I have some things to share about teaching weather science, but . . .
Let’s talk about important things first…
ONLY 4 MORE WORK DAYS UNTIL SPRING BREAK!!!!!
Sorry for yelling. I cannot wait. March can truly be sooooooo long! I’m tired. They’re tired. It’s a good thing. I cannot believe there will only be 8 weeks of school left when we return! Amazing that another school year is so close to being over.
This week our school heard the great news that we are now a California Distinguished School.
I’m so proud of our little school. Title 1 with an extremely varied population. We work hard, the kids work hard and it is just a fantastic place to be!
Ok, so weather science activities…
We’ll be working on our weather and seasons science standards when we get back from break. The California standards on this subject are not very robust – so we bump things up a few notches. As I’ve mentioned before, our classroom themes each month change. THE WHOLE ROOM.. all bulletin boards and everything MUST (because all 3 of us 1st grade teachers who have been working together for over 15 years are OCD) come down and new ones must go up. To ensure everything remains standards driven, our monthly themes are based around or social studies or science standard for the month. All of our writing and reading activities are based around that.
RECIPE FOR A CLOUD
One of my favorite bulletin boards is the one we do about the water cycle.
This little chef cooks up a recipe for clouds and explains the “procedure” for creating the water cycle. The kiddos write the recipe, noting the ingredients and the procedure (read: water cycle) necessary to create a cloud.
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF . . .
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs has always been a favorite of my kiddos. I love using that book as inspiration to writing. That permission to be creative, silly and “out there” provokes the BEST imaginations! (Here’s an afflink to scoop it up on Amazon.)
After reading this fun tale to my kiddos, we do a little crazy weather activity ourselves! I take a photo of them ducking away from the food of their choice that is falling from the sky. This idea to have them pose like the “sky is falling” was inspired by a student teacher, Lisa, that I had the pleasure of having in my room long ago. Taking their photos and cutting out the background just makes this writing activity that much more fun!
WEATHER-THEMED READERS
I absolutely adore using interactive readers with my kiddos. They gain so much in the way of decoding skills, fluency, inference and comprehension ability.
The readers in the resource I’m using this month are awesome. The kiddos interact with them in a variety of ways. There are extension activities provided, too. These additional activities extend the readers and keep my kiddos thoroughly engaged in learning and using and developing those ELA skills.
SEASONS
One of the big writing lessons this week is our opinion piece on favorite seasons. This resource comes with differentiated organizers to assist all levels of early writers in creating a magnificent paragraph about their favorite season.
The art project that goes with this writing activity is a definite favorite amongst the kiddos. They love that it requires them to utilize a few different mediums.
MASTERING SENTENCES
I have my kiddos practice basic sentence skills a lot. Fabulous Weather offers plenty of opportunity for that! This resource includes Change a Phrase where students will create statements and questions from a given phrase. Additionally, there are some weather-themed Fix-a-Sentence activities, too!
Be sure to check out the preview Fabulous Weather in my store. It included a FREEBIE!
Be sure to check out the preview Fabulous Weather in my store. It included a FREEBIE!
