groundhog day Archives - Ideas by Jivey

We had school yesterday (President’s Day) to make up for a snow day, and we had school again today… a normal day, yes… but after so many days off, it’s hard to work so many days in a row! 🙂

I’m linking up with Holly for Tried It Tuesday!

We used Groundhog Gets A Say THE WEEK OF GROUNDHOG’S DAY…… and some teachers might just throw in the towel after almost a full week off due to snow, but not me!

After finally finishing our mentor sentence lesson, we were getting this darn poster finished!!!! So we didn’t just have Groundhog Day, or Groundhog Week, but apparently, I’m dragging it out for the month.

Since we had been working so much with figurative language, I challenged them to use the facts we learned from the book to write sentences with all of the types of figurative language (alliteration, simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, hyperbole) in groups. They came up with some really great sentences!

“The groundhog dug out a zillion tons of dirt from the ground.”

“Chomp, chatter! That fruit was delicious!”

“Flap! Flap! Flap! goes the groundhog’s flappy ears.”

“The whistlepig whistles in the windy wind.”

Then, I had everyone in the class write a sentence on chart paper, but they had to read everyone’s above them and make sure the one they wanted to write wasn’t already on the poster. Look how many we managed to get!!

If you are interested in what we else we did with the book, click below! 🙂

That’s right- FULL week! This was literally our first five day work week in forever!!! Here’s my FIVE!

We FINALLY wrapped up our snow globe stories this week and we were able to make our snow globe craft! Yippee!

We used the rest of the fake snow left over from making the ornaments at our Winter Party and some glitter flakes to fill the inside – I hot-glued the clear plastic plates on top. Last year, I used small plates, but this year we used the big ones. I think they turned out so cute!!

We’ve been working on non-fiction text structure in reading. I’ve been using Pinkadots Elementary’s Text Structure Unit, and the kids have really enjoyed it!

Not only have they read different structures, but they have practiced writing them, too! It’s awesome! Definitely check it out if you need some resources for text structure! :o)

In Social Studies, we’ve been learning about how our government was created. We’ve just gotten to the Constitution, so we are “dissecting” the Preamble and rewriting it in our own words. They had to look up some of the words in the dictionary… and you would have thought I just gave them a million dollars by handing them a dictionary!! We haven’t done a ton with the dictionaries this year, so I guess they are a novelty?? 😛 Whatever makes them happy!! Ha!!

We did all of our Groundhog Day stuff this week, including our mentor sentence from Groundhog Gets a Say, which is the CUTEST book for the holiday, in my opinion. (General Lee here in Georgia did NOT see his shadow by the way… we had a discussion about who we hope is correct, Phil or General Lee! We all agreed: General Lee!)

This sentence is in my Third Mentor Sentence Unit, and the interactive activity is in the accompanying Interactive Language Arts Notebook Unit. I just introduced relative pronouns to them this week through this sentence and interactive activity. They were pointing it out all week every time someone said “that” or “who!” It was hilarious!

I also have a mentor text unit that goes along with Groundhog Gets a Say, which we used this week, too!

To tie it in with the figurative language we have been learning, I challenged them to use the facts we learned from the book to write sentences with all of the types of figurative language. (They couldn’t just make things up to make it fit for the figurative language.) They came up with some really great sentences! We aren’t quite done with our project with the sentences, so I will be sharing more next week! :o)

Tried It Tuesday: Groundhog… Month?

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