BATS!

First off, let me say how much I wish I could have a bat house in my backyard! lol

Second, next year, I'm totally going to see if our local zoo can come do some kind of presentation for us and bring some bats!!

First we started with a graph on how they felt about bats before we even started our week on bats...

This is their graph BEFORE we learned about Bats

This is their graph AFTER we learned about bats

Click HERE to get the Bat graph

And they did a foldable before we started our bat week too. On the top they wrote three questions they had about bats when they did their picture walk through the Bats book by Gail Gibbons.  After our week was completed, they took back their foldables and wrote the answers under the flaps. Some of them had such great questions that we didn't even discuss, so I had to show off how smart I was - haha! And I gave them their answers. 

This idea next was "inspired" by The Inspired Apple...hehehe....LOVE her!! Click here to see the bats post where I got the freebie for the "Can, Have, Are." If you go over there to snag her freebies, let her know who sent you! :)

As we were reading this book....

 the students were writing down all kinds of facts that they were learning (as my intern was writing down everything that she was "learning" to demonstrate ALL the facts that they could be writing down.)

If you don't have that book, this book is another GREAT resource to use....



Then, they sorted their post it notes into Can, Have, and Are categories on our Bat-style Tree Map.



Ok - You don't even KNOW what it took me to draw this bat!! lol!!! If we weren't laughing so hard, my intern would've taken pictures. First of all, my first bat came out all lop-sided. And since I'm OCD, I just could NOT deal with it! And my BEST room mom ever (whose kids I don't even have anymore) happened to be in my room and she totally gets my OCD, so she ran over and grabbed a yard stick and and a protractor...or compass??? I'm not sure - lol. I don't teach 5th grade. ANYWAY, tada!!!! It's kind of massive, but that's ok - just more room for us to show all that we have learned! lol!!



The next day, they made their own personal tree map.

Of course, we used Stellaluna as our story for the week..

We talked about the story structure, and then the students made an accordian book to sequence the story. Click HERE to get the sequencing activity. 

I just LOVE this one....it's so cute!

They also compared and contrasted birds and bats (the characters in Stellaluna). Which was great, because they needed to not only use the information in the story, but they needed to bust out their knowledge they learned in the nonfiction books too!

Over at Fun in First, she posted about her 600 mosquitoes...I just LOVED it - and so did my kiddos! They've all decided that they want a bat roost in their backyard so we can get rid of the mosquitos, in a toxic-free way! lol (I teach my kids all about being earth-savvy and recycling...lol!)

We also did a Brain Pop Video - with a quiz. The quiz was way over their level, but once we explained the options to them, they were able to narrow it down to at least 2 out of the 4 options...and most of them were correct!

Click HERE to go to the Brain Pop video :)

Some other bat books that my students read this week are.....

The Bats at the...."series."  There are a few different versions of these books - super cute! It was funny how my kids would come up to me after learning all about bats and connecting their new-found knowledge to what was in the book! I LOVE it!!

And then of course, there's the ever popular....

My friend, Amanda, in 5th grade even suggested to have the kiddos do their own version of this book. They could turn it into a food web....draw it out on the front, and then write about it on the other side. There is a pattern for a brown paper bag of the little old lady that could easily be adapted to whatever animals and then they could eat the rest of the animals.

Some of the ideas I had this week that we didn't get to were to

a) Echolocation (Marco Polo style)...have a student blind folded shout out ECHO, and the rest of the students shout out LOCATION and he/she has to tag someone just by listening...I SOOOO wanted to do this, but sometimes, something's gotta give.

b) bat wing measure measurement. I was going to give them a piece of yarn that was the size of a bat (maybe the bumblebee, which is the smallest one, or just an average sized bat). Then they go around the room using their pieces of yarn as non-customary units of measure. But again....where does the time go?? lol

http://clutterfreeclassroom.blogspot.com/2011/10/peek-in-my-planbook-week-in-review_21.html