The Lemonade Club

While preparing for our author visit by Patricia Polacco in April, I came across The Lemonade Club. Given that one of our fifth grade teachers, one of his students, and our principal are shaving their heads for St. Baldrick's, it was the perfect book to read to my class. It's about a fifth grade girl with leukemia and a class that keeps her spirit up by shaving their own heads! In an interesting twist, their teacher also has cancer - breast cancer. It's a great lesson that...

Click here for interdisciplinary lesson plans.

If you'd like to get involved, pledge your hair to St. Baldrick's, donate your hair to Locks of Love, or get involved in one of the many cancer society charities such as Alex's Lemonade Stand (childhood cancers). I have donated my hair twice - 12 and 10 inches - in honor of my younger sister Melissa. She had colon cancer at the age of 16 and is now almost 28 years old. It's one way of feeling less powerless.

Please consider donating!

Did You Get Lucky?

We had a blast celebrating St. Patrick's Day yesterday! 

I made shepherd's pie for the kids and we drank green leprechaun juice (green Hawaiian Punch) as well as soda bread and green fruits and veggies (grapes, celery, broccoli, cucumbers, and pears).

To make shepherd's pie, add ketchup and brown sugar to cooked, drained ground beef. Add vegetables such as green beans, carrots, peas, and corn. Put a layer of mashed potatoes on top, and add cheese or gravy! Bake until cheese is melted.

We raised our glasses for Slainte! (a toast to good health).... 

and did some Lucky Charms marshmallow graphing!

I got these cute little leprechaun hats at the dollar store, but the kids drove me nuts because they broke the elastics when putting them on, then tried to snap the string at each other, and the hats kept falling off when I was trying to take pictures! It did make for some funny faces, as you will see!

We wrote an explanatory paragraph telling why we felt lucky to know a special someone in our lives.

Then we got really silly listening to Celtic music, learning about the Blarney Stone, and had some fun imitating Irish stepdancers. 

Then we played St. Patrick's Day I Have, Who Has - division-style!

The kids thought the Irish flag looked a lot like the Indian flag... except they decided that the orange must be for Irish hair color, white is for the pale skin, and green is for the hills of Ireland...hahaha! My grandmother's maiden name was Hogan, so I am 1/4 Irish. I definitely have pale skin that burns and my hair gets reddish in the summer....so they might be right!

Now they are all hurrying to read to fill up their leprechaun sticker charts to get a homework pass!

Anyway...it's time to announce the winners of the Busy Bee Birthday Bash!

The winner of the $29 Amazon e-gift card is:

comment #21 Kelly B aka Queen Bee!

She must have been really lucky because not only does she have a bee theme like me, but she also posted at 3:05 am.... and my birthday is 3/05!

Other winners include:

Read the Room Sheets:
Mrs. Richling
Rachel
Jennifer @ First Grade Blue Skies
Shelia
Linda @ Down the Learning Road
Jennifer @ The First Grade Dream

Dolch Sight Words Pack:
Jennifer @Keys for Education
Amy @ The Resource(ful) Room
The Polka Dot Owl
Meghan @ Third Grade in the First State

Creative Writing Genres Posters and Book Lists
Mrs. Lazenby

Bossy R Turkey Feather Game
Jennifer @ Herding Kats in Kindergarten

Ladies, check your emails on Sunday to collect your winnings.
If you didn't leave an email address, please leave one here!

Also, I promised 29 winners...so if you left an entry on the original blog post but did not tell what you liked from TPT, this is your last chance to check out my TPT store and leave a comment here telling what you'd like!

Life on the Ice

It feels like such a downer to be reading a story about the Arctic and Antarctic when we are embarking on spring...but alas, we can't skip stories in our reading book! Life on the Ice talks about the reasons why scientists go to the North and South Poles, what they see and do, and why their jobs are important for Earth. We just finished up a weather unit a while ago, so the kids had a lot of background knowledge on climate change.

I found some amazing resources at the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears site at Ohio State University.

A few of my students had a hard time keeping the Arctic and Antarctic regions straight. This nifty little foldable and other resources helped a lot! It had a list of great books to read on the subject too!

Faces of (Arctic) Climate Change Video

Video on Arctic Climate Change

Disappearing Sea Ice Video

See other Journeys posts here.

Writing, Writing, Writing!

We have been working extremely hard on writing these past few months, and I am finally seeing progress! At first my students would totally miss the point of mini-lessons. I would work on them with prewriting and set them to independent work...and guess what they didn't do? Pre-write! I did a mini-lesson on paragraphing and....they'd write everything in one blob without even indenting. Maybe it was the lectures, maybe it was the parent teacher conferences, maybe it was the report cards, or maybe my little third graders have finally matured. Either way, I am extremely proud of how hard they have been working and the progress I am seeing. They are actually believing in themselves and starting to realize that they can do better! Now it's refining details....like describing things that are important. For example, they finally started describing...but they'd talk about the girl's hair color when it had nothing to do with the problem in the story. Now they're talking about quivering lips, shaking knees, and tear-stained cheeks because of the furrowed eyebrow, teeth-clenching bully!
Other than good old-fashioned practice and using mentor texts as examples, here are some resources I have been using:

Snip! Snap! What's That?

Short, humorous fiction book that is great for teaching onomatopoeia!

I use this cool onomatopoeia art poster to help kids remember different words to use.

Onomatopoeia Poster with Words

Mrs. Gilchrist's Author's Purpose Charts

OREO Persuasive Writing Chart

This is working aaaaamazingly!!! My students are now writing 5 paragraph persuasive essays! It's been hard getting them to come up with reasons, but once they do, the examples flow!

Writing Workshop PowerPoint (click any image to view)

I am now going to give this to parents on Back to School Night!

It includes kid-friendly (but sophisticated) examples of introductions...

descriptions...

...and closings from popular books...

...as well as samples of student writing. They're definitely a little above where I expect my students to be, but it's nice to be able to give them something to aim for.

Check out other resources on my Wonderful Writing Pinterest Board!

...and don't forget to enter my giveaway!

Giveaway Goodies!!

Don't forget, you have a few more days to enter the giveaway! 

http://alysiabattista.blogspot.com/2012/03/busy-bee-birthday-bash.html