darker values of colors that are close on the color wheel (yellow is lighter than yellow orange but they are close in appearance and in the same family). They draw the texture with the darker color crayon of colored pencil and then overlap it with an all over color that is lighter. I caution them not to pick a color too close in value or it will hide all of the texture work. On the back, they sketch out 3 ideas for different monsters.... It also guides then through the creative writing activity. They have to explain what their monster consists of and what they are like. This is a good time to write vocabulary on the board for animal characteristics: Omnivore, Herbivore, Carnivore, Marsupial, Mammal, Reptile, Amphibian, Nocturnal, Arachnid, Insect, etc. These first 4 are mine... sorry, I love drawing monsters! I use them as examples for the kids to look at for ideas. This is the story outline for the monster above.... STUDENT EXAMPLES Faith Larry Brianna Calli M. Morgan G. Rikki S. Carmen S. Angel S. Victoria
This is a HUGE BUNDLE of +400 words that will last you for years - even if you switch grade levels! Plus, purchasing this editable BUNDLE gives you $9.00 off from purchasing the four sets individually. You can't beat this deal!!!Download the preview for a sample of words included.Download a matching...
Incorporate social studies into your language arts block by doing book clubs with Revolutionary War books.
Match definitions with 4th grade vocabulary words as you climb the tallest mountain in the world!
Looking for some new summarizing mentor texts? I've shared with you all of my favorites all in one easy read! Come check them out!
The social aspect of reading is so important! This post shares engaging (and easy) ways to have students share their reading with their peers.
I am delivering some Free Literacy Resources for the K-5th Grade Classrooms. Scroll down to find the resource that is just right for you and your students. Click on the picture to take you to the blog post that explains about the freebie. You will be able to download your freebie from there. I am always updating and adding new freebies. Check back later to see new ideas!
A fun gunslingers and outlaws project to do with 4th, 5th, or 6th graders. Great for Gold Rush lessons!
Look for ideas for the Age of Exploration? Then you need to read this post with over 30 ideas for the age of Exploration.
Your students already love them, why not use cootie catchers for a fun reading comprehension strategy activity when studying nonfiction or informational texts. This file includes eight different cootie catchers containing open-ended questions for nonfiction comprehension. Cootie Catchers can be use...
Successfully teach personal narrative writing with these 15 personal narrative mini-lessons perfect for first, second, and third grade classrooms.
I have so much to share with you about writing interventions, but first things first: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW BLOG DESIGN?!?!? Please share your thoughts! Every year, I meet lots of middle schoolers who struggle with writing. And every year, I play around with lots of different interventions to meet their needs. Last year, I made establishing sound writing interventions one of my big goals. I spent lots of time (and money!!) on resources that I could use, and by about March, I had something that I thought I was pretty happy with. This year, I'm starting off with those interventions that worked so well last year and I couldn't be happier with the results! In fact, I'm so pleased with how they are working, I feel confident enough to share my practice with my blog readers. I can say that these are definitely KID TESTED, TEACHER APPROVED!! Creating a Time and Space for Intervention within your Classroom I teach by myself. There are no aides, special ed teachers, BSI teachers... just little, ol' me! So, when I want to create and manage small groups, I'm on my own. This is hard. It would be so much easier if there was another adult in the room to help, but there is not, so I just have to deal! It's work, but it absolutely can be done! A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Power of Bell-Ringers. Establishing a quiet and smooth transition into writing class is a great way to get started, but it also provides me with a window of time where I can pull a small group! By mid-October, my bell-ringer time gets extended to 15 minutes. The kids get started immediately and are clear on the expectations during this time. Now the environment for working with small groups is set: the room is quiet and engaged, allowing me to focus my time on the handful of kids in my group. I pull my kids to a table that I have set up in front of our classroom library. I have a "teacher station" at one end where I do my instruction. I usually stream some jazz or piano music during this time so my group doesn't distract the rest of the class. Establishing Interventions In my district, by middle school, there are no longer district-mandated interventions in place. There are no clear resources for teachers to use or personnel to help. So, when we have a struggling reader or writer in 7th or 8th grade, it's the job of the classroom teacher to meet their needs. In my tenure of working with middle schoolers, I've found that there are two types of students who need more support than my writing curriculum provides (and please remember... I am not a researcher/specialist/writer of books/etc. I'm just a teacher, like you, who loves my job, tries to do the best by my kids, and is compulsively reflective about what I see happening... to me, teachers are the best EXPERTS, but I know that we are hesitant these days to trust a "lowly" teacher and rather find ourselves relying on big publishers and educational researchers to show us best practices... I don't have lots of "data" to support what I'm sharing with you... just my actual observations I've made while working with real, live kids in an average classroom setting!!). Type One: Students Who Struggle with Structure The first type of students who need intervention are those who struggle with structure. These are the kids that can't organize their thoughts in a way a reader could follow. They simply write whatever their brain thinks at the time. They can generally stick with a broad topic, but because they are just writing whatever pops into their head at the time, there are lots of places where their writing veers off track and becomes confusing. Here is an example written by a former student struggling with structure: My dog Henry is my most special treasure. He is always there for me whenever I need him in sad times and happy. In many ways, he's my best friend. He has brown fur and a white chest. He is such a good dog to have around when you are sad because he always knows just how to cheer you up. His eyes are brown, like a Hersey bar. His favorite toy is a yellow tennis ball. Once he almost got hit by a car chasing the ball down the street. I have loved him ever since he was a puppy and we first got him. I was only 4-years old when that little ball of fluff was brought home by my parents to be best friends. His soft fur is always so smooth and warm when you pet him while watching TV on a cold night. He is my best friend and that is why he is my special treasure [sic]. This student is clear about his topic - his dog, Henry - but he cannot organize his thoughts. He is thinking about his dog and writes down everything he knows about his buddy exactly as it comes to his mind. Clearly, he has mechanical and conventional skills, and you can see evidence of where he is practicing what we learned in our mini-lessons and from studying our mentor pieces. But, because there is no organization, it is too difficult to follow and all of the skills he has are lost to the untrained, teacher-eye. Kids who write like this need an intervention that focuses on structure and organization. Typically, I LOATHE teaching step-by-step process writing, but in cases like this, I'm left with little choice. The lessons that I put together for kids in need of this intervention consist of learning how to write a well-organized paragraph. Together, we will work on writing topic sentences, creating strong and clear supporting sentences, and finish up with writing a closing that sticks with our reader. My favorite plans for this type of writing come from Michael Friermood. His Fact-Based Opinion Writing products are geared toward teaching elementary students (grades 3-5) how to write a good opinion paragraph, and they are PERFECT for my struggling 7th graders. They also lack a lot of the "cutesy" images that you find with products for this age group, so my big kids don't feel like I'm making them do "baby stuff." (I do not use the stationary he provides for the final writing piece... it's adorable, but it would be pushing in with my kids! So, we just do our paragraph writing in our intervention notebooks!) My plan is to pull the intervention group for one week (at 15 minutes a pop, this comes to 1 1/4 hours of learning). Long before I ever pull a group, I work hard to make sure that my lesson is broken down into five succinct 15-minute increments. Since time is so precious, you need to make sure not one minute is wasted! I can say that it takes me much longer to plan for a small-group lesson than a 50-minute whole-class lesson because efficiency is so crucial. The first few times you plan a small-group lesson, don't be surprised if your timing is mess. It definitely takes practice to be an effective small-group instructor! After their week is up, then I send them back to completing the bell-ringer at the start of class. I will watch them closely and conference with them lots to make sure that I am seeing a transfer of skills. If I don't, then it is likely that I will put them back in an intervention group in a few weeks to practice again. This intervention model will continue all year. Right now, I have 8 intervention students in one writing class, and 6 in another. By the end of the year, those number should reduce to 3-4 and 2-3. Never in all my years of working with small groups, have I had 100% of my intervention students "graduate" from small group. Don't be frustrated if this is the case! If you can improve 50-60% of those kids, then consider that a huge success!! Type Two: Students Who Struggle with Motivation The next group of kids that I work with are those who struggle with motivation. These are the students who complain a lot about not having anything to write about, spend more time doodling or coloring in their notebook than writing, and who will write the absolute bare minimum for any writing assignment. Many times, these kids produce too little for me to gauge whether or not they also need help with structure. But typically, once I can get them writing, they will likely find themselves in a small group for structure work :) Come October, after we've spent lots of lots of time list writing, the kids who are still struggling to get their pencils moving find themselves using a very special Interactive Writer's Notebook called "Musings from a Middle Schooler." This product contains loads of interactive writing pages that will motivate even the most reluctant writers. The pages can be printed out and glued into a marble notebook. (Most often, I'll have the kids create their own... I don't always have them use all the pages, rather I let them pick and choose the ones they like!). Cover Table of Contents page Table of Contents cont. and an "All About Me" page "My Life Story in Two Pages" My Favorite Thing Comics I created this project just last school year and it's been an absolute smash! The kids (especially my boys!) LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! In absolutely no time, they are writing like crazy. And once I can get their pencils moving it doesn't take me long to get them producing some actual pieces. I don't necessarily pull these kids and work with them in a small group. The first few days, we will assemble our books all together at the back table, but then they go right back to the big group. Rather than do the bell-ringer with the rest of the class at the start of the period, they will work in their "Musings" notebooks. Fifteen minutes of that is usually enough to get them into writing mode for the rest of class. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * So, that's how I make writing intervention work in my classroom. Phew!! That was long, folks!! I apologize for my wordiness and I am grateful if you stuck it out until the end! Also, I'm sure that I've left out some crucial details of my practice, so please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you still have! Do you have any good intervention tips or strategies that work for you? I'd love to hear about them. Drop me a comment and share! Happy Teaching!!
