The Room is Alive...

     Okay well that is a little miss leading.  I actually haven't been in my room since May.  Our building is going through a major remodel and last year I was housed out of a seperate building.  Now that I am moving up I am not going to be in the brand new building, in a brand new room!! Kinda excited for that new carpet smell...aaahhhh.  
     So in the mean time I am chomping at the bit to get in and get things unpacked.  We don't even get the go ahead until the 7th at the earliest! We start the 15th!! As teachers know this is not a lot of time to get things organized and set up, especially being that I am changing grade levels. Again. 
    I am spending my nights making name tags and classroom newsletters.  Anything that will give me more time to set up later.  I will attach my newletter, but I still don't know if the cute fonts and such will transfer, I am not quite ready to start paying a server to save my docs as pdfs.  

It's a Mystery

So our district came out with the genre focus for our grade levels, and with me being a 4/5 combo I will do a little of each grade.  Rewind to end of the school year and I was perusing my genre list and saw fantasy!! Oh yeah, I may have even done a little dance.  That is my most favorite genre!!  Fast forward to Monday... and they made some changes!  Now instead of fantasy I get to teach mystery...  I did not do a dance this time.  Don't get me wrong I love a good mystery movie, but really it's not my cup o' tea.  But as a teacher I need to do what I teach my children and that is to broaden their reading palate.  So with that in mind I am making it a  goal to read at least one mystery this month. What are some of your favorite mysteries???

Scheduling Scheduling

     Alright it's June 28th and the master schedule has been sent out from our principal, eh not to shabby this year. My Friday's are awesome, rest of the week... We are required to have 3 hours of literacy each day and 1hr15 min of math and then content gets what is left over.  The latter makes me sad, as science is my most favorite subject (and that of my student's). So I am left trying to find ways to bring content into our literacy block through research and writing experiences.  You can see the break down of my schedule here.  Feel free do download and adjust as it fits you. 
****Side note: t I am font freak and love to color code and use a variety of fonts, it is like a sickness I swear, I cannot however figure out how to upload the cute version of my documents I get to see. Oh well I am a teacher, a lover of paper, smell of new pencils, post its, labels and funky fonts! 

Summer Lovin'

Yay summer time!!  Time to sleep in and lay around all day in the sun...right...WRONG!  I think that my students think this is what I do all summer long, let's be honest fellow teachers know that this does not happen.  Summers for a teacher, as much as we would love to use the 3 months to travel and sunbathe, are spent gearing up for the coming year. Sad, but true.  My summer days are spent with my children trying to keep them causing complete chaos with some constructive activity each day (like a lesson plan...) and my part time become more each month it seems photography hobby.  I love my time away from the classroom,  it gives me a chance to regroup and gear up for the next year.  

    This summer is no different, I have been part of a book study looking at this text:

I love this book!! I read it last year in about April and was wishing I had read it sooner, but there you go.  I love the ideas about creating a community of readers and writers.  Leslie has so many great ideas about the use of literacy logs, or a Book Lovers Book as she calls it that you truly have to read this text to fully understand how you can implement them in your classroom.  One of my top reads for the year.   

Next Round of Literature Discussion Groups

So some students just loved their books, and others...not so much. In one group we actually abandoned our book and discussed some of the reasons why a reader abandons a book.            

 

               

Rolling Through Forces & Motion

We have culminated our study of forces and motion by creating our own roller coaster.  Last week the students work to design their roller coaster on their own plot of land. They had to first think of the layout the ride would take within their park (area).  Then they worked in teams to make the best ride.  Here is just the start of their designs. Tomorrow we will test them and see if our design needs some "tweaking". 

January 12, 2012

In our classroom our reading groups are more of a book club, we call them literature discussion groups.  The students are asked to select from 4 different books the one they would most like to read. Here are some of the choices for this round:

 Before each meeting they are responsible for completing their assigned reading, and a thoughtful log response.  Contracts will be coming home with them today to expain their first job and what is expected of them. You will be asked to sign as well as all of them. 

In preparation for our discussions we have been delving deeper into what makes a successful discussion and literature response.  We have been reading books and writing our responses and then using them as a springboard for discussion.  Here are a few examples of anchor charts we have made, originally seen in Life in 4B another Dorn model school. ...

 This chart helps us to remember what is required in a successful log response.  The students have their own copy in their journal. 

We watched a literature discussion by two model teachers and sketched out the strenght of their ideas. You can see that in the strong model the ideas build on one another and begin to look like a constellation. 

Talk is the key to a successful literature discussion group!  We have been really working hard on making our conversations more meaningful.  I can honestly say that after this week of stregthening our responses and practicing purposeful talk we have made tremendous progress!!!