Aloha to Second: Welcome to the Jungle!

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Welcome to the Jungle!

I LOVE the Jungle Unit! We have so much fun learning about different jungle animals and the layout of the jungle. My students are always so fascinated by the jungle animals.

To start our jungle unit, we made vocabulary bags. The vocabulary bags look like jungle trees! Then, we wrote down a new word each day and placed it in our bag. This was great practice for the students. It helped them learn new words and practice defining words without using the word. My students often say, "Plants mean plants that grow outside." ha! This always makes me smile, and then we practice describing the word without using the word. This is a difficult concept!

Each afternoon we made a jungle animal and wrote about the animal. We used a booklet where we wrote bulleted facts about the animal. I even learned new things! For example, I had no idea that you could hear a monkey up to 2 miles away! That seems so far. I then compared that to a local store down the street and told my students that they could hear a monkey from our school to that store. They were in awe! We started by learning about Tree Frogs.

After Tree Frogs, we learned about Jaguars!

After Jaguars, we learned about Monkeys! I love monkeys! Many students chose monkeys to write about, too!

After Monkeys, we learned about Toucans.

Last, we learned about Sloths. We really enjoyed looking at sloth pictures - they are so cute!

During our writing time, we wrote about jungle animals. I let my kids pick which jungle animal they wanted to write about. The writing prompt was, If I were a _________, I would.... So, each writing piece was different. Therefore, we were not able to complete any of the writing together. This was the first time I had them make a list, complete a four square, and write their final copy ALL independently. We typically will complete some of the steps together. I was SO proud of their writing. Once they chose an animal, they had to write a list of things they would do if they were that animal. Then, they wrote a four square to lay out their thoughts before they transferred it to the final copy. Once the final copy was complete - they made their jungle animal. Here a few they made!