Hollywood Moment for the Prevatte's

I normally don't post anything about my own family on my classroom blog, BUT I thought I would make an exception this one time.  I know many of you have probably heard by now that my son, Dawson made an appearance this past Sunday night on America's Funniest Home Videos.  We were so excited to see him on there and so thankful little man got chosen to have such a cool experience.   I made a quick little iMovie of it so anyone who missed it could see it. :)

Box Tops Popcorn Party

Thank you so much to all of you and your families who keep sending these Box Tops in for our school.  Our class reached a new goal last week with 900 box tops so the students were rewarded with a popcorn and soda party.  It was a blast and we are anxious to reach the finish line.  Keep the box tops coming!!! =)

What We Love Most About Fall

 If you get a chance, come stop by and check out our fabulous fall writings in the hallway.

The students worked very hard on their publishing and editing.  I loved reading about all their favorite parts of Fall. 

SC Regions Cookie

We are coming to the end of our study of the SC regions and I always love doing this culminating activity to reinforce our learning.  We used a cookie cutter in the shape of SC and baked sugar cookies. Then added various toppings to represent our state's regions.  For example, Hershey's miniature chocolate chips were used to represent the Blue Ridge region.  

 Some students decided to eat their sweet treat for lunch...

    and others decided to save their sweet treat for home.

Either way I am sure all my boys and girls came home talking about this delicious activity.  Hopefully they were able to explain and/or show you what they learned.  I want to give a special "shout out" to our homeroom mother who not only baked all the cookies, but bought our toppings and cut them up for all of us.  Thanks again =)

Play-doh Landforms

This was my first year using this activity while teaching landforms, but I couldn't be more thrilled with the results.  The students did an excellent job of recreating landforms with their play-doh. It was very exciting watching this "hands-on" learning experience.

         Here we have an island. Love the palm tree guys! :)

                                                                     

                                  A steep mountain

                              a very messy volcano

a hot pink cavern

                                    another volcano

     and another one that looks like it's actually erupting now!

                                      and a valley

I definitely will be using this from here on out. The kids had a blast and more importantly they were able to not only recall their landforms but recreate them without any definitions or descriptions. :)  Thank you to our parents who donated the play-doh.

1st Rock Star Student

Congratulations to Michaela who was the first one to enjoy using our class' Rock Star chair.  She's done a great job each day and I am super proud of her.  Can't wait to see which student will earn it next. :) 

Creating a "Reading Salad"

I introduced the word metacognition to the students this past week.  I taught them that metacognition is thinking about our thinking.  Meaning, while we are reading we aren't just reading the words like a robot.  We are actually "thinking" about the words in the context of our text and reflecting on our thoughts.  

In order for the students to understand, I had them create a reading salad (with tomatoes and lettuce) using text and thinking cards.  The red text cards represented the tomatoes and the green thinking cards represented our thinking while reading the text. 

 As we read from some text in a chapter book, we would stop periodically and think about our thinking and reading of the text.

                                 We started to notice something very quickly in our salad bowl!

  Just like a salad has more lettuce than tomatoes, we had MANY more thinking cards in our bowl than text cards.  Good readers are always thinking about what they read and not just reading the words.  Our goal is to make sure as readers we are comprehending what we read and constantly using our metacognition. I am hoping this little exercise allowed the students to grasp this concept. :)