Last Thursday we took our field trip to the zoo. We lucked out with no rain. Our weather has been cold and wet all month, so all we could do was hope for the best! We had nice weather! We always have a lot of chaperones so we have really small groups and it makes the visit more enjoyable for all!
As the school year winds down, our students are writing animal reports and participating in an animal wax museum to wrap up our animal unit. Last year was the first year we've tried the museum and it was a huge hit! I have a third grader this year, so we'll be working on a habitat for a Lynx.
After our field trip I like to use my zoo sentence scrambles and writing unit with my students. It's a nice change of pace from all the work we've done during the year. My students really enjoy working on the sentence scrambles and it was just challenging enough to make them think without getting frustrated and to put chatting aside. It's a great language review when they need clues to help them.
There's a choice of 5 animals. Some sentence scrambles are more challenging than others, so I was able to differentiate the activity for my intervention groups. There are 3 scrambles for each animal and my students were able to complete all three in about 30 minutes.
Tomorrow my students will work on choosing a sentence to paraphrase and illustrate. My students still need a lot of practice of writing information in their own words. It's a tough skill for many of them. Then they'll choose an adaptation and write about it. To finish up, they'll complete an editing activity.
