Spring break was great but now it’s crunch time! The last 9 weeks of the school year. That means we have a lot of learning to do and there is a lot of fun to have! And we have to work extra hard to keep the kids engaged because it’s now officially peeling the kids off the ceiling season!

Lesson Plans

You can always download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!

NOTE: when you download the free lesson plans, all images are CLICKABLE so you can simply click on any book or resource to get more information!

You can get our EDITABLE lesson plan template by clicking on the image below:

Phonics And Phonemic Awareness: Vowel Bootcamp

We are following our required foundational skills curriculum. And we are supplementing with our TKS BOOTCAMP Blends Bootcamp! Our foundational skills curriculum is focused on segmenting, word chaining, blending, and writing words using blends, and digraphs, and now we’re introducing vowels. The curriculum has us doing short vowels, so we will be doing circle charts to focus on the short vowels as the medial sounds. We know the sounds so this will be a bit different by isolating the sounds in the middle of words. This week we’re doing e and u.

We will be segmenting, spelling, writing, and reading the words as well as changing sounds to make new words with short vowels, blends, and digraphs.

We also use our decodable texts in small groups to work on the skills in text. I have seen so much growth in my student’s reading with these decodables. The kids love them and I love seeing their confidence and excitement as they read!

In small groups, we’re using our Word Mapping Mats to really help us segment, spell and read words! Since we started using these I’ve seen great improvement in my students’ ability to segment, spell and read words!

We’re also doing a lot of word chaining with CVC words and blends. Word chaining is when you change one sound to make new words. This phonics activity is one of the best for helping students blend and write words and understanding how words work. For these lessons, we’re using our Digital Word Building resource! This resource includes a PowerPoint file and a Google Slides file so it can be used on any device!

Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month so all month long we’re celebrating by learning about women who have changed the world! As with all of our heroes research projects, we honor the month but we use the resource all year long!

Math-Shapes

This year our district is using Illustrative Math as our math curriculum. We will be completing those lessons and supplementing them heavily with our Math It Up! creations. This week the curriculum is about shapes and making shapes with shapes and pattern blocks.

To kick off the week, we’re reviewing 2D shapes with our GUESS THE SHAPE game! I put a bunch of shapes into a bag. We grab a shape, and identify the shape and attributes. The kids find the shape on their paper and color it!

You can grab the FREE recording sheet in the blog post that is linked at the end of this post.

The rest of the week will be building shapes, counting how many shapes we use, and comparing the quantities. We will also be writing equations. Stay tuned for more details!

Reading Comprehension: America Then And Now

We are working on module 3 of our required curriculum. This module is about life in the past and present. This week we’re reading the books Transportation Then And Now and Communication Then And Now. We’re working on main ideas, key details, notices/wonder, questions, and answers.

Plants

We are also starting to learn about plants and living and non-living things with our Plants Research Project and our Living And Non-Living Research Project! We have a 20-minute science/social studies block so we do our research and graphic organizer during that time. We use our PLT time in the afternoon to finish up any of these activities that we didn’t finish.

As with all of our research projects, we start with a schema map. We share our schema about plants and add it to our schema map.

We discuss what living things need and how those are the same and different for plants and animals

Then we apply our knowledge of living things by comparing and contrasting gummy worms and earthworms!

Art Projects

This week we’re doing two fun art projects! One is for spring and Easter and one is for plants!

Our plant art project is celery flowers! Simply cut the bottom off of a celery bunch. Students dip the celery into paint and press it onto paper. Then they paint a stem to make flowers!

Our spring/Easter art project is using cookie cutters. These cookie-cutter paintings have become a class (and teacher favorite!) because they’re so easy! Just grab some cookie cutters, paint, and construction paper. Students dip the cookie cutters into the paint and stamp it onto the paper. We get our cookie cutters at Walmart and get the bigger size with the plastic bottoms!

Foodie Fun Friday

This week’s Foodie Fun Friday snack is a new one! We’re doing a carrot garden using gummy carrots, pudding, and Oreos! Basically, the kids crumble the Oreos and put them on top of the pudding and then they add the carrots!

Morning Meeting

Greeting-we are here

Activity-I Have Who Has-ten frames

FREEBIES!

For all your classroom needs, check out these resources:

For more information, check out these posts: