With that in mind, I planned a back to school, ice-breaker type of day that was met with enthusiasm and talkative kids (the good kind of talkative!) I wanted to trigger critical thinking and eagerness to start thinking. Since that day may have come and gone for you, I'm thinking this could be a "Brainy Friday" idea. I gave them some ground rules, AND I provided lots of "choice." Choice is the key to success for all students in the room, in my opinion. First, I found all those great and challenging books I had collected over the years from book fairs and Scholastic Freebies! Mine probably aren't the same ones as yours, but you know you've got em. I bet you hardly ever use them because who has time? Some are consumable and some aren't - but since I have so many- I just let them write in the consumable so that the copyright police wouldn't arrest me. I have a solution for those copyrighted pages...keep reading.
First, I took a couple of fabulous non-fiction books. I thought up writing activities for each one. I have this wonderful primary encyclopedia called Very Important Things. I simply told them on a little notecard to research something from the book they are interested in and write a short paragraph about what they learned and add a question they still have about the topic. (Encourage curiosity, always!) I provided a notecard to write down the information.
Next, I have this ADORABLE nonfiction poetry book about animals called, Animal Ark. They simply wrote a line of poetry to replace (think: SCAMPER) one in the book (using a sticky note) and stick it on the page where their line can be substituted for the original text. Easy, peasy.
I laid out the books they could write in. I also have some amazing optical illusion books that I am in love with. We seldom have time to look at optical illusions, but they are so fascinating!! If you ever have time, go look at http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/ (pre-screen the text on the site first, but the illusions are so much fun!!) The kids who chose the illusion books to look at didn't switch activities once.
Ok...here's the tip on what to do with books that you don't want the kids to write in. First, find the best book you can for this (interactive magazines work well). I use the Puzzlemania and Highlights books that come as samples to my teacher box in the office. Rather than letting the kids write in them, I cut the pages out and put them in sheet protectors so that the kids can use dry erase markers on the pages. I even put the answers in an attached envelope so the kids can check their work. I've used this one for about 4 years! Still perfect.
One of my FAVORITE things of the whole year is what I call my treasure jars. They are like "I Spy" in a jar! I saw these at the store and I thought they were pricey! These are filled with rice and beans, but could be pretty sand or whatever you think will work. The ones at the store were filled with white beads, but I found beads were so expensive. I found "trinkets" on Etsy. They were the most expensive item for the project, but I got a TON in the bag (about $10), and I can make several treasure jars with this small bag of trinkets. Next, I found some clear containers. I used a Mason jar and a plastic container with a good lid. I have a cool olive jar I'll use for my next jar. Here are the images of my supplies and finished project. Be sure to list what you are putting in your jar and later type it up for the kids to check off with dry erase markers.
We had "Brain Day" for more like a Brain Hour...but they had a blast. Were they thinking? Oh, heck yeah.
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