Fable Lapbooks

Now I've posted about lapbooking before, but as a reminder, lapbooking is all about creating a product that is interactive and that students can learn from.

This was a project we did in class about fables. We were studying what a moral is and then how to apply it to a fable. We read aloud several fables beforehand and even read some stories that weren't really fables, but still had a moral. This was also a great chance to practice retelling.

I chose several short fables from the book Fables by Arnold Lobel. I copied the pages and then had students highlight key details from the story and then write what they thought the message was after rereading their key details. (This was important later for the lapbook retelling portion)

Here is our finished product!

These were hung up in the hallway where any students could walk by, read the summary and then pull out the card to read what the moral is. It was kind of a fun game for the students to check themselves.

I love making lapbooks and the students had a great time as well! I can't wait to make more later this year :)

Ideas, not yet creations

Since I am off to Ireland on Friday and working on packing for our move to our new house, this post is more of a list of things that I hope to make as soon as I get back from my trip or maybe just before I go (some of them will be easier to make than others).

Reading Groups

First here is a blog with some wonderful ideas for word work using a modified daily 5 (she does the daily 3 for 5th grade). I'm interested in using the daily 5 in my classroom next year. I'm not sure how to modify it for 4th grade yet, but this daily 3 blog may led to more ideas. I was particularly interested in the word work post.

I haven't heard of all of these options, but I will do more reading to find out!  That is the first project I plan to accomplish right before or right after my trip!

Grammar

Now this is something that I would think I can handle making before we go. One area that I really want to hit a lot harder next year is grammar. I plan on changing the sticks to match spelling words for students as well as high-frequency words-- as the end of the year I am hoping to even add adverbs and proper nouns! 

Math

I am planning on creating these early in the year next year because my kiddos certainly needed a refresher before they were ready to move on to the big money problems.  I think this could be great for many age groups (maybe not 5th and 6th), but a good review and practice.

I will probably need to adapt quite a bit of these activities to be school/age appropriate (some are religious). The original source is from here. 

I hope this gets some of your idea gears turning! Hopefully I will be feverishly working-- it's just hard to get going knowing that I will be leaving for Ireland in 3 days! I'll post when I get home; perhaps even with some pictures from Ireland :)

Math, Reading, and Science Goodies

As promised, I took some more pictures of my classroom and the things I've been working on so that parents could see what we've been working on, teachers could get some ideas for their classrooms, and my family and friends could see the work that I've been doing! So let's jump right to it-- these are mainly foldables, lapbooks, and bulletin boards.

Math

So these are lapbooks. They are all the rage now at my school. The way I've described them before it 3-D scrap books filled with information students are learning.

These are lapbooks our class made about angles.  The right side is a simple note-taking form that we filled out as a class where students filled in the blanks with the definition of the 3 types of angles as well as practiced drawing angles.

The left side was what I used as my formative assessment. Students had to come up to me putting the popsicles sticks together to form the correct angles- for blue they had to show a right angle, yellow an obtuse angle and red an acute angle. Then I hot glued them together after I checked their understanding and hot glued them to their lapbooks (where they then had to label the angles one more time).

One of the other teachers told me that she's thinking about creating a lapbook for next year that has something on the inside so that students could practice moving around the angles to make different shapes. That may even be my summer project this year so that students could practice that when they finish an activity early or something. I may even turn that into a learning center activity (since the file folders aren't the most durable!

Another lapbook that we made that does allow students to review and practice was for transformations.

We had already talked about the definitions so we filled out the left side as a class with the definitions for a translation, rotation and reflection.

Then we glued or taped graph paper to the other side of the folder.

Then the students were to cut out specific shapes out of construction paper. The pentagon was for a rotation (or turn), diamond was for reflection (or flip) and rectangle was for translation (or slide). To practice a rotation, I had the students poke a brad through the shape so they can practice turning it and seeing how the shape looks. To practice a flip, students taped one side of the diamond to the graph paper so they could flip it over and see how the shape looks. To practice a slide, the rectangle is paper clipped to the top of the folder so they can take off the rectangle and practice sliding it around the graph paper. Very easy and cool lapbook.

Reading

This was an Easter left over of a bulletin board I had in my room. For fourth grade, students have to know the prefixes: ex-, non-, anti-, dis-, and under-. They also have to know the suffixes: -less, -ness, -ment, -en, and -ful.

To help the students review the meaning of the different prefixes/suffixes, I created an interactive bulletin board and turned it into one of the the kids' learning centers.

There are notecards in the pocket below the big egg and to either side I have string set up for students to hang their "EGGxamples" (and yes, the kids do appreciate my corniness!).

So here are some samples of what the kids made. They also had to write the meaning of what their word meant (using the definition of that prefix or suffix in their definition).

This also gave me a good chance to see which prefixes/suffixes my students are comfortable with (-ful, -less, non-, anti-) and which ones they shy away from (-ment, -en, ex-, dis-).

Science

Here is an example of a foldable we just made in class. I used this same concept in 1st grade (I just had the definitions already typed up for the kids to cut out and paste) so for all you teachers out there, this can work for intermediate or primary.

The stem of the plant is a foldable about plant parts and includes a description of the job and a drawing for what that part looks like.

The top part of the plant is about plant needs. I used the acronym PLANTS. Place to grow, Light, Air, Nutrients, Temperature, and Soil.

Sorry this got to be so long! I just had so much to share! I'll be sure to add more next week :)