Hooray!

I am so excited to finally know who the lucky Room 13 kids are going to be next year!  We are going to have so much fun and learn so many amazing things.  Even though it means the end of summer vacation, I can't wait to get back to school and get started!  

Summer camp just ended, so the custodians (including the new West custodian - Mr. Arujo) are working really hard to get the classrooms cleaned up so that the teachers can get them ready.  In the meantime, I am doing some projects at home that I can bring to school for this year.  

One thing that I really wanted to have ready this year was a set of really nice, reusable name tags since we have so many new teachers this year.  I got some inspiration from the web and decided to make a nice place to display them as well.  

It started with a plain cork-board.  I planned to paint it blue or grey or something dull like that... but then I found green glitter paint!  How is a person supposed to pass up glitter paint?

I also enjoy love polka dots, so I found some ribbon covered with them to hang the names from.  

After that I made name tags up on the computer.  I used some new fonts and borders I downloaded from this blog.  I love how easy they all are to read.  

I happen to think that this is going to look totally fabulous in my room this year, right under the phone.  That way when we go to specials for the first few weeks, go on field trips, or have a substitute, names won't be an issue.  Besides, the sparkles just make me smile!

Mini-Lessons

They have always been one of the main things in my teaching that I felt I needed to improve.  I always set out with the best of intentions to keep it simple, direct, and to the point... and yet they would end up taking 20-30 minutes.  About half way through this past year I realized that it wasn't really always me talking too much - it was the kids.  I just didn't know how to keep them engaged, but not let them take over the discussion.  I tried a lot of things - scripting my mini-lessons out, setting a timer, etc.  None of it really worked.

That's why I was so excited to have the chance to work in some mini-lessons during the nonfiction blogging club that I am co-running at our summer camp.  Being able to do the same mini-lesson four times over the course of a day has really helped me get the timing down and find that perfect balance of student interaction/engagement.  

They certainly weren't incredibly original topics for mini-lessons, but they helped my find my rhythm that I am excited to transfer into my classroom this year.  This is particularly important for me as I am going to try to implement Daily 5, which relies so heavily on mini-lessons for teaching strategies and procedures.  Here's what I did:

Monday:
I read them them just a couple pages of A-Z Brazil and as I mentioned in a previous post, we listed "What good readers think about." I put them up on a chart that we referred to for the rest of the week when I was reading aloud or when I was chatting with them about what they were reading.  I also used this book to show them that they don't always have to read the whole book when reading nonfiction - they can just pick parts that interest them.

Tuesday:
Today's mini-lesson was about wrapping up their blogs with an opinion statement.  To start we talked about all the ways we could describe a book if we liked it.  Then we made a list of words we might use if we didn't like it.  After that I told them that there was a secret word that really was the most important when you write your opinion and I wrote "because" in really big letters on the bottom of the chart.  

Then I read them the essay from the beginning of one of my old Zoobook magazines about Bats.  It was all about how most people think bats are scary or gross but how they really are helpful to people.  After I read it I had 2 or 3 kids make opinion statements, making sure they included "because" and a reason that made sense. 

Wednesday:
We looked at nonfiction text features - all those parts of nonfiction books that aren't usually a part of fiction.  For this I just passed out a book to each kid that they could flip through (making sure they all had lots of features).  Then we listed all the things we found in the book and talked about what they were used for.  

After we made the list I gave them examples of how you could write about using these features in their blog.
     "I used the Table of Contents to find the part about the flag because I wanted to see what it looks like."
    "The glossary helped me figure out what erosion means."

I also encouraged them to try to use labels or captions in their illustration for the day (and lots of them did!)

Thursday:
We talked about the strategy that I called "Read*Think*Write."  I read them the first few pages of First Garden by Robbing Gourley, which is about Michelle Obama's decision to plant the big vegetable garden at the White House.  This lesson was definitely inspired by the "Check for Understanding" comprehension strategy from the CAFE book by The Sisters.  Very simply, I read them a page and very intentionally put the book down.  We talked about what we thought was interesting or important from that page.  Then we turned it into a sentence or two on the chart.  The focus was really on thinking at the end of each page and then writing our own words, not copying from the book. 

My favorite moment was when one of my soon-to-be fourth graders said excitedly "All we need to do is add an opinion and it would make a great book-blog!"  Yay! She remembered!

Summer Blogging

Since it's the big thing that I am doing with kids this summer, I thought I would post a few more details about the "nonfiction blogs" that we've been working on.  I showed this space to the kiddos as an example of what a real blog is and they thought it was pretty cool.  Because it's a camp, we do this over the course of a week, with them doing a blog entry each day.  In my class, I plan to do it once a week.  

We have about an hour and a quarter with each group.

We all started with an "About the Blogger" page because it was something they could do without a lot of instruction.  I showed them the About the Author section in a few books to get them on the right track.  Then I did a quick model on the board with just a couple of sentences.  With the Olympics on, many of them chose to write about favorite sports. 


Then I did a mini-lesson.  Today's was about things good readers think about when they are reading.  I read a small section of a book and then the kids noticed things I was doing while I read.  The kids came up with a list that included 

• deciding which facts were the most interesting or important
• making connections (thinking "this reminds me of...")
• visualizing/making mental images
• comparing and contrasting information
• making predictions

Then the kids get to choose a book and start to read.  I have all my nonfiction books grouped by topic so the kids can find something that really grabs their interest. 

Either as they read, or when they finish, they take some time to write about what they have read.  They are encouraged to write about all the smart reading they did (from the list above), but most of them start out by just writing interesting facts.  Here are pictures of the blank forms that they use for their blog.  The link is in the previous post (**if the link doesn't work, try closing the window and clicking the link again... not sure why but that seems to be what works**).                            That's pretty much how the first day goes.

Tomorrow they will start their day by reading each other's posts.  The back of the page has spaces for them to write their comments.  They create a symbol for the box on the left and then write their comment. The kids are encouraged to write meaningful comments, to avoid the "I like" syndrome.  I post the chart below (sorry it's blurry) and go over it with the kids pretty much every time they make comments.

I will wrap up with just a couple examples of completed blog entries by the kids.  Thanks for reading!

Welcome!

Welcome to Room 13, a 4th grade classroom at the West! 

This space will be used to keep the kids and families updated on what's going on at school.  I will also (hopefully) be posting all sorts of fun teaching things to share with all the fabulous teachers out there.  


I've spent my summer taking classes and teaching summer camp.  I've learned lots of great things, gotten great ideas, and had a lot of fun.  


At summer camp, Mrs. Higgins and I are working on a Nonfiction Blogging Club that is going really well.  The kids get to research a topic of their choice and read all about it.  Then they write a "blog" about what they have read and their pod-mates can write them comments.  Because of limited access to the computer lab, so far all of our "blogs" have been done on paper, but maybe someday we will get to type them up.  I am still figuring out this format, but I think this link will get you a template.


As a teacher, I have to admit I have no idea what I did before Pinterest!  How did I know how to decorate my room or what to teach??  As I am trying to bring my classroom more into the 21st century (a blog, twitter, etc.) I was so excited when I saw an adorable idea for a job chart yesterday on twitter.  I immediately went out, got supplies, and made it!  I love it!!

I bet it will look even better on the wall in my classroom than it does on my living room floor.  The "apps" are library pockets and the kids will each have an index card with their name at the top that will slide into the pocket.  It just makes me smile!