Tuesday, August 21, 2012

our second week of school

After an exhausting first week of school, I wanted to start off the second week with some fun and excitement.

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The kids came in Monday morning to a little treat. They were thrilled. I got this idea from a friend who teaches in California.

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For Science and “team building” we did an activity called “Save Fred”. The students were told that Fred (a gummy worm) is stranded on top of his boat (a plastic cup) and his life preserver (gummy life saver) is trapped under the boat. They had to work with a partner to get the life saver around the gummy worm using only 4 paper clips (no hands can touch the worm, cup or life saver).

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They also can’t injure Fred in any way (like stab him with a paper clip to pick him up).

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They had so much fun with this activity. I was very impressed with their problem solving skills! My teaching partner found this idea on a teacher blog and it’s definitely a keeper!!

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I ended the day by sending home a bag of gummy worms along with their reading logs. As a school, we are participating in a Million Minute Challenge. The students keep track of the minutes they read at home and we hope to have a cumulative total of 1,000,000 minutes by the end of the year. We are also having monthly celebrations if we reach certain milestones. Just one more fun and exciting activity to promote reading!!

Now I need to think of some more little incentives for the coming weeks. All ideas are welcome!

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