Here we are back at Sunday again! It’s time for a whole new week of lesson plans and engaging fun! Since we plan for the following week on Wednesdays, it gives me time to prepare things by Friday so I can leave for the weekend all set up.
Here’s the plan for this new week of learning.
One of our Friday afternoon rituals is to clean and prepare the room for the next week. Students set up the charts, drawers, and morning message etc. They bring me the remains of the last week all bagged up and ready to be put away. Not only does it help me so very much, but it also shows them how we move on to new concepts. Some students are wiping down desks, others are shutting down computers, some are cleaning out their own desks, others are straightening the library, sharpening pencils, tidying the writing center, and supply areas. All in all it only takes 10-15 minutes. Another benefit to this ritual is that students know where things are and how they work. They have ownership of the entire structure of learning!
We are LOVING our living things interactive activities in science. To tie in our science studies, we will use these books as our non-fiction text. Book pics will link to amazon.
Our math concept didn’t change this week, but we are continuing to work through my graph pack activities during guided math!
In this activity, students reach in and take a bear 15 times. They tally and graph their results, then compare with a friend.
This is a fun toss and graph activity where students will toss the egg towards the bucket 15 times tallying and graphing their results for in the bucket or out of the bucket.
Last week students did a similar activity in the pack where they pulled student names from a bag and tallied and graphed boys and girls. They could only pull 15 names so they hoped that their gender would win!
This week our independent math tubs all come from my math sticks unit. We had a blast playing Popsicle stick last week. Now we have 4 more fun activities to look forward to this week. (No school on Friday)
Last Friday they played house of sticks. Here’s what it looked like when I came to check on them.
In writing we have so much more stamina! It isn’t as difficult to write now that we are better readers and spellers too! We will be writing a more developed piece using my parts of a story cards and writing paper. First we will do this during an interactive writing lesson and then transition to choosing our own cards and writing a more developed piece.
We are about halfway through our living and non-living books, so we will be finishing these up and also adding rocks to our learning.
Looking ahead, I just uploaded a new unit for April. Here’s a look at what we will be getting ourselves into in a couple of weeks!

I LOVE that you have students help you re-set for the upcoming week. What a fantastic idea! I am a huge believer in letting students take ownership of their learning and our classroom… I genuinely let them do just about every other piece of the details of running the room through their jobs (attendance, lunch count, organize book shelves and supplies, etc.) so this would fit in very naturally! Can't wait to try it out next week. (:
Melissa
seebeanteach.blogspot.com
I pinned so many ideas from this post – thank you for the inspiration these last few days before Spring Break! Have a super week, Jen
Awesome Classroom!!!! Will do my best to make my classroom as fun and instructional as yours. Thanks for sharing your great ideas.