Sorry for the delays in posts! Last week FLEW by and this week is following the same suit! Tuesday we were SO lucky and were able to have Kevin Hawkes come meet with us! He told us how he came to be a famous illustrator and even drew some great pictures for us! I will post the pictures once I get them onto my computer :)

We have finished unit 12 in Everyday Math. This is the last unit in the program, so after we test them on this final unit we can begin review for the year end test! We did unit 12 using the Math Workshop model. I am excited to see the results of how the workshop effected their understanding!

We have also finished our Chris Van Allsburg author study as of yesterday :( I love those books! So happy to see that the kids enjoyed them too! We are still working on our Harris Burrdick writing though!

Just a quick reminder that tonight is Science Night at Old Town Elementary School. It starts at 6 and goes until 7:30. Come have some fun and enjoy all the fun science exhibits!!

Today we put the workshop model into full swing! I really enjoyed being able to have a more personalized math lesson! I hope that the students enjoyed it as much as I did!

In reading, we read The Yellow Star and worked with foreshadowing. We had a chart where we recorded any phrases we thought would be considered foreshadowing and wrote why we thought the phrases were foreshadowing. We also wrote down how the phrase made us feel- interested, anxious, curious, made us wonder what was going to happen next, etc. They caught on really quickly and were pros in no time!!

In science, we finally started our sound kit that they have been so anxiously waiting for! We started the unit by creating a class KWL chart that I will post once the unit is over and the chart is complete! I was shocked at how much they already knew about sound and light and they had some great questions about things they wanted to know! We started an investigation today on light sources (I'll post pictures of them as soon as we are finished!) In the investigation we are including some key vocabulary words, our main source of light(sun), and other sources of light. They are looking good!!

Hope you all have a good night! :)

Day One Update

What a busy day we had today! We had art to start off the morning, then got right to work on writing! On Friday before vacation we started writing about The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (Thanks to Mrs. Bagley!) The students each chose one picture to write about and and then developed a statement/opinion about the picture. After we stated our opinion about what was happening in the picture, students had to support their opinion with evidence from the picture. They could either support it by using a list, comparing or telling a story. To end the writing piece they had to write a short reflection that brought the whole piece back together. Today we worked on finishing up those writing pieces. 

Math was the main focal point of the day. We are starting to shift to the workshop model for our Everyday Math program. All this entails is changing teaching from a whole class to three smaller groups. This allows for students to get a better grasp on the content and more individualized lessons and attention. I'm excited to get it started, I've heard so many good things about it!!

Back to school!

Tomorrow we are back to school! I hope everyone had a great vacation!! As I said in the letter I sent home, this coming week will be my week on my own :) We have lots of stuff we need to cover this week- it's going to be busy, but fun!

We start our Foss sound kit this week, where we will be doing hands on experiments to learn about sound! We are also starting Unit 12 in math (our last unit!!) And of course there will be lots of reading and writing!

I will try and update as much as possible to keep you all informed on what we are up to :)!

Chris Van Allsburg

On Friday I had the opportunity to sub for my first time in 4th grade! We had such a good day together :) My favorite part of the day was our reading/writing portion. We had to combine them because we were short on time due to art! We continued our author study on Chris Van Allsburg by reading Two Bad Ants. We looked at a few different elements of the story: first of all we used our prior knowledge of ants to think about what different locations would look like to an ant. We determined that the perspective of our classroom would be very different if we were an ant because of the size difference between us and ants! I then explained that Allsburg uses very descriptive words in this book to give readers a visualization of where the ants are, but he never actually says the setting the ants are in. We first read the book without being able to see pictures, but we brainstormed as a class and with our neighbors about where the ants were on each page that was being described. After we finished the book we went through and looked at the pictures that went along with each description ( the students guesses were spot on almost every time!) After looking at the pictures we discussed what made his writing so descriptive and entertaining. The students then had the option of writing one of two writing assignments: They could either write a text to self connection that they thought of while reading the story, or they could choose a setting and describe it using any words they wanted besides the name of the place. I thought that they all did an awesome job! We saved time at the end of the lesson to make sure we could go back to the rug and share our wonderful writing :)

Mass Customized Learnings/ Bold Beginnings

My crazy week has come to an end! Here's a little recap for you!
Monday - Student teachers had a workshop today. There were several interesting topics that we discussed! We had an after school counselor from Lewiston come and teach us how to better relate and interact with our students to make learning more meaningful. The most informational part of the whole day was the presentation on mass customized learning. I've heard of the topic before, but I never had the opportunity to discuss how it worked in a real school system. It was really interesting to hear their daily structure/routine and how they begin their school year. It was something I would like to learn more about, because I can see some real potential in this system. I love how students get to learn at their level, so they aren't feeling left behind when they can't grasp certain concepts. I know that a lot of people aren't switching over because they're afraid that their scores will fall. However, the people who came to talk to us said that once they switched over their scores actually increased. This was due to them being able to go back in and fill all of the holes that some students had, which made it easier for them to deal with higher concepts.
Wednesday through Friday I was back in second grade! So great to see my old class! On Friday, I was able to do a lesson plan on bold beginnings. We started the lesson by reading the first page of Patricia Polacco's story Babushka Baba Yaga and then discussed if the beginning made us want to read more. We all agreed that we did! We shared what about her opening wanted us to keep reading. All the students had different reasons as to why her opening was so interesting, it was fun to hear them all! We then looked at an anchor chart about bold beginnings and different ways you can hook your reader.

 

After we went over the chart we looked a few examples. I read four openings from different books and students had to place them in their the good category or needs more work category. If it needed more work, then we brainstormed ways that students could make the opening more interesting. 

 

Then we learned about the "Try 3" method. We looked at our own writing and tried three bold beginning strategies to make it more interesting. Before we did it independently, we did one as a class- Here is was the students came up with!

We had lots of fun with this lesson! It was divided into three "mini lessons" throughout our daily 5 schedule!

I also wanted to take a second in this post to just post some pictures from our adverb mini unit- it lasted four days.  I wrote about the unit in one of my previous posts, but I didn't have pictures on my laptop to post at that time- SO here they are!

Here is our adverb anchor chart. After watching the Schoolhouse Rock adverb video, we went over this anchor chart and students added their own examples of adverbs to the chart!

The last day of the lesson, we made adverb trees. Students were given four different adverbs and were asked to make them into a sentence. They wrote their sentences on a leaf and we attached the leaves to a tree trunk! Here is one example of a finished product! They were all so cute and so good!

Fourth Grade/Second Grade Mashup!

     What a crazy couple of weeks! There was a snowday last Tuesday and a one hour delay on Wednesday. What a difference that makes.  Finally getting settled into my placement in fourth grade- such a great environment to be in! I just finished unit 10 in math focusing on reflections using mirrors.           Student's had such a fun time with this unit it was almost like we weren't even doing math! 
I have am subbing this week back in my second grade placement. Strange transition at first, but exciting to see how much I've progressed since the first time I was there! It was also good to know that I am able to switch back and forth and still be successful even when I have to sort of wing it. In second grade we have also started Unit 10 in math- although this one is about money. We started our first lesson in it today and it was a great success. Student's caught on so quickly, it made my job much easier. In Daily 5 we have been focusing on dictionary work and finding words. Students are given a work and they need to find it in the dictionary. They must include what page it's on, what part of speech it is, and its definition. However, tomorrow we are working on bold beginning for our writing. I have a fun set of lessons planned out, so I hope the kids enjoy it as much as I do! In spelling we are working on conjunctions. In social studies today students finished their Pysanky Eggs. They turned out beautiful- students were so creative with these. They all expressed their individual styles! 

I will update you on how the bold beginnings work out, as well as post some egg-cellent  eggs in my next post! 

Happy Thursday :)