Happy Anniversary

Today a student came to me and said "Happy Anniversary!" She explained more after she saw my confusion. "It is March 28th. Happy 1 year anniversary. One year ago today was my first day in your class!" I pretty much turned to mush right then and there and demanded a hug. She then went further with a little humor in her voice this time, "Yeah, it was the best day of my life."

It is moments like this, folks... <3

Colonial Williamsburg

Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg!  Today we simulated life in Williamsburg, Virginia during the colonial times.  Students rotated through stations where they experienced life as a citizen who went to work, school, church, and more!  History came alive today.  It was crazy, but also lots of fun!

The first station was the school.  Girls attended the Dame School where they learned how to sew.

Boys attended the College of William and Mary where they learned to write with ink and a quill (toothpick).

Students then moved to the Church where they drew role cards and had to find their assigned seat based on their status in society.  They also had to create church bulletin postings based on their role card.  

The next station was The Governor's Palace.  Students took turns being Governor and had to decide whether or not to pass bills that came across their desk.  One example scenario was: Black men and women are not allowed to vote.  

Next stop: Shoemaker's shop.  Students went to work as shoemakers, tracing each others' feet to create custom-fit shoes.  (Lots of stinky feet comments coming from this corner of the room)!

Citizens of Colonial Williamsburg also visited the town Tavern, where they ordered a meal and played a game with their friend to relax.  

The last station was the Slave's Quarters.  Students learned a slave song and dance, and how these were often used to send secret messages to each other.  

Our time in Colonial Williamsburg was brief, but well spent.  Students were able to take a mock field trip back in time to learn though hands-on activities.  We'll do another field trip like this soon when we get to the Civil War.  My prediction for next time: army crawls, campfires, and bandaging wounds!  So long for now, from Colonial Williamsburg! 

Space Unit

We've just completed our science unit on space.  Its a combination of the study of Measuring Time & Earth, Moon, and Stars.  We start off by having the students make predictions on the order of the moon phases.  Then, each night the students look in the sky and record a picture of the moon on a calendar.  The following morning students posted the correct moon phase on these strips of paper.  Soon they could see the pattern and were able to predict the rest correctly.  This was a great way for the students to learn about the moon phases through inquiry-based learning.

We also talked about the way people explained the way the Sun and Moon worked in Ancient times.  I showed examples to the students and then they worked in groups to create their own Ancient World Models.

Students got up and moving to explore the difference between rotate and revolve as we learned how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the Earth.  In the picture below, the boy is spinning in circles (rotating) while using his finger to model the moon orbiting his head.  At the same time he is revolving around the the laughing girl.  It was a lot of fun -- we got very giggly and dizzy. 

We used foam balls to model the moon phases.  This activity was the most beneficial to helping the students see why the moon phases work the way they do.  We pretended our heads were the Earth, our foam ball was the Moon, and the sun was ...the sun from our window!  We rotated around with our moons to see how the moon is always half lit, even if the amount we see changes. 

We made Moon Phase flipbooks too to help us study!

 We learned a lot about stars from a SMART board lesson I'd created.  They were so engaged during this lesson because they had no clue that our Sun is really just a star.  And an average star at that!  They were fascinated with how outer space works.  We also studied constellations.  We made constellation telescopes by creating black construction paper tubes with a black face on one end of the cylinder and taping a picture of a constellation to that same end.  We used push-pins to puncture the stars in the constellation and voila! When pointed to the light we can see a miniature constellation in our telescopes!

 

 

We learned how to use star maps too!  Star Maps are specific to the time of the year and your hemisphere, so I found one for February and taped un-labeled pictures of the constellations to my ceiling.  Students were given 5 minutes to try to figure out how to use the maps on their own to locate constellations in the "sky" and then were sent on a hunt for specific stars! 

 

These are just some of the fun lessons we did to learn about Space.  We also made our own sun-clocks and watched several Bill-Nye videos!  Is it too cheesy to say that our study on space was Out of This World?!  I think not!

Book Club Binders

During our study of Historical Fiction, students formed book clubs that read the same book and discussed together.  I created TOP SECRET Book Club Binders for each group in hopes to create an exciting way to keep and organize their notes while reading.  

The first day the groups met, they formed a Book Club Constitution with this as a guideline:

I included this page at the front of the binder as a reminder of all the ways they could collect their information (whichever way suited them).  We had previously done minilessons on these:

The binder included 4 tabs:  Thoughts, Characters and Plot, Vocabulary, and Envision

I typed up one of our anchor charts from our minilessons to put in the Thoughts tab as a tool for them to use. 

I then included several blank graphic organizers for them to use if they wanted.  They were also free to just make notes on stickies or on paper.  These graphic organizers were just an option several chose to take advantage of.  I've uploaded picture of just SOME of the MANY we used.  Still in the Thoughts tab...

Questions Tab:  In this tab I included a reminder sheet of QAR and the different leveled questions we can come up with.  I also taught this skill in small groups during their reading time. 

Characters/Plot Tab:  This tab included the most graphic organizers.  Here are some examples. 

They also put their own notes into the tabs to share with their group.  I taught students how to make a Character Attribution Matrix like this one:

Here is a student's character web on Isabel from the book Chains.

Vocabulary Tab: This tab included a collection sheet and word maps. 

Finally, the Envision Tab was just a place for them to put their sketches of the story.  

I think this was a great organizational tool for the book clubs to use.  Each week they decided as a group on their jobs for the week.  Each week someone would focus on Questions, Characters, Envision, and Vocabulary.  They rotated through these jobs so every one got to do each job.  At the end of reading time, I gave groups 5 minutes to meet with each other to share and talk about their books and add their notes to the binder in the appropriate tab.  This way all their notes were in one place, rather than spread out in 5 different spirals in 5 different desks.  

The only thing I'm going to change next time is I'm going to put a Job chart in the front pocket that keeps track of who has which job each week.  I want to make sure I have a way to track who is making notes and who is not.  Definitely make sure names get put on everything!  

It was  such a success, I plan on using it again for our next book clubs: FANTASY!!  

Writing Workshop

We have to take the state writing test next week, so a post about writing workshop seems fitting. We use the Lucy Calkins Writing Workshop model. The first year I used it I was so overwhelmed that I only got through two units the whole year. The last two years though, I've been very successful at implementing it. The lessons are very long and complicated, so I found it helpful to create an outline for each so it wasn't as much to look at.

Writing workshop has a very set structure. The first 10-15 minutes is the teacher minilesson. Students then write independently for 45-60 minutes. There is usually a mid-workshop interruption for another quick teaching point/redirection. During independent writing time, the teacher confers one-on-one and in small groups with students. The workshop is closed with a 5 minute share time.

You should teach one lesson a day (at least 4 days a week). Students work though units on personal narratives, essays, fiction, literary essays, and memoirs (if there is time). Students use a composition notebook as their Writers Notebook where they collect ideas and try them out. When it is time for students to draft and publish they do it on yellow lined paper before they do final copies. We make a big celebration out of each published piece. Our publishing parties always include sharing with a meaningful audience.

To prepare for 5th grade writing tests we taught the essays unit from Lucy Calkins which teaches them how to search for and gather evidence and organize it meaningfully. They take the real authentic process of building essays. We then turned to the 4-square method for extra practice. They used it for a planning tool since they'd already developed real writing behaviors through Lucy Calkins.

We showed students the rubric that will be used on their state tests. Students assessed past writing with the rubric and scored their own writing with it multiple times. I scored at least one piece each week for the kids as well. Students love knowing what it expected of them and how they will be assessed. I think my students feel confident now going into the test. Of course, I always feel like I need more time. There are still those students who are not writing in complete sentences no matter how much I work with them. So I am nervous and hoping for an easy prompt. My time is up, there is no more I can do. Time to trust in what I've taught.

Classroom Library

Organizing a classroom library is no small task.  There are so many ways it can be done; you just have to choose a way that works for you.  It is suggested that 1/3 of your library is organized by level and the other 2/3 is organized by topic or genre.  Here is my library.  

The first shelf is for my leveled tubs.  I have marked each book on the inside cover with the F&P reading level and my name.  I've put a sticker on the spine of each book that is color coded to each tub.  A-I are pink, J-L purple, M-O blue, P-R green, S-U yellow, V-W orange, X-Z red.  The books in these tubs are my fiction chapter books (Although I also have pulled some of the fiction chapter books to go in my topic tubs).  

The second shelf holds my magazines (also organized) and some of my topic tubs: Poetry, History, Space, Science, Tales, Animals, Biomes/Geography, and Fiction (picture books).  They have a range of reading levels and not necessarily marked with the levels.  Students are taught to select just-right books on their own, just like they'll have to do as an adult.

The third shelf holds dictionaries, thesauruses, and the rest of my topic/genre tubs: Various Non-fiction, Revolutionary War, holidays, sports, biographies, jobs, Mrs. O's favorites, Principal's Picks, Math &Language, Historical Fiction, and Books in a Series.  These tubs may change throughout the year based on what we are studying, and students can play a role in this decision.  

The tubs across the top of the shelves are for book clubs/research groups, etc.  When we did a unit on Nonfiction, the students picked topics and formed research groups.  My minilessons revolved around non-fiction and they were able to practice with their group's research books.  We then did a study on historical fiction, so they were put into historical fiction book clubs.  Each tub held the books and binder for the group.  We will soon be embarking on a Fantasy study.  Students are very excited to get started in the books they've chosen!

However you choose to organize your library, the important thing is to do it in a way that makes finding an interesting and good-fit book easy for the students.  

Read on! 

Valentines Day

Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday we celebrate at school (since we can't really celebrate Christmas).  Why though?  Is it the candy? No.  Is it the cheesy valentines cards? No.  It is something much deeper.  Valentines seems to bring out the kindness in kids.  Students who sometimes like to just receive suddenly find so much pleasure in giving.  They are kind to each other, bringing valentines for every student in the class-not just their friends. They give away pop-up cards, notes, candy grams and crafts.  They give smiles and kind words.

I'm always surprised by the gifts I'm given.  Sometimes I will get something from the store, like this cute singing teddy bear (brought by a student I had 3 years ago).  But most of the time, I get hand-made gifts.  Guess which kind I treasure! :)  Although these students cannot afford to buy their teacher gifts from the store, they go out of their way to WOW me every time!  Their creativity and sincerity is amazing.  Check out this box of "candy hearts" next to the bear.  One students assembled a box out of construction paper and cut out many colorful hearts.  He secretly went around the room and had each student sign a heart and then surprised me with it on Valentine's day.  It now sits on my bookshelf to remind me of the precious hearts I touch each day, and how each of their hearts has somehow grown mine a little bigger.

Some girls in the room colored a valentines poster for me with a secret message.  They cut it up into pieces to create a puzzle for me to solve.  How creative and thoughful.  And this heartfelt note literally made me cry.  I am so lucky.

A fellow teacher and my 2nd mom said it so well: "And THAT, is why we are teachers! What we give up a decent salary for. No football player, lawyer or movie star can say they had this much impact on another human being and yet THEY make exorbitant salaries compared to ours. You are awesome, a person due great esteem, worth more than all the riches of the world, and truly what God hopes for mankind."

And so, for many reasons, Valentines makes my heart so very happy :)