Paging Dr. Contraction, Dr. Seuss, and a bunch of lizards!

Happy weekend!  My students and I had a blast this week.  Goodness, there was a ton going on, but it was all good stuff and worth the stress. 9 more school days until spring break, but who's counting? :)

This is a long one, so consider yourself warned.  Downloads for all activities are at the end of the post.

First off, my students have been having a hard time with contractions.  I think that the fact that 20/22 students are native Spanish speakers has something to do with it.  Think about it - contractions don't exist in the Spanish language.  So, borrowing a page from Mrs. D Lue Pann and Mrs. Cara Carroll, I decided to give contraction surgery a try and add my own twist.  Man, this was such a hit!  The kiddos loved it, and they are having a much easier time reading contractions AND identifying the two words that go into each contraction.  Hallelujah!

We started out with the actual surgery by meeting our surgical team - Dr. Con, Dr. Trac, and Dr. Tion.  Each doc had a very specific role in the surgery, as you can see in the pics.

 Next, the students became surgical interns, got their "scissor scalpels," and surgeries started happening all over the classroom.  Sadly, a few words flatlined and had to be brought back to life with a new copy of the butchered word.

Now that the surgeries were done, it was time to put together our class book.  We created sentences together for each contraction, and then the students worked in pairs to create illustrations for the sentences.

Finally, the kids got to make their own "Contraction Surgery Book."  Now it was their chance to match the pre-op words and post-op contractions on their own and write their own sentences.  They turned out great, if I do say so!  I also added a pic of the wall display of our final surgical product.

 Ok, moving onto leap year.  A lovely Northern CA storm system dumped a good amount of rain on our area on the 29th, and that torpedoed my plan to do our activity outside with measurement and chalk.  Plan B:  Masking tape, post-its, and our classroom rug.  The kids loved it anyways.

The winning leap!

Leaping Lizards Contest Results

Keeping tabs on our Leaping Lizards partners.

Last, who doesn't love Read Across America?  I love me some Dr. Seuss, and this year, I decided to focus on Happy Birthday to You!  The message of this book is that each person should embrace the qualities that make them unique and be proud of who they are.  My class this year has a few kids who are a little...how can I say this nicely..."off center," and some of their classmates haven't been exactly friendly as of late.  So, I wanted to create a chance for kids to compliment each other.  Here's what we did.  Students created their "I Am I" bag and wrote a little bit about what made them special.  

Then, they pulled names randomly and had to write a compliment for that person on a separate page that I made.  I was expecting at least one student to come up to me and ask for help because they couldn't think of anything nice to write, but it never happened.  Huge sigh of relief!  They then delivered the compliments to each others' bags.  My kids liked it so much, I set up a compliment corner in my room, hoping that we can keep this idea rolling.  I put a few copies of each students' name in a "Compliment Me!" box along with some extra compliment pages.  They left the room absolutely giddy on Friday afternoon, knowing that the compliment box would be there on Monday for them to use.

Room 5's Compliment Corner

I also borrowed this activity from Mel D's fantastic blog.  I am in love with these little mischief makers!  Check out the close up pic.  This is from a student who isn't the strongest writer, and when I had her read it out loud to me, I had to stop myself from laughing.  Too stinking cute!

"I would get my brother and wap them on the hiney."  Well said, Bella.

 Want to try any of these activities for yourself?  Downloads are below.  If you download one of the files, please make sure you are following my blog.  Thanks!

Contraction Book - Class

Contraction Book - Student

Leaping Lizards Leap Year Measurement

I Am I Bag

Cheers!
Meghan