This week we are returning to virtual learning. Our district made the announcement on November 23. We will remain virtual through December 17 which is our last day before our Christmas break. We will spend the next 3 weeks in 100% virtual learning and we’re going to make it as fun and easy as possible! We might be going virtual but that doesn’t stop the fun so we’re kicking off our Holidays Around The World Research Project, we’re subtracting to 10 and working on CVC words with Word Family Bootcamp!

Holidays Around The World Research Project

As ALWAYS, our lesson plans are free to download. This year, we’ve modified the format to show the live teaching we’re doing and the self-paced learning the kids will do. When we return to in-person learning, we will switch back to the regular lesson plan format. If you’re interested in previous lesson plans, we have 8 years of our lesson plans in our Resource Center at the top of this page!

CLICK THE IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK’S VIRTUAL LESSON PLANS!

Word Family BOOTCAMP!

We are continuing WORD FAMILY BOOTCAMP! We’ve spent the last 5 weeks working on word families and CVC words. When doing Word Family Bootcamp, we work on blending, segmenting, and writing words. We also work on onset and rime. We work on adding and deleting phonemes to make new words. Our focus for the next few weeks will be using our Word Family Bootcamp to build and read CVC words and write CVC WORDS!

NOTE: WORD FAMILY BOOTCAMP NOW CONTAINS DIGITAL ACTIVITIES. IF YOU ALREADY OWN THESE CREATIONS, SIMPLY REDOWNLOAD THE FILES TO GET THE DIGITAL UPDATES.

Research Project: Holidays Around The World

This week we are kicking off my favorite research project of the year! We are starting our adventure around the world with Holidays Around The World! And yes, we’re doing it 100% virtual. Since we had plenty of notice, we prepared everything needed for Holidays Around The World including supplies for art projects! This week we’re visiting: Mexico, Italy, Germany, Australia and England!

For this research project, we use countries and geography to learn about different cultures and traditions. We’re not celebrating Christmas, but learning how cultures and traditions are different around the world. We learn about Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Diwali. We visit one country a day and learn about how they celebrate the holidays.

Here’s how our Holidays Around The World works:

Each student receives a personalized airline ticket to the country we are visiting.

Then we “fly” to the country of the day using Google Earth. This also serves as a geography lesson!

We then read a book that’s not necessarily informational but is related to a custom or tradition of the country. Then we go through an informational PowerPoint that we use to complete the graphic organizers. (All of these are included in our creation along with a recommended book list!!) Students then use the graphic organizer to write a fact about each country or holiday.

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Finally, we stamp our passport. Students color the passport stamp for the country we visited and stamp the date. This year, there won’t’ be a stamp but they will color their passport each day.

When we’re in person we do an art project for each country or holiday. Since we’re virtual, I want to continue the art projects but I won’t be doing them daily. Again, we were able to send home all of materials necessary for the art projects. The way we’re doing the art projects is they will be done asynchronously (don’t we all love that world?!). I will record a video shwoing how to do the art project. Families will complete the art project by watching the video.

Holidays Around The World is available in print and digital versions!

Math: Subtracting To 10

This week we are practicing subtraction to 10. We introduced subtraction (virtually!) during our first 9 weeks of school. This week we will introduce the equation and we will use manipulatives to subtract. And, as I have vowed to do, we’re keeping as many of our best lessons/activities/traditions going, even in the virtual setting so we will be using our GET OFF THE BOAT subtraction activity!

Get Off My Boat is an activity that we use all year long to work on subtraction. It’s a great total physical response activity. It’s fun and highly effective. So, how can I make this work digitally and virtually? Here’s my idea: I’ll make an interactive game using my smart board software. I’ll put a picture of a boat on the slide. We will write an equation and I’ll use pictures of my students to put on the boat. Then to subtract, I’ll “kick” them off the boat to subtract. It’s the same idea we use if we were doing this in person, but it will be digital and virtual!

FREE POEM AND EMERGENT READER!

These are the resources we’re using this week:

For more information, check out these posts: