Classroom Cave Day!

We started off our classroom cave experience by leaving out some secret parts around the classroom. Anticipation really builds when you know something is coming. It helps to have all the supplies organized ahead of time too!

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Cave exploring coming up soon. Taking a page from @elementaryshenanigans playbook with headlights and all. Kids will earn their spelunkers license all day through various activities- can't wait #engage #caves #iteach456 #iteachtoo #iteach456

A post shared by Amber Nicole (@sssteaching) on Oct 11, 2015 at 3:20pm PDT

I’m so excited to share Classroom CAVE DAY! I’m taking a page out of Hope King’s playbook and if you haven’t read or seen her blog then head over there now. I saw her Jurassic World day and knew it would be perfect for my students and I modified it since Missouri is “the Cave State” as well as the Show Me State.

You can read all about other Learning Events/Classroom Transformations and how I make them easy!

I love LOVE how this encompassed every subject and fit in so many good standards – all in 1 day!  We did cover informational text in September but this would be a great review for ANY TIME of year!  I love how excited both the students and me were!!

*granted some of these I had taught before but touched on or reviewed today again but they got exposed to 13 standards today!

First up in cave day was making our headlights.  Every good spelunker has to have headlights right?!  I used headbands, hot glue and touch lights.  No way around it – they were expensive!

BONUS: These can be used again for a Surgery Day as well! Plus you can reuse them year after year. Another great cost savings would be to have these for just one activity or station and have students take turns wearing as well.

We used this playlist   for some “Cave Tunes” while we were working all day. 

I found this headlight in hubby’s truck so I get to be the official lead spelunker for the day.

  

Ok….the setup…..  I used extra desks to make a tunnel to come into our room and the students had to return their HW to get their ticket inside and a headlight.  This gave them some background knowledge of caves already and prepared them for the day ahead.  I used a Readworks Passage about caves for grade 4 and their comprehension questions (perfect!)

Once inside students were given their Caving Club card.  They had to participate in all activities (reading, writing, science, and social studies, +4 road blocks -grammar challenges)  to earn their spelunker license.)  I had stamps I used each time they completed part of their Caving Club challenge.  Each grammar “road block” they showed me had to be correct to get the stamp of approval!

Here is an example of a road block – they would have to fill it in correctly to move on and get back to their other work.

We started with reading.  I used a Reading A to Z book focusing on main idea and text features – two things we have already studied extensively.  We also used the comprehension questions just to check for understanding.

*I love all the options of Reading A to Z – the books, and accompaniments are great!* They are usually more high interest too than just a normal reading passage.

They took a final assessment based on an article about Missouri caves linking to many covered standards from this year so far.   This was an assessment I created on Google Forms and was excited to have them take it for the first time.  I tried using the split screen technique because our state assessments look like that just so they are used to it and see it more.

We did have to read the passage together and explain some wording of the questions but overall they did great – I graded it with Flubaroo – EASIEST thing ever! – 1 touch and my grading of my Google Form was complete with assessing weak questions!

We used the Caves Nearpod lesson (FREE) which was fantastic as we got to explore different caves. Nearpod is like an interactive Powerpoint where I have to advance their slides but this one they could explore different caves, answer polls and see our class results, type in answers, etc…

looking at the ceiling of a cave

We also used the iPads and researched cave animals to make cave food webs.  It was awesome to build on our knowledge from last year about producers, consumers, etc.. and our last test on vertebrates and invertebrates!

     

We studied caves in Missouri and used this site – http://missouricaves.com/ to plot large cities (a SS standard) use the Google Map to find caves using intermediate directions. 

We also had to infer about geography and use the map to see if caves were just located near rivers or water sources and if that made sense with what else we read today.

Favorite picture of the day!