{4.24} Five for Friday

We are lucky enough to have a fabulous half time art teacher! This wall used to have a different mural on it, that in my opinion wasn't very pleasing to look at. This year she decided to have students paint over it and break it into sections to represent the different animals & habitats in Alaska. These are some 5th graders working. I'm super excited about the final product!

I do not have any sons nor do I have to help my husband tie his tie. This young man asked me to help him with his this morning. Uh-oh. 

Luckily, we had a male sub in our grade level or else I would have sent him to our 1 male teacher in 3rd grade or our custodian.

How many males do you have working in your building?

April snow showers are common here… we ended up with this one for a a day and half. 

Hopefully we're done with it now. :)

We used Socrative again! I love it! 

I created a 10 question review for our last three lessons. Students worked this quiz at their pace and then moved right into the lesson video. I downloaded the report and I love how they color coordinate so that I can see right away which were answered correctly or not. I'm a little sad to see that much red, but at least I know what we need to go over again before our quiz.

I ended up with an unexpected doctor appointment yesterday afternoon for our coming baby girl. We had an assembly in the afternoon so it was fairly easy to adjust for a sub. Everything ended up being just fine and I was out of the office within an hour. That meant that I got to spend the majority of a wonderful sunny afternoon with my toddler. She loves her leaves, sticks and dirt! 

Five for Friday 4.17

We used Socrative in math class as a review. My kids loved the Space Race! The girl up front is excited because she got a correct answer so her team moved forward. 

I was blown away when I learned that my kids did not know what guide words are and how to really use a dictionary. I did not think the alphabetizing some words would almost bring 5th graders to tear. Yes, that really happened. Crazy! 

 I pulled some words out of our class dictionary and wrote them on index cards. The kids then would take one card, find the word in the dictionary (no iPads in use this time!), write down the guide words and page number. We also threw in working with a thesaurus. They had to find the word and then write down at least one synonym. Most of the kids ate it up. They really enjoyed actually flipping the pages.

We're digging out a hill and using some of the sand to fill my daughter's sand box. She loves to help! The plan is for this area to eventually be turned into a gathering area with a fire pit

An example of what my math kid did one day after their morning of AMP testing (our state tests). 

They had to find the area and the perimeter of their name.

WE ARE FINISHED WITH OUR STATE ASSESSMENTS!!

(Although we have our MAP tests coming up soon.)

Thanks for stopping by!

*Steph*

Technology Thursday: Reflector Tip

I have been trying hard the last little while to really integrate our iPads into everyday instruction. 

I started out using Reflector for going over homework and examples since my document camera hasn't been working since who knows when. Today, I think I made a breakthrough!

We have been reviewing everything the last week as we have our state tests next week. I've said this before, but my math class is truly one that makes or breaks a day. They can be a rough group!

As students were working on their warm up, I walked around and checked their homework. I highlighted one question from their homework (that I know they had correct and showed their work) and made a mark on my answer key with pencil. Now, a few students didn't get highlights because they didn't show their work or I ran out of problems. That is something that I will need to work out as well as what students w/out homework do. This is an activity that takes a little longer than the normal amount we take to go over homework. 

Students were to open a white board app (we have 2-3 they choose from to use) and show their work and answer to the problem I highlighted on their homework.

I then walked through the steps with the class of how to show their iPad on the board. 

1. Make sure you (the teacher) has Reflector turned on on your desktop.

2. Students swipe up so the grey bar with comes up and touch "Airplay." If your Reflector is turned on, your computer/room name should appear. I changed mine so that it says my last name "Udy"

3. Have them touch your room name.

4. Give them the password if yours is locked. We do this so students from a different room won't accidentally project their iPad onto your board.

HERE'S MY TIP:

5. Students waited until I called their name to turn on "Mirroring." This made it so that one iPad was on the scree, it was larger enough to actually see, and we didn't have to wait for someone to go through all the steps to mirror for each problem. When they were done, they just flicked the "Mirroring" off and we moved on. 

6. When everyone is finished, have students choose "iPad" again instead of your room. Students learned that volume also is transmitted when one student had a math game open and we could hear the music from it. It was comically because a lot of students rushed to make sure it wasn't them. 

I love that he explained what he did and he actually reduced!

This girl is about to turn off "mirroring." Hers is the iPad in the bottom righthand corner.

This ended up being a really nice way to go over problems and to let them take ownership of their work. I think it may also motivate some students to always have their home and SHOW their work. It's not something I'll do every day, that would take away the novelty, but maybe once a week to keep them on their toes. 

Make sure you check out other tips and ideas at Teaching Trio!

*Steph*

Pretend It's in the Lesson Plan

Do you ever have activities just jump into your brain? 

I'm not sure if it's inspiration or just my pregnancy brain but I've made some last minutes adjustments to my lesson plans lately. 

We had been working on inferences and deductions. It was the Friday before Easter. 

I had been reading some "What Am I" riddles to my reading comprehension group and one boy said, "These are fun! I want to make my own." 

*Spark*

Pulled out the construction paper… whipped up an example… let them try it out

I thought they turned out decent for spur of the moment. Next year I will have it actually planned and we'll spend a little more time on it. Enjoy!

(Close ups of a couple eggs and their clues coming soon… I forgot to take them and if I don't get this posted, it may not happen.)

Once a week we specify one of our homeroom blocks as geography. We've been spending a lot of time on learning the states. I have one puzzle of the whole US. I wanted the kids to have to place the states but didn't want to make paper puzzles. 

What do I do? 

I gave each student 2 puzzle pieces. (I have 27 students but a couple were absent so it worked out.)

They then had to put the puzzle together as a class, silently. They could only touch their own pieces, but they could suggest where someone should put their pieces by pointing. They also had to step out of the inner circle if they didn't have any pieces in their hands. This kept 1-2 student from taking over the whole activity. I also timed them. It ended up being a great class building activity. Everyone was involved, most of the students were pretty positive with each other. That is a huge plus as this has been a rough year with the way our students have been treating each other.

My future plans for this… acquire 3-4 more US puzzles and have races with smaller groups. 

If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Anchor's Away- Point of View

Now I feel a little silly and embarrassed to admit this, but this is the first anchor chart I've done this year. I blame it partly on me having to embrace and do three different scripted reading programs during my reading class (we level and split the whole grade up). I was pushing it to get all three done in the time period, let along do anything extra. 

Well, we finished one level of one of the programs and I decided to do some review before our big state tests next week. One of the topics was Point of View. I found this great freebie from Buzzing With Mrs. B and it came with an anchor chart idea and a practice packet. It came out great!

After we created the chart and talked about it, we practiced identifying what was what using the practice packet. It is the same story written three different ways. We highlighted the words that were clues to us and then identified what point of view it was written from.

This ended up being a great lesson. My kids even made connections to stories that we've read together!

Next, we are going to write our own paragraphs based on this photo...

The kids will get to choose what point of view they will take.

1st person or 3rd person (limited or omniscient)

and

Bear or Fish

Check out other anchor chart ideas at Deb's Crafting Connections.