Five for Friday

Another week has flown by and I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly linky party.  I can’t believe we are already in the middle of April, so much to do, so little time.  

We continued our study of Informational Text.  This week was all about text features.  On Monday we did an overview of all the text features (labels, print types, captions, heading, table of contents, glossary, and photographs).  After I introduced the vocabulary cards the kids had a chance to dive into informational text and flag the text features they found.  

My kiddos loved this activity and I loved how they were talking about the text and the text features they found.  

Throughout the rest of the week we focused on one text feature a day.  We used Animal A to Z as our anchor text and recorded our information in the text feature book. 

To get my students talking about text features we did a few Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures.  One activity we did was “Think, Pair, Share”.  If you are not familiar with this strategy the students walk around with one hand in the air.  When they find another student with their hand in the air they high five.  Then they each share a text feature and high five again.  The students put their hands in the air and walk to the next available partner.  We do this activity often as a way to share information and move at the same time. My kiddos love it.

All of the pages above can be found in my Adventures with Informational Text Packet in my TpT store.  

We are finishing up our math unit about teen numbers and place value.  Yesterday I introduced a new game during math centers.  It is a place value game.  The students need 2 cubes to mark their space, a die, dry erase marker, and slate.  One student rolls the die.  If they land on a space with base ten blocks they have to write the teen number it represents, if they land on a teen number they have to show the teen number on their slate by drawing base ten blocks.  It was a bit hit!  Then again, any time they have the opportunity to use their dry erase marker and slate they are all about it. 🙂

In science we started our unit on animal habitats.  So far we have talked about the desert and ocean.  Our plan is to spend two days on each habitat.  (Desert, ocean, Pond, Forest, Savannah, and Arctic).  After we learn facts we do a craft about the habitat.  This week we made a kangaroo rat for the desert and a crab for the ocean. 

Have you heard of book wizard?  

It is a FREE app that enables you to find and level scholastic books.  All you need is your scholastic log in information.  The cool thing about this app is once you download the app all you have to do is scan the bar code on the back of the book to find the reading level.  


This app has definitely made my life easier as I level new books into our classroom library! 

Thank you for taking the time to read about my week.  I hope you have a fantastic Friday and a great weekend!