The beginning of the year is so full of hope.  Hope that your class will be great.  Hope that you will learn all you have to learn and more.  Hope that those ideas you seek out on Pinterest and through blogs will be the magic bullet that makes your year complete. Well, my year was filled with a boatload of hope.  I just knew all of the great things I was going to implement were going to be fabulous.  Now.....a year later....hope has turned into reality.  Some of those amazing ideas flourished, while others...not so much.  So I thought I would take a little time to reflect on what worked and what didn't. What Worked Math Workshop.   It went through many changes this year, but overall, I am SO excited with how it all turned out.  It is still a work in progress, and will continue to evolve next year (and the years to come) but it really is a happy spot in my schedule.  Here is a pos t I did about some of the changes (and it has even changed since then!)  Read Alouds.   T...
Kids form opinions on everything they encounter rather easily.  The know what they like and what they don't like in an instant.  But getting the students to dig in and really think about opinions that they have made based on what they read is rather difficult.  They can tell you what they think about the reading, but pointing to the part that "proves" their opinion is a challenge. So one thing I have done is have the kids make "Text-Based Opinion Posters".  These aren't as hard to create as the title will imply (that does sound like a rather ominous title doesn't it???) in fact, all you need are some large pieces of construction paper, an article that lends itself to varying opinions, and some colored pencils/pens. First, I had the students read the article on their own.  I wanted them to be familiar with it going into the poster.  (I actually used the same article that they used when we did the "Written Conversation" I wrote about in my la...
One of the things that I did this year that was successful in getting the kids to dig a little deeper into what they were reading was a "Written Conversation". I got this idea from the book Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading . I have been using it quite a bit to help ease me into this idea of "close reading" and I am loving it!  It is definitely a higher level book, as it is written for middle school, so I wouldn't recommend it for anything lower than 5th.  But I am enjoying using it for sure! The strategy is very simple.  First, the students are grouped into pods of 3 or 4 children.  The students are all given the same article to read.  They annotate that article (if you choose to have them do so...I do) and then take 3 minutes to write down a response.  This response could be questions they have about the article, aha moments that came up, or just ideas about things in the article that they annotated about. Next, in a counterclockwise manner, t...
OK...so I have started this post about 5 times, only to erase the sentence and begin again.  It is the end of the year, and this year, with me leaving for maternity leave and all of the new requirements with CCSS, etc....it has just been one of those years that leave me mentally drained.  So, I know if I am feeling this way, my kids are too. They have done so well this year, giving it their all with the new standards and new expectations, that I wanted them to keep with the high level and quality of work, while still having a little time to relax.  So I created this little Math Mat Glyph for them to use. If you were around Room 6 last year, you probably read this post about the Math Mats I made for fractions and multiplication.  The kids followed a path of their choosing, solving math problems along the way, then drawing a scene with pictures corresponding to the answers to the problems.  But this year, I wanted them to have a little time to think about their year as a whole.  So ...
As the year winds down, I want my students to remain engaged, yet give them a chance to have a little fun while they spend their last few weeks with me in elementary school.  Now, I use the term "fun" loosely here.  ;)  It isn't like we are going to be hooting and hollering.  I just want them to relax and enjoy themselves, while still keeping things standards based. One thing I did this year with my students is have them respond to the Read Alouds we have been doing using a Story Wheel.  This wheel is something I got from the book entitled 35 Ready-To-Go Ways to Publish Students' Research and Writing (Grades 4-8)   It is an awesome book!  I have been using it for YEARS (literally) as there are just so many different simple templates in it to get your kids writing without thinking they are.   Anyway, back to the Story Wheel.   Basically, there are 6 sections on the wheel that asks the students to respond to the reading they did.  They must talk about the main char...
Every year, I try to make things work a little better than the year before.  I am always tweaking lessons or units so that I can get the most out of them. One of the areas I have always been looking for "something" is my Greek and Latin Root word study.  Over the years I have taught them in a sort of systematic way, but it was always a "maybe" subject.  Maybe I will get to it.  Maybe I will do this with the roots today.  Maybe I will make something that won't make this a "maybe" subject. Well, this year, I think I did it. What I did was create these Root Word Trifolds .   Essentially, combining all of the things I had been doing in the past, but into one easy to use and follow trifold.   So here is how it works: Each Monday, I copy the trifold I am using for the week back to back.  I pass them out to the kids, they fold them (because I am sure not going to fold 32 trifolds myself!) and we get to discussing the roots.   Here is the exact sc...
 I am going to share something I have already shared with my long time readers, but not many of you saw it (since it was from the "olden days" days...way back in 2012 ;))  I thought it might still be useful to some of you, so here it is again.  This is how I manage the bathroom. I am pretty lenient when it comes to using the bathroom in my class.  I really only restrict it when I am teaching or we are in the middle of something that a trip to the bathroom would ruin.  I wasn't always like this.  I used really be strict on bathroom use, until I had a class that pushed me to my breaking point.  You see, this 4th grade class just wouldn't use the restroom....ever.  They preferred to go right in my room.  Yeah.  It was lovely.  I was almost at the point that I was just going to conduct class in the bathroom itself so as to avoid what was inevitably happening with 8 or so of my students (yes, I said 8...4th graders....8 of them) So anyway, after that year, I really l...
What a year this has been!  Can you believe it is MAY already???!!! Well, with May comes Open House at my school.  This is the time where we display the great projects and learning that the kids have been doing and invite the parents in to see it all. This year, since we were smack-dab in the middle of our 13 colonies unit, I thought it would be awesome to research what an actual early colonial village would look like and then turn the room into said colony.   This took a lot of research on the students' part, and a lot of butcher paper on mine, but I think the final product was amazing!  The kids did so much work, and it really showed.  So now, without further ado, I present to you the Colony of Moormania :) Here are two pictures of the entire room.  Both are views from the front of the room.Just click on any picture to enlarge. In this picture you can see the "Floating Colonies", the informational writing on the colonial regions, our colonial shops (blac...