We started by reading Have You Seen Birds? by Joanne Oppenheim. I absolutely love Barbara Reid's illustrations and my class was suitably impressed too. I'm sure you've read it, but if not it's worth checking out.
I sent them off to work on Daily 5 while I met with my small groups to read this article which you can get from Denise here.
The kids were SO excited that they would be getting the chance to spot a rare and ELUSIVE bird. They really do love picking up new vocabulary.
There were three questions to do following the reading. Before we started reading I took a moment to remind each group that if they are asked to read a passage and there are follow up activities they should take the time to see what they will be expected to do after reading so they can be on the lookout for the information as they read. This is especially helpful to the less confident readers who struggle with going back through a passage to find information. After we finished doing the 3 questions we grabbed our carrots, put on our jackets and headed outside on our hunt.
They were so cute, holding up their carrots and softly singing, "Lirpaloof, Lirpaloof". I almost felt guilty.
At first we weren't too successful but when we went around the front of the school to the huge blue spruce tree that"s growing there we could tell that there were birds way up in the boughs. The great thing was that we couldn't really see them well because the tree is so dense.
When we returned to our room they were very motivated to write about their possible sighting, and equally pleased to be able to munch down their carrots!
The final question was whether to tell them or not. I decided that I would let them in on it (only one even suspected that it was a trick). We all had a good laugh.
I hope your April Fool's was fun and successful, too.
Debbie
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