Soil Investigations!

It's soil time! This week we started our soil unit in science. This unit has the possibility of being super fun or super boring. I made a soil study booklet last year when I taught this unit during my internship, but I recently went back to beef it up and pretty it up. I already had the soil study booklet I created posted at both my TpT and TN stores but I just posted the whole unit! In this unit there is:
-a NEW soil study booklet (this one is a bit more comprehensive than the original booklet posted)
-lesson ideas
-vocabulary word wall strips
-vocabulary sheets
-quick check quiz
-fill-in-the-blanks page
-printables for a Components of Soil foldable

Check it out! TpT TN

FREE student led Earth Day discussion

 

I'm linking up! Head over to Sunny Days in Second Grade to see the many, many Earth Day Freebies. The freebie I am offering is a student led discussion guide for Earth Day. You can get it FREE at my TN shop. I plan to split my students into small groups and give them each a page with a different discussion questions. The students will take turns reading their question aloud and discussing it with their group. The student who asked the question will be in charge of recording their group's thought. Early finishers will flip the paper over and do an Earth Day Drawing. Quick, easy, and engaging.

My Freebie Includes:
3 Discussion Question Sheets with Lines
3 Discussion Question Sheets with Bubble Maps (for younger students)
Drawing Sheet
Instructions Page

Don't Forget to Stop by My TpT or TN shop to check out my Spring Back from Spring Break Sale!

Science Notebooking: Animal Adaptations

My students and I had a blast with our animal adaptations unit! The students loved being able to look at pictures, watch videos, and learn facts about real animals that they are interested in. Below are some picutres of how the unit played out in our learning journals.

 Title Page & Table of Contents

 Vocab Sheet 1 & Adaptation Intro Booklet

 Inside Adaptation Booklet

 Camouflage Notes & Questions (Super Teacher Worksheets)

Camouflage Pictures

 Mimicry Notes & Mimicking Animal

 Hibernation Notes & Acrostic Poem

 Hibernation Questions

 Migration Notes & Migration P.O.V. Story

 One of the Migration Question Pages

Adaptation Flipbook & Behavioral Adaptation Sort

 Adaptation Definition, Example, and Picture

 Physical & Behavioral

 Bottom Tier of Flipbook

 Vocabulary Book & Vocab Sheet 2

 Inside Vocabulary Book

 We did A LOT with vocabulary in this unit. There were 20+ words the students had to learn!

 Predator/Prey & Producer, Consumer, Decomposer Sort

I gave them sentences on a separate sheet of paper and they had to sort the items into the correct category for each.

 Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore Sort

 Food Chain Pictures

1. Food Chain with Arrow  2. Shows each animal inside their predator

 Food Chain Picture & Question Strip

 Population/Community Notes

 Habitat Notes

I learn so much about notebooking from every unit. From this unit I learned that I want to give them less worksheets and pages to glue in (partly because gluesticks have become like gold in my classroom...I don't know how they go so quickly!). Students did well and showed more creativity when I had them take and illustrate their own notes. I still give them direction, but I have learned that they do well with the freedom. Ex. After learning about Terrestrial, "Write yourself a note that will remind you about what terrestrial means, make sure to include the word "land" somewhere in your note."

If you are teaching a similar unit any time soon you may want to pop over to my Animal Adaptation Symbaloo page and take a look.

I would love to hear any thoughts or ideas!