Creepy, Crawly, Spiders!

Creepy, Crawly, Spiders, EEKK! I don't really like finding spiders in my house, but I love teaching all about spiders in my classroom.

I am super excited to be blogging today over at The Primary Punchbowl all about how I integrate learning in my class, specifically during my unit on spiders. I share lots of great ideas for Science, ELA, Writing, a Craft and of course a Snack too! Be sure to head over and check it out here!

Here, I am sharing the complete contents of my two Spider resources. You can check them out and even win a copy of each for yourself!

I know there are mixed feelings about teaching in themes, but honestly I love it. I feel it actually helps me maximize my instructional minutes by having my lessons integrate all subject areas together, rather than trying to keep everything separate. To do that I have created a Non-Fiction Spider unit incorporating Science and ELA. As well as, a Spider Literacy and Math center pack.

Studying spiders would be considered a science unit. However by focusing on reading skills, word patterns, citing evidence in the text, comprehension it is quite easy to see how it is also my literacy focus for the week. In addition, there is a big push to introduce our students to more informational text so this fits in quite nicely.

We start all our units by making anchor charts. I like to do Schema, New Learning and Misconceptions. Here is the one we made in our room.

I know some teachers like using the K, W, L model. I have included headers for both types of charts in my pack.

The next thing we do is go over our vocabulary for the unit. I have 9 vocabulary cards and journal pages to illustrate and write a sentence about each word. I also created one to use in Interactive Notebooks if that is what you are using in your room.

Going hand in hand with our vocabulary we label the parts of a spider. I have fill in diagram with the key included as well as a second version for use with INB.

In addition to reading several books about spiders,

I have created Spider fact sheets that I project on my smartboard that we read together. You can also print out these pages and put them together to make a book about spiders to use whole group or in your guided reading groups.

Then I put up the coordinating comprehension question sheet and we share the pen to answer the questions. I also incorporate a partner talk question. I have a 95% ELL population so we try to incorporate as much speaking as possible. Talking with a partner is a great way to build confidence in language development. We do then share our ideas whole group and even take a poll and graph our results.

For those of you want something on a higher level I have included 2 spider fact passages with vocabulary and comprehension questions. These can be done independently or in a guided reading group. I have students highlight the vocabulary words as we review them and use context clues to confirm their meaning. Next, they look for the answers to the comprehension questions and highlight their evidence in the text.

I have the students illustrate a Spider fact book once we have read it together during a small group session.

Finally in this pack I have included 2 emergent readers. One focusing on sight words and predictable text. The other also incorporates a review of colors and counting spiders up to 10.

If you are interest in this unit you can find it in my TpT store by clicking on any of the pictures above. It is on sale through Saturday for 20% off.

I love carrying my unit theme throughout all of my lessons. So I created this unit of Spider Literacy and Math centers. There are 5 Literacy and 5 Math activities included. Each activity has an I can... direction card and all are aligned to Common Core standards.

One of my kiddos favorite things to do is write or count the room. This pack has an activity for both writing and counting included.

There is also a rhyming center, that can be easily differentiated. Students match the rhyming cards. They can also complete a recording sheet by drawing pictures of their matches, or for my highest learners that sound out and write the words of the matches along with their pictures.

The other literacy centers included are a sentence scramble, uppercase/lowercase/picture match a sight word roll.

For the math centers this a roll and cover with 2 different levels. One just for finding the number rolled and the other they roll two dice add them together and then find the number.

There is a non-standard measuring center. Students will measure how many spiders long each spider or web is.

My kiddos love using themed erasers, and let's face it I can't pass them up at the dollar section in Target. So what do you do with them. I have Ten frames that the students complete by filling in the number on the card using those fun erasers. The numbers 1-20 are included.

The final two math activities are the Count the Room, and a number and tally mark matching game. My kiddos loved all these centers. Thus, my lack of action pictures, we were having so much fun I forgot to snap some pics, blogger fail! If you are interested in this unit you can click on any of the pictures above to go to my TpT store and it is also 20% off unit end of day Saturday.

For making it this far I have 2 goodies for you. First off a freebie to use during your spider week. We started word families in our class and I found this super cute spider activity from Susan Jones at Thank God It's First Grade.

Secondly, I a going to give away a copy of both of my Spider units to one lucky winner on Sunday October 18th at 8pm (pacific time). My son will pick a random number so just leave me a comment below telling me how you feel about spiders. Be sure to include your email so that I can send you the units if you are the winner. For a second chance to win, be sure to head over to my post all about Spiders on The Primary Punchbowl.

You still have a few days left to enter on our Fall Blog Hop to win a $25 TpT gift certificate as well as tons of other goodies too. Click here to head to that post. Have a great week friends and thanks for stopping by!

Markdown Monday

Today I am linking up with Kelly and Kim's Kindergarten Kreations for Mark Down Monday.

I am offering my new Spiders Galore Math & Literacy Centers for 40% off until Friday October 24th. 

My kiddos had a blast using these activities last week. They always love write the room.  This center has 12 Spider Vocabulary cards for your students to locate around the room and write on their recording sheet.

Another one of their favorites is matching the spider and web rhyming cards.  This can be differentiated in 3 different ways.  Students can just match the cards.  There is also a recording sheet where students can draw pictures of their matches.  My high group did both of those activities as well as sound out the words and write them on the boxes with their pictures.

We were having such a great time with these centers I didn't get more pictures snapped.  The other ELA activities included are:  Upper/Lower case letter matching, Letter/Sound matching, Roll a SIght Word, and Unscramble the Spider Sentences.  The Math activities included are, Number/Tally Mark Matching, Non-Standard Spider Measuring, Fill-in 10 Frame Cards, Spider count the Room, 2-versions of Roll & Cover so you can differentiate.

These activities are all aligned to CCSS and have the standards listed.  They each also have a matching "I can..." direction card for the students.  If you purchase this fun unit I would really appreciate your feedback. If you have any questions feel free to give me a shout out.  Be sure to check out all the other great markdowns on the link up and have a fantastic week!

~Laura

Five for Friday~Spiders Galore & So Much More!

I can’t believe it is Friday already.  The weeks are just flying by.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re having fun.  I will admit I hate it when that alarm clock goes off at 5AM, but once I am up I am excited to see what the day will bring.  Kindergarten is a new adventure everyday.

 

Today I am linking up once again with the fabulous Kacey at Doodle bugs teaching for this weeks 5 for Friday.

Here is a peek at our focus wall for the week.  We are making our way through the alphabet, this week was R and S. 

Yes, we skipped Q.  I go back to that and teach Qu.  They are married ya know and so they are always together…always.  We make it a super fun week. Anywho…here are our letter circle maps for the week.

Mr. Greg, from The KindergartenSmorgasbord had a great idea to make a book using pictures of your circle maps once you have gone through the entire alphabet.  Lucky for me I have been taking pics each week.  I think it will be a favorite in our library.

Another one of the things we have been focusing on is our reading stamina.  Once we hit the 5 minute mark I gave each little their own whisper phone to use. 

They were so excited.  If you want to make your own like I did check out my tutorial here.  They were super easy.  They really help my kiddos hear how they are pronouncing their words, it is especially helpful for my ELL’s.  But…we are stuck at the 10 minute mark.  Any suggestions??  I stopped even counting my 2 little’s that are on IEP’s otherwise we would still be stuck at about 7 min.  I just stay close to them and redirect quickly when they start to get off task so the other students won’t see it.  About ¾ of my other students I know could go much longer, but I have some real young ones that just can’t get past 10…ugh!  Help!

Another highlight of our week was a visit from our reading buddies.  Every other week our 5^th grade reading buddies come for a visit. 

It is so beneficial for both groups.  It builds confidence and leadership in the upper graders and allows my littles to feel special that the “big” kids come to read just to them.  Many of my higher kiddos can now read a book back to their buddy and you should see their smiles!  They are so proud of themselves.  Next visit we are planning an art project together, it should be lots of fun.

Do you do sharing in your class??  We do and it is a fantastic way to build listening and speaking skills.  Each child has an assigned day that they can bring something to share.  I have some black tote bags they take out to their backpack to put their item in and bring in, so it is a secret from the other students.  They choose 3 clues at home about their item.  Then I help them read each of their clues.  We give a clue, they choose 3 students to guess, then the next clue and guesses, etc.  Once they reveal their item I usually ask a few other questions of them. 

The kiddos love it and it usually only takes about 5-7 minutes of our day, but it is so worth it.  They are becoming so much more comfortable talking in front of the class.  To be honest they don’t always remember to bring something on “their day” so sometimes it goes even quicker.  I got this fantastic idea of using the 3 clues from the wonderful Kim Adsit, in her Ultimate Open HousePack.

One of the things that makes my job so rewarding are the wonderful notes and pictures of love that I receive from my kiddos.  How do you keep yours??  This year I created a little bulletin board area on one of my cabinets to display them.  

The kiddos love seeing their artwork displayed and it is always a great thing to look at if I am having a "tuff" day...lol.

Our main focus this week was all about Spiders.  I don't do Halloween because I have kiddos who don't celebrate, but we study spiders, pumpkins, and bats during October. 

We had a blast learning with some fun thrown in there too. We started off by putting our schema on our spider interactive chart. Then we read several books and watched several videos all about spiders.  Next we added our new learning to our interactive chart.

Then we made these fantastic All About Spider books from Deanna Jump's unit.  We unscrambled the sentences, glued them in our book and then drew a matching illustration.  They did a fantastic job!

We are working on our first word family -at.  So we completed this super cute craftivity with all of the -at words that we came up with. 

These are a FREEBIE from Susan Jones at Thank God it's First Grade.  They came out super cute!

We had to do some spider writing. This was perfect to help support those kiddos they are still needing a prompt.  While my above level kiddos could add additional sentences on their own. 

These were the great idea of Miss Kindergarten Love.  You can get her FREEBIE mini unit here.

We also had a great time with our Math and Literacy centers from my new pack Spiders Galore .  One of their favorite things to do is write the room.  So we're reviewing all of our important spider vocabulary as we wrote our words from around the room.

We did some rhyming practice by matching the spider card with it's rhyming web card.  My high students then drew pictures and sounded out the words to the matches that they found.

We also did number and tally mark matching, a counting spiders around the room activity, measuring spiders, unscrambling spider sentences and so much more. Unfortunately I had to do assessments during center time so I wasn't unable to take more great pics of our center fun.  But here are some previews of this unit so you can check them out.  

We ended our week with one final craft.  We had learned all about spider webs so we made some of our own.  They couldn't have been easier.  Draw your web with a pencil on your black paper.  Trace your drawing with glue.  Add glitter, yes glitter and dump of the excess.  Ta Da!  Beautiful spider webs where everyone was able to be creative and feel successful.

As a reward for making it through this marathon post leave me a comment with your email and I will giveaway one of my new Spiders Galore Math & Literacy Centers. We have a big weekend of racing so I will pick a winner when I get home Sunday night!  

So what were you up to this week?  I would love to hear all about it!  Be sure to check out the linky and see what everyone else has been up to this week.

~Laura