Learning Snapshots

I wish more of my day was spent teaching students, or preparing to teach students, rather than filling out paperwork.

Nevertheless, this  is the career I signed up for.  Here are some snapshots of our learning lately.

Poetry Mini-Unit

We've been working on different types of literature (RL 5.5).  Students are quite familiar with the components of novels, enjoy reader's theater, but tend to avoid poetry like the plague.  I get it. I don't actively seek out poetry to read during my free time either.

We spent a few days on reader's theater in small groups.  I selected a passage about Mount St. Helens to tie in with our volcano unit (more on that later) and took the assignment as a speaking grade.

They also practiced taking portions of their novels and turning it into reader's theater scripts.

In doing so, students had to analyze what parts would be explicitly stated by the characters, what information would be presented in stage directions, and what parts might be eliminated.

But since poetry is a major deficit for many of my students, we decided as a planning team that this needed to be addressed.  With poetry, we'll discuss summarizing, layout (stanzas, lines), figurative language, and poetic elements.  Coincidentally, February is also poetry month, so we look like we're totally on top of things!

We started with a class guided poem on World of a Blossom, which actually sparked a forty minute conversation on symbolism (I budgeted twenty, tops).  They glue the poem into their notebooks, then practice annotating their thinking.  We worked on identifying types of figurative language before talking about what the flowers might represent.

I modified this lesson from Jefferson County's long range ELA plans, available {here}.  I taught their unit with fidelity a few years ago and really enjoyed their pacing.  Want just the poem? It's page 29 in the PDF.

Some of mine are experimenting with color-coding their notes.  As a teacher, I allow them this flexibility because fifth grade is such a crucial time for them to develop study skills that work for them.  I've had this discussion a few times with fellow teachers, but hold true to my belief that their notebooks are for them. As long as they have the basic requirements, they can annotate however they'd like.  We practice multiple strategies in the first half of the year, but the second semester means I let them choose how they take notes.  It helps get them ready for middle school where they'll take ownership of their learning.

From there, we did some partner and table reads.  I found a book in our school library about states and poems.  I selected some from the New England region to tie in with our geography unit.  As a class, we read about light houses.  As a table, they found alliteration in a poem about Gulls and Buoys.  With partners, they read about the Islands off of Boston Harbor (complete with pirates).

Surprisingly, they're really enjoying it! We spent some time earlier in the year reading The Raven, which they liked.  We'll be trying some colonial poems next, reading about Moana Loa, and ending with New Colossus.  (Timely, right?)

Project Based Learning

With our project-based learning, we ended our unit on catapults and moved into colonial America (which ties in with our social studies plans).  I'm so fortunate to get to work with such an awesome GATE specialist who co-plans and ties her standards in with what we're teaching.  

They're doing a five class period mock simulation of Jamestown and the starving time.  Each group has one leader (John Smith) that has to decide how the money is spent and which building tasks they'll complete during each given class period (season).  When the whole group works together on one task, it often leads to a lot of fighting.  It's interesting to watch which groups are able to divide up the work load to accomplish more during each season.

We also made sure to not select GATE students to be the group leaders.

Here a group is working on building their palisade, to protect Jamestown from wild animals and hostile natives.

Landforms

We also finished up a mini-unit on volcano formation.

A fellow teacher and Hawaiian native came in to talk about Hawaiian culture.  One of her friends sent us a box of goodies from the Hawaiian Research labs on active volcanoes.  We spent time exploring topographic maps of Mauna Loa and watched several Discovery Ed video clips.


We've explored equivalent fractions, fractions on a number line, adding and subtracting fractions.  Once again, color coding the fractional amounts is a helpful strategy for many students.  We use colored pencils quite often in math these days.

We have reviewed with bingo in small groups:

This game was part of an old {donorschoose} project and is still loved by students years later.  Thank you again to friends, family, and strangers who continue to support my students and their learning.


Up next?

This week brings the 100th day of school, Valentine's day and the class party, and getting ready to go to the neighboring middle school for a tour.

#yeareightisgreat

Thankful November, day 3: Scholastic Book Orders

Day three: Scholastic Book Orders

Today, I am thankful for Scholastic Book Orders.

These provide such a great opportunity for my students.  Most months, certain books are $1.  Yes, a buck for a book.  Last month I snagged another copy of The Lightning Thief and a collection of poems by Edgar Allen Poe for a dollar a piece.  Somehow, my nine copies of The Lightning Thief are all checked out and we just read The Raven, so this was another natural purchase.

Even the books that aren't a dollar are much more discounted than stores such as Target, Barnes and Noble, or Costco.   I appreciate the significant savings, as do my students' families.

What's even better? Every order I place earns me points which I can then use on free books to build my classroom library.

Each order also has freebies for students who order, which in turn encourages reading.  

I try to place an order each time in addition to my students' orders.  Generally a $50 order will give me $10 in free books AND points for future purchases.


Plus, sometimes there's a cool Avengers themed reading poster which obviously will be proudly displayed in my classroom.

I'm thankful for Scholastic and their book orders because they offer low cost options to get books in students' hands.

I'm also thankful that my latest scholastic order should arrive this week!

The Raven, round 2

Last year, we did the Raven with students.  The lesson went fairly well, but I made some tweaks for round two.

This year, we did the entire lesson in 1 day instead of 3.  

In my district, Nevada day & Halloween fall on the same day, so the kids didn't have school on the 31st.  We celebrated on the 30th instead.  Those same lucky kids have off next Monday AND Tuesday because teachers have staff development.  I'd love a five day weekend too, but I'll settle for three.

Since the day before Halloween and their epic weekend can be a tad challenging behavior wise (and their costumes don't help!), I wanted a hands-on, engaging task before their costume parade.

I read the first stanza of the Raven after we reviewed elements of poetry.  They then did a close read on the rest of the poem with their neighbors and I think they did a great job!

We then watched two different video clips on Teacher tube.  We compared and contrasted the video clips before talking about the multimedia elements that contributed to the video's meaning.  

They had a great time doing this grade-appropriate Halloween activity!

The Raven

We've been working on poetry, so in honor of Halloween, we read Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

I read the first stanza to them and they listened for alliteration.

Then, we watched two videos on teacher tube. 

The first was with an actor (Christopher Walkin?) reading aloud the poem with spooky sound effects.  The first video did a great job at establishing an eerie mood, similar to the true intention of Poe.

The second was the animated Simpson's version:

Students took notes on the video:

Then compared and contrasted the multimedia elements in the presentations.

They had a great time with the poems :)

Themes & Poetry

This week we are working on poetry.  Specifically, we're reviewing text structure, figurative language, theme and summarizing a poem.  We're also working collaboratively to summarize the stanzas, identify characters' feelings, locate shifts in mood and practice note taking on the text to become more engaged readers.

We used the poem Casey at the Bat this week and broke it up into a 3 day unit.  The first day was the "I do" where I modeled the skills we're working on, the second day we did as a class and the third day they did part with a partner and the rest for homework.

Then I re-read the entire poem, thus modeling the importance of re-reading for information.  We then referred to our theme chart:

(You can grab it here as part of a TpT bundle!)

We did Casey at the Bat not only because it's a recommended text, but it's also because I'm a Boston Red Sox Fan :)

Today, in honor of Halloween, we are doing the same process with Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

I know it will be a little tricky for some students, but it's a fun challenge and it's festive!

In small groups today, we're also trying a new collaborative strategy for writing a constructed response.  Since many of them have finished their first novel, we are going to look for the theme.

I made them a guide for their CRs:

They're going to write independently on a post-it today and tomorrow combine 3 or 4 people's post-its into one group response. I'm excited to give this new strategy a try!

Next, here's a student working on our affix sort, a new process I'm trying this week.

We did Wednesday's activity yesterday of sorting affixes.

You can download your own copy here!

We also have our new centers ready to go!