Naked Mole Rat

We read "Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed". As a fun activity at the end of the day I gave the kids a sheet I had made where they got to choose what the Naked Mole Rat is picking out to wear. Their ideas were so funny- they were anywhere from a bikini to a superhero costume to a wedding dress! Great imaginations!!

What Do Pigeons Dream Of?

More of Mo Willems!! The kids made predictions about how "The Pigeon Stays Up Late" ends by drawing their predictions out. They were really entertaining to see the connections they made in their drawings. After everyone finished their drawings each person stood up in front of the class and orally described their prediction and shared their drawing. Afterwards I shared the actual ending of the book and they were so suspenseful- very funny!

Daily Five

The school that I'm student teaching at is moving towards making Daily Five mandatory for the teachers to be using in their classrooms. With this push there are a lot of misconceptions that are coming up about this teaching/learning strategy and it has made me curious. So.. to strengthen my professional development and explore even deeper into something that I think is a great idea I just ordered the two books on Amazon. I compared prices with the producing company, Thriftbooks (which is an AMAZING site for ordering books by the way), and Amazon. Amazon seemed to be the cheapest in stock at this time so that's where I ordered. From the reviews that I read The Daily Five is a breakdown of how it works and gives a specific six week lesson start to get the daily five working in your classroom. The Cafe Book is the resource that goes hand-in-hand with daily five and models for teachers how to organize and display what they are using. I'm looking forward to getting this in the mail next week!

I also just found this and thought it was pretty neat. It looks like it's a SmartBoard interactive. Personally I would make it into a bulletin board and make the kid's pictures movable with push pins! Looks pretty cool to use with Daily 5 & Cafe

The End of the Lapbooks

As I was grading the student's Lapbook I was super excited to see how much effort some of the kids put into their book. It's so good to see when the kids give me back as much effort as I put in to planning something like this. Here is some of their work:

Here is a picture of the rubric I used to grade! Worked out really good with a score of 3,2,1. If the student didn't have anything for what was required in a particular box then they got no points for that portion.

Valentines Pictures

I wanted to get the kids pictures doing something fun for Valentines Day and have them hung up on their lockers before Parent-Teacher conferences. So today I got on the starboard and messed around for awhile and ended up making a background for the kids to stand infront of where hearts are "floating away" in a swirl like pattern. Then I had the kids stand infront of the StarBoard and they could either act like they were blowing the hearts, sneezing, or caughing. I added a little sparkle to the pictures and had them printed. I'm so thrilled with how cute they turned out:

The first one is of a kid sneezing and his face was priceless but of course had to cover it up!

I'm going to hang them on their lockers tomorrow after I laminate them! I also made a sign that says "Love & Germs are in the air" to go by the pictures! =]

Learning Centers

I love learning centers and have adapted this idea from my cooperating teacher from my clinical experience. I created this bulletin board to use when I want to use a learning center. The cards on the left can be erased and changed because they are laminated and make for easy rotations. The numbers are to represent that group's number & the rules on the right are the rules I came up with for the students to following during centers.

Today I also created a chart to help keep track of where the students are with their writing. We are still working on our persuasive writing pieces and I found it hard to keep track of who needed to be working on their writing and who had finished it. I think it's a great organizational tool not only for me, but also the students to look at and see where they're at. I'm also hoping that it will encourage the students who are slacking off to get their booties in gear when they see their peers moving forward on the chart.

Have I mentioned Mrs. Husted?

How crazy of me to have been spending time posting all these wonderful things I'm doing in the classroom and not give credit to the woman who's letting me do it all! Mrs. Husted is my cooperating teacher and she has been the best person I could have been paired up with. We are both learning things from one another and I couldn't have asked for a better mentor. She is so open for letting me try new things and is constantly telling me that I'll never discover what works for me if I don't try it! Besides her hospitality she has been spoiling me like crazy! She got me the lovely red border you can see around the door decoration on the post below. On top of that she got me heart shaped sticky-notes since we are constantly needing them && a whole pack of new sharpies!! I couldn't beleive it. THEN to top it all off, I came in on Friday morning and she had bought me a three-pack set of the Llama Llama books! Being assigned at this school and with this teacher has truly been a blessing!

Foldables

Like I said in my previous post, for each new ecosystem we learn about we will add a new foldable into our Lapbook. The first ecosystem(s) we learned about were the four types of forests.

This foldable was pretty easy. You take an 8.5x11 piece of regular paper and fold it nearly in half "hot dog style". You want to leave about a 1in margin on the end so that you'll have room to write "forests". Next, fold it in half "hamburger style" and half again the same way. When you unfold it, you should have four equal sized rectangle-like shapes. Have your students cut along the fold lines (*only on the top side of the page, the purpose is to create flaps, not four seperate rectangles). If it is cut right, there should be four seperate flaps which will represent the four different types of forests. I had students write the type of forest on the bottom lip of the flap and draw what the forest looks like on the outside. Then when you open the flap is the notes that we took on that forest.

Ecosystems Lapbook

The first subject I got to take over for my student teaching experience was Science. I wanted to deliver the information to them differently than what I had observed they'd been doing to see if it helped them remember the information better. I created an "Ecosystem Lapbook" where each student could store the important notes on each ecosystem as we learned about them. I made an example for the students to refer to as we assemble it. Here is the cover of mine:

The chapter in the book covers four types of forests, the desert, grasslands, and fresh/salt water ecosystems. For each ecosystem I designed a foldable that the students would use to record their notes. The purpose of doing this was so that the students could refer to the lapbook to know what to study for, for the formal assessment. 



At the end of the chapter the lapbooks will be collected to be checked and make sure each student was being responsible and doing what they were supposed to be doing and then returned so they can use them for studying. I created a rubric for the lapbook and it is here, if you are interested in using it!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124085145/Lapbook-Grading-Rubric

Pigeon Adjectives

To start the Mo Willems unit I showed the kids a YouTube video of an animated "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus". I would have loved to read the book to the kids but I didn't have this book with me that day so I went to the dear old internet and found it animated. The best thing about reading the book is having the students tell the Pigeon "NO!" each time he asks if he can drive the bus. So to improvise I told the kids ahead of time that if the Pigeon asks if he can drive the bus they have to tell him no.

The kids interacted so well with the video and they loved watching it on the StarBoard. They wanted to watch it again, but we didn't have time. After the video we talked about how the Pigeon was trying to use persuasion to try and get the reader to let him drive the bus. We are also writing a Valentine's persuasive piece so it was nice to be able to make that connection.
During the week we had been working on adjectives. I thought it would be perfect to take what we were learning and connect it to the Pigeon. I created up a real quick worksheet on Microsoft Word that had a picture of the pigeon with a thought bubble above his head and printed it off. The kids had to come up with a question the Pigeon would be asking in the bubble. Then around the Pigeon they had to come up with 10 adjectives that would describe the Pigeon that they just saw in the video. Here is the finished product:

Mo Willems!!!

I absolutely LOVE Mo Willems books AND since his birthday is February 11th, what better way to celebrate his birthday than doing an author's study on him this month! To get the students interested in Mo Willems & his characters, I first drew, colored, and laminated the popular characters from his books and then hung them up around the water fountain outside our room.

 After putting the characters up and seeing the kids interest in them, I rushed to the public library that night and checked out all their Mo Willems books. (Probably about 30 in total) I put a few books aside that I wanted to use in lessons that way the students wouldn't be too familiar with it when I introduced it. The rest of the books went on the class display shelf where the kids could check them out in their free time.

I was excited the first day I brought the books in to see how excited the kids were in the books. All day they were rushing to finish what they had to get done so they could read a Mo Willems books. The best part was that students were talking about Mo Willems and telling their peers what book they should go read next.

Raining Hearts

To get in the moode for Valentine's Day I read the book, "The Day it Rained Hearts".

The book is a little under level for third grade but because I read it aloud to them I was able to ask them comprehension questions and encourage them to make connections throughout. I also had them make inferences at the very end of the story. (If you read it you will understand the connections). After reading the story I decorated the classroom door for Valentines to match the door. In addition to, the kids all decorated their own umbrella. When we had some free time, I pulled the kids aside and took everyone's picture acting like they were flying away on an umbrella. With a little editing on Microsoft 2010 I cropped the kids' pictures and we able to create these when I attached the umbrellas:

 This is just the backs of the ceiling hangings. I turned them around to protect the identity of the kids. 



Inspiring Better Writing!

I found this idea on Pinterest and recreated it for my own. We are working on a lot of writing lately, especially preparing for ISAT testing, so I made this to help the kids remember all the small, but important, parts of writing.