Hey everyone!!! Lindsey here:)
As we inch closer to the end of the year…although maybe bound would be a better word because it seems to be going so fast…as we bound to the end of the year, we are hard at work in our class. We are knee-deep in our ocean unit. I LOVE to teach our ocean unit! It is by far my favorite…I know I’ve said that before, but this time I really mean it. I feel like it is in this unit that my kiddos really get to show their growth this year. It wraps all our writing and non-fiction book studies into one neat package with a little poetry sprinkled on top:)
I don’t want to overwhelm you with our massive unit all in one post, so I am going to post a few times throughout the rest of this year and give you little tidbits.
After we talk about what we know about the oceans, we jump right into the ocean zones. My kiddos know a lot about the first two zones but once we go a little deeper they don’t know as much. I will say that thanks to the Octonauts and Finding Nemo, they do have a little bit of knowledge. Part of our big unit requires them to write a report on an ocean animal and they also have to record what zone or level of the ocean their animal lives in, so this poster is a big help.
We are a huge GLAD school. I know we have posted some of the strategies we use in older posts and I have told you how awesome our district is when it comes to GLAD. AMAZING!!! We are so lucky to have amazing GLAD trainers and they are full of resources. At our school we have an absolutely amazing GLAD teacher who comes into classrooms and does lessons for our students.
This HUGE work of art is a two day lesson. Our GLAD teacher came in and did the first part and then I did day two. She makes it so easy because everything is penciled in on the poster and all the pictures are numbered and the information is on the back. This poster is built with the kiddos and focuses on the classification of ocean animals. This is another part of the research project. It really helps the students to start feeling comfortable with the academic language surrounding the topic.
The ocean is such a massive topic and the kiddos are consumed with information that I try to bleed it into each subject. This week, we focused on the levels of the ocean in small group, as well as invertebrates. We read two passages from our new Under the Sea passage set. Of course, we were so busy reading and discussing that I forgot to take pictures! Here is a look at the two passages we worked on…
If you are interested in these passages you can get them here or here🙂 I will be on again to share with you a look into our actual research projects and the presentations that will come from them.
I hope that you are all having a wonderful time soaking up your kiddos before they leave:)
Have a good week!
