April Fool's Day is for the Birds

We have been studying birds for the last week so it was fun to use this idea that I saw late last night as I was catching up on my blog reading. It was from a post last year by one of my favourite bloggers, Denise, of  Sunny Days in Second Grade.

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

Fortunately

Mentor Monday-Using Mentor Texts for Writing Ideas

Link here
I am excited to join this linky party sponsored by The Reading Tutor - OG. I use mentor texts in my classroom often because they are so helpful in spurring kids's imaginations and for giving them a platform to launch their writing from.

The kids in my second grade class LOVE this book by Remy Charlip. It is hilarious to read and a great text to use to inspire some fun writing projects.

 After we read the story together I start us off with something like, "There was a boy/girl named _____________.  Unfortunately he/she was lonely because he/she didn't have any brothers or sisters. Fortunately he/she got a new pet."  There are always a few eager beavers who are chomping at the bit to add the "unfortunate" next event, such as "it was a tiger". We go through a few of these then I have them continue on with their shoulder buddies. They are pretty excited to get to the writing, especially the boys, who delight in coming up with all manner of gruesome happenings.

I love to set this up as a whole class project in a shared writing book.  I put enough papers in a duotang so everyone has a page then they can get it during Daily Five and read over what has already been done and add their own twist. Because this is a very short piece of writing when it is done this way even reluctant writers are willing to contribute and the resulting book is in high demand as a choice during Read to Self. 

The Reading Tutor - OG