Friday, March 2, 2012

I Speak For the Trees

This week has been full of Seuss.  We were able to integrate writing, math, social studies, and science with Dr. Seuss books. 
Dr. Seuss Math

Some of my most reluctant students showed off their writing skills with their versions of some Dr. Seuss stories.  A favorite was There's Wocket in My Pocket.  Thanks to Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants, my students were able to imagine a pocket creature that rhymes with pocket.  Students also wrote about their favorite Dr. Seuss books.  Our Thing One and Thing Two Glyphs were too cute.  It was my fault that they glued the hair on wrong, but they are still too cute.  Kimberly Edgerton's directions for the Dr. Seuss glyph were clear, but I failed to make a sample before the students did the activity. The students learned that a glyph is a display of collected information in the form of a picture instead of a graph.


We used One Fish! Two Fish! Red Fish! Blue Fish! to graph Gold Fish Crackers and to do nonstandard measurement.  We also used Oh, the Places You'll Go! for nonstandard measurement.  Marlana at Li'l Country Kindergarten provided a 100 chart picture of The Cat in the Hat.
Using toy cars to measure our paths

During our discussions, we made connections with modes of transportation when we read Oh, the Places You'll Go!  After watching a Sneetches video, students made a text-to-text and text-to-world connection with Freedom on the Menu and the civil rights movement.  I usually save The Lorax for Earth Day, but since I was The Lorax, and the movie started today, I just had to read it.  Thing One was quick to make a connection about how we need to take care of the Earth by planting trees and stop being wasteful.  I shared that the reason I choose to dress up as The Lorax is because my birthday is on Earth Day.
I Speak for the Trees
There was so much to do, that we weren't able to finish our Oobleck.  The students who were able to make Oobleck today, also had to mix colors to make the color green.  That was not intended to be part of the lesson, but the students were able to witness some problem-solving in action. I might as well get a big bottle of green food coloring so we can finish this project and be ready for St. Patrick's Day.

The whole school celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by dressing up and decorating bulletin boards.  Teachers switched classes and read a Dr. Seuss book. I enjoyed visiting kindergarten, because I was able to see who might be in my room next year.