A Hopping Good Week!

     This week my firsties had a blast learning about their favorite little amphibians, frogs! We started off the week same as always, we filled in our anchor chart on schema, new learning, and misconceptions. Students came up with so many great facts for schema, I was surprised at how much they already knew! I loved how they connected to other learning with some of their answers. They said they know that frogs can be different colors, and then one student said, “I think they might be camouflage to blend in like penguins.” There is no better feeling as a teacher! Their only misconception was they thought frogs were quiet. Here is a picture of my anchor chart I made for frogs.

     Then we read The Frog Prince. While I read, the students filled in their story map to show comprehension of the story. When finished, we did a class graphing activity. I asked the students if they would kiss a frog like the princess in the book. After graphing, we answered questions about our graph. The funny thing about this activity was that when I first posed the question all the kids said “Ew!” but obviously some of them changed their mind.

     We read aloud a non-fiction book about Frogs. They wrote down on sticky notes any new fact they learned. They had some great new facts. I then handed students their Froggy Research paper. They started writing down the answers to any questions they knew. They kept this paper in their unfinished work folder all week. I gave students the book from my packet called My Little Book about Frogs and they read through this with a partner in the room. They illustrated each page to show understanding of the text. Then they got to take this books home and share with their family.

     One of my favorite parts of frog week was the frog-themed math centers I created. My first graders needed a bit of polishing up on their number sense after Spring Break. So, I designed 5 centers that helped them work on their number sense and fluency. They built numbers with connecting cubes, stacked them into order, practiced counting on, adding up to find totals, etc. Here are some pictures from Froggy Math Centers.

     We finished the week off with students presenting their Frog Informative Writing pieces. They used all of the information they learned throughout the week to write a research paper on frogs. They used my Writing Process to produce their finished papers. Click here if you’d like to buy my Writing Process. They wrote their papers, then matted them onto construction paper. Then, they added their frog parts, and poof! They had these absolutely adorable frogs. They loved these and were so proud to show them off. They read them aloud to the class and enjoyed Froggy Floats during the presentations. The recipe for this is included in my packet! It was a class favorite.

Download my frog-themed unit by clicking on the picture above. It’s full of math, science, literacy, and other fun activities and resources. Enjoy and Happy Teaching! Ribbit, Ribbit!