Back Again - Open House Projects

I am sitting home alone and extremely bored, so I decided to finally get caught up with my blogging. I have so many pictures from this year, and have just been terrible about getting them on here.

Last night was Open House at my school, so I thought I'd give a peek into some of the projects we have accomplished this year.

Here is how everything looked right before the doors opened:

As we are getting closer to the end of the year, some of my students want to be a bit chattier, so I have transitioned from my regular group seating, to this paired stadium seating. I really like it because it gives students an easier view of the front of the classroom and less distractions, but I am also able to continue incorporating lots of pair-shares and group work. I have my students trained to move their desks back into a group arrangement in under 20 seconds, so we do that for times where I have larger group work planned.

Anyways, I thought I would show you some of the projects on display a bit more close up.

This is an Element project that I created this year, and that I really love. After learning all about elements, students were assigned an element from the periodic table based on their class number. They then researched their element, and created these standing displays based on their research. Each child became an expert on their element and then presented it to the class. The rest of the class took notes, and were therefore able to learn about many other elements as well.

This is a "Who am I?" descriptive writing paragraph that my students made. This is another craft that I created. The students wrote their paragraph on the first page of the magnifying glass, and then drew a picture of what they were describing on the second page. We have been really focusing on nonfiction writing and descriptive writing, and this was a fun cumulating craft/writing assignment.

Whenever possible, I like to get my students to create while they are learning, even if that simply means coloring and labeling. When they create for themselves, I find that their much more likely to retain the information. In Science, one of our units was on the lithosphere, and one of the first things we learned about was the layers of the Earth. This simple paperplate labeling activity was a big hit as a part of that lesson. The color is based on the heat of the layers, not what they actually look like, obviously :-).

On their desks, students also had their persuasive essays for their parents to read. Students could either argue for or against our uniform policy. I structure our persuasive essays fairly heavily, and this causes my students to be able to write quite sophisticated essays. This unit takes a long time, both for my students and for me. Individually writing feedback for both the rough and final drafts takes a looooong time, but I love to do it, because the improvement is so great to see.

 This is pretty self-explanatory. Most teachers end up doing an activity like this when introducing fractions. What can I say? It's a great one! It really helps students get the concept of fractions conceptually, and again, they are able to create.

Another Science unit we have done this year is on the troposphere. After students learned about the four main types of clouds (stratus, cirrus, cumulus, and nimbus), they created their own Cloud books. After they wrote a paragraph on each cloud, they made paper representations of the clouds.

One fun thing our cloud unit has brought to my classroom, is that we now daily decide what kind of clouds are in our sky in the morning. It has become a permanent part of our morning routine, and students consistently remember to check the sky prior to coming into the classroom. This just takes one minute, and keeps this vocabulary and understanding fresh in their minds. I've actually been super impressed with how their vocabulary has grown by doing this. They have even started to use the complex prefixes scientists use in order to differentiate different clouds. Just today, one student said this "I think that we have cirrostratus clouds today, because they are foggy and gray just like stratus clouds and cover the sky, but they look like they are super high up, and stratus clouds are usually low."

Before teaching this unit, I didn't even really know the prefixes, and now they are using them better than me!

Well, that's it for now. Hopefully I don't wait too long in between now and the next post. I have so many more things to share!

"Math Around the Room" and other Active Classroom Activities.

Last year, I had some very fidgety learners. Their own active minds would get in the way of their learning, and especially in the way of their practicing. They needed to move!

Because of this, I started using Math Around the Room more and more. It helped my active minds to focus as they got to move around while doing work without being disruptive. And I also discovered that it was great for my other students as well. This year, I don't have as many fidgeters, but I still am using this kind of activity all the time. It just breaks up the day more, and refreshes all students. They all enjoy it, and are able to work on the assigned problems very quietly and with no classroom management problems.

What is Math Around The Room?
It is simple:
1) Take the worksheet problems you want your students to work on.
2) Cut them up
3) Post them in various places around the room (on chairs, by the library, on the counter, by the backpacks etc.)
4) Students walk around the room with a clipboard and recording sheet, moving around and solving the problems.
In my class, this may only be done silently. If students are having a hard time and are getting distracted by their peers, they have to work by their desk while everyone else gets to cycle the room. Because they really enjoy Math Around the Room, this is all the reinforcement they need, and they work quietly on their activity.

This can be used for any subject and most activities. I tend to use it most for Math, for the simple reason that we need to practice math skills in the form of a worksheet more often than other subjects.

Here are some pictures of my students doing this:

In these three pictures, we were doing Math Around the Room for ordering big numbers. This is a free product that can be found on tpt. I posted 4 pencils, 4 apples, 4 markers etc. around the room. Students had to find all of them, and then put them in order, either from least to greatest or greatest to least. A lot of my students were already great at ordering numbers, but some needed extra support. This activity allowed me to work with a few students one on one, while the rest of the class was engaged and thinking, as opposed to bored at doing something they already knew how to do.

Because I liked this activity so much, I decided to create my own for math facts, since such a product did not exist. It is up for purchase at my store, and can be found here.

Again, students really enjoyed this activity and were able to quietly practice their math facts, while I had the opportunity to work with a few students who were struggling (particularly with their division facts).

"________ Around the Room" is definitely something I would recommend for your classroom. It is life-saving for our friends with ADHD, but fun and useful for the entire class as well. You should try it out!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Diving-into-Math-Facts-Math-Around-the-Room-Multiplication-and-Division-1430295

Back Again

So, clearly I have been terrible about blogging. I keep wanting to, and then the task of restarting up again feels so overwhelming that I don't.

I finally decided enough is enough, so here I go. No promises on being able to keep it up.

Things that have happened since the last time I posted...back in March (yikes!)

1. I started my second year of teaching. I have a great group of 4th graders. They are a very quiet group compared to last year's class. I had to actually teach them how to pair-share, which was something last year's class picked up like a fish picks up swimming. Interestingly, my boy-girl ratio is also very skewed. I only have 5 boys! FIVE! The rest are all girls! Anyways, they are awesome. I am really enjoying them so far.

And I am still loving teaching every single day. It is definitely the profession for me! I just love coming up with engaging lessons that the kids also love.

2. I opened up a Teacher Pay Teacher store! It can be found here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Explorations-Of-A-4th-Grade-Teacher
It is not a big store yet (only 17 items) and I am not making a ton of money. Still, I am selling things, which feels pretty great. I am making enough that I can buy what I need from TPT basically for free. So my tpt addiction is currently paying for itself, but I don't really have extra spending money. Surprisingly, it is my bible products that are selling the most so far.

Anyways, I will probably link to some of my products as I blog about what we are doing in the classroom. Joining TPT has definitely made me a better teacher. I am spending time making things for my classroom and more engaging lessons, that I might not have made otherwise.

Ok, well this is just a check-in, so that is all for now. Hopefully I will actually keep the blog up this time :-)

Dissecting Squid - 4th Grade

One really fun thing we did in Science was a squid dissection lab. Turns out that you can pay people to come into your classroom to do this with your class (another cool thing I learned from my 4th grade team). Basically, it is a field trip inside of the classroom, where the field comes to you! This was a very cool project that students loved, and I had to do next to nothing, besides walk around and take some pictures!

This took about an hour and a half. We watched a video and learned about squid, dissected squid, diagramed squid, and finally ATE squid. That's right, we salvaged some clean parts from the squid we had dissected, fried them up, and ate them with a little garlic salt. And they tasted good too. Again, I was super glad I wasn't in charge here, I never would have had the guts to give kids calamari to eat.

Without further ado, what you have been waiting for, the pictures:

The squid prior to dissection. Kinda cute actually.

And starting to dissect!

Once students had completely dissected their squid, they got to take out the ink sack and write with it. Here is one of my students writing his name!

6 Characteristics of Life - Science

For this post, I am going to do some free advertisement for "A House Called Home" on Teachers Pay Teachers. This product was my very first purchase on tpt because I just couldn't resist getting it for my Science unit. I loved it, and will definitely continue doing this project every year.

As I prepared my lessons on the 6 characteristic of life, I was despairing at how boring the whole unit was. So I did some digging online and found the perfect (and fun) application. My kids loved it and they definitely deepened their understanding in ways they wouldn't have without this project. "My Living Invention" has students inventing their own creature and defending how their creature has each of the 6 characteristics of life.

The beauty of the project is that it takes very little time. I had 6 lessons, one for each of the characteristics. At the end of each lesson, students filled out just the box pertaining to that characteristic, which took all of 10 minutes. Then, at the end of the unit, we threw everything together onto a poster board. Students were super invested and very avidly paying attention to the lessons in order to better defend their creature. They loved it!

Here are all of my student's finished projects on the wall.

As you can see, students were super creative. We had many flighted animals, some animal-combos, and some more unique creatures such as flesh-eating plants. 

Here is a close-up of one of the posters. 

One thing I absolutely loved about this project is how deeply students had to think about the concepts. Creation is the highest order of Bloom's taxonomy, and students really had to understand each concept in order to defend their creature well. It also made assessment really really easy. It was so easy to see any misconceptions students held, based on what they wrote, and I was able to correct some of their thinking after grading these projects. The difference between adapts and responds was by far the most difficult for my students.

California Topographical Maps - 4th Grade

One of the first major Social Studies projects we did back in the Fall was make topographical maps of California, using homemade salt dough. The class learned about the different California regions and major landmarks as we made the maps together. This was a pretty extensive project. We spent an entire hour for an entire week working on these. I had two parent volunteers per day. I could have done it without them I suppose (so don't fret if you would like to do this project but don't usually get a lot of parent help), but boy did it make things easier to have parents helping out!

Here is a picture story of the events:

 Here is the Before. The key is to have students bring their own salt dough. It is a very easy recipe, and it saves a whole lot of time. We needed a lot of salt dough, so with each child bringing one batch, we were guaranteed to have enough. I made two extra batches for those students who forgot to bring dough or whose dough was too runny.

This is the progress after the second day. We did the Central Valley and mountain ranges on the first day, and then finished the coast and desert on the second day. Basically the way it works is that we have a map of California attached to a piece of cardboard. We then pressed the salt dough in small pieces directly onto the paper.

I tried as hard as possible to get students to be as accurate topographically as possible. We didn't include all mountain peaks of course, but we did include the top three Whitney, Shasta, Lassen and students were supposed to ensure that Whitney was the tallest peak on their map.

Here is a close-up of a topographical map. One big thing I graded for was that the Sierras were twice the size of the Coastal Ranges. This student did a good job of that, as well as placing his mountain peaks in the correct spot.

On the third and fourth day, we painted in the same order as we built: Central Valley first, then mountains, followed by the coast and desert. The reason we split it up is because you really want the salt dough to be completely dry. Otherwise it still shrinks and moves.

We painted the four regions in four different colors. All of them are pretty realistic with the exception of the coast. The different colors really help the students learn the different regions. After this activity, all of my students knew them and they still correctly refer to them months later.

Finally, on the last day, we labeled everything. This is the finished product. As you can see, there are some cracks in the painting because the dough was not completely dry. For next year, I think I am going to do the map building on Thursday/Friday and then the painting/labeling on Monday through Wednesday in order to give the dough more time to dry.


This project is what made me fall in love with teacher collaboration. As a first year teacher, I would have never attempted this project on my own because it seemed way too daunting. But my coworker (the other 4th grade teacher) has done this project for years, and she walked me through the process. And I loved it! Definitely doing it again next year and for many years to come. It is such a fun project and the students get so much out of it! It is also surprisingly easy.

Long Time No Blog

So clearly the blogging thing never happened! After I stopped blogging after the first few weeks of school, I still continued to take pictures. I didn't have the motivation to blog after teaching, so I was going to catch up during Thanksgiving break. Well, that didn't happen, so then I was going to catch up during winter break. That didn't happen either.

Now I am a few weeks away from Spring break (our break is sooo late this year) and I just so happen to be bored. So here I am, several months later, planning on sharing a few fun projects we have done this year.

Overall, my first year of teaching is going really really well. It honestly is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I don't really feel like a new teacher. I just feel like I am in the groove of things at this point.

Back to School Night

Well, I survived week two of my teaching career, and I am still loving it! Surprisingly, so far I am not really stressed at all. Sure, I sometimes get there very early or stay late, but for the most part I am still super energized and relaxed! I am sure that won't stay forever, but for now I am really enjoying it.

On Thursday was Back-to-School Night! I was a little nervous having to talk with parents for an entire hour, mostly because I felt like they would ask me questions I didn't yet know the answer to. But, with the response "I don't know, but I am going to find out!" prepared in my brain, I tackled Back to School Night with gusto. And what do you know, the parents weren't so bad afterall ;-) There was only one question I wasn't prepared for and I was able to come up with a reasonable solution on the spot. For the most part, I think parents left feeling pretty happy.

Here are some pictures.

I decided to continue the Mission theme I did on "Welcome Day" on Back To School Night because it worked so well. On the right are a stack of pages ranging from field trip information to volunteering opportunities etc.

I of course wanted to make sure that the bulletin boards were filled with projects we have been working on. Here are the compass roses we made as a part of our beginning of the year maps/geography unit.

I also put up all of our newspapers.

Finally, here are the completed "Highlight of my Summer" paragraphs we did. This was the first "Writing Process" work we did where students first brainstormed, wrote a rough draft, revised, edited and then finally wrote a final draft. I had students write these in their best cursive and they also drew a picture.

My favorite part was having the parents answer a Did You Know with some of the content my students have been learning in Social Studies. I thought it was a nice way to show what we have been learning. I was very pleased to se that some of my parents did not know the fact :-)

Anyways, that was basically it. I made a PowerPoint and spent about 30-40 minutes talking about my classroom and sharing my expectations for the year. Then I opened up the floor for questions and allowed some time for parents to explore the classroom. And that was that!

First Week of School!

Well, the first week of school just flew by. I'll be honest, I can already tell that I will not be updating my blog very often. Things are just too busy. I think my goal will be to update once a week since I have more time over the weekends, but I can already tell you now that that is probably not going to happen either.

Anywho....

The first week of school went SO well! I LOVE my kids! So far they are really well behaved and the "problem children" I was warned about are not a problem at all. Teaching procedures is going really well. The students love the group-points system, and I have a really easy time getting their attention and transitioning from one subject to the next.

I am especially proud of my Morning Routine. If you are (or are going to be) a teacher and haven't read "First Days of School" by Harry Wong, you need to get on that because it is absolutely amazing. I implemented his morning routine to the letter and it is absolutely awesome.
Every morning, my students come in, check in, take out their homework and start working on the assignment layed out on their desk in absolute silence. For the first twenty minutes of school, not a single word is spoken in my classroom. Literally! My students do practice work quietly at their desks and this gives me time to do attendance, check homework, and prep other things we are going to cover that day.
The first day of school, we practiced the routine.
The second day of school, I gave a few reminders to some and rewards to others for completing the routine successfully.
The third day of school, I watched in awe as the entire class followed the procedure to the letter. Seriously, I am so proud!

Not everything is going perfect of course. I am still a first year teacher after all! My main problem so far is organization. There are certain procedures that my co-teacher introduces that I haven't, for the simple reason that I don't even know what I want! The other class spent 15 minutes learning how to title, name and date every single assignment they turn in, and where to turn it in. I did not teach that, and currently have everyone turning everything in in just one inbox. I just haven't quite decided how I want everything yet! 
But I am not too worried, as I feel that this can come with time. I have all of the most important classroom management procedures in place, so even if my classroom will be a bit cluttered, it will be a "in-control","quiet and focused", "cluttered" classroom. I am ok with that (for now) :-)

Anyways, on to some pictures! I will go in order of some of the days.

#1 Welcome Day!
Monday was Welcome Day! Students came in with their parents from 9-11am just to meet the teacher, see the classroom, and get acquainted with the school. I think it is an awesome idea and every school should have it. Welcome Day took the edge off of the first day of school for both my students and myself as we had already been acquainted with one another.

This is what students found on their desks when they came in. All of their workbooks as well as their first "Mission" to be completed that day in the classroom.

One of their missions was to answer the "Did you know?" question on the bulletin board. I was initially worried that students might be too scared to admit that they didn't know something, but that was clearly not the case! On Friday, I had students write a refection on the first week of school including 3 things they had learned that week. Many chose to put this fact as one of their learned things. I am planning to use the "Did you know?" feature for actual curriculum and facts, so I am really excited that it seems to be working.

#2 First Day of School!

Our first day of school was a half day, so it was pretty much just packed with procedures.

One of my students made my day and gave me a bucket full of candy! I mean literally, an entire bucket! I love pinterest and use it for ideas all of the time, but this is the first time I have been on the receiving end of a pinterest idea. It was a great start to my day :-)

My students absolutely love the group points! They get very competitive in trying to earn points for their group, which results in a very quiet attentive class and very quick transitions. Love it!

After I introduced the class rules and main procedures, we did a sticky note activity to get students excited about the year. I loved reading the insights students had to give on the first day. Some of those "What I am excited about" stickies even said "That my teacher is really nice", which was of course lovely to hear for this pretty nervous first time teacher :-)

Finally, we ended the day with an "About Me" art project. This is something I found on a "Bulletin Board" site and then pinned on Pinterest, which then got repinned hundreds of time. Obviously it wasn't my idea, but I like to think that I had some influence on it being done by lots of teachers ;-)

Students were supposed to draw things about themselves onto the puzzle pieces. Some students chose to draw what their hobbies were, others drew foods they likes, and still others just decorated their puzzle piece with things they enjoyed such as rainbows or flowers.

I haven't added it yet, but I plan to add the quote "We are all unique but every piece is needed to complete the puzzle" to the puzzle which is currently on my door.

If you are interested in doing this with your class, it is SUPER EASY! Just super-impose a blank puzzle (images found on google) onto either a projector or overhead, and then trace the individual puzzle pieces on a piece of paper (I used card stock). It took some prep, but this is also something that a parent volunteer would do an awesome job at.

Here is my puzzle piece. Of course it wouldn't have been complete without a reference to ultimate frisbee :-)

#3 The Rest of the Week.

The rest of the week was spent in several different ways:

1) We practiced our procedures.

2) The students took a few pre-assessments so that I would know where they were at skill-wise coming into the year.

3) We did several "Beginning of the Year" activities

4) I scaffolded my students through writing a "Highlight of my Summer" essay, which was probably the meatiest (in terms of hitting standards and objectives) assignment of the week.

5) I taught several "Community" lessons, which focused on creating a positive classroom community by teaching teamwork, social skills, and how to address bullying.

One of my classroom community lessons focused on bullying/respecting others feelings. I had students cut out and decorate hearts without telling them what it was for. Then students had to pass their heart to the right (we were sitting in a circle), where that student crumpled it while saying "I don't like you". We then talked about how that made each student feel, watching their hard work get crumpled. Next, students tried to unfold their hearts while apologizing to it, and we talked about how even though they tried, they were not able to completely get that heart back to normal. We discusses the effects our words have on people, and how saying "I'm sorry" doesn't completely repair the damage. Finally, students went to their desks and wrote this poem onto their hearts. The hearts are now on a bulletin board in order to remind students to treat each other kindly.

Students also wrote a newspaper about themselves, including their favorites, their hero, and a story about themselves. On Friday, we sat in a circle and every student presented their newspaper to the class.

Sorry for the black smudges, but that is what I did in order to get rid of the pictures that the students brought in to add.

For Social Studies, we started curriculum while also making it fun, by making compass roses on posterboard. We first discussed the cardinal directions and how a compass works, and then students got to work creating their own. I think they turned out really nice.

Well, that is basically it!

Overall it was a fantastic first week! I feel energized and excited for the rest of the year. Real curriculum starts next week!

Classroom Tour!

It is finished! It is finally finished!!!

I can't even tell you how proud I am of my room. I randomly catch myself just beaming with pride at it. My own classroom. Wow! It took me many many hours of hard work, and I absolutely love how it turned out. I can't wait to have some more of those bulletin boards filled with student work. I will preface my pictures by saying that I think the room looks way better in person than it can be portrayed by my old little point and shoot. So view these pictures and then imagine things even better ;-)

As a reminder, here is the Before...

And After!

Back of the classroom before... 

And After!

 I am especially excited about replacing that ugly and ripped tan sheet with the pretty leafy green one.

You guys have already seen pictures of my library, as it was the first thing I finished in my room. However, it now features a green rug from IKEA as well as some comfy pillows that I got at the thrift shop for two bucks each.

When you walk into the door, this the homework/check-in section when you turn to the left. Students will put their homework into their file container, which will make it really easy for me to see who has it and who doesn't and to numerically order them for grading and inputting. If students don't have their homework, they have to fill out and turn in a "No Homework" Slip as well, in which they state their reason for not having their homework. I will keep all of these in a binder and it will be both a great way for me to see who is consistently forgetting homework but also a great way to show their parents.

This is a closer look at the table. The pizza pan on the left is how students sign in without me having to do roll each day. They simply move their magnet from Absent to Here. Then, I just have to look at who never moved their magnet to see who isn't there that day. I made the magnets out of 1 dollar clear stone decorations, modge podge and old/used bulletin borders.

This is my favorite portion of my classroom so far. The Boggle board is for early finishers, and the letters are easily movable. I can even very easily replace them with numbers or vocabulary for a simply made review bingo.

I love my interactive "Did you know?" bulletin board, which I found on pinterest. Students have a numbered clothespin, and they can either answer the question by moving it to "I didn't know that" or "I knew that!". At the beginning of the year, I am just asking a question to go with our Mystery theme, but later on in the year I can use this board to preview and check background knowledge on a unit I am about to start. It is going to be a fun way for students to learn new facts without me expressly having to teach that fact.

The picture turned out a little dark, but here are the prizes that students can buy in my class based on a ticket reward system that I have. I refuse to spend a lot (or any) money on prizes so they are all privileges I can give them for free. Even the treasure box is filled with cool knickknacks that were given to me rather than purchased.

Here are all of the jobs, of course with Mystery themed titles. From top to bottom the jobs are Paper Collector, Paper Passer, Supplies, Answer the Phone, Ipad Helpers (we have an Ipad lab), Pencil Sharpener, and Floor Monitors.

And finally, here are a few different views of the classroom than what has already been shown.

The classroom from the back of the classroom.

I work at a Christian private school, so this is my bible verse in the classroom. It is pretty much the only thing that distinguishes it from a public school classroom at the moment.

Word Wall, which will be filled with the academic vocabulary we learn this year.

The room as can be seen from the right front corner (where the jobs are listed)

Mystery-themed nametags on all of the desks!

Back left corner. This offers a view of my small group table. That table used to be where the projector stood but it was too big for be in the middle of the classroom, so I squished the projector and document camera onto a desk and am now using the table for better purposes.

Alright well that is it! Tell me what you think!