Opposites! Opposites! - Grade 1

After we read Earth, Sky, Wet Dry: A Book of Nature Opposites by Durga Bernhard and Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli, Grade 1 students worked together to develop lists of opposites. They got some inspiration from this Sesame Street video, and had a stack of books to help with ideas as well.

Can your family fill in the table below with the missing words? Can you come up with more examples?

up
	cold
fast
	quiet
inside
	sad

Here are some of the kids hard at work:

Friday Morning Crosswords

I LOVE CROSSWORD PUZZLES. Through them, I've picked up a ton of vocabulary and trivia. They stretch your mind with puns, double meanings, and synonyms: a fantastic way to support the Common Core Anchor Standards for Language:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.L.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.L.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.

On checkout days, I offer word and logic puzzles as an activity; students have one week to return them to me complete and correct. If they do, then they get a free book from the prize box. I was thrilled by how many kids worked together yesterday, using the dictionary, encyclopedia, and almanac to look up answers such as "October birthstone" (which is opal).

Here they are in action:

This group all finished before the end of class!
I think I'll be giving them a two-star difficulty puzzle next time.

Choosing from the prize box.

PreK Jack O' Lanterns

It's almost Halloween! The PreK class listened to Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming and practiced counting and identifying colors. Next, we talked about shapes, and they used different colored squares, triangles, and circles to create jack o'lantern faces. Finally, we watched a video of A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown.

Here are some of the jack o'lanterns:

M. liked A Dark, Dark Tale so much, he drew the cat and mouse
on the front of his jack o'lantern and the dark, dark hallway
on the back. "To make it spooky!"

Grade 4 Dewey Investigation

The Dewey Decimal system is a way of sorting nonfiction books. I don't expect my students to memorize specific numbers; that's what the online catalog is for. I do, however, want them to understand how certain topics go together. At least according to how Mr. Dewey thought they did.

Each table of fourth graders got a stack of books from a "hundreds." They had to work together to figure out how the subjects could be classified under one major label. For example:

Here are the students in action:

Grade 1 Teeth on the Loose!

So many first graders have been telling me about their loose and missing teeth, I decided to make a lesson out of the topic.

First we read one fiction and one nonfiction book about loose teeth. Then students wrote down one fact they learned. Here are some of them:

• Kids have 20 teeth. When you are a grownup, you have 32 teeth.
• The pointy teeth are called canines
• Roots hold your teeth in your mouth.
• The top of your tooth is called the crown.

Finally, the kids each placed a tooth on a chart showing how many teeth they've lost so far. Can you use it to answer the questions below?

• How many kids haven't lost any teeth yet?
• What is the most common number of lost teeth?
• Have more kids lost a total of 1 tooth or a total or 6 teeth?