A Peek Into My Week - Mar 17 - Mar 21

Next week is going to be short but crazy!  We ended our third quarter on Friday, so we will be having Parent Teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday - that means half day craziness.  Friday I will have a sub because my hubby is having a procedure to reduce his migraines.  He has tried everything from physical therapy to meds to botox - with no relief!  We are really hoping this works!  With 6 boys to keep after - migraines are just not a part of the plan!

I am linking up with Mrs Laffin's Laughings to share a few things we have planned for next week:

Reading/Science

Animal Presentations

The students have been hard at work putting together their animal research reports and boards.  We will present them this week.

We used this Animal Research Project from forkin4th.

Conferences

When I hold conferences, I try to have the student run the conference if possible.  I have them complete the sheets below which I found from Lesson Plan SOS.  This really helps them guide what they tell their parents and I have found the students to be VERY honest.  Their reflections usually match their grades closely, and light bulbs seem to go off in many of their heads about their work habits.

They are often tougher on themselves then I would be, but that is often a great teaching point in itself!



 I also ask them to write a short note to their parents telling them one thing that they are proud of this quarter and one thing that they are still working on.  It works great for the conference and is also as a mini-assessment.

I also found these forms from Ms. York's class that I think I might use this year.

Do you have your students write self-reflections for conferences?  Do you have any other tips for having successful conferences?

Math

Due to the short week, we will be reviewing fractions - St. Patrick's Day style!

Wacky St. Patrick's Day Fraction Fun

and

This one is a FREEBIE!

Organizing Research Writing

When I worked on the Common Core Units and District Assessments, I had the opportunity to work with some AMAZING teachers from all around our district.  One of the teachers there shared this organizational system for research that she uses with her students during the research unit for 4th grade. In our district several grades have to write research papers, so it could work for many grades.  I remember using a similar system with note cards when I learned how to write a research paper in 7th grade.  I love the way that her system stores the note cards though!  I am sharing some quick pics I snapped with my iphone, but I will share more when I use this with my students this upcoming school year.

The blue strip at the bottom is construction paper stapled to the folder (which is legal size).

The fabulous teacher who shared this with us told us that she just has the secretary at her school order library card envelopes (240 = 8 per student X  30).  The other teachers and I mentioned that you could make the envelopes yourself with construction paper or cut envelopes.  I have seen these at the Dollar Tree as well.

Here is a close-up of a few of the cards out of the pockets.  I LOVE this idea and can't wait to use it with my kiddos! 

How do you teach research writing?

Martin Luther King Timeline and Writing Activity

Like many classes across the US we have been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. this week. Yesterday we read Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport.  Then I gave the students copies of the important dates and asked them to choose the four that they thought were most important in describing why we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. I thought it might give them a little practice in picking out main ideas as we seem to still struggle a bit with this skill.

The students colored in pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and pasted them to the beginning of their paper.  They drew a timeline across and used speech bubbles to write down the events they chose.  Here is what the final product looked like:

Today we worked on our essays comparing our dreams to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams. We started with a graphic organizer that looked like this:

Then I asked the students to brainstorm the dreams that they had for their school, their community, and the World.  This is what they came up with:

You can tell that some of their dreams are related to recent news events :(

We used the brainstorms to write a paragraph about each of these dreams.  After the students wrote about their own dreams, we went to the computer lab to research Martin Luther King Jr.'s dreams.  They wrote a paragraph about what they found.  We put the two together for a cute craftivity.

Learning About Frogs - Carousel

We are beginning a research/non-fiction unit on frogs (since we will be getting a class pet soon!). Before I told the kiddos what the unit was about (and what pet we were going to get), I had them complete a carousel activity.  I set up 6 stations around the room with pictures and chart paper. The chart paper was pre-labeled with "What I Notice" and "What I Wonder".

The students worked in groups of 3 and had 3 minutes at each station to talk about what they noticed.  Each group had a different colored marker and wrote down some of their observations and questions.

It was really fun to see what things they noticed (and what things grossed them out!). It was a great way to introduce the unit and get their brains engaged.  They did eventually guess that we would be learning about frogs.

I am working on the complete unit as they work on it, but I will eventually post the final unit to TpT when it is done.  In the meantime, you might want to check out my Can We Get a Pet Unit which kicked off the whole project you see here!

Have you used a carousel in class before? What other engagement ideas do you use?

Researching - Learning About The Things We Are Interested In

Ever since one of my students brought in a tomato horn worm, my kiddos have been begging to do "Research" as one of their Daily 5 Choices.  I love the idea that they are self-directing their learning and that they are seeking out informational non-fiction text (you know, one of those biggies in the New Common Core Standards).

But... (and this is a big But) I am finding that a lot of my kiddos really love watching videos about their topic of choice.  I am really ok with this, but these are some of the same kiddos who really need to work on their comprehension and writing skills.

Luckily I stumbled across this 3-2-1 Reading Strategy Sheet from Teaching With Love and Laughter!


I printed a ton of these off and have placed them next to my computer station for them to complete when they conduct their research.  A win win for both teacher and student!

I will probably also use this for reading informational text later on in the year as well.