Yesterday was so hard for me. I don’t know what went wrong. I just know that it did. All the fire was out of me by the time the children came back from recess. Today was a little bit better because I just refused to let it be like yesterday. Everyone that I talked to about yesterday said that it just like that sometimes.
Well, until next time people!
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Tuesday was my very first Unit Opener ever. We decided to do it on Tuesday because of the break. We just didn’t think that it would be a good idea to have the students try to focus too much on the first day back at school after a three week break.
I mentioned earlier last week (here) that everyone else were such pros at coming up with great ideas and I felt that I had lost my thing; my “itness”. I felt so incompetent. I was having trouble coming up with something for the Unit Opener, but thank God that I found someone else’s Unit Opener on Imagination (here). For her U.O. she did Harold & the Purple Crayon.
“Perfect,” I thought.
I love Harold & the Purple Crayon. My creative juices were beginning to flow. The only problem was narrowing down my choice. Once I made my choice, coming up with activities to supplement it wasn’t hard at all.
If I could toot my own horn for a minute (toot, toot), I have to say that it was a resounding success. Of the four other third grade classes, two of them are unruly. I did not have a problem with them. I worked with them just like I work with my own class. I stopped them at the door, told them my rules and my expectations. Once they were aware that I meant business, I did not have problems with them.
I borrowed the video from the public library (since I only have a VCR in my room) and let the students watch it. Before they watched it, I frontloaded them with a little background info on Harold. Then we talked about how Harold used his imagination. I then told them to use their imagination while watching it to come up with a superhero character of their own. One that no one else had thought of.
I told them that I watch a lot of cartoons (I do) and that as a result they couldn’t trick me. Of course they decided to test me by naming “real” superheroes. (I passed) Once they realized that they couldn’t trick me they came up with ones of their own. I used a spider graphic organizer that you can find here.
Since I had extra spider graphic organizers, I asked who wanted extra ones to do at home. Almost everyone who I offered one took it. I felt so good.
I was so thankful for finding this blogger when I did. I have to give most of the credit to her. Even though I don’t know her, she helped save my hide. She is the one I got the idea from. Thank you very much mysterious blogger.
Well, this got kinda’ long, so I’ll cut it off here. Until next time people!
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