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?

Listening Center From Donor's Choice and Freebie!

I am on cloud nine! I got my first project funded from Donor's Choice - a listening center.  The items arrived last week and I am loving them!  I have a few students who are very low readers, and they take a lot of my time.  They have a difficult time working independently, and the listening center has changed that!  I set them up with the listening center first thing in the morning which frees me up to meet or conference with other students.  I know that many of you already have listening centers in your classrooms, but I did not have one in the room I have now, and coming from 7th grade math I had no need for one in the past.

Other students have been eyeing the CD/MP3 players and I can't wait to get a few above grade level books such as the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series for them to use and hopefully build their skills as well.

Do you use a listening center in your class?  What do you do with it?

I have this listening center sheet to help hold students accountable for what they are reading  and you can download it here:

Listen to Reading Worksheet

150 Follower Giveaway! Win the Quietest Pencil Sharpener and More!

I know, I know, I am super behind in this, but better late than never right?

I am so appreciative of all of my followers and in honor of that I am hosting a little giveaway!

The prizes include:

 The Quietest Classroom Pencil Sharpener from Classroom Friendly Supplies. I absolutely love mine! You even get to choose the color you like to match your room decor! (Red, blue, green, or black)

 Number Bingo  and a Schoolyard Safari item from Learning is Rosey with Mrs. Josey. Updated! Mrs. Josey is also giving away 2 items of your choice from her store as well!

Two items of your choice from Sara's TPT store. You can find her blogging at Miss V's Busy Bees.

and last but not least, two items of your choice from my TPT store.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Marzano Proficiency Scales

Our district has adopted the use of Marzano Proficiency or learning scales.  I was inspired by this Pinterest pin my own learning scales for my class. Although the original pin was related to behavior modification - it fit what I needed.  Here is what I came up with.  The left side is for our language arts goal and the right side is for our math arts goal.  My principal really wanted to be able to see our scale and be able to ask the students about it when he made his walkthroughs.  I on the other hand felt that although we might be focusing on one particular learning goal during a lesson, we really visit and re-visit several goals and I want the kiddos to understand where they are on the scales for all of them.  So this was a great compromise.  The scale is front and center and easy for both the principal and the kiddos to see at all times with our current goal.  I will take a picture and make copies for the students' binders to refer to throughout the year.



You can find Marzano scales for most of the Common Core Standards at their Proficiency Scale Bank here.

Parts of Speech Brainstorm and Fabulous Giveaway!

On Monday we started our weekly essay with this brainstorm idea I saw somewhere (I can't find the blog or the Pinterest link anywhere, so if it was you let me know so I can give you credit). Anyhow, the idea was to write their names in bubble letters, then they would write down nouns, adjectives, and verbs to describe what they did over their winter vacation.


Overall it was a great way to not only brainstorm, but also to review parts of speech. It gave me a good idea of who still needs a bit more review, and who really got it.
The only bad part was when my principal came in and asked one of my students what we were doing and he said, "making bubble letters." LOL! Well, I guess it makes learning better when they don't even realize how hard they are really working!


In other news, have you heard about the amazing giveaway from Rockin' Teacher Materials? They are giving away flashdrives loaded with tons of goodies from many different blogs and TPT sellers.  They have one giveaway for each different grade - I contributed to the 3rd grade giveaway, but you can enter whichever giveaway applies to  your grade, just click on the link when you get there for your grade. 

Can We Get A Class Pet? Freebie!

If you have been reading my blog for a bit, you might already know that my kiddos have a way of "hijacking" my lessons as I like to call it. I already told you about the time one of them brought in a tomato hornworm, but that wasn't the only time.  We will be in the middle of something I had planned when one of them will go on a tangent and the next thing I know we are in a learning frenzy.  I am learning to love their spontaneous lessons as I let go more and more to their student centered learning.

A few weeks before Christmas break it happened again.  We were in the middle of our morning meeting and I don't remember what happened right before (if anything) a student raised his hand (YEAH - Following rule #2 Raise your hand for permission to speak - yes I am a WBT addict).  Anyway, he asks, "Mrs. Malloy, could we get a class pet?"

And the lesson was on!

Could we get a class pet? Could we? What do we have to do? Let's write down all of our questions.



Who would we have to ask/convince? Mrs. Malloy and our principal.

How much would it cost? How could we pay for it? Off to the computers to research pet costs and pet grants. "We could apply for a grant Mrs. Malloy!!!!"



What type of pet should we get? More research, and maybe we should take a vote!


Asking and answering questions while reading Non-fiction texts is the common core standard we were focused on - and I think my formative assessment would say they got it!


Then we were off to write persuasive letters to both Mrs. Malloy and our principal. We also wrote about our pet with a research project.  We made a budget and applied for a grant (which we received!).  Fun, fun learning with a real world purpose! Loved it!

So... I decided to create a unit based on what we did over the holiday break and this is what I came up with:



 

Can We Get A Class Pet? A Lesson in Persuasive Writing and Research

If you are thinking about getting a pet for your classroom, you will also want to check out this great blog:

Critters in the Classroom

Download the preview for a freebie!  And, I am giving away this unit to a few of my followers! Be one of the first three commenters with you email address and I will send it your way!

Hopefully the pics are ok in this post- Blogger is being a problem today :(