Edible Earth Model and Interactive Writing

      As part of our Earth, Sun, and Moon unit, we created an edible Earth model after learning about the different layers of the Earth.  This could also be a really fun Earth Day activity.  Before we made the edible model, we studied non-fiction conventions and learned about being readers of non-fiction text.  Here are a few anchor charts we made.  The second picture is of a chart still in progress...I actually make a copy of the page from the book I use to model whichever convention I am teaching about for the day and glue it to the chart to help kids remember our learning together.

After we learned about diagrams and labels, together we labeled the diagram I created of the Layers of the Earth.

Then, we did some interactive writing and filled in missing information, sight words, and chunks while reviewing what we had learned about each of the layers.  Whenever possible, I really try to integrate science and social studies content into literacy.  So, we did this during our word work time.

Finally, we got to make our edible Earth model. I got the idea for the inner and outer core from a Pinterest picture of bite-size caramel apples with pretzel sticks in them.  

Edible Earth

For the four layers, we used:

         1.  inner core- apple (I used a fruit scoop.  It took about 3 apples for my class of 25 students).

               -The inner core is solid metal.  The apple was a good model of how the inner core is solid,         

         2.  outer core- caramel dip 

                -The outer core is made of molten rock, so the caramel has a similar consistency.

         3.  mantle- crushed graham crackers

                -The mantle is made of rock.

         4.  crust- crushed chocolate graham crackers

                -The crust is the outer covering of Earth, made of land and water.  

So, we used the chocolate graham crackers to look like land (soil).

The kids loved it and learned the layers of Earth.   Please let me know what you think and how it goes when you try it with your class!  

Morning Meeting and the Moon!

I love morning meeting!  It is such a calm, focused way to start our day and build community in our classroom.  Beginning on the very first day of school, we meet in a circle on the meeting area carpet to begin our day.  At first, I lead the morning meeting but gradually release that responsibility until the kids are totally in charge!

The morning meeting is part of The Responsive Classroom philosophy of how to build a positive classroom culture.  A morning meeting usually has four parts, ending with the morning message:
                                                   
                                             1. Greeting
                                             2. News/sharing
                                             3. Activity
                                             4. Morning Message

There is a morning meeting book that is a great resource that I've used a lot when planning my morning meetings.  Click on the picture of the book below to check it out.

Ok, so I just wanted to get that plug in for morning meeting.  I will post more about it later with examples of greetings and activities I use.  But, I also just wanted to quickly share an example of how I try to integrate whatever content we are learning into our morning message each day.  We are in the middle of a unit on the Earth, Moon, and Sun (more to come on that unit).  Here is one of my morning messages from last week:

OOPS! I just noticed that this pic has the wrong date in the message.  One of my students noticed right away (of course :) and I fixed it but had already taken this picture before school.

We are learning about contractions right now so I put a line under "it is" and "we will" for the kids to fill in the contractions made from those words.  Also, I usually try to incorporate whatever chunks/word patterns we are learning about.  That day I wanted to review what we learned about how the moon isn't really changing shape but just looks like it so I asked a question that could start a quick review discussion. I make the morning message interactive so that it can serve as a quick review.

Oh, and I also try to change the greeting of the message each day to match something we are working on and help my kids see themselves in many ways.  That day they were strong readers.  Some other common greetings I use are:
                                        Dear authors,
                                        Dear mathematicians,
                                        Dear second graders,
                                        Dear boys and girls,
                                        Dear kind kids,
                                        Dear curious kids,
                                                 (when we are working on questioning)
                                        Dear teachers,
                                                 (when we are working on how-to writing)

During our current unit, I have also addressed them like this:
                                         Dear astronauts,
                                         Dear space explorers,
                                         Dear researchers,

Much more to come on morning meeting!  I would love to hear how you write morning messages or different greetings you use!