Shark Week!

Well, we are almost there....the end is near...and the natives are restless.  It is getting harder and harder to get and keep their attention, so I decided to pull out the big guns last week- SHARKS.  It is pretty universal, all first graders love sharks - I have no idea why.  We had our state testing last week for the bigger kids, so that means we were trapped in our rooms with no specials for three days of the week.  I knew I would need something BIG to keep us all from going completely crazy.

We began with a little research on Tuesday.  I used a nonfiction resource from A Year of Many Firsts for most of our research and it worked out perfectly.  We read the mini book about sharks the first day and made a giant web with everything we knew about sharks.  I put out my shark books on the browsing shelf for my kiddos to peruse through the week and they just ate them up!

The next day I let them break into teams.  They used reading passages (from the same resource) and books on pebblego.com to gather information about their chosen type of shark.  I had groups researching great white sharks, whale sharks, tiger sharks, and hammerhead sharks.  They were so engrossed in this that it took most of the morning, and I was happy to leave them to it!

On Thursday we began working on our posters.  They drew their sharks, filled in the background, and added facts they had learned about their shark.  I was pretty impressed with how detailed their drawings were!

I was trying to think of a good activity for Friday when I came across this little directed drawing activity on @adayinfirstgrade's Instragram account, and I knew it would be perfect!  Sure enough, my kids loved it, and they turned out to be adorable.  When they finished my kiddos spent some time reflecting on what they learned in their journals.

All in all, it was a great week, even with the testing and the end of year craziness. Just twelve more days to go!!