Vertebrate Animals

In my elementary school, we use the Journeys Reading Series.

This week we read the story "Animal Groups" which is a story about how vertebrate animals are classified:  birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.

Here are a some of the activities we did with it:

At the word work center, the students unscrambled sentences.  (Last year, at Easter, I bought up all kinds of shaped plastic eggs that you could fill.  I got them at the following places:  Target, Dollar Tree and the Dollar Store.)  There is a frog, bunny, and bird which covers 3 of the animal groups.  The sentences I chose are similiar to the ones used in the story with the same vocabulary.  The sentences to unscramble are colored the same as the egg container so the students won't mix them up.

The students  wrote a sentence telling something they learned but it had to be written as a question.  Students used the starter

"Did you know . . .?"

and my little ESL student made this one: 

At the writing center, the students used the plan sheet below to write a 5 sentence paragraph.  I added the vocabulary under the picture to help with spelling since this was done independently while I was working with reading groups and I didn't want students to interrupt with "How do you spell . . .?"    

 For and explananation on how I do this, go HERE.

Here is a sample of what one student wrote:

We worked on a Draw/Write Lesson with each animal group:

Bird Group (Owl):

Mammal Group (Elephant):

Fish Group (Salmon):

Reptile Group (Alligator):

Amphibian Group (frog):

I got the drawing lessons from these books: