Tried it Tuesday - Zoo Building!

Oh boy! I've become one of those slacker bloggers...sigh.  ;) Seriously though, I think I've fallen into the trap of working myself into temporary burn out. Sometimes I need to sit back and accept that not every cool idea needs to be done this year with my kiddos...

Speaking of traps, check out my class's Venus Fly
Trap! It's an attempt to cut down on our fruit fly
problem, which is caused by terracycling
juice pouches for the school.

Every time I've finally gotten myself to the point where I'm a good week ahead of the game in school, I notice all of the "home life" things I've been neglecting. It never ends, right?!

I definitely need to find that balance between working on school stuff, my personal life, and going to bed at 1 AM. Right now my time allotment is way out of whack leaning towards the teachery stuff. And I think it's time to come to terms with the fact that I'm not young enough to stay up til 1 o'clock every night anymore. I need to spend more time on "me things" too.

I'm so lucky to have such a great bunch of kids this year! They've made my transition into 3rd/4th a lot smoother than it could have been. One thing I love about the multi-age class is that I get to keep all of my 3rd graders next year as my new 4th graders!

But..on with the show:

I'm linking up with Holly for another Tried it Tuesday! This week we started regrouping for Math. I have taken on teaching the fast-paced, gifted learners group. We have a lot of those in my district, so my math class has 27 kiddos in it. That's a whole lot of kids that need constant challenge in order to be kept engaged. My plan is to do a lot of project based learning along the way. 

Matt over at Digital Divide and Conquer has a great project based product for teaching Area and Perimeter (and great practice for a bunch of other skills too!) that I am starting with this group. It basically tasks the kids with building a zoo and meeting multiple parameters while doing so. It comes with a lot of extension activities too, which I really like. There's also an entire set of the papers that allow a teacher to differentiate for a lower level group! We're also currently studying Africa, and this'll be a great way for me to hit some of that with the animals in the zoo. 

I love the fact that this product comes with everything ready to print and use, and that it can be done to different levels. For example, if a student finishes building the zoo, there are sheets to have the student "zoom in" on one of the animal enclosures, or write a quiz about their zoo. Definitely go check it out! At just $4.50 I'd say this is pretty much a steal. 

My mentor texts this week have included I Need My Monster (which goes along with Jivey's Mentor Sentences), Fake Mustache, and Galimoto.  We're a little more than halfway through Fake Mustache right now, which I use as our text to model our CAFE strategies. This week in reading we are focusing on recognizing character traits (personality and physical) and visualizing. Some of the activities in my Fake Mustache Unit have made planning for this week easy-peasy!

Galimoto was our writing mentor text, where we're focusing on having a bold beginning for our narratives. It also ties in well with the Africa unit I am teaching in social studies. It's the story of an African boy who goes along trying to find wire so he can build a "galimoto." The kids slowly discover what that is, so it's good for predicting and inferring as well. But we focused on the first page of the story, where the author begins by telling us the things this boy has in his possession. It makes you want to know why he has those things and what he's going to do with them. He wasn't introduced right away, and the setting wasn't discussed initially. It is a different way to begin a story, and it hooks the reader. I challenged the kids to write a piece with a bold beginning after we read the story.

I figured I'd throw in some of my favorite Halloween books too! Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich (and Takes the Cake) are both hilarious books full of rhyming short stories, comics, etc. I usually read a little each day to the kids just for fun starting a week before Halloween. Monster Museum is a funny book of poems about the different monsters. Vunce Upon a Time is the story of a vegetarian vampire who also likes candy, but has run out right before Halloween. I use these stories to reinforce the skills we've already introduced, but we read them mostly just for fun.  :)

And if you haven't already, it's not too late to start up some Monster Battles in Math! I recently finished my Multiplication Facts (tables 0-12) battle tournament. I also have multi-digit addition and money addition tournaments. The multiplication tournament has a totally different set of pairings and a different winner than the addition tournaments! Each tournament comes at the ridiculously low price of $5! We actually completed our tournament already and the kids LOVED IT. They want to do another one later this year!

In other news, my BBB Jess over at I Heart Recess is having a giveaway! I've donated my Roll and Draw a Monster activity! Go enter if you haven't already!

Five for Two Fridays!

So, I fully intended to write this post LAST Friday! It's hard to believe I let an entire week slip by without blogging at all, but it has been a crazy-busy couple of weeks!

So this might be a little bit more than 5 for Friday...more like the last two Fridays.

First:

Two weekends ago, Killer B and I participated in the Color Run! I've included a before and after picture. It was actually a lot of fun! As far as 5ks go I'd have to guess that it is pretty laid back, but it has gotten me interested in looking into other ones to run in.

Second:

This breakout session was on the birth of
the universe. Pretty intense, and WAY
over the limit of what I would need to teach
my elementary students.

Last weekend I attended the PA Earth and Space Science Teachers conference. There's nothing like being paid to attend a conference and getting put up in a suite for free...but I really wish there had been more opportunities geared towards Elementary teachers. That being said, the keynote speaker was great, and he showed us a great activity for getting kids to understand what scientists do. 

These inquiry cubes are placed on the students' tables and they are asked, "What question comes to mind?" Well, of course the first question you think of is "What's on the bottom?" So the kids work together to try and determine what's on the bottom using the clues they gather from what's on the sides. We never got a chance to see the bottom (just like a real scientist will never see the inside of the Earth, or the first stars) but we were all pretty confident that we knew the answer. There were other ways to extend it too, like introducing "new technology" that lets you see one corner of the bottom of the cube. This might make kids revise their theories about what's on the bottom. It was a great activity, and I'm looking forward to using it in my classroom.

Third: 

Still missing the chiller and the eggs! The foam covers it on
all sides all the time. I'm going to have my kids make some
signage for the front explaining the life cycle and telling
others to leave it alone!

I applied for, and received, a grant last year to participate in a program called "Trout in the Classroom." I've put a lot of work into getting the habitat ready for the eggs. My principal and head custodian were a HUGE help in the fact that I was able to get a sturdy rolling table to put the 55 gallon aquarium on in a nearby stairwell. This giant, green foam-covered monstrosity was kind of a safety hazard and frankly an eyesore. But, now that it has found a home outside of my room, but still nearby, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when our trout eggs arrive in early November! There's still a lot of work to do, but hopefully I'll be releasing a bunch of baby trout fingerlings into a nearby stream next Spring.

Four:

We've been studying Biomes and Ecosystems, so I thought I'd share this funny video that my kids loved. They were singing along with it. From a strictly grammatical standpoint it is kind of funny, but this is science, not grammar...ha. Find the video here.

Five:

This week we've been reading Fake Mustache by Tom Angleberger. This is a fun book that cashes in on the current popularity of mustaches, but it's also by the same guy who did Origami Yoda, which my kids love. I wrote a novel unit for it! Check it out!

Our CAFE strategy this week (using Fake Mustache as our text) was to "Read with emotion when appropriate." We're preparing for Fall parent conferences so I went with an easy one.  ;)  

Our VOICES strategies (Six trait writing - check out my free CAFE style menu!) this week were "Use interesting words" and "Use powerful verbs and adjectives."  To go with those strategies we read "Come On, Rain" with Jivey's Mentor Sentences, and then I read Crickwing to the kids.

With Crickwing, I have gone through and rewritten the first few pages and taken out all of the interesting words and powerful adjectives and verbs and replaced them with tired words. After the second page the kids have this look like, "What?!" on their faces. I stop reading and ask what's wrong. Before you know it we're launched into a mini-lesson about how impactful our word choice is to a story and why we should pick interesting and powerful words. Then I read them those first pages over again and they really see the difference. I read about half of the story one day, and the rest another day. This book also has a great anti-bullying message too!

Now I'm really looking forward to a weekend where I hopefully can balance having a little bit of a life with getting the work done that needs to be done! I have a full day of curriculum writing on Monday (and I'm missing my class's first field trip, Yikes! Sorry sub!) and this next week is a short week because we have two days of parent conferences at the end of the week! So maybe I'll get ahead of the game again...

Workshop Wednesday - Word Work

I'm linking up today with Jivey's wonderful Workshop Wednesday! The topic of today's linky is Word Work games and activities! I was excited to hear that because I have recently introduced Words their Way with my 3rd and 4th graders and am always on the hunt for more Word Work games to keep it fresh.

Only a few people in my district are using Words their Way in 3rd and 4th (I'm one of the two from my 7 person team in my school) so their aren't a ton of resources handed to us by the district. The district provided resource is Sitton Spelling. It is mostly based on high frequency words, and has a cloze style spelling test for every Friday. It just wasn't doing it for me, so I asked if I could do something different, was happy to hear that a couple other teachers were interested, and before you know it we're doing WTW! So far I've been really happy with it too!

It took me getting over one thing though...my brain kept insisting that I somehow had to fit everything into a Monday - Friday rotation, but then I read a blog post on Life, Love, Literacy and it clicked, why not do a 7 day cycle?! So that's what I've done, and it's working great!

Our system is basically this:

Day 1 - Intro New Sorts (word lists) - Initial Sort - students cut sorts and try to sort them any way that makes sense.

Day 2  - Sound/Spell Sort - students practice sorting their words by sound or spelling pattern. They check their sorts with a friend.

Day 3 - Game Day - students play a game with their words.

Day 4 - Alternate word work day. I didn't want to not be able to do all the other great word games and word study opportunities because I only had time for WTW. This day the groups do one of those other great games that don't necessarily relate to that week's sort.

Day 5 - Game Day - students play a game with their words.

Day 6 - Buddy Spell - students quiz each other on their words.

Day 7 - Each group takes their own spelling test.

So, on to the activities and games! Some of my favorites are really simple, and you could easily reproduce them! 

Kids in different groups have different
colored paper for their word cards.

I have printed off American Sign Language sheets and the kids practice signing their words to a friend.

We play a word game similar to Guess Who, where kids choose a secret word and the other student asks questions to narrow down which word from the sort it could be.

I have my kids make their own word searches and trade with a buddy. 

Long, long ago when I first taught 2nd grade and used WTW I made myself this "Words Have Value" page to have kids practice counting money and spelling their words. I've found that my older kids like doing it too! I went ahead and added this simple sheet to my TpT store for just a buck! 

One of my favorite activities for the kids on the alternate day is a new one for me this year! It's the Expand-a-Word pack from Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching. Basically, the kids get a sheet for recording, and a set of cards for the week (I give my kids 4 each time). The letters on the cards should be used to make as many words as possible by adding other letters without rearranging the letters on the cards. So if the card says "SOR" one word that a kid could make is "Source." My kids LOVED it when we tried it this week.

There's a year's worth of cards in the pack, so at just $3.50 you're basically paying 10 cents a week for a ready-made, worthwhile word work activity! Click the image to go and grab a copy!

And of course sometimes I have the kids practice alphabetizing their sort, or trying to find other ways to sort their words if they have a couple of minutes. But I'm excited to sit down and read all of the other link ups!

If you stuck around this long, you must have a kind heart! So go check out my class's current Donorschoose.org project! We're almost funded! We're asking for a bunch of "Who was" and "Choose your own adventure" books. My kids need some engaging biographies, and they just eat up the "Choose" books. Match code MALL20 will match any donation! (Thanks Jivey!)

Tried it Tuesday - Raw Rhubarb and Cursive Writing!

So, just a quick post for Tried It Tuesday with my BBB Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper! Though some of these are cheats because I didn't try them all for the first time recently. But they were new for my kiddos at least!

The first is raw rhubarb! We read "My Rotten Red-Headed Older Brother" this week in class, and if you've read the story then you know that at one point the siblings have a raw rhubarb eating contest. Well, I (much like Ricky in the story) don't LIKE raw rhubarb, I LOVE IT and snack on it often. In fact, I grow a ton of it in my garden each year! It's a perennial and I don't think I could kill off the three plants I have going if I wanted to actually... 

So, with free access to mountains of rhubarb, (more than even I can eat) and a story that mentions it, I thought it'd be a great time to bring some in for the kids to do their own little "Tried it Tuesday." I wish I could post the picture I took of their mouths puckering when we counted down from 3 and all took a big bite at the same time. One kid comedically fell out of his chair when he ate his. Hahaha.

So, my second tried it is Cursive Handwriting! I introduced our practice books this week as part of morning work. I won this fun and cute booklet in a giveaway! It's from Funky Fresh Firsties, click the link to find it in her store! I've never had to worry about cursive before this year! When I taught primary they were too young, and when I taught 5th they'd already learned it. Now that I'm in 3rd/4th I am supposed to be in charge of it...well my cursive stinks! 

Of course that's assuming my kids can tear
themselves away from their Book of Awesome
Tasks long enough to focus on cursive!

And I'm not sure how I feel yet about cursive. I think that I am going to require my kids to learn how to READ cursive, and to sign their name. I don't want to spend class time teaching it... 

I have provided each child with the cursive handwriting practice book, and I will hold little cursive writing teaching/practice sessions as an option during indoor recess days for the kids that want to do that though.

I'm just throwing these in here because a couple of
people have asked what the books look like when
they're constructed. Lots of fun!

I will admit that cursive is something the kids want to do. That's why I love doing it during indoor recess (it rains and snows here a lot!) because usually a third of the class is quietly engaged doing that rather than getting out of control and stir crazy! How do you feel about cursive?

And PS, find the Book of Awesome Tasks in my store for five measly clams! Book 2 is in the works!

Five for Fraturday - Science, Math, Writing, Reading, and More!

So, I DID start writing this 5 for Friday post for Doodle Bugs Teaching's Linky on Friday! Once again things got busy and it just wasn't in the cards to get this post published before the clock struck midnight!

So this was another busy week that just seemed to fly by! Here goes:

1. Pictures!

This week we had Fall Picture Day! I was sooo busy on the first day of school that I never managed to get my kiddos' pictures! Aagh! So I just decided to wait til Picture Day to get them because I knew they'd be dressed up! 

I hung this fancy green frame with fishing line from the ceiling. I had prepared these photo booth props for kids to use for the pictures and they turned out really cute. There were several mustaches, lips, bow ties, and glasses to choose from, each attached to the end of a dowel. 

2. Ecosystems Scoot!

We've been studying biomes and ecosystem stuff in Science lately, and this set of cards was a perfect check-in to see what we knew and didn't know still.

The kids LOVE playing Scoot, and the best thing is that they don't even realize that they are basically taking a test! 
Grab yourself a lifetime supply of copies of this game for just $3 by heading over to my store!

3. Read Bead Board version 2013!

I've talked about my Read Beads in previous posts, but didn't have a picture of my display board for this year until now! Here it is! 

I leave the board up all year long. Those fall leaves will turn into snowflakes, then spring flowers, then green leaves as we pass through the seasons. 

Kids LOVE collecting the read beads, and I think it makes a handsome display outside my room's door and takes the pressure off constantly worrying about changing the board.

4. Writing Workshop - Mentor Texts & Writing Activity

This week in Writer's Workshop we took a break from writing Small Moment Narratives to do a different kind of activity. I started the week by reading the book Fortunately to the kids. This book follows a pattern that goes back and forth between things like "Fortunately I was invited to a party!" "Unfortunately the party was in Florida, and I live in New York." "Fortunately a friend lent me his plane!" and so on. Unfortunately (ha!) this book is lacking in strong adjectives and vivid verbs. After reading it to get the pattern down, the kids begin writing their own stories. 

The next day I read Fortunately, Unfortunately to the kiddos. This book follows the same pattern, but features an occasional adjective that spices up the writing. We make note of that, and then we begin editing our stories by adding in interesting words.

Finally, I read That's Good! That's Bad! to the kids on the third day. This story follows a similar pattern, but the difference is that nearly every page is packed with strong adjectives and vivid verbs! The kids really can see the difference that those interesting words make. We pull out Fortunately at this point and practice by sticking in good words. The kids continue editing their pieces at this point (and now they really have the hang of it!)

On the fourth day we don't read a picture book, because instead we share our own "Fortunately" stories!

5. Measurement and Addition in Math

In Math this week we started working on lines, segments, and measuring perimeter of triangles and quadrilaterals. One of my independent centers this week involved the use of my newest TpT product, these Insect Measurement Task Cards. The cards have detailed photos of some unique bugs on them. I post the cards around the room, and when kids get to that center they get to walk around the room with their record sheet and go on a "bug hunt." I asked my kids to measure all of the bugs and then add up the measurements. Anytime you can practice multiple skills while keeping the kids highly engaged is a win in my book! Task cards beat out a worksheet any day...but they are essentially getting the same practice! Grab up a copy of my cards for just $2 and use them in your classroom for years to come!


So that made up a big portion of my week! Of course a whole lot more went down than that, but those were definitely some of the highlights! I managed to make it home with a little less work on my plate than the past three weekends! I'm hoping that I'll keep getting ahead a little more each week!

Workshop Wednesday - Math Edition

So before I get into the meat of my post, I want to share my "popping tags" experience at Goodwill the other day! I regularly go to Goodwill to check out the kids' books section and usually leave with a bag full of pretty decent books. Well, I just happened to pop into Goodwill this past weekend and grabbed this whole stack of books at 50% off for just $23.00! What?! Two of the hard cover books are worth that alone! I even found a bunch that my kids requested on their reading interest surveys! Also grabbed up a few picture books, one of which is one of our mentor sentences books later this year! Go to Goodwill, people!


So, I'm finally getting a chance to link up again to Jivey's Workshop Wednesday! This time I'm going to talk about one of the workshops in my room that I haven't talked about yet...Math!

5 years ago when I moved here to lovely Central PA, I was hired to teach a 1st/2nd multi-age class. At the time the expectation was that teachers would NOT switch for math...so that meant teaching both first and second grade math class at the same exact time. Well, there are some significant differences in those levels, and the only real solution was to embrace a math workshop! I have to admit that teaching math through the workshop model was relatively new for me at the time. But what choice did I have?! Now I'm grateful that I took the plunge.

This year, I still have a multi-age (3rd/4th) but we do switch for math. (Phwew!) This year I'm in charge of teaching 24 third graders (half are mine and half belong to a class down the hall for the rest of the day), and while there isn't the same huge spread of abilities I found when teaching both grades at once, there is still a pretty big range in the class. Luckily I've had a few years to practice how I like to run my Math centers.

If you're familiar with Guided Reading then you know how my math centers work! Basically I start the day with a whole group mini-lesson, and then I have four or so flexible groups that rotate through 4 centers daily. I see each group every day (but some groups see me longer than others) and later in the year my intern (super lucky to have a year-long student teacher, amiright?!) sees one group. The other groups are a math game and an independent practice group.

I've also started doing Interactive Math Journals with my kids (as of last year) and I've found that it is usually best to get that process started in whole group and then finish or check in during small groups. I've been using I'm Lovin' Lit's foldable templates to make all of my own foldables this year.

Preparing for math workshop can be a little time consuming, but I think it pays off in the end. Being able to cater to the needs of kids across the range is just so much better than shooting for the middle and ending up with one set of bored kids and another set of confused kids. 

So. Many. Worksheets!

Typically all four groups are working on the same skill (but at different levels of understanding) so planning my station and my intern's station is usually pretty simple. I'm basically working on the common core standards and using the scope and sequence that my district provides. We have a primary math resource, Math Expressions, that I find to be VERY worksheet heavy. Often my lessons will relate to lessons in the book, but are tailored to fit my teaching style. (aka not 4 worksheets a day per kiddo) Usually it involves some math manipulatives, marker boards, etc. But sometimes we even do cool stuff like make cookies, read a mentor text, or build something. (depending on the skill!)

It is pretty common for my independent practice station to include activities from the book, IXL or Xtra Math on the computers, a Math Literature Activity, or sometimes even good old fashioned math fact drills. Last year I really got into Task Cards, and this year I'm committing at least one math workshop station per unit to having my kids do those. I post them around the room in order to get the kids moving a bit.

Here's just a few of my math games in a bundle!

Probably my favorite part of Math Workshop would be the game center. I'm pretty sure that my kids like that one the most too! I won't list them all here, but I have made lots and lots of games for math workshop that can be found in my TpT store. Of course, the games change with every unit, and I usually try not to repeat the same games more than a couple times per unit (or the kids lose interest), so that means I need LOTS of them. 

I spend a lot of time in the first few weeks practicing how to handle the workshop, and getting kids to understand that some centers can whisper, some are silent, some can talk, etc. It's an ongoing process...haha.

I have really found that running a math workshop makes math FLY by. Every day I look at the clock and can't believe that my time for math is up. On the occasional day that we need to do a whole group assessment or for some reason can't do the workshop, I feel like math just drags on and on. 

Right now, my kids are working on multi-digit addition. This skill was introduced in 2nd grade but I've found that my kids really need a lot of practice with it to become fluent. I created a resource for myself that the kids have really loved doing. I call it Monster Math Battles. Basically, each day the students complete some multi-digit addition problems, and the monster that "wins the most rounds" (has the highest sum each round) moves on to challenge another monster another day! 

There's a whole bracket set up, and the monsters will fight all the way through a championship bout where the ultimate winner will be determined! That's a total of 31 fights. With 10 problems in each fight, the kids will have completed a total of 310 math problems and never complained about it once! That's potentially 31 days of math practice, but I give my kids 2 fights each day (because they asked me to!). 


I've had kids begging me to get the sheets for certain monster matches. Haha. The best part? My independent practice math center right now is nice and quiet, and planned for the next couple weeks! Fast finishers flip the page over and write a quick story explaining how the winner won their battle (they have to include some math talk in the story!)

Just 5 measly dollars!

My kids have liked it so much that I am planning to make another tournament of battles for when I introduce multiplication later in the year! Grab it for just 5 bucks! If you like the concept, but teach a different math skill, let me know and I'll make a tournament for that skill for my TpT store!

Like those monsters? My brother drew them, and the clip art is available in his TpT store! He's a high school English teacher, but an excellent artist as well! Go grab all 32 monsters in both color and black lines for just $8! Halloween is coming up after all!

Whew! This was a long post! If you stuck around this long, you deserve a prize! How about this PEMDAS Order of Operations poster that I made for my classroom?! Just click the picture to go download yours for free! Feedback is always appreciated! 

I have been so busy with school that I just haven't had the time to write about everything I want to write about! I've definitely hit that point where things are finally calming down though! It's hard to believe that Summer is turning into Fall already. I really hope we have a nice long Fall, and a short Winter! 

Check back soon because I have a couple more freebies I'm looking forward to sharing later! And as soon as I get my act together I'll be celebrating reaching 500 followers!