Another Goodbye to the Dinosaurs…and January Unit Plans!

It was our last week with the dinosaurs, so I made sure to teach them about one last dinosaur that they all wanted to know more about…the tyrannosaurus rex. After the whole terrifying allosaurus ordeal, I was shocked that so many of them wanted to study this horrific creature. They seemed to learn quite a bit, and they really enjoyed walking around like t-rexes with their puny dinosaur arms.

Since I’m a super nice and cool teacher, I bought them a little surprise on Tuesday morning.

The instructions said that the dinosaur should hatch in 12-24 hours, so I thought, “Great! They’ll have a few days to play with it!”

It did not take 12-24 hours. In fact, I had to {secretly} induce it on Friday morning before the kids came in. They were so excited that it had finally hatched! As they all came hurdling towards me to let me know, I put on an Oscar worthy performance of pretending to be just as shocked as they were.

I love ending things on a good note {can ya tell?} so I let the kids watch two Magic School Bus episodes that connected to both our dinosaur and energy units. Remember how much I love Bill Nye? I share the same feelings for The Magic School Bus. Grade One just can’t be taught properly without it.

"Busasaurus" 

"Gets Energized"

Oh wait...that's not how I ended the week. We actually ended off Friday by making dinosaur fossils! Here's what you do:

1. Use Crayola Model Magic-it's not messy and it won't cause health problems (apparently other clays can). Squish it into the bottom of a Tupperware container lined with foil.
2. Use a strong cast plaster and mix it with water until it resembles the consistency of pancake batter
3. I bought dinosaur skeleton toys off Amazon and used them to squish into the clay

4. Pour the plaster into the mould and let it sit. We are letting ours sit over the weekend.

5. Cross your fingers and hope they turn out as well as the model (even though mine broke on the way to school).

One last thing: If you want to use some of these ideas, but need some help to actually put it into a unit plan, I have attached the links to download mine. Change it up as you need to. 

January Literacy Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

January Math Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

January Science Unit Plan. Click HERE to download.

The kids are bummed that the dinosaurs are gone from the classroom, but I’m hoping they’ll be just as excited as I am for our new unit {starting tomorrow} on the Olympics!

Time to go and get everything ready for tomorrow/all next week.

Happy Sunday!

Day, Unit, and Long Range Plans

I thought I’d make a midweek post and share some stuff that falls on the administrative side of teaching; because as you know, teaching is more than reading cute poems, solving math problems, and making gigantic paint messes on Friday afternoons. There’s a lot, and I mean A LOT of planning and preparation that goes into each day, week, term, and school year. I spent the majority of my free time in the summer planning my little heart out for the upcoming year and I’m finding that I’m still tweaking things even though I thought I had it all planned out. Yesterday I adjusted the details on my day plan template because if I had to leave it for a supply, it may have been a little confusing. So without further ado, here are some of the templates I use for myself. To get a free copy, click on the picture and download the file.

Long Range Plans

For the past few days I have been thinking about my love for the winter Olympics and how I could fit that into the year somehow. I just spent 10 minutes revising my long range plans for February. What was originally a unit all about Friendship (booorrrring), is now a (hopefully) engaging unit on encouragement and perseverance in the Winter Olympics. I’m telling you--the teacher brain in me never turns off.

Unit Plans

I use these templates and adjust as needed for each subject. I always type it up before my unit begins and by the end of the unit, I look back through each day plan and record the resources I ended up using. Then I reprint it for my files. It’s time consuming, but it will pay off in future years when I want to know what books and resources I used. Here are the units for literacy, math, science, and social studies for the months of September and October.

September Literacy

September Math

September Social Studies

October Literacy

October Math

October Social Studies

Day Plans

Day plans are primarily meant to help you effectively plan your upcoming day(s), but they are also necessary to have in case an occasional teacher has to come into your classroom. I have had to make slight changes to mine about three times now so that it would make sense to anyone who looked at it.

A Week at a Glance

I find this so helpful. I sit down on Fridays and plan a rough sketch of the upcoming week. It helps me see when certain lessons should be taught together, and when I’ll have enough time to begin and finish a task. The learning centres section is also very helpful because I can quickly see what supplies I will need to set them up.

If you’re stuck for some new ideas, or you’re new to a grade, it helps to see someone else’s tried, tested, and true plans to get yours going. I hope this helps!