Dinovember has come and gone. I think it went well :) For our final week Pre-K and Kindergarten read Saturday Night At The Dinosaur Stomp about a dino dance party, and then used plastic dinosaurs whose feet had been dipped in paint to have a dino dance party on this big sheet of white paper. Super cute and they had fun! 1st grade read Dinosaur vs the Library and then did a worksheet that said "Dinosaur vs. _____" and they got to fill in the blank and draw a picture of what the dinosaur was fighting. 2nd grade read How Do Dinosaurs Go To School, which is part of a great series. They then had to make a list of the things the dinosaurs did at school and place them under the category of good dinosaur behavior or bad dinosaur behavior. I have some trouble with my 2nd graders' behavior so we might have to do more things like this. 3rd grade read Dinopets Go To School which is very repetitive in saying "I got a dino for a pet. The biggest/tallest/smartest dino I could get." So we made a book about pets going to school and they filled in the blanks and drew a picture on a worksheet that said "I got a ____ for a pet. The _____est _____ I could get!" Some really creative ideas came out of this! 4th grade talked about how dinosaurs are extinct and so are a lot of other animals. We discussed endangered animals and listed some, then they wrote an acrostic poem using the word "endangered." Most of them had never heard of an acrostic, so they weren't exactly what I was hoping for, but practice makes perfect! Finally, I subjected my 5th graders to a TED talk! This whole month all they've wanted to talk about dino-wise if Jurassic World, so I found a TED talk about bringing animals back from extinction. It was a really great lecture that didn't use far out, crazy lingo they wouldn't understand. Then they wrote about what animal they'd like to bring back from extinction and what it would be like to have that animal back!
Yesterday was career day, so students dressed up as what they want to be when they grow up. I dressed in lots of umbrella stuff because I want to be a meteorologist when I grow up! Today is the last day of school before Thanksgiving week off (!!!), so I've mainly spent it cleaning and prepping for my one week of library lessons in December. This next week off is going to be so amazing! I plan on sleeping. A lot.
This is the TED talk we watched with 5th grade.