Classroom Adjustments and Extras

As it always goes, once the school year starts we teachers realize that we want to tweak our plans for our classroom.

Level Library

I have made it my goal to expand my leveled library so that I can provide books for students that are at their level each week in their "book bag" at their desk. I introduced that book boxes to the kids today and they were so excited about them!

I pick out two books at their level from my library and let them choose two other books that they are interested in. I can't get them to put it down! So that a wonderful thing!

I have also written each student's name on their bag in the color of their reading group-- to help me when I'm choosing books at their level. Super excited that I could have "book bags" again!

I got lots of books from Savers yesterday (Buy 4 get 1 free) so I am sure that in not time I will have much fuller baskets in my library! I also appreciated that families that donated books to my classroom. The students and I are very grateful!

Literacy Centers

After trying to use the smartboard to project the stations, I decided that it was too confusing for students. I want them to be able to move quickly without interrupting the guided reading time to ask where they are going. This is why I've started using the group baskets!

It says their rotations and has their book from guided reading time so that if they finish early, they could be rereading those books.

I have a basket for all four of my groups. Each day someone is designated to carry the basket to the rotations and be the leader-- pointing other students to their next spot if they forget.

The entire class is really enjoying word work activities and game goo!

Author's Purpose

I've done some work with the P.I.E. (Persuade, Inform, Entertain) idea before, but now I've expanded it into an interactive bulletin board! While students have done their silent reading, they decide which "piece of the PIE" the book their reading is.

I'm planning on getting some more persuasive texts from the library this week so students can see the difference. I think they've really taken off with it and it'll be a piece of cake in no time :)

 Classroom Community

Our class is truly coming together and will continue to build on our relationships using the morning meeting model. 

This was an activity we did our first week of school-- an all about me pennant. I've hung them all together to show that we are a community. The students haven't seen what I've done with them yet, but I think they'll be excited :)

Double Trouble Mysteries!

I'm overdue for an update so I thought I'd catch everyone up on what we've been up to and where we're going!

Math

We've just finished up working on our doubles facts and working with money (although we will certainly continue reviewing and practicing those skills). We had a magic doubling pot and have practiced using graph paper to work on our doubling facts.

We're now moving into geometry! We're working on shapes and symmetry-- hopefully the next post will have some of those pictures :)

Continue to work on those skills at home and we'll continue at school!

We are preparing for the end of the first quarter and our summative test for math is coming up on October 8th and grade cards come out on October 10th!

Reading and Writing

In addition to practicing writing complete sentences (with a naming and telling part and with end punctuation), we just started looking at mystery writing last week and now we are working on creating our own mysteries in our Daily 5 reading groups.

We've been reading The Mystery of the Missing Moon and we completed this graphic organizer to organize the story.

Tomorrow we will be watching a Scooby Doo mystery while using the same graphic organizer to understand the format of a mystery story.

For the rest of this week we will be working on creating a mystery in our leveled reading groups (with my guidance).  I'm hoping to have the groups read their mystery to the rest of the class by Friday-- we will go to Monday if need be!

This was our first week doing full-out reading groups! Today was our first day and it went great! I'm very excited and hopeful to get math groups started shortly as well.

We are preparing for our main summative test for reading on October 3rd.

Science

I wish I had more pictures of us doing science, but I don't right now-- I will be sure to get some up for our next post as well as some social studies pictures!

In reading, we've been learning about the phases of the moon. In our National Geographic curriculum, we've been studying rocks, minerals and soil and are preparing for a rocks test on October 2nd and a soil test on October 5th.

Extracurricular

I was a part of the Welborn kickball team. I can't say that we won any games, but I was able to rediscover my skills :)

Until next time!

Last Day of School

So today was our last day of school and I thought I'd share some ideas for end of the year items, talks, and activities.

I've had this up on my door for a few weeks, but it said "Meet the future 5th graders." Today, the first thing students saw when they walked into class was it changed to "Meet the new 5th graders."

Just this simple word change already made a few kiddos get teary-- me too!!

The day then began with students signing those memory books (mentioned in an early post) and then we had an award ceremony.

I found blank certificates online and was able to write 2-3 accomplishments the student had achieved this year and then the class would raise their hand if they had more things to add that that student had accomplished.

When presenting the certificate, I also gave them this gift that says "you'll glow far with your smarts." It's a glow-stick bracelet with smarties taped to it.

I told the kids they could wear them during the movie in the dark if they want or take them home and wear them there.

Then we watched a movie and afterward did a writing activity called the Summer Bucket List.  First of all, you'd be amazed how many kids don't know what a bucket list is!

This my bucket list and now that it's posted for the world to see, I can have some people help me make sure I accomplish these things!

These were really simple to make and the kids got very excited to think about their summer activities (many are planning to go to Worlds of Fun and Power Play so heads up parents!).

Later toward the end of the day, we had our final balloon popping (again, that's mentioned in an earlier post).  The students all year have been asking me what my age is so in the final balloon they requested that it just say how old I am.

Then we got ready for the goodbye ceremony.  This was very sad and it built on something we'd done earlier in science.

We planted these marigolds for our plant unit and they've been growing and growing to the point where they have outgrown their cup.

For our goodbye ceremony, I talked about how this plant shows that they've outgrown their 4th grade cup and now they'll need to move on and replant in a new, bigger place-- in 5th grade.

To end my day I got this lovely text from one of my parents that really made my day. I'll share it:

Have a great summer. You have been a great teacher. I hope (student's name)'s next teacher will be just as understanding as you have been. Thank you for everything and good luck to you next year.


With that happy note, I will happily start my summer break!!

Math, Reading, and Science Goodies

As promised, I took some more pictures of my classroom and the things I've been working on so that parents could see what we've been working on, teachers could get some ideas for their classrooms, and my family and friends could see the work that I've been doing! So let's jump right to it-- these are mainly foldables, lapbooks, and bulletin boards.

Math

So these are lapbooks. They are all the rage now at my school. The way I've described them before it 3-D scrap books filled with information students are learning.

These are lapbooks our class made about angles.  The right side is a simple note-taking form that we filled out as a class where students filled in the blanks with the definition of the 3 types of angles as well as practiced drawing angles.

The left side was what I used as my formative assessment. Students had to come up to me putting the popsicles sticks together to form the correct angles- for blue they had to show a right angle, yellow an obtuse angle and red an acute angle. Then I hot glued them together after I checked their understanding and hot glued them to their lapbooks (where they then had to label the angles one more time).

One of the other teachers told me that she's thinking about creating a lapbook for next year that has something on the inside so that students could practice moving around the angles to make different shapes. That may even be my summer project this year so that students could practice that when they finish an activity early or something. I may even turn that into a learning center activity (since the file folders aren't the most durable!

Another lapbook that we made that does allow students to review and practice was for transformations.

We had already talked about the definitions so we filled out the left side as a class with the definitions for a translation, rotation and reflection.

Then we glued or taped graph paper to the other side of the folder.

Then the students were to cut out specific shapes out of construction paper. The pentagon was for a rotation (or turn), diamond was for reflection (or flip) and rectangle was for translation (or slide). To practice a rotation, I had the students poke a brad through the shape so they can practice turning it and seeing how the shape looks. To practice a flip, students taped one side of the diamond to the graph paper so they could flip it over and see how the shape looks. To practice a slide, the rectangle is paper clipped to the top of the folder so they can take off the rectangle and practice sliding it around the graph paper. Very easy and cool lapbook.

Reading

This was an Easter left over of a bulletin board I had in my room. For fourth grade, students have to know the prefixes: ex-, non-, anti-, dis-, and under-. They also have to know the suffixes: -less, -ness, -ment, -en, and -ful.

To help the students review the meaning of the different prefixes/suffixes, I created an interactive bulletin board and turned it into one of the the kids' learning centers.

There are notecards in the pocket below the big egg and to either side I have string set up for students to hang their "EGGxamples" (and yes, the kids do appreciate my corniness!).

So here are some samples of what the kids made. They also had to write the meaning of what their word meant (using the definition of that prefix or suffix in their definition).

This also gave me a good chance to see which prefixes/suffixes my students are comfortable with (-ful, -less, non-, anti-) and which ones they shy away from (-ment, -en, ex-, dis-).

Science

Here is an example of a foldable we just made in class. I used this same concept in 1st grade (I just had the definitions already typed up for the kids to cut out and paste) so for all you teachers out there, this can work for intermediate or primary.

The stem of the plant is a foldable about plant parts and includes a description of the job and a drawing for what that part looks like.

The top part of the plant is about plant needs. I used the acronym PLANTS. Place to grow, Light, Air, Nutrients, Temperature, and Soil.

Sorry this got to be so long! I just had so much to share! I'll be sure to add more next week :)