Saturday morning recap

I love, love, Five for Friday. But many times on Friday I am too exhausted to get my five things done and posted. So, I'm linking up on Saturday again. Hop over the Doodlebugs Teaching and read about everyone's week or day!

 1. Groundhog's day! What a fun way to learn. We ended the day with a groundhog snack.... pudding cups (aka dirt) with a groundhog (sometimes known as teddy grahams) poking out of a mound of dirt (crushed oreos).  We did some estimating and predicting, groundhog fun in a word find, watched a video about Punxsutawney Phil and learned about ground hog features and habitats.

 2. Learned about different cultures for our Multicultural project. We "hungout" with someone who had been a missionary to Cameroon, Africa via Google Hangouts. We learned about the culture, the dress, foods and markets, housing and modern conveniences that we take for granted in America, that are not a given part of their daily life there.

 We honed our letter-writing skills by writing a thank you letter to Mrs. Rundus for her time and expertise, and for sharing her knowledge with us! This is a skill we have been practicing for awhile and we often bring it together with our "Awesome 2015" goals. Sometimes I don't realize what an awesome group of students I have until I see their finished work!

Dear Mrs. Rundus, Thank you for teaching us about living in Africa. I think it would be funny to see a motorcyle with 5 people on it. Sincerely, (1st grade friend).

Dear Mrs. Rundus, I learned so much from you like women wear hair coverings to go to church and weddings. Also you said that clock time is six hours ahead of us but I am wondering what do men wear in Cameroon Africa? Also you didn't tell me how you get electricity but you did tell me that your electricity runs out faster than our so what do you d when the power goes out? Do you cook? Do you play with your kids or do you go to bed? Do your kids go to school or do you teach them math? Do your kids read library books? I think I know what mean wear in Cameroon, Africa. I think they wear white clothes and hat with a feather on top of the white hat. Your friend, (fourth grade friend).

I loved how both letters demonstrated that students were listening and engaged when the speaker shared about events in Cameroon. A lot of the girls were struck with fact that many people in Cameroon raise Guinea Pigs for food, not to keep as pets.

4. Good behavior rewards! We've had some great behavior lately and it shows! Rewards, rewards, rewards!! We've noticed a dip in the desire to please and so my team and I agreed we are going to "catch" the good behavior frequently! So we've had a lot of full charts that have chosen from the following coupons: eat lunch with the teacher, stinky feet (no shoes in the classroom), silly slippers (wear slippers instead of shoes), show and tell (bring something from home and practice speaking skills), or wear your pajamas to school for the day. This little Kinder filled his chart and chose the "still sleepy?" reward and wore his pajamas all day!

I got my whole class reward coupons from Mel at Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations. This was my first ever TpT purchase and worth every cent! You can check them out here!

5. Rewards, rewards, rewards! More individual behavior rewards equals more whole class rewards! We filled our Cool Beans chart and earned a celebration. How do you handle this in your classroom? We throw out ideas and then vote. First we brainstormed and posted quite a few ideas on the board. Then we voted those down to just three ideas. Then we voted one more time and chose our reward for this time and will use our second choice reward for our next behavior celebration. Students voted to have a Rootbeer Float party! It was easy and fun and we did this at the end of the day on Friday!

Happy Weekend everyone! What do you do in the classroom on Valentine's day? Do you celebrate? What grade levels celebrate Valentine's Day?