A Rainforest Museum for Earth Day!

I've been teaching for twelve years. Unfortunately, I really didn't start documenting and photographing my teaching  until about four years ago. That means there are about eight undocumented years of teaching. And that really stinks, because during that time I remember doing some very awesome stuff with my kids. 

There was the year we collected funds for the World Wildlife Fund, made informative presentations about endangered species, and invited classes from around the school to learn about why we should protect the environment.

A jaguar in its rainforest habitat.

There was the year we made books based on "When I Was Young in the Mountains." Each student wrote a memoir and created a bare book to read to their little first grade buddies.

I don't have one single picture of these events. So please, take pictures of your teaching. You'll wish you had them.

Today, I came across a set of pictures about six years ago that I didn't know I had. They were from our fourth grade museum.

For several years in a row, the fourth grade hosted "Fourth Grade Science Museums" at the end of the school year. We chose a science topic that we had to teach at that time and each section took a different part of it. For example, one year, we divided up the Earth and Space standards among six sections and I got the objects in the sky part. Another year, we divided up the Changes to Earth standards, and I took fast changes - volcanoes and earthquakes.

A lemur, lollygagging in a rainforest tree.

This was the year of the biomes. Each teacher took one biome, and I had the rainforest. We. Had. A. Blast. I took black butcher paper and covered the entire back wall of our room. Each student received colored chalk to create a mural of the rainforest. It was beautiful! Of course, I don't have pictures of that.

Each student chose an animal to research. We used Zoobooks from the classroom, library books, and a multitude of resources online. I provided a list of some great places to get rainforest research below.

The golden lion tamarind, resting against a tree.

After gathering their information, students created a short presentation about their animal. At home, they built a model of the animal including important details about their habitats. 

They each created a book about their animal. I provided each student with a small bare book and we discussed how to create a nonfiction book - we planned out the pages: life cycle, food chain, a description of the animal's habitat and more. Then we added glossaries in the back. I love having students create books! Bare books are the best investment!

The last piece was a powerpoint presentation - each student added one slide about their animals to a class presentation. We projected it and left it on a loop. Classes from across the grade and a few from around the school were invited to come and visit our presentation. We set up a schedule to visit each others' classes. The students were so proud to share their learning! And I truly believe it helped increase their environmental consciousness. 

Students teaching each other about their animals.

Teaching about the rainforest? Check out these resources:

Books

Rain, Rain, Rainforest

The Great Kapok Tree

Magic Tree House Rainforest Guide

I love these Magic Tree House guides - 

full of great information and very readable!

Websites

National Geographic for Kids: Animals

Scholastic Research Starters: Rainforest

What is a Rainforest?

Research in the Rainforest

Enchanted Learning: All About Rainforests

Animal Fact Guide

And here's a handy product to use with The Greak Kapok Tree. It integrates the story, reading about rainforest animals, and ideas for extensions! Grab it on TPT!

Pin It  

Earth Day: Michael Recycle* DELAYED POST!

Okay, so I really like Earth Day, all right?!  I didn't intend for my Earth Day post to come out in June, but, you know, sometimes things happen. Like sometimes you ask the teachers to have the kids finish coloring their pieces and sometimes the teachers misunderstand and sometimes they send them home with the kids and sometimes you have nothing to put on display until sometimes one kid brings her piece back to school and you can share your post.
And then you forget about it cause you're on crazy endofyear mode until the Tuesday after school lets out, but then you already posted about your toilet, so you schedule it for tomorrow. 
Anyway, that's why my second half of my Earth Day post isn't happening until the second week of June. I figure it's not actually that much worse than my MLK Day post in March, right? 
So anyways...
With my third grade pull-out group, we focused on the 3Rs. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.  First, we watched a BrainPop Jr. about the 3Rs and we charted out the important ideas: We used what we'd learned to complete The Lesson Plan Diva's Earth Day Craftivity Freebie! (That's a lot of capital letters.) You can grab it free at TPT. I also did this with my kids last year. Short & sweet, but they enjoyed it. You can read about the whole persuasive writing conservation unit shenanigans here.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea.

Then, we read Michael Recycle! It's pretty cute, it rhymes, and it's an easy read. Yay, right?

After that, we had fun. We brainstormed a list of words that were related to "Helping the Earth." It was a pretty hideous chart, so I'm not picturing it here. My next charts are also terrible, so you can imagine how bad the one I'm actually censoring was. I modeled (badly) making up a name for a superhero using one of the words off of our list and a blast of alliteration! I'm Captain Conservation.

Then I wrote several sentences using as many C-words as I could (because Captain Conservation starts with Cs) describing how Captain Conservation helps the Earth. I also modeled (as you can tell by the hideous-ness), some revising.

Yeah, that's the ticket. Revising!

Then, I embarrassingly sketched out what my finished product would look like. 

The kids, of course, went to town and had a blast. These is one of their pieces:

Pin It

Earth Day: The Great Kapok Tree

So one fun part of my job is that I sometimes get to pull out kids to do fun stuff instead of test practice. This is what happened last week and the week before. I worked with a group of third graders and a group of fourth graders who had been successful in their test-taking, and we didn't want to waste their time with more of it before the test. So we learned about Earth Day!

I mentioned previously, in my Five for Friday post, that I had started working with this group of kids, and I shared a couple charts we made. That's what we did first, before we read The Great Kapok Tree. We also read this freebie article about Earth Day from Rachel Parlett. You can grab it free at TPT and we charted out some basic points about Earth Day.

Using the structure I posted in my Five for Friday, post, the students wrote brief paragraphs about Earth Day and published them on some cute writing paper.

The next day, we read The Great Kapok Tree. 

My purpose for reading this book was to, of course, introduce students to reasons for conserving our rainforests, but also, to have them take the fictional story and rewrite it as a drama. I wanted them to think about what would be the role of the narrator, which character voices they would need, and what would be included in stage directions.

We started off together, charting the introduction to the drama. After a conversation about how we should differentiate between the narrator and stage directions (the kids decided that they wanted the narrator to tell the actions, and the stage directions to describe. This was with some guidance, of course!), this is what we came up with:

Then, I divided the students up and gave each one a chunk of text that introduced a different animal. I had a small group of students, and there were many animals, so only two students had to buddy up. They wrote their chunk of the story as a drama and published it, using their animal's fur or markings to illustrate the border.

After that, each student got a paper plate and enough construction paper to fill their every heart's desire.

 And this is what they made:

Sloth

Yanamamo Boy

Snake

Jaguar (looks pretty tiger-y to me)

Monkey

Porcupine - just noticed she made mistakes in her drama. Poop. Gotta go back and have her redo that one!

Anteater

Toucan (kind of)

Bee.... with a ghostly reflection of myself in the background. 

How funny that, in all the pictures, the only one I came out in is the Bee!

There's also a frog, but he's not done yet.

Stay tuned for my upcoming hallway display debut: It took me two weeks, but it is almost done!

Pin It

Home Alone

Ok, so I wrote this post before the Five for Friday Party got started! Then I did yardwork.... And two hours later, there are over 100 people at the party! What the WHAT?! Anyway, here's my Five for Friday link-up!

My hunnybun left for his trip to Vegas today. He's going for a videographer convention. THIS MEANS I'VE BEEN HOME ALONE!
It's nice, and then not nice, and then nice again.
It's nice when I get to watch whatever I want on TV. Like The Walking Dead (which Fernie won't watch because he doesn't like zombies) or the Office (which Fernie won't watch because he's had a boss like Michael Scott so he can't get past the first couple episodes). 
Then it's not nice. Like when my hunny texts me from a tasty restaurant and says, "It was sooooo good. Wish you could've come."
And I'm eating scrambled eggs for dinner.
Then it's nice again when I get to make a pot of flavored coffee because the hunny only drinks plain decaf.
So it's been a bit of an adventure. All of this disclaimer is necessary for my Five on Friday post!

#1: This is what I had for dinner on Monday. It's mashed cauliflower I found on pinterest. It was eh. But by the time I finished making it, trying it, and getting the seasonings right, I was full. So that was my entire dinner, right there. A plop of mashed cauliflower. Mmm, you're thinking. Yummy.

#2. So what's that in my glass, you say? It's wine. Yes, wine in a Star Trek glass. I know what you're thinking. Classy.
It is indeed classy. Mad Men is on in the background. It doesn't get much classier than that. Oh, Roger Sterling. 
#3. In case you're feeling a little uncomfortable, I thought I'd share my fancy brand of wine with you. 

See that? That's FRAN-ZEE-A, for those of you who don't speak French. Muy fancy. Look closer and see why it's such a great buy:

Yes! I am! I am reducing my carbon footprint! You're welcome, Earth.

#4: All this Earth-saving inspired me. The third grade teachers in my school asked me if I could pick up a group of students who have been successful in test-taking and I thought that sounded like fun. I decided to put together a group of third graders and a group of fourth graders to work on Earth Day!

I love Earth Day stuff. 

This is what we started on.

We watched a BrainPop about conservation and then we read a brief article. From the article, we charted out this information:

#5. We wrote an Earth Day paragraph using sentence frames. Many of the students are ELLs and are working on developing their English. To help them build their sentence structure, I used sentence frames.

First we wrote four sentences using the information we learned from the video and the article.

This was the example: "Earth Day is... a special day to celebrate the Earth and practice conservation! Conservation means... using our natural resources carefully. You can help by... turning off the water when you brush your teeth! This can help us... use less water and protect our resources.

Then we used the sentence frames in green to create diversity in their writing. On Monday, they're going to publish.

Go link up with DoodleBugs!

Pin It

Earth Day Every Day

I feel like I pet a porcupine.

My fingers are full of stickers. I was pulling weeds from the front yard, and they had already gone to seed. And how do they protect their seeds? Stickers. Yowza.

Anyway, as I complain about the healthy weeds growing in my front yard, I would like to share with you our Earth Day writing.

WHAT?! Earth Day! That was a month ago!

Well, that's why my title is "Earth Day Every Day." Sheesh.

Anyway, we started our pieces in response to our school-wide April Picture Prompt back at the beginning of April, but we didn't get ours done until the week after Earth Day. For more information on our school-wide picture prompt and other initiatives, click here.
And then I had two kids who were absent
and I didn't want to take the picture with their writing missing!
So anyway, everything is on the wall now, and we're ready to share what we did.
This is the wall:

This is the article on the wall:

It's a Scholastic News about recycling shoes, which apparently is a thing now.

These are some of their writing pieces. 

I'll share our persuasive writing format as a template below.

These are some of the pieces the kids wrote in response to our monthly picture. The picture was a little girl (or maybe a boy from far away) who was walking in a green, green environment full of grass and trees. 

The kids wrote about persuading someone to do something good for the environment. They had to identify the action that people do now that is a problem, a couple of reasons that it was a problem, and what they wanted people to do about it.

Then, because it was the day after state testing and Ms. Beltran was depressed, they made these! They're from the Lesson Plan Diva and the kids thought they were so cool.
Grab it for free.

             

To grab the template for the persuasive writing plan, click here to get it from Google Docs.

Pin It