Virginia SOLs: Teaching the Ancient Civilizations - Ancient Egypt

Hello Friends!  Are you managing to stay cool?  I've opted for some indoor activities since the temperature has hit into the 90s.  It's feeling like summer in VA!  

I'm finally getting some files organized and uploaded.

I came across some pictures and materials that we used this past year during our study of Ancient Egypt.  I'd love to hear from my VA teacher friends....what do you think about our new history SOL's?   Are you loving/hating the fact that we teach five ancient civilizations through the course of one year? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Last year we used a learning log to record all of our social studies and science learning.  I have tried many other approaches throughout the years but this worked the best. I will be creating learning logs again next year. 

I made tabs for each of our topics of study.  Here is our section on Ancient Egypt.

In order to create more time for my reading block, I needed to cut my content area time to just about 20 minutes. That time goes super fast! I managed to integrate a lot of social studies and science learning into my language arts block. My students read and write about content area studies throughout their reading rounds.  It works out great.  

When we do have our content time, my lessons need to be fairly quick, direct and tightly aligned with the learning standard. 

I like using visual slideshows to introduce and then review the information they need to know. 

The slide show includes the driving question. 

We view photographs to help us create an image of the information in our heads. 

We also viewed some photographs of artifacts and paintings. 

From these, we made inferences and had conversations about what conclusions we could draw based on what we noticed. 

As we worked through the slides, students also took notes about what we learned.  These got glued into their learning logs.  They reread their notes and created "meaningful" illustrations during reading time.  This allowed them to revisit that same information again and this time they had to create the visual image themselves. This repeated practice really helped the information to stick!

During our study of Egypt, I had my students also work on some partner research during the language arts block.   They created research folders to keep them focused and organized. 

Students recorded what they already knew about Ancient Egypt on the back of the folder.

Then they recorded some questions they wanted to find out.  This helped to give students a purpose for their reading.  

I checked out a wide variety of nonfiction books.  I made sure that there were some on a lower reading level so that everyone could locate information.  

Students recorded information on post it notes and organized them under the correct topic.
Afterwards students would participate in shared writing time.  Together, we created paragraphs using the details that they found during their research time.  This was my way of modeling how to write a research report.  Later in the year, students would be assigned another animal research report to do independently.  Writing a report about Egypt as a class was a way to scaffold the instruction. 

We found some good online resources like encyclopedias and websites to use. 
All students were very focused and productive during this time.
They love to research!

I've added this Egypt file to my TPT store. Click the link below to check it out!

Ancient Egypt Slide Show and Materials

Here are the others if interested: 

Ancient Greece Slide Show and Materials

Ancient Rome Slide Show and Materials

Ancient China Slide Show and Materials

Getting Hooked on Books

How can we get kids fired up about reading? We need to start with a spark. 

I view my read alouds as just that. I am a firm believer in setting aside a time each and every day for a read aloud and third graders are not too old for this. My kids and I both love this time.  It is precious for many reasons. One of the most important being that during this time I not only model good reading strategies, but I also impart and instill in my students a deep love of books and reading. I feel it is important to share our enthusiasm for what we are teaching...it can be infectious. 

Here is our gathering spot. It includes a chair and a little table on which I can display the book of the day.  My genre signs and nonfiction text posters are hanging close by so we can refer to them prior to reading our book.  

My story souvenir suitcase includes vocabulary word cards, background photos or story props. 

Of course the most important part of the process is picking the books.


Here are some of the most memorable ones from the past year.

Stuart Goes to School
Stuart's Cape
The Amazing World of Stuart

Of course I must make mention of my collection of Stuart books.
Stuart Goes to School is the very first chapter book I read aloud to my students on that very first week of school.
Stuart is a likeable, relatable character. We moaned, groaned, laughed and cheered alongside him as he faced many trials and tribulations during his first days at school.
My kids couldn't wait to get their hands of the other two books in this series.

Chalkbox Kid

Hundred Dresses

I could see the impact these books had on the faces of my kids while reading. The Chalk Box Kid and The Hundred Dresses are two books that I think left the biggest mark on my students.  They help to teach compassion and kindness through characters who are facing hard times.

Stories Julian Tells

Stories Huey Tells

My third graders loved reading the Stories Julian Tells. Each chapter is a different story.  We loved Ann Cameron's descriptive writing style so much that we tried to copy it as we wrote our own stories. It made a great mentor text for writing personal narratives early in the year.

Owen Foote Mighty Scientist

Dirt Boy

Three Little Wolves and Big Bad Pig

One way I can make sure that I work in my read aloud time, is to have it be the hook to a content area lesson.  These three books were used during my science time.

Owen Foote Mighty Scientist is a great one to read to introduce the scientific method as Owen and his friend work on a science project.  Dirt Boy is my absolute favorite read to jump into a unit on soil. The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig is a fun one to incorporate during your simple machines unit. 

I Have an Olive Tree

Mysterious Traveler

Boy of the Three Year Nap

These three are some of my favorite ones to use during my social studies units. I read I Have an Olive Tree while teaching about Ancient Greece. Sophia is given an olive tree in Greece as a present. She travels and finds out the importance of such a gift.  The Mysterious Traveler is an outstanding book to read during a unit on Mali. This mystery is set in the desert of Africa and will have your students guessing what will happen next. I love reading The Boy of the Three Year Nap as we study Ancient China. It is full of great vocabulary and lends itself to so many reading skill teaching points. 

Do you have favorite read alouds?
Would love to hear!

A Summer Book Response: Story Pails

After a long and crazy school year, I must say I am super excited about summer!

BUT the reality is that we have two weeks left of school before we call it quits for the year. 

So instead of counting down the days....we need to make the days count. 

We can review a lot in ten days!

We will spend some of that time practicing our good reader skills and strategies. 

I try to give my students regular self selected independent reading opportunities.  We call this time BAM (books and me) Time. It is one of our favorite times of the day.  I like to have my kids share out about the books they are reading.  Sometimes those are quick "book commercials" and other times we do something more involved like these book report reading pails. 

This project involved students responding to their book by telling about the characters, setting, giving a short summary and stating their opinion. 

Each of these elements go on one of the shovels. 

The pails are constructed so that the shovels could fit inside of the pails. 

Students can then share their books by reading what they wrote on the shovels. 

To make the sharing time even more special you could serve these cute sand cups.

The recipe is super simple and fun to make. 

I've added these materials to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. 

Check there if you would like to try this with your children. 

http:///Product/Summer-Book-Response-Report-Story-Pails-1286003

Let the reading begin!

Yes We Can! Third Grade Writing: Four Paragraph Research Paper

Third graders are naturally curious. 
They have lots of questions about lots of things.
One of my objectives as their teacher is to get them to realize that they don't really need me.
If they have pondering, questioning, or wondering minds then they can do something about it...
they don't need to wait for me or anyone else  to teach them.
They can teach themselves by picking up a book.
That's just what we did during our animal unit. 
I primed them by teaching them some vocabulary words connected to this science unit.


We learned about carnivores omnivores and herbivores.
We learned about predators and prey.
We learned about terrestrial and aquatic environments and SO much more.
Then it was time to use those words along with our good reader strategies and skills.
It was time to dig into nonfiction text resources like nonfiction books, encyclopedias and internet resources. 
It was time to research.
So I went to our school library and checked out a ton of books about an assortment of animals.
I love the New True Books about Animals and Nature's Children Books.  They are very third grade friendly and have all the nonfiction text features like indexes, glossaries and tables of content that I want my kids to get practice with.



I let my students pick a research buddy and an animal and we set to work. 

We made a simple research folder out of a piece of construction paper.
Students cut out the four categories or topics that we wanted to include in our research:
habitat, diet, physical and behavioral characteristics. 
These are aligned to the science learning objectives that are part of our curriculum.
I helped kids out by adding some guiding questions under each category. 

We glued those into the center of the folder. 

On the front they glued a cover that included a place to write the animal they were researching.
Then they filled a circle map with a picture of the animal and facts that they already knew about it.
This helps kids tap into their prior knowledge and gets them thinking about what they  want to learn. 

On the back cover, we glued another page to record the questions we had about the animal we were about to research.  This helped us set a purpose for reading.
The back page also include a place to record the sources they used to gather information. 

I required my students to use at least three different research resources.
We started with our books. 

Partners helped coach partners in using the index and table of contents to locate the specific answers to questions we had.  Students used post it notes to record information. 
Students bulleted information rather than writing complete sentences for this fact finding mission. 
One of our learning objectives is to understand what plagiarism is. 
No plagiarists here!

Working in groups kept everyone accountable. 
There was lots of conversation and I used this as an opportunity to ask questions and take some anecdotal notes. 
No need for a multiple choice test...authentic assessment at its finest!

Later in the week, we also used the children's online encyclopedia and the research site: Pebble Go.  Kids loved this site!
We kept collecting information on our post its and added them under the category in which they belonged.  

After days of researching and collecting facts, it was time to begin recording them in paragraph form. We have been working on paragraphing using the "Hamburger" method all year long. 
Lots of shared writing had paid off. 
My kids did a great job coming up with a topic sentence, adding details and then a conclusion sentence. 

We had some peer revising and editing to do.  We reviewed our writing targets and students helped students clean up our drafts. Then it came to me.  I had quick conferences with students.
We corrected words like the homophone...roam/rome. 

My students begged to do the final draft on computers. 
It is amazing how fast they are picking up keyboarding skills!
All that was left was to add an illustration.
I had my kids create "pop up" art work that highlighted the animal's habitat.
Here is their end product.
A four paragraph research paper!
Mission Accomplished!

My students loved working on this project.  They were engaged readers and writers and were able to use the skills we worked on all year in a truly authentic way.
Are you interested in having your students attempt this mission?
This set is included in my TPT store.
You can check it out by clicking the link below!




Animal Research Project