Reading Salad

Check out my students making reading salads at http://www.busseysbunchoflearners.blogspot.com 
They did such a great job showing their thinking. This was lots of fun!

SCOOT

Can't wait to try this AWESOME activity from Keep Calm and Teach on called "Scoot."
http://keepcalmandteachon.blogspot.com/2011/04/scoot-activity.html#comments
It is kind of like the musical math I did below but what I love about this is that you can actually use it as an assessment too: formal or informal. What a super idea!

Meaningful Work

This past week the students participated in some fun and meaningful activities. While working on comparing and contrasting characters, we first worked together and completed a venn diagram about two characters from a big book we read. The the students and I made a list of the adults in the school they know really well- like me and the related arts teachers (since they spend more time with them and me). Partners then selected two people from this list and worked to compare and contrast them. They did fantastic and were quite insightful. This took some higher level thinking for sure.

      Another activity that was a lot of fun and met lots of learning styles was musical math number collection boxes. I prepared large number collection boxes on construction paper- each with a labeled number in the corner. These were placed on various desks throughout the room. I turned on music and students walked around the room. When the music stopped, they went to the nearest collection box and added a name to the box. We continued until students had an opportunity to write in lots of boxes. What fun!