Wonderful Wednesday

Coming up with clever and catch titles has never been my forte. I was an English major with an emphasis on fiction writing for a semester or two in college and it was difficult for me then. So this is what you get. I actually took a few pictures today of somethings we did. We have had a good week so far which I was expecting for it to be crazy with the time change and all. But maybe they are too tired to be too crazy. I said yesterday I felt like I was in a slump blogging. I just don't feel like I'm doing anything all that great but then I got to thinking that maybe I should just share a piece of my world and my room.
Last week we started adjectives. I started off by letting the kids watch a Brain Pop Jr video. Our PTA bought us a subscription to both regular brain pop and brain pop Jr. I didn't utilize it enough at first but I've really been working on using it more lately. I love Moby and Annie. The kids love to watch the videos and they are short with little quizzes afterwards. So we watched the one about adjectives and adverbs. Then I tried to get them to come up with some adjectives. It was terrible. They didn't get it at all. The next day I put some items in a mystery box and gave the kids adjectives to try to figure out what could be in there. They did ok with that and were able to come up with a few adjectives of their own. Then I had them make their own mystery box. Which if I'm being honest we never finished. They were not getting it and it was frustrating me. So I was back to the drawing board for our adjective lessons this week. According to the basal, we were suppose to be working on comparing adjectives but I couldn't imagine moving on to that when they still don't get adjectives. I called on one of my trusty sources for good ideas, TPT. I bought Babbling Abby from the Inspired Apple's Let's Get Poppin Adjective Unit. I printed all the pages out which I don't do with everything I buy but Abby's things are so through and include lesson plans. It is usually easier if I print everything. She suggests reading the book, The Popcorn Book by Tomie DePaola.

 So today we read the book and then munched on some popcorn. The kids then gave me some adjectives to use to describe popcorn. It was like they finally got it. They were able to come up with quite a few adjectives.

Tomorrow we will take the adjectives and do a writing activity and a sorting activity that was included in Abby's activity. I tried having them pick out some adjectives out of our story for the week. But that was a horrible experience. So my plan is to write a couple of paragraphs for the kids to find adjectives in next week. Hopefully this will be a little more successful. Seems like adjectives are skill being taught in several classroom in the bloggy world. I found a great freebie from Lindsey at A Year of Many Firsts. It's a cute little activity for describing themselves. Check it out here.  I think it will be in the plans next week.
I have a couple more pictures of the activities we used from Greg's Basketball Math and Literacy Madness Unit.

 These are some differentiated addition problems. Greg includes a recording sheet but my copies are very limited. So I have been using them as fun flashcards this week. We've played around the world and then I use them for lining up. I usually show a card and whoever's hand goes up first gets to answer the question and then line up. The basketball ones are perfect for this time of year and all the boys I have in my class.

The next activity that I've used quite a bit are the word problem mats. These have basketball themed word problems for addition. This is something that we've been working on. There are also pictures of basketballs to use for counters. I've been using these under the document camera.
So that's my peek in my classroom for today. I'm so ready for spring time. When I took the kids outside to play I thought I was going to freeze. We had a taste of warm weather this weekend and it got my hopes up. So far I've blogged 3 days in a row. So we'll see if I can keep it up. Hope you had a great day and maybe sunshine in your part of the world. I would love to hear from you! What great adjective ideas do you have?