Skip to main content

Textbook Scavenger Hunt

I am working with some third grade teachers this year in setting up their notebook and proposed they add in a page, in the beginning unit "Inquiry", that covers parts of a textbook. It actually is not a bad idea for fourth grade as well.

I sort of assume when they get to fourth grade that they are familiar with the parts of a textbook and that is not a good assumption to make.

The jump from second to third grade is quite strenuous academically and initiating a lesson within the first couple of weeks of school on the parts of a textbook might actually be quite helpful in the long run. I proposed that they put together an interactive white board lesson (we use Promethean in our district), have the students go through the parts of the textbook as they go through the lesson, have a higher level textbook (grade 5 science) on the desks as well so that they see that the "parts of a textbook" apply to all grade levels, and then have them conduct a textbook scavenger hunt with their third grade science textbook.

I was looking online for some text to use that went over the parts of a textbook and cobbled together a LH page assignment that you can download HERE (please feel free to modify it, as it really was pieced together). The RH assignment is a scavenger hunt using our textbook, which I didn't include as a download since our textbook might differ from those used by others. I could have made the scavenger hunt longer but most of the third graders I have been talking to get between 30-40 minutes to teach science and I thought a one page scavenger hunt was doable with that time frame (including the lesson).

Comments

leshutton said…
Could I possibly see your scavenger hunt so that I can get ideas on how to make my own? I love this idea!
Mrs. Goos said…
I am curious to know what type of questions you used in the scavanger hunt. Were they subject-specific or something more like "what is the title of Ch. 7?" I know we won't have the same books, but I am interested in doing this. I am just not sure which way to take it to start with. Your information has been very inspiring for me!

Popular posts from this blog

Secret Messages - How To (Light and Color)

This was fun activity that I got from Roper Mountain Science Institute. They suggested red theater gel to reveal the message, which can get pricy. Another idea I heard was to ask movie theaters to donate left over 3D glasses, which also have a red filter. A guest speaker we had last year said red jello would work. Tried it this week and it worked like a charm. The students thought it was very cool. I found my "attention challenged" students had trouble focusing on making their own secret messages so I was very glad that I had made extra copies of the sheets from the GEMS Color Analyzer book that they could color and then check under the jello.

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.

QR Project - Open House

Twitter Post Link -  https://bit.ly/3Umic7r I saw this adorable QR code project on Twitter and decided to try it out with a couple of third grade classes. We have several schools in our district who are "Leader in Me" schools and I asked a teacher if I could come in and make them for her open house (you don't need to be a "Leader in Me" school but I know they do a lot of goal setting and mission statements). She loved the idea! I decided to use Flip (formally Flipgrid) to do the recording. The web based program is free for educators and automatically generates the needed QR code. We started on a Thursday. I pulled students into the hall to get a picture of them holding a square piece of paper prior to an ELA block. The paper acted as a place holder for the QR code (which is square) and ensured I got the correct hand spacing so the students looked like they were holding the QR code. I found a spot that didn't have anything in the background. The background...