Peek at My Week: Bats and Spiders Research

Some how some way I will figure out my routine. Anyway, I wanted to share about my plans for the week. You can read my food menu plans for the week at Balancing the Backpack.

We are studying bats and spiders some over the next couple weeks. We are doing a lot of fiction studies right now, so I wanted to bring in some nonfiction. Last week, we read The Spider and the Fly.

We followed it up with a really cute writing activity where the kids had to either be a piece of candy convincing a trick-or-treat sack they did not want to go with them or a trick-or-treat sack convincing the candy they would not get eaten.  The kids had a lot of fun with it, and it was a great follow up to our discussions of letter writing, persuasive writing, and Point-of-View.



This week we are reading Stellaluna and Bats to go with this Collaboration Cuties unit. We read Bats today and discussed Fact and Opinion. It was a great entrance into our week of researching bats.

We are also doing some close reading passages on spiders and bats from this Really Creepy Stuff unit.

I am excited to use several of them through this week and next. (Next week we are going to do some Monsters activities and use some more of the passages.)  I am excited to introduce close reading to my students.  We are going to discuss how readers have a purpose just like writers do.  We will discuss the difference between active and passive reading.

To go with our reading about bats and spiders, my students will be doing some online research about bats this week and reading various nonfiction texts.  They will be doing a project about what they learn about bats. They decided they wanted to research a species of bat and a species of spider, so we will be doing both. It may take us into the first part of November to do both, but I am glad they are excited about it. I am finishing up a bat and spider research project unit that I hope to get posted on TpT in the next couple days.

We have lots of other stuff going on, but that is as much energy as I have tonight. Do you have any favorite books or websites about bats and spiders?

On a side note, I went to the Dallas Arboretum on Saturday and checked out the Pumpkins.  Here is a picture of me with the Pumpkins.



I am also going to link up with Denise at SunnyDays for my truth about fitness.  Here is my truth about fitness: