Monday, March 3, 2014

Dr. Seuss Report


As we are studying nonfiction text and celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday I decided to create a report template that students can use to learn about Dr. Seuss and practice most of their nonfiction concepts.

Plus it makes a great bulletin board display.

I was amazed with the amount of excitement and interest from my students. It may be that I just have a strange group of kids but I am glad that they loved this activity and where engaged. The outcome was exciting especially with the amount of knowledge they gained form this experience.

The report has three pages which I glued to a long construction paper and folded the paper like a folder or you could simply use a folder.

The report consisted of students writing a summary of Dr. Seuss childhood, college, adult life, achievements, and challenges. They also had to choose one cause and effect moment from Dr. Seuss life. Students also had a series of 5 questions to answer by looking back to the passages that I had given them. Students also had to complete a Venn diagram to compare and contrast two articles that I had given them about Dr. Seuss. With this report I introduced the concept of a timeline. For the Timeline we used Seussville which contains a timeline of Dr. Seuss's life.

I wasn't going to end my report there. I also had the students glue examples of different text features they encountered on the back of their report with the name of the text feature and a way that the text feature helped them with their report/reading.

I gave my students three articles to read and analyze:
1. Edhelper Dr. Seuss by Brandi Waters
2. Scholatic News: Get to Know Seuss
3. Biography : Theodore Seuss Geisel by Samantha McClure with Teaching on Cedar Street (This was a wonderful story!!!)
Over all my students and I loved this report and experience. If you would like to get this report you can find it here

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Read Across America Success

In my last post about Read Across America I had uploaded the Thing Icon with Teacher in it. Here is a picture of how it turned out. We loved the final product. I made the hair like if I was making a tutu. Like my coworkers called it a head tutu, you can find the info on the hairpiece here

Also in my previous post I had mentioned an Oobleck activity. This was a great success in my classroom. Other than running out of time, my students and I loved this activity. Students had a new experience and outlook of Oobleck. I will definably do this activity again next year.



This was my door decor for this day. Based on the book, Oh, the Places You'll Go! My decoration consisted of road of different shapes, sizes, and edges. Along the roads there are shoes walking different paths. The shoes are a little booklet where students wrote about where they plan to be when they grew up. It wasn't just for career plans, but in general. For example, where they plan to go to college, where they plan to work, etc. You can get a copy of the shoes here.
During our festivities students ate green eggs and ham. After they ate green eggs and Ham and we read the book students drew where they would like to eat green eggs and ham. I had a range of roller coasters, space, and many others.

Another activity students did was to read directions found on a Jell-O box and to create Jell-O. After students created the Jell-O they placed a couple fishes (of course candy fish). And they had their One Fish, Two Fish.


Students enjoyed following directions, having the experience, and most of all their final product.


Between all the excellent readers and all the exciting activities this was one of the best days this year. It was a day to remember.