LESSONS
PROPERTIES I WANT IN A LESSON:
� Attention grabbing opener
� Clear objective/goal
� Exciting (include a hands on activity)
� Clearly states methods of instruction
� Formative checks through out  lesson to check level of understanding
� Motivating questions
� Appropriate assessment of mastery
MY FAVORITE LESSONS
I like all of my lessons and units to be cross curricular.  I like to start with a book or story and use it across the curriculum.  If I am doing a unit with a core of Science or Social Studies I will find several books that relate and use them through out the unit.
Biomes/habitats- At the end of the year this was the unit that my class said they remembered and enjoyed the most.  To close the unit each student got to choice a project.  They could create a travel brocure to the Biome of ther choice, work with a group to create a commercial or write a research paper.  I loved watching their creativity with these projects.
BIOMES
THE AMAZING SOCK EATING BEAN PLANT
This lesson was based on the story.  We did several activities including the one shown here.  Each student brought an old sock from home and made their own sock eating bean plant.  The picture to the right is the display we created in the hall for our projects.
MONTHLY ACTIVITY BOOKS
I think it is important to have quality activities planned for "unplanned free time".  Every month I created a "workbook" with handouts, color sheets and activities that coordinated with our current unit or time of year. 
This title page was followed by handouts about the human skeleton.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Use construction paper to illustrate you favorite scene in the book. Explain to the class why you picked the scene.
Several time during the year we would pick a shape to write our spelling words in for practice.
MAYFLOWER
Each day we would read a chapter out of a novel that described the voyage on the Mayflower.  Each student picked a passenger off of the manifest and started a journal from their perspective as if they were on the Mayflower.
RAINFOREST
One of my favorite units.  The first day of the unit we turned our room and hall into a rainforest.  There were paper trees and vines engulfing the entire room and hanging from the ceiling.  We made Journals where we made notes about the things we learned that we found most interesting.
WEATHER
This is another unit that my students named their favorite.  Every morning we would go outside, lay in the grass and look at the sky.  We would try to name the different cloud types and we kept a journal on the weather conditions each day.  One of the students favorite part of this unit was every morning i would record the weather and bring it to class.  We would watch the forecast together and discuss all of the things on it like barometer and pressure systems.
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