Butterfly Life Cycle

The class I am student teaching in is preparing for a field trip to the IMAX and Putnam museum. We will be watching an IMAX film on butterflies!! The students are very excited about our trip, and we have been doing some education on butterflies, specifically their features and life cycles, throughout the week.

Today, we created a butterfly life cycle wheel. The resources I found were from my mentor teacher, and I could not locate the original source. Yet, I did find a website that offered a similar template (http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/pz-butterfly-life-cycle.html).

Students colored the pictures of the four main life cycles. (1. Egg, 2. Caterpillar, 3. Cocoon, 4. Butterfly) We then pinned the wheel onto a paddle, also included in the template of the website. Then, we practiced spinning the wheel and talking about the life cycle of a butterfly.

This was a fun project, and the students did a great job coloring!! Great to use for other cycles such as the water cycle, plant life cycle and much more!!

Happy to share! :)

Miss Underwood

Magic E - A Lesson in Long Vowel Sounds

Long A Vowel Sound

This was my first week to start teaching some of my own lessons in the classroom. This particular lesson was geared toward spelling, writing and reading words with the Long A vowel sound. Since the beginning of the school year in August, students have been working with short vowel sounds only, so this was their first experience with the long vowel sounds. They were familiar that the letter "a" had two sounds, but just never used the long a sound in reading or writing lessons. The lesson specifically focused on the CVCe pattern, introducing the Magic E.

I found an awesome lesson idea from (http://blog.maketaketeach.com/diy-magic-e-wands/) This site provides a free template with short a words such as "cap" or "tap" with a star at the end of the words. Students each were made a wand with the letter "e" in the star, for the Magic E. Students placed their star from the wands at the end of the short a words, and then read the new word with the long a vowel. I really liked this concept because it still had students practice reading words with the short a sound, and introduced them to the long a sound and how to recognize the words with that Magic E on the end. I used a lot of cueing "Magic E makes "A" say it's name! A-A-A-!!!" and students were successful in correcting their mistakes and reading the words with long and short vowel sounds!

I showed an example first and then had students take turns to read the words with both the short and long vowel sounds. The awesome thing about this website is that the template provides words for all vowels, and not just one! I plan to introduce the rest of the long vowel sounds using this strategy as well. The students loved it, and it was effective in teaching the concept!! I look forward to using it again in the future!

Miss Underwood

Learning Update

It's been a while since I've posted on here, and I have many updates to come! I'm currently student teaching in a self-contained Special Education classroom for Kindergarten and 1st grade students. This has been a huge switch from my previous 7th grade setting. The main struggle for me has been adjusting to using simple vocabulary and shorter sentences for the students to understand. I am really enjoying my experience so far and thankful to be with another amazing mentor teacher.

Today, I was surprised with my early graduation present, an iPad! (Yes, I'm currently blogging using my iPad...) I'm overwhelmed with educational apps and possibilities I now have at my fingertips. I'm currently teaching Long vowels in words with the CVCe pattern in my reading group, and opposites in my language group. Below are some FREE apps that I found useful for teaching these subjects!!

Once I use them with the students, I'll come back on and write a review and how the lessons went!

Autism iHelp Opposites - Teaches opposites and has matching game. (1 set free, 3 other sets available for purchase)

Buddy the Bear (Has 4 free games, the rest are available for purchase)

Dog Story Opposites - Tells a story of opposites using dog pictures! Interactive, and comes with a game

Vowel Stories Long Sounds - Gives stories for Long vowel sounds, practice long vowel words, and games.

Phonics: Blends, Digraphs, Long Vowels - Variety of practice for these concepts, specifically a "Magic E" section!


Off to do more app researching!

Miss Underwood