We had a fantastic Grinch Day!!! The students were greeted by our Grinch door (shown below), wrote in their Elf on the Shelf journal and got started on their grinch masks. We made predictions, ask questions, clarified, and summarized as I read aloud The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The students had to write an opinion piece answering the prompt "Should the Grinch Grin?" It was fun to hear all of the reasons they love Christmas as they tried to convince Mr. Grinch to grin. We brainstormed a list of adjectives to describe the Grinch. Then students selected one adjective and wrote a simile. They were very creative! The students worked in groups to analyze the Grinch with some higher level thinking skills. They took turns spinning the die on the smartboard and then had 3 minutes to record their ideas with words or pictures. Then they shared with their group. Finally, the groups shared with the whole class. Here are some of their ideas: Describe the Grinch: hairy, green,sly, mean, naughty, vicious, grumpy, ugly, spooky Compare the Grinch: Same-frog, zombie, monster, lizard, grass, pedal Different: dog, human, Small Pine, Santa Associate the Grinch: alligator, sly fox, stinky frog, Hulk Analyze the Grinch (What is he like and why?): Doesn't like Christmas, Likes the Who's at the end, Maybe he thought about the Christmas Spirit, His heart was two times too small, He doesn't like the Who's singing, Nobody is nice to him, He got his heart broken Apply the Grinch (How can you use the Grinch?): Get him out of town, Throw him in the garbage, To scare my sister, Make him happy, Remember Christmas is more the presents Argue for or against the Grinch: For: I like his dog, He is nice at the end, He is kind Against: He is mean, grumpy, He is a liar, He is ugly, He is a monster So Thursday was a Christmas Tree Theme. We read a wonderful story called Why Christmas Trees Aren't Perfect. It tells the story of Small Pine who with all of the other trees in the Royal Evergreen Forest hopes to be chosen by the Queen to be the tree for the castle. When a rabbit seeking shelter from wild dogs, a wren needing a place to rest in a blizzard, and a lost, starving fawn are in need, Small Pine offers his branches. He isn't so perfect anymore, but the Queen recognizes his giving and chooses him to be the honored Christmas Tree in the castle. The students worked hard to predict all of the story elements before reading: setting, characters, problem, main events, solution, and the theme. As we read, the students wrote the actual details for the story elements. They did great and really appreciated the theme of the story. After all that hard work, I just had to reward them with a fun activity. They were divided into groups and had to work together to decorate one person as a Christmas tree. It was hilarious and so fun!!! Our math word problems and writing in language arts all were connected to the story throughout the rest of the day.
This week our holiday theme was the gingerbread man. We had a lot of fun and learned so much! The focus of the lesson was to read and analyze the similarities and differences between two or more versions of the gingerbread man. The students enjoyed talking about he different repeated refrains. They were shocked when we read the version that ends with an eagle scooping the gingerbread boy away from the fox. Oh where, oh where is my Gingerbread Man? Oh where, oh where can he be? He popped out of the oven and ran out the door. Oh where, oh where can he be? The students decorated their own unique gingerbread boy/girl. The next day they wrote a descriptive writing piece describing what their lost gingerbread boy/girl looks like. I was so proud of their excellent writing!! I posted all of the gingerbread creations up and read each students descriptive writing piece. The students were so descriptive in their writing that we were able to identify every students lost gingerbread boy/girl. In small reading groups I read the story The Gingerbread Man with each group. I also gave each group three different printable books at different levels to take home and read. Next, the students were given a partner to read with. After rereading the story they used stick puppets and a fox paper bag puppet to retell the story. In science the students went through the scientific process. Together we went through each of the five steps: question, hypothesis, experiment, results and conclusion. We asked the question, "what would happen if you put a gingerbread cookie in water?" It was great to see the students so excited about science!! To integrate our gingerbread theme in math each student was given a gingerbread man cookie. They had to record which part of the gingerbread cookie they ate 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Next, they wrote to explain how they ate their gingerbread cookie. In math we created a vertical and horizontal bar graph recording the data. We also showed the data on a pie graph. Most students ate the gingerbread arms first. I will upload photos on Thursday, but didn't want to delay the post any longer! Technical difficulty! So to kick off the week after Thanksgiving, we had to do some fun Santa stories! We read the silly Santa's Stuck story. We summarized, clarified, asked questions, and predicted while reading. We did a lot of predicting about how the characters would help Santa and the solution surprised them all. The kids made their own Santa stuck in a chimney (above) and wrote an explanatory piece about what they would do if they found Santa stuck in their chimney. We are so impressed with how well they do writing an introductory sentence, details, and a closing sentence. I forgot to snap some pictures with my phone of their writing so I will add those next week! They had some great ideas and I'm sure Santa would appreciate their help if he ever found himself in that situation! We also read How Santa Got His Job. This book is great and there are so many learning opportunities within the story. We used details from the story and the illustrations to describe Santa. We made a character web with all of the descriptions. The students worked in cooperative learning groups to sequence the 12 events in the story. They then had to meet with another group to compare their work and come to a consensus on the correct sequence. It was a challenge, but they all ended up with the correct order by the end. We also learned about cause and effect. This is a tricky skill for first graders, but using the events in this story made it fun. Students worked together to identify the cause and effect for a given situation from the story. They had to illustrate both the cause and the effect and share their thinking with the rest of the class. There was a big improvement in their understanding of cause and effect within the 30 minute lesson! Since the story was all about Santa finding a job that met his personality and strengths, the students had the opportunity to apply for their first dream job: Santa's Elf! They had to fill out an application and write a paragraph stating their opinion with reasons why they would be a good elf. I couldn't believe how focused they were. I think they took the application very seriously and are hoping Santa picks them one day to be one of his elves!
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