Small Reading Activities

If text is very long I look for ways to break up the reading by having student draw something in a box I have added to the text.

In the first picture we were reading about characteristics of hurricanes, blizzards, thunderstorms and tornadoes. I created boxes while I was typing the information and gave students a few minutes to draw a scene that featured some characteristic of that type of severe weather. I was rigid about the time frame. If the student was not done they would have to finish later. Students also were required to color the pictures in but most had to finish during their free time. Their right hand assignment was to complete a venn diagram comparing and contrasting two of the four severe weathers discussed.

In the second picture we were discussing how clouds were formed and the three types of clouds. The drawings in the boxes was their notebook activity for the day (we also watched a film about it so I had very limited time to work in the notebooks). On the first page students drew the steps of how clouds formed (using the text above as guidance) and on the second page students drew and labeled the three basic cloud "shapes."

Students like the read/do model since it does require them to engage in the text a bit more then just reading and highlighting.

Comments

Mrs. T said…

I love your science notebooks! I am preparing myself to do them with my 3rd grade high ability class next year.

I have a question about this post. Your readings - did you type what your textbook has or is that a summarized version of your textbook?

March 1, 2009 at 9:02 AM

Eve Heaton said…

Our textbook isn't the greatest so I pick and choose what I want to use out of that book and basically retype it (our state has really good science support documents that goes over exactly what the students should know). I also use internet sources, other textbooks, and a state practice workbook that I get information from. If you don't want to retype you can always copy and shrink down for the notebooks or use cloze notes where students have to find the missing text by reading the assigned book/article.

Hope that helps!

Mrs. Heaton

March 1, 2009 at 1:04 PM

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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