Fun Friday Habitat Project

I am linking up with Teaching Fourth's Fun Friday again this week!

This week we worked on a great project to learn about ecosystems. I combined two activity sets that I purchased on teacherspayteaches and created biome flipbooks. The idea and templates for the booklet came from Hope King's My Biome Book and I used the graphic organizers from Nicole Shelby's Food Chain Packet to first research each of the ecosystems. We used this website http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/world_biomes.htm to look up information. Nicole's packet also had some great ideas for food chain and food web activities that I plan on trying this coming week! Below is a picture of a finished project!

If you are learning about animals and need a review, I posted an Animal Jeopardy game that reviews the different groups of vertebrates on teacherspayteachers. You must have SMART Notebook to play the game though.

Fun Friday-Edible Earth Rounds

We did a super fun activity this week that was found on Laura Candler's website. The hands-on activity represented how only a small portion of our planet is actually inhabitable and that our resources are very limited. My students had a great time building their earth round and an even better time eating them after! And...I think they even learned a little something! I had every intention of taking pictures, but of course I forgot to bring my camera! So check out the activity here: Edible Earth Rounds

Who Loves Giveaways!!??

I was doing my daily blog reading today and found a new blog full of great ideas and a giveaway!Head on over to Peacocks and Penguins to check it out and sign up for her giveaway!!

Daily 5

I decided on trying Daily 5 and CAFE this year. Practically EVERY blog I read talks about the Daily 5, so I decided it must be pretty good! We have been in school four weeks now and both the students and I LOVE Daily 5. I will say it took a lot of training, but it was well worth it and things are now running very smoothly. The principal came in the other day and was very impressed at how everyone was on task and working quietly. I was over at Runde's Room reading her post on Daily 5 and she had some great ideas that I can't wait to use! She showed pictures of her student's reading journals where they keep track of each of the strategies taught in CAFE and also where they will write reflections on the strategies they use. She also shared a powerpoint that introduces Daily 5, which I will definitely use next year! Another great idea was her Comprehension Question Fans which has questions to ask about the different strategies that are studied in CAFE. I would love to use these when I work with small groups and have the students write answers in their journals. Do you use Daily 5 and/or CAFE? How does it work for you? I would love to hear your ideas!