Final Project

        Ulysses S. Grant                                                                Mary Todd Lincoln

                 Al Capone                                                                    Miles Davis


My final project before I left was having the students research and create a model of a famous person that was related to Illinois's history at point or another. I was so thrilled with how the models turned out! They were so cute and I was so happy that they were excited to share them with the class.
In addition to their model, they had been using the iPads to do research about their person for two weeks on www.wikipedia.com and www.encyclopedia.com. After finishing up their research they then had to turn their research into a paper with an introduction, detailed facts, and a conclusion. Then they all took turns giving an oral presentation to the class. The whole project ended up being 40 points, and an additional 10 points where they did a peer-assessment of four students from the class.
(P.S. the darling two people to my left are John Dewey and Joseph Smith!)

IL Note Taking

Their last social studies unit was on Illinois. To help prepare for their test I had the kids work in small groups and go back through the unit and choose what they thought was important from what we covered and write it down on their Illinois-shaped note card. I took points for how well they worked together in their group to get the notes collected as well as the amount of information they wrote down that they found important.
I ended up letting them pull out their note card during the last five minutes of their test to check their answers or look up something they were unsure of. For the responsible students who listened and kept this in a safe place, it paid off.

Fraction Hopscotch

Equivalent fractions isn't something that is hit on really heavy in third grade but it is definitely something that the kids were seeing now and again and was on MAP testing so I wanted to find a way to make them more familiar with fractions that were equivalent and what that meant. One of the ways I did that was by creating a Fraction Hopscotch in the back of the room that they could play on. I just used regular masking tape and put it down while they were in Music one day (so took about 30 minutes). To play they through a bean bag and wherever it landed they had to hop over that fraction while saying it and the other ones that were equivalent to it.
I was unsure if this was going to actually help but wanted to try it and it paid off the other day... We were working on morning work and equivalent fractions came up in a problem and one of the girls raised her hand and told the fraction and I asked her if she looked at the hopscotch board and she said no, she just remembered from playing it the day before!! Ah, the thrills of being a teacher =]

Personification Assessment

After reading Our Tree, Steve (illustrated by David Cantrow) we discussed personification and when/where we see it at. I showed the video http://youtu.be/n2Gzk-8J-Y4 from Beauty and the Beast that I found on YouTube that really illustrates a typical way that we see personification.
Then I laid out pictures of animals that I had found in magazines and cut out and called table groups back one at a time and let each student choose an animal. They had to take their picture and give their animal human characteristics by completing the rest of the picture on a white sheet of paper. Above are two of the best ones that were turned in. They were so funny the ideas that the kids came up with.

Alternative Assessment

                              Similes & Metaphors Test
We spent about two weeks reviewing and discussing similes and metaphors and I wanted to assess the students but didn't want to give a standard written test to do so. Soo, instead I came up with this:
Each student got a blank sheet of paper. On the back they had to come up with four things about them, five for a bonus point. They had to use at least two similes and two metaphors to describe their eyes, nose, lips, and hair (their cheeks were extra credit). Then, instead of actually drawing themselves, they had to draw their portrait with the similes and metaphors they had described themselves illustrated in the picture.
Now, I chose not to tell my kids that this was a test because they tend to freak out. After they turned them in I asked them if they thought it was easy or hard and majority said easy and then I told them it was a test and explained why I didn't tell them.

Fruit Ninjas

Since we started our unit on fractions I tried to think of a creative way that I could incorporate that into the door decoration. Some of the kids that day were acting like ninjas so I thought about Fruit Ninja and the next day I had a new door decoration! I found the fruit pieces at Dollar Tree (for $1!) and laminated them. Then cut them up into fractional pieces and labeled them. Next I used "Face in Hole" app that I downloaded on my cell phone. I took a picture of all the kids and uploaded their face into a Lego Ninja body I found on the app. I printed them off and put it all together on the door. The kids were cracking up at their ninja-selves. 

Idioms

After learning about similes and metaphors we discussed idioms because some similes and metaphors can be idioms. Then we looked up all different types of idioms that talk about food and I assigned each kid to one of them. What they had to do was draw their food idiom on a paper plate and then describe what it really means in their "napkin", aka folder piece of paper.
Then to display it, I got a table cloth from the Dollar Tree (for a $1) and hung them up in the hallway.

Rocket Math Division

We have started Rocket Math in Division and I wanted to create a way to keep track of where students were at. Each Friday we update this and I move students up to the letter they are on. Not only is it easier on me, but the kids really enjoy seeing where everyone else is. It creates a little bit of a competition and makes them worker hard to move up. I have also seen a lot of positive feedback when students get a lot higher than everyone else, their classmates will clap or cheer for them.

Metaphors & Poems

April has definitely proven that it is the rainy month for central Illinois. It's kind of hard to see because it was so dark outside and light in the room, but the top of the picture has paint strips taped up in a rainbow-like form and then down below are raindrops that have poems on them.

For the metaphors lesson I went to Lowes and got 23 different colored paint strips for free! Then each kid chose a color that they wanted and they had to come up with three (because there's three boxes on each paint strip) metaphors that describe that color.

For the rain drop poems, we read "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by David Cantrow. We talked about the rhythm that the book has and how the words rhyme in the story. Then we made a list of rhyming words that are associated with rain such as fella & umbrella, rain & strain & drain, etc. Afterwards, each kid came up with their own poem (they had to have four lines total) following the same rhythm as the story; however, there's started off saying "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More, No More"

Music

Music is something that I love to listen to all the time while working on things around the house or at school. So, while the kids are working on morning work or small tasks I will play music in the classroom too. I love PANDORA Radio because it is free and you can set-up your own stations how you like them. The station that I play includes artists like The Temptations, John Mayer, The Fray, Colbie Calliet, Adele, etc. I always "like" songs that are what I'm looking for and then Pandora creates more songs in that genre for my station. I have even played music during testing, however I change the station to classical music. If you type in "The Piano Brothers" they are a real good classical music station to listen to and they play popular pop songs too.

Flying Away with Fractions

 

To start discussing fractions I created an anchor chart for the new information we were learning to leave up around the room for the kids to refer to when needed. What we discussed was how to write a fraction, numerator and denominator, what a fraction can look like, equal parts, and mixed fractions. After we discussed the different ways fractions can be represented each student created their own fractional kite. They were each given a piece of paper telling them what fractional part of their kite had to be zig-zags, swirls, polka-dots, and stripes. Then they could design their kite anyway they wanted as long as they represented their design correctly as a fractional part of the whole kite.
(Examples of finished work are below)

David Cantrow & Solar System

I love bringing out different authors and presenting a collection of their books to the students. This time however, instead of doing an author I did an illustrator, David Cantrow. He is an awesome illustrator and his illustrations keep the kids entertained and always searching for the "hidden pictures" when we read a new book we talked about the repeating patterns we noticed in his work and how that affected the story.
I always try to integrate what we're learning into the books that I have out on the shelf for the month so here's what I was able to use with David Cantrow:

"Our Tree Named Steve"  was used to discuss personification. The reading teacher also used this book while we were discussing David Cantrow to review on background knowledge and also she focused on the focus of the illustrations on each page that David Cantrow did.







"The Long, Long, Letter" I used to discuss hyperboles and exaggeration. While reading the book I had the kids shout out "hyperbole" if they heard one in the book.







 I used "I Wanna Iguana" at the beginning of the quarter to introduced persuasion and then we later wrote a persuasive paper for Valentines Day. (Check back in February for my full discussion of that project)




 I also had out books on the Solar System for the kids to check out. Again I was surprised at how excited they were to learn about the planets and what's in our Solar System. They were constantly checking the books out and trading with friends around the room. They also acted as an aid when students were doing research for their power points on a planet they chose.

The Solar System

When we returned from Spring Break we stared the new unit on the Solar System in Science. It was nice to have the week off because I was able to take the time and make the planets! I made them out of home made paste and newspaper and then painted them all. I raffled them off at the end of the unit and gave them away to the kids to take home. I set them up in the classroom as they appear in the Solar System, with the sun in the middle and all the planets rotating around them and YES, I included Pluto, you can see him on the far left side! =]
The picture to the right is one a student make during our planet unit. She spent a lot of time on it so I hung it up on the window of the door.

Because the solar system is something that is covered in second grade what I decided to do was create a KWL chart before reading about the solar system so I would know what the students are familiar with and what we can skim over and the things that we needed to spend extra time on. It also allowed them to ask questions they were curious about with the planets. Their curiosity ranged from aliens to asteroids and to the stars. I was really surprised to see how excited and interested they were for this subject.

Catching Up!

Like most of you could probably relate, teaching has taken over my time and I have forgotten to keep updating my blog. We have done a ton of awesome things in the last month so bare with me as I upload pictures to share them!

Earth Day with The Lorax

Our school is celebrating Earth Day with all day events on the 19th. To prepare for Earth Day, we watched an online reading of The Lorax on YouTube and discussed what the message in the story was about. We then created a list of ways that people could help make our Earth better. Then the students wrote down if they were the Lorax what they would do to help preserve the Earth. Then they cut out a mustache and eyebrows and I tapped them onto a picture of each student and hung them on their lockers. They turned out pretty cute in the end! 

Similes

We started working on similes and metaphors this week. For the similes lesson I had students first understand what a simile is by giving a definition of it and having them brainstorm phrases using "like" or "as" that could be similes. After they understood what a simile was, I put up an anchor chart with the title "The Pop Rocks Exploded..." on the board. I handed out a small amount of pop rocks to each student and at the same time they all put them in their mouths. After the rocks had stopped popping, we came up with similes that described how the similes exploded in their mouths. Here are some of the things they came up with:

After the whole-group instruction  I broke up the class up into small groups and each group got their own poster with a saying on it. They had to finish the saying using a simile to explain the subject on their poster. They came up with some pretty good expressions!

Phases of the Moon!

We're finishing up our lesson on the solar system and the phases of the moon are the last chapter. For a hands on activity I bought generic Oreo cookies from Wal-Mart and gave each student 8 cookies (8 phases of the moon). While we talked about the phase of the moon from the textbook the kids got to bite off the parts of the top cookie to make it look like that phase of the moon. After the lesson I went around and checked everyone's phases to make sure they were correct and then they got to eat them for snack.

Disney World Letters

About a month ago all of the kids wrote letters to their favorite Disney World character so we could get practice writing letters. They've been anxious ever since about getting a reply and we finally got one yesterday!! They sent the whole class back this letter:

Then on top of that, each child got their own autographed post card. One was all the Disney Princesses and the other was all the Mickey characters. I didn't get a picture of the Princesses before the kids left but here is the Mickey ones. I also posted a picture of the address to Disney if this is something your class would be interested in doing!

Spring Door

Wow! When you start teaching you really have no down time so it took me literally two weeks to get the picket fence up but now the door is totally done! The tree used to be twisted paper and it made it look 3D (was pretty cool) but unfortunately we don't have strong enough tape to keep it up so it was a constant battle to keep it up so I just redid it.

Classroom Organizer

Have you ever seen this resource? It's really cool and I love it! You use the barcode scanner on your phone, tablet, or iPod to scan the barcode on the back of a book and it instantly adds it to an online library where you can look up and manager the books in your classroom. I know a lot of teachers who spent time typing up all of the books they have in their room but this is SO much faster!
This can also be used in the class for students to check out your books if you need a library management system! I highly recommend it. It took about two hours for me to get all my books in but now it's really great because anytime I get new books it only takes a few seconds to add them to my account.

http://classroom.booksource.com/

The Water Cycle

In Science we are currently learning about the water cycle which will lead into our next chapter on weather. I wanted to create a reference for students to be able to look at throughout the day to remind them what we had learned so far. I created the background and hung it by the classroom door. Then each time we learned one of the new vocabulary words we added it to the picture where it would go. I used this as a tool when we were waiting in line to leave for our specials and asked students the vocabulary words that were posted on the window at that time. Then because it had been there throughout the whole chapter, when we took our quiz the students were able to refer to it during it. The definitions aren't posted anywhere near it so it was more of a visual representation to help students remember and recall.

Pesk in My Desk!

To go along with our Dr. Seuss theme we read "There's a Wocket in my Pocket". After reading the story the kids had to create a creature that was in their desk. They had to give it a name that rhymed with desk and then draw their creature in the desk. In addition too, we were currently learning about adverbs so to join the two together the kids had to create four short sentences that used adverbs in a sentence about their new creatures. Here are some examples:

Rocking ISAT!

My words of encouragement for the kids as they enter the room!

Measure Up!

We are wrapping up our measuring chapter in Math and I wanted to do some learning centers as a last assessment to see what they students get and what they're struggling with so I know what needs to be retaught before we take a test. Our chapter was on measurement including centimeters, inches, meters, millimeters, pounds, ounces, grams, kilograms. Then we were also starting the next chapter in advance so that the students would be familiar with the plane and 3D shapes on ISAT this week. 

We had five group:

Group 1: did measuring with grams (first set of pictures)

Group 2: measuring to the nearest inch/ft (last picture)

Group 3: liquid measurement 

Group 4: Quilt Quest- they built shapes out of the plane geometrical shapes they just learned about

Group 5: iPad's on a math app for 3rd grade