Shepherd's Shining Stars: maps

This coming Tuesday should be the 4th week of school, however, it will be the third due to Hurricane Isaac's appearance. I am looking forward to getting back to work and into the routine of things on Tuesday. I can't wait to hear students tell their stories about their experiences and will definitely have them do a writing describing their experience through Hurricane Isaac to share with all of my followers. Eventually we will post them on Kidblog. So, stay tuned for some wonderful stories!

Everyone here in southern Louisiana is beginning to get power back after 5+ days without electricity, but there are a lot still without power and the temperature here is extremely hot. My parents are one of the many without power and are staying with us at night.

We had very little damage due to the Hurricane unlike many whose homes flooded in southern Louisiana. We lost a few shingles on the roof, our fence is missing a few boards and leaning, and the trampoline and play set has been destroyed. Not too bad for 75+ miles per hour winds.

As I said before, I am really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. This coming week, students will identify and describe the Plot in the story. I will use the short film "Oktapodi" to introduce and model how to identify and describe the Plot. I am planning to re-create an anchor chart found on Pinterest when modeling. Wednesday and Thursday, I will do a read-aloud using the text Sarah and the Freedom Quilt a historical fiction selection to review and guide students through discussion on identifying and describing the plot. Independently students will read one of the leveled readers from the basal and they will identify and describe the Plot making a foldable I found on Pinterest. I will post pictures next week from this activity.

In Social Studies, students will identify and describe features on a physical map. I found some really great apps that I plan to use with students in collaborative groups. After modeling the different types of features found in the US I plan for students to use the app Educreations. Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Students will use the web to locate a physical map of the US and then take turns using the app to identify the features and their locations to teach the other members of their group. They will select one member's presentation to send to me via email.

We will also discuss how Louisiana is the only state in the US with parishes and how it consists of 64 political parishes. Students will also create a foldable showing their street, city, parish, state, country and continent and discuss and record the population of each. Love this foldable I found from Pinterest from Clutter Free Classroom.