Book - Unit Plans (Hoot)

Hoot is one of my favorite books to read with fourth graders towards the end of the year. It goes well with our study of animals and how humans impact the environment (and it has the added bonus of having a movie to show afterward!).

I talked a new fourth grade teacher into giving it a try (which turned out to be fortuitous because they are doing a birding day this week with a local birding group). We borrowed a class set from another school and checked out the book on CD from the local library as well as the movie (warning the word "dammit" is used in the book...I never noticed before but this teacher did...after the kids went "ooooooo" they got over it). While I was looking for some Hoot lesson plans online for her I came across a site that had an EXCELLENT Hoot unit plan. It was so good (they had sample pages online to view) that I purchased it for $20 (gasp!). I thought their questions and activities provided good higher order thinking questions (good practice for the upcoming transition to Common Core). It included chapter tests as well. Some of the items are "advance" (imagery, irony, symbolism) but definitely dobable.

The teacher LOVES it and would definitely consider other purchases from the same site. Here in South Carolina teacher's are given state money at the beginning of the year (I want to say $200) and often grade levels have some money to spend. It would definitely be worth it to review the site and purchase other book units. The units are billed as "Middle School" units but they have books that we read in elementary school (i.e. Because of Winn-Dixie, Bud Not Buddy, and Tuck Everlasting to name a few).

http://www.sandtpublications.com/hootlessonplans.html

Comments

Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21). I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class. We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online). One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom. All the templates for this challenge Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was ke...

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.

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...

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Search This Blog