I am linking up with the wonderful Aspire to Inspire to the Neighborhood Blog Party! Woot Woot! If you want to join in the blog hopping fun click on the link above. It's a great way to get to know the blogs on the block! B.Y.O.B (Bring Your Own Button . . . he he he I know it's corny, but I couldn't resist . . . my husband's humour is starting to wear off on me :)
Currently in French we are working on a food unit. To kick off the unit my teaching partners and I had our students help us to create a word wall . . . or should I say word fridge :) We gave each group of students a theme (meat, veggies, fruit, drinks, desserts etc. . .) and then they each had to create an illustrated card with the new vocabulary to put inside the fridge! Since the students' helped to create the word fridge I find that they use it a lot more. Definitely something I will continue to do in the future! It's also been fun to play games using the fridge like "Qui suis je?".
I wish my actual fridge was stocked this way!
Who doesn't keep cotton candy in the fridge? I know I do.
"Dr. Poivre" for "Dr. Pepper" I love when students translate proper nouns, way too cute!
I saw this idea on 4th Grade Frolics a while back, but I finally got around to making! Last week I introduced this "Homophone Shaker" to the class as one of our working with words stations. They love it! Although it is a tad loud when shaken with gusto. For the station students shake the bottle to find a homophone. Then they have to try to write a sentence using that homophone and it's "pear" (a little homophone humour lol)! I have placed 15 pairs of homophones in the bottle and if they have trouble coming up with match they can search for it by shaking the bottle some more.
It works best if the word cards have the word printed on both sides
It was my first time dying rice so I was a little skimpy with the food colouring . . . next time I'll be more generous with it :)
We are currently in our Medieval Times unit right now and the students are loving it! Honestly I was a bit hesitant when starting the unit because there is ton of new vocabulary and complex ideas and we would be tackling it in French! Lucky for me I have wonderful teaching partners and together we have been able to come up with some fabulous activities! Most recently we have been going through the steps of becoming a knight and each step of the way the students have had to perform a challenge. As a Page students had to read tongue twisters, do long division, and complete an obstacle course (which ended up being MUCH louder than I expected. . . note to self "Don't do that in the hallway again."). Then as a squire they had to perform endurance tasks such as standing on one foot, hula hooping, singing without taking a breathe and the dreaded "burpies"! At last they were dubbed knights by King Beauetfort! Check out the video of the ceremony (I'm totally loving IMovie right now!). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa46Xfr_D2A&feature=player_embedded
After the knighting we had a royal tournament where students took part in a jousting competition!
Here is the magic formula . . .
2 wheelie chairs, + cardboard shields + paper jousts + 2 teachers pushing the chairs = Good times!
(Note to self: "Have students wear goggles next year . . . ").
In French class we are currently working through a unit on food, which always make me hungry for some reason lol. I have just put together a fun package to help practice expressions of quantity and it is up on Teacher Pay Teacher! So for all you Frenchies out there like me . . . Bon Appétit!
As of last post I was still not sure how to start my sound unit. . . today I am here to announce the winning idea! I am not sure exactly when or how the inspiration struck, but it did and that's really all that matters. To start of the unit I have made a "Name that Sound" game. I have selected 20 random sound clips and the students will work in their groups and try to identify all the sounds. There were soo many fun sound effects to choose from and lots of humorous ones. I tried to restrain myself, but I couldn't help including a burp sound effect. After the game students will take their sound lists and find a way to sort the sounds (ex: loud and soft, artificial and natural etc) using a Venn Diagram. If you want a copy of the SMARTnotebook file let me know and I'll send it your way!
So I'm currently procrastinating, watching Steve Spangler Science videos (which are great by the way) hoping inspiration will strike for my next Science lesson. We are currently in our Light and Sound unit and I am searching for the perfect way to introduce sound. We introduced light by making pinhole cameras out of Pringles containers and then we converted the staff room into a ginormous pinhole camera. It was awesome! We covered all the windows with garbage bags, cardboard and tarps so it wouldn't let any light in and only had the one small "pinhole". Then we held up a white sheet and you could see the outside image projected upside down and colour onto it. Since the staffroom was a tad small for all of the grade 4 classes we had the other classes go outside and dance around near the window so we could see their images. I wish the picture of the image would have turned out, but I forgot to turn off the flash!!! So anyways now I am racking my brain to come up with something equally as engaging to launch Sound. Any ideas?
A little bit of prep, but well worth it!
As you may note from the grease marked pizza boxes covering
the windows we recycle, reducse and reuse. lol
This is the photo I ruined with the flash . . . just use your imagination :)
