Exploring Africa

We continue to explore our world! We reviewed where we have been so far this year: The United States (North America) and then China (Asia). Next, we focused on Kenya in Africa. We labeled a  map with many of the countries of Africa. We have studied the Kenyan flag and what the different colors and symbols mean. Be sure to ask your child about these. 

We also read a  shared book called Postcards From Africa and recorded important facts. In addition, we enjoyed another “Around the World Time for Kids”, this time focusing on Africa. This provided us with an abundance of facts about life in Kenya. We made postcards from Kenya as if we are visiting this special country. We also played Jeopardy to test our new knowledge.

We used the laptop computers to watch African Animal videos. I shared all of the videos on Google Drive so that the students continue to have access to them. We noted appearance, diet, habitat and interesting facts on our record sheet. The students then published another google slides and presented to the class. Please have your child share their finished product at home.

We finished up Kenya with some African mask making and "beaded necklaces". Check out our African Dance video below.

Our Favorite Shared Book - Sarah, Plain and Tall

We recently read one of the third grade required texts: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. It is a historical fiction book which is a heart warming story about family. We read it as a shared book experience and focused on character traits and how the characters change throughout the story. The chapters do not have titles so after we read each chapter together, the students created an appropriate title. I was amazed at how creative and insightful many of the children were. We had in-depth class discussions following each chapter. We used this information to notice how the characters change and then designed character webs. 

We also focused on vocabulary and looking words up in the dictionary. The students filled out sheets on assigned words and then presented to the class to help us acquire new vocabulary.

After discussing the importance of the settings (the sea and the prairie), we created a watercolor portrait of a visually pleasing scene from the book.  

In addition, we watched the movie Sarah, Plain and Tall and made comparisons between the book and the movie. We concluded this book experience with each student writing a letter to William, Sarah’s brother, as if they were Sarah and had lived on the prairie with her new family for a year.  The students seemed to enjoy this unit and you may want to pursue the sequels to this classic book for some quality additional reading! 

The Art of Poetry

We just completed our exciting Poetry  writing unit. We started by examining different poetry books and recording what we noticed about poetry. We read quotes to tap into our imaginations and made lists of topics we know a lot about for possible subjects for our poems. Our class has focused on reading and writing many different types of poetry.

In each Writer’s Workshop, we learn a new “tool” writers use for poetry. Then the students attempt this type of poetry and do at least 3 “try its” in their Writer’s Notebook. Some of our recent writing time has explored rhythm, rhyme and repetition, using our 5 senses to write Color Poems using descriptive language, alliteration/name sillies and animal sillies (using the same letter at the beginning of words) and simile (comparing 2 things using “like” or “as”).  We also studied acrostic poems (the subject of the poem is written vertically), concrete poems (poems in the shape of their topic), “If poems” and haiku. Mrs. Furlong even introduced "My Favorite Place" Poem to us. The students are experimenting with these different types of writing and their creativity continues to amaze me!

Over the last few weeks, we published our favorite of each type of poetry on the chrome book and have illustrated them beautifully in preparation for our class writing celebration.

The students loved reading each other's poetry books and writing comments to the authors!I hope you did too!We also enjoyed sharing with our second grade Buddies in Mrs. Cale's Class.