Poet-Tree: Pun Completely Intended

The holidays are fast approaching in our classroom! Since all of our fall activities have come and gone, it was time to bring in some fresh and new holiday spirit. I present you.....drumroll please...... our "Poet-Trees".

Our Poet-Trees just happen to be a few very-well priced 3 foot Christmas trees that were recently picked up from Target. The trees were quite barren and needed a bit of pizzaz. Some good ol' 5th and 6th grade educational pizzaz. Isn't that the best kind?

I gave each student a large ornament print-out. I asked the students to research and find a famous poet and a poem that he or she wrote. I specified a list of poets that I wanted my students to research only because I know my students know plenty about Dr. Seuss and other classroom favorites. I wanted them to step out of their comfort zone a bit and take a look at other classics.

After each student picked their poem, they signed up for a day to present their poem to the class. Before their presentation day they needed to type the poem, decorate their ornament, and get at least three signatures saying that they had recited their poem to an audience. This was wonderful because each listener had an opportunity to give comments and shape them into better public speakers.

Let my tell you I was quite impressed with my students! When it came time for them to present, they got up there with confidence and recited some classics. I love that this activity asked them to research poets and really take some time to understand the poem that they wrote. Many of my students came up with more than one favorite and had a hard time deciding. It has been great fun listening to them in class!

Thanksgiving Festivities

Ahh.... so I do realize that this post is a bit late on the arrival. However, better late than never, right? I have been so incredibly busy with student teaching winding down that I have not had a second to sit down and blog. I pinky promise that I will be more diligent now that I have more time. I will.

Anyway, Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago. In my class I made it a fun-filled educational day. I am a firm believer that education on the day before Thanksgiving break is vital. As educators in todays world, we don't have a day to spare on the curriculum calendar. I packed the day full with fun activities, math games, and even a Black-Friday debate. The topic was " How early is too early when opening stores on Black Friday?" My students were FILLED with all sorts of ideas about the topics. We had a rather heated debate and I think that they raised some wonderful points! They were begging me to stay inside for recess to continue the discussion. 

Who says learning on the day before break can't be fun?!

In the morning I had a treat waiting on the students desk when they came in. I created rice krispie treat turkeys' for the students and allowed them to munch on them while they were completing their bell work. They were impressed by my turkey creations! Thats exactly why I love my kiddos, they appreciate all of the hard work I put into it. Even if my turkeys do come out looking a little less-than-turkey-like. 

(Did I mention I made 60 of them?!)

In the sprit of Thanksgiving, we also created "The Diary of Plymouth Rock". I read the book, Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock to my class. The book tells about the very interesting life of plymouth Rock. We learned how many times the rock was moved, the many places it was moved, the various monuments that were built to enclose the rock, and even its current resting place. The students were truly enthralled with this book. I was also impressed to learn so much about the history of such a important artifact!

We then created our own diary of the rock. I asked the students to complete a diary entry for the rock. They were asked to fill in the dates (located in the book) for the 6 important events in the rocks life. We have really been focusing on the voice trait, so the students were asked to use strong voice since the diary entry was from the rocks point of view. They turned out wonderfully! I decided to create a class book out of all of the wonderful entries.

Those are some of our Thanksgiving festivities, what are yours?

Pet Rock Persuasive Writing

I believe that a huge part of a students learning in school is linked directly to the experiences that they have. Some of the best teachers that I had as a student still stick out in my memory today.

We recently ended a very memorable unit in our class. The students created their very own pet rock. They created a house, a name, a personality, and even a Halloween costume for their lovable friend. Let me tell you.... they had so much fun with it.

Here is a home that one of my students created... completely furnished!

Our pet rocks lived with us in our room for about two weeks. In this time, the students were working on a persuasive writing unit. I asked them to write an essay convincing their audience that a pet rock was the best pet to own. After all, they are quite easy to care for! It was easy of the students to convince others that a pet rock was the best pet because they had become quite connected to them.

We worked as a class to brainstorm ideas, learn the format, and then write our very own essay. At the end of the unit, the students were able to do a photo shoot with their pet rock to add to the published version of their final copy. 

Since the rocks lived in our rooms for so long, we were able to do a lot with them. We did journal prompts, and even wrote them letters explaining what was happening in our room. The students loved the experience of having a pet rock. I created a "pet rock daycare" so that our friends could be well cared for while we were busy learning. It was a great way to avoid distraction with the rocks. 

It was a wonderful unit and a wonderful experience. I have to admit, I was a bit sad to see them go home this week!

Hamburger Paragraphs

We have been hard at work in writing this week. We have been working on our pet rock persuasive essays. I can't wait to share more about this unit with you. My student's are LOVING it.

I wanted to focus in on the creation of a "perfect paragraph"; a topic sentence, 3 details, and a clincher sentence. I really wanted them to take the time to understand how to construct this paragraph. I decided to turn it into a mini project.

We created hamburger paragraphs. What good is a hamburger without all the goodies inside of it? If you stopped by your favorite burger restaurant and they plopped down nothing but a bun on your plate, you would be pretty disappointed wouldn't you? I know I would and my students agreed. In the same respect, A burger without a bun is nearly impossible to hold together and get a good taste of. This very same idea is true in writing. I love that my smarties could relate so well to this concept. 

I had them write a sentence of their paragraph on each part of the burger. The topic sentence on the top bun, the details in the middles, and the closing sentence on the bottom bun. The results were wonderful (and adorable)!

Veterans Day

It is so important that students learn to reflect on the things that people have done to make their life what it is today. Veterans day is the perfect day to do that. 

I run Community Service Club at our school. We have students from 1st grade all the way up to 6th grade in the club. We took the day and gave back to the people who worked so hard to protect us. We read an article, wrote letters to give to a local veterans home, and then created this masterpiece!

My students were so excited to create this! My older members worked hard at cutting out everyones hands, while my littlest raced their hands and glued them on to the flag. 

I am thrilled with how this turned out and I plan to donate it to a local veterans home after it has visited our hallway wall for a bit. They are so proud of their work and so proud of the veterans' that worked so hard for our safety. 

Math Games/Centers- Jenga, Guess Who, and Ker-Plunk!

Mathematics is one of my absolute favorite subjects to teach. I love seeing my students enjoying math and saying things like, "this is so much fun! Who knew math could be fun?" It makes me smile to see them enjoying their learning. It is one of the many rewards of this wonderful job.

I like to spend some time reviewing concepts after we have completed a unit. I find that a worksheet style review is effective in many ways, however I believe that every student learns differently and many of my kiddos are kinesthetic learners, they gotta' touch, feel, and experience it to understand it. I love this.

Many times, we play review games in a "center" style rotation. This week we spent some time reflecting on percents, fractions, and decimals. I created a few games by putting a spin on some old favorites that live in my game closet. My students LOVED every second of the review. Some even stayed in for recess to "study" for their upcoming math test. 

Math Ker-plunk

I put sticky labels on the ends of Kerplunk sticks and folded them in half. The way this game works is you pull out the sticks one by one hoping that you DON'T make the marbles fall out by pulling your stick out. I had one student call out a fraction, percent, or decimal. The other student needed to find that particular stick equivalent version of what his partner called out. For example, if I called out 99%, my partner would need to find 99/100 or .99 on the sticks. (this could also work with cards that the students would flip over if you wanted this to be a bit more independent)

Math Guess Who

Who doesn't love a good ol' game of Guess Who. This game works very similarly to the original version. Students choose a card from the deck and need to give the other student clues of "what it is not" by answering questions and narrowing it down until ONLY one card remains flipped up on their board. For example, if my card was 8/10, and my partner asked "Is is a fraction?" I would reply "yes" and she would flip down everything on her board that was not a fraction. If she asked, "Is it in simplest form?" I would say, "no" and she would flip down everything that was in simplest form. In the end, my partner would only have 8/10 standing up on their board and they would win. 

 Math Jenga

Students give each other clues to direct them to which peg they need to push out of the tipping tower. They (of course) try to make it challenging by having their peers push out CHALLENGING pegs! If I saw that 9/10 was a tricky peg, I would say something like, "Push out the peg that is equivalent to 90%" (In the game I created, there was more than one!) It was so fun and stressful to watch!

Class Totem Pole

In social studies we have been learning about Native American traditions! 

One of the traditions we have spent a lot of time with is the totem pole. We talked about how each piece of a totem pole is meant to symbolize a particular person. Usually, they were place in front of a home to represent that particular family. We had a discussion about what each symbol means, and how the colors that are used also represent something about the person it is symbolic of. 

My students were so interested! This got me thinking. I wanted to know how they would represent themselves. How do they view themselves? What colors describe them and how? What are they proud of?

I decided to make a class totem pole. I took off the Michigan projects from my park sign kiosk project and I suddenly had a blank slate! 

I asked the students to represent themselves by choosing an animal. On the back of the paper I supplied, they would need to write a paragraph describing why they chose that animal and why it represented them.

They also needed to choose unique colors! In the same respect, they were asked to describe, in detail, why those colors were used on their section of the totem pole. They needed to write a paragraph explaining that as well. 

When their creations were complete, I taped them on to the totem pole! I taped them as flaps so when our kindergarden friends come by, (they are our biggest fans!) they have a chance to read about our symbols. My students LOVE to watch as the little admire their creations. It warms my heart to see them learning and my students teaching. 

Our Halloween Party!

Ok, so I am a bit late on this blog posting. It has been a crazy week full of report card preparation and end of the quarter catching up but, better late then never?

We are so lucky to have wonderful parent involvement in our room. Our parents are eager to donate their time, supplies, and anything else they can offer to help us out with anything we need.  

In our room, since we are in fifth and sixth grade, we allow the students to plan their own party. The way this works is by organizing a committee for each holiday (Valentines day, Christmas, and Halloween). These committees meet during recess and propose a theme, games, and various food choices. We, the teachers, then work to turn their ideas into a reality. It really runs quite smoothly!

So, for Halloween this year, my students chose a spooky theme. We had a variety of games and food choices that were brought in and created, some spooky and some.....not so much. But it's the thought that counts!

He are some of our our spooky treats that one of our wonderful parents made!

We spent the morning listening to spooky halloween mysteries on the computer. The students also created a polygon pumpkin at this time. It was a great way for them to come in, relax, and begin their day. They were asks to create a pumpkin using at least 8 polygon shapes, keeping in mind what we had been learning about polygons this week. 

They were also asked to write a journal prompt! In our room, we our working on a persuasive writing unit about pet rocks. Each students was asked to bring in a pet rock and they are in the process of writing to explain why pet rocks are the best pet ever (more on that in a later post). They are so thrilled about this writing experience, I can not even tell you! I believe that a lot of this writing activity is in the creation and experience. At the end of the day on the eve of Halloween, I allowed asked them to dress up their pet rocks for their very first Halloween! My little creators went straight to work. The next morning when they came in, they were asked to write explaining to their rock what was going on in the classroom today. After all, they have no idea what Halloween even is and I'm sure our pet rocks were all very confused!

One of my favorite costumes. Can you guess what it is? 

The middle of our day was filled with a Halloween parade, a morning special, and a trip to a fellow teachers classroom to see their live wax museum in action! (Whew! We were sure busy!)

When we came back to class, we had about an hour to finish off our party. I decided to set it up in centers so that all of my friends could rotate through and get a chance to experience everything together.

We had a Photo Booth!

Let me tell you this was by far the best idea I had. I had a few parents come in, set up a backdrop, bring in a few props, some big sunglasses, a camera, and BAM! Instant fun. All of my students were able to go out into the hallway and snap some pictures with their friends. They all turned out adorable and my parent volunteers even turned the photos into a CD that I was able to download and put up on our class website! Bonus: I was able to enjoy the party without having to worry about getting a picture of every single person. It was wonderful.

We also had pin the brain on Frankenstien. The students were able to play a Halloween version of pin the tale on the donkey. They loved this too! My winners we rewarded with candy.

We created cheese-cloth ghosts! (disclaimer: these take two days to make as they must dry overnight. We started this project the day before Halloween) We blew up balloons, dipped cheese-cloth into a water and Elmer's glue mixture, and laid it on top of the balloon. On Halloween morning, we popped the balloon and added the felt eyes. They turned out to be adorable!

All of my students also had the chance to participate in a pumpkin candy toss. They were asked to stand on a tape line and toss candy corn into plastic pumpkins. If they made it into the pumpkin, they got the candy that was inside. I also gave each pumpkin a point value. They then added the points up to keep track of high scores! (I had to throw some math in there somewhere!) 

Our party was a success thanks to our volunteers and my cooperative and fun-loving kiddos. They made it all worthwhile! It was ball.

Halloween Treats

Tis' the season for creepy-crawly, spooky treats!

In our class, we chose to have a Halloween party with a creepy theme; complete with me and my cooperating teacher dressing up as mad scientists! It's sure to be a spooktacular event!

I wanted to create a simple but cute treat for my class. We have wonderful parent volunteers that are creating so many delicious and spooky themed treats. I wanted to keep it simple, but add a unique touch!

These were so simple to create! 

I bought a few bags of Blow-Pops, a pack of googly eyes, and a few bags of pipe cleaners.  Each spider requires two, full size pipe cleaners. I cut them in half, and wrapped the four individual pipe cleaners around the stick. After they were wrapped around, I bent the legs into feet. As a finishing touch, I glued on the eyes! TA-DA!

Okay. Ill admit they are more cute then spooky..... but I can't help myself! I hope my students love them as much as I do! 

Figurative Language Poster Creation

As is evident by my blog posts lately, we have been hard at work on learning how to use figurative language to enhance our writing. We have spent about a month going through the writers crafts and learning how to use them effectively. I wanted to create a means to go back and review all of these wonderful ideas, as well as a means for the students to see them in the room and pull ideas from them into their own writing. 

This idea is rather similar to the game of musical chairs. I created posters, each with a type of figurative language posted in the center. I hung the posters all over the classroom. The more you spread the posters out, the better luck you will have with this lesson. 

I broke the students up into groups of about 4 students per group. I then handed them each a marker, and instructed them to stand by a designated poster. I explained to them that this game would work a lot like musical chairs. When the music plays, they would need to write as many examples of that particular form of figurative language as they could on the poster. The key here is they must try not to repeat any on the poster. When the music stops playing, they must quickly move to the next poster. 

I even chose a "figurative language rap" song that I found on YouTube to play as the music during this activity. My students LOVED this activity and did so well with it! These posters will hang in our classroom and will be a great tool to spark ideas when they need to spice up their writing. They look great!

Tall Tales

This week in reading, we have been focusing on tall tales.

 My students are absolutely engrossed in the unit. They love laughing at the hyperbole and imagining the lives of these tall tale characters. I took a trip to the public library this week to get "a few" tall tales books. I find that although the students get a good feel from the tall tales in their reading anthology, I want them to get to experience many writing styles of all the wonderful authors out there! My trip to the library for "a few" books turned into me struggling down the library stairs with a stack 10+ books high. What can I say, I got carried away. I was even able to snag a few different DVD's to cater to my visual learners. 

The kids begged me each day to read another one. I love seeing them excited about learning! I made sure to place all of the books across the whiteboard and they were certainly the hot commodity to read during silent reading. They were so disappointed to see them go at the end of the week when they were due back at the library. My little bookworms love to read. 

So to conclude our wonderful unit on tall tales, I wanted them to write their very own! Keeping in mind the hyperbole usage, character traits, and setting of the tall tales we read, my writers got to work. What they came up with was amazing. To make this experience even more exciting, I put an emphasis on the tall part of tall tales.

 I brought in receipt paper from a local restaurant (as a side note, all restaurant depot stores carry this tape) and created two clouds. We wrote our tall tales on this very skinny paper, henceforth creating some very tall tales. I love how they turned out! 

The students were hovered around the bulletin board in the hallway laughing at the hyperboles their peers had incorporated into their writing. It was certainly a hit with my class!

Park Sign Kiosk

What better way to get students engaged in their learning then to put them completely in charge of it? With this activity, students become tour guides and park rangers for your particular state.

We spent some time this week reviewing what we know about our great state of Michigan. The students took time to reflect upon what they have learned in third and fourth grade. It is important to recap these things and it can be a lot of fun doing so!

I wanted to do something different with the students'. I didn't want to pull out a worksheet and ask them to fill in a map of Michigan. Although these types of activities can be quite effective, my students have already learned this material and needed a refresher. I wanted a way to differentiate their learning.

I created a park sign kiosk that they would be in charge of decorating with facts and information about Michigan. Almost all of the students have been to a welcome center or a rest stop of any given state. Inside many of these locations is a kiosk that tells information and attractions about the area. I wanted them to create this for their own state! I explained that they would work in pairs to conduct research on given topics (trade, resources, attractions, bodies of water, etc...). Once complete, they would present their information to the class and we would display the kiosk in the hallway for passerby's to view.

After displaying our beautiful creation this week in our hallway, we had a visiting kindergarden class come by to learn a bit about their state! I love that my students got to see their hard work being used as a teaching tool for younger students. 

Onomatopoeia Comics

Have I mentioned how creative my kiddos are!? I could shout it from the rooftop! They never seize to amaze me with their ideas and passion for learning. They remind me why I love my job so much. I love watching them learn.

In writing, we have been working on our writers crafts. We have been trying to enhance our own writing by adding figurative language to engage our audience. Today, we focused on onomatopoeias.

 I introduced the lesson by reviewing what we already knew about the craft. In fifth and sixth grade, a lot of the things we are focusing on in writing is review. Most of my students have a pretty good handle on the idea. We talked about where we see onomatopoeias most often. They responded by saying things like, "children's books", "captions", and "comics". We centered our focus on the latter.

Some many of my students are so interested in comic books. I decided this was a wonderful way to incorporate this! I gave the students each a blank comic consisting of a variety of frames. They were in charge of creating a comic using onomatopoeias! One onomatopoeias had to be present in each frame. They turned out wonderfully! 

I gave them mine as an example:

The students' had so much fun reading their peers comics in the hallway. I loved hearing them standing outside my door reading the onomatopoeias with such emotion! "BANG! BOOM! CRASH!"

The hallway has been filled with figurative language excitement.

I Can Statements

I think it is imperative to have students be involved in their own learning. It is one thing to perform well on a test or quiz, but to be able to take away the big idea after the lesson is over. 

For this reason, I love the idea of "I Can" Statements. These statements are student-friendly versions of Common Core Content Standards. For example, if the CCCS is "compare two decimals to the thousanths place based on the meaning of the digit in each place" , the I can statement is "I can read, write, and compare decimals to the thousandths". These " I Can" statements can be easliy found on Teachers pay Teachers to correlate with your particular grade level. Many of the versions even show what CCCS the statement correlates to. 

I have begun to implement these into my lessons! What better way to open a lesson than to allow the students to understand what they should walk away understanding?  I wanted to create a system where I could easily display the statements and the students could read them daily. I also wanted to be able to easily interchange the statements as we move from standard to standard. This got my creativity flowing.

I created a hanging chart for my board! 

I found colorful scrapbook paper, listed each of my subjects, and left a empty strip where I could continue the statement, "I can:". I laminated the paper so that I could write and erase with a Expo marker. This chart hangs at the side of my board. I takes up very little space which I adore. I list the statements correlating to the CCCS we will cover that particular day.  I caught a peek of a few of my boys gathered around it today trying to guess what our writing lesson would be about. I love that they are so excited to learn! 

Personification Mobiles

Oh how I love to teach my students to be better writers! I love watching them blossom into better writers as the year progresses. I absolutely love taking time to read their wonderful writing.

Since my last post, we have been working on adding some figurative language to our writing to make it more intriguing to our audience. My students never seize to amaze me because they are SO good at it!

On Friday, we introduced the idea of personification. This can be such a fun lesson to teach and my students truly had a strong grasp on it before I taught it! They were already asking me if they could add personification to their writing at the beginning of the week- my little over-achivers.

So when I sat down to lesson plan, I was faced with a challenge. How can I engage the students fully into something they already have a strong grasp on? Then it came to me. I needed to create a little competition. We went to work creating personification mobiles.

We began by talking about personification and creating a brainstorm on our board. I love to play actual storm sounds in the background while we fill our whiteboard with all of our wonderful ideas. After we had many ideas on the board, I passed out a paper plate, a hole punch, and a stack of brightly colored paper. I told them they would  have until lunch to fill their personification mobile with as many personified phrases as they could think of. At lunch, I would tally them up and the winner would be awarded with a homework pass! 

My kiddos went straight to work! Every single one of them was engaged. I loved walking around the classroom and listening to their cooperation and ideas. My winning table got a total of.....*drumroll please*...... 42 personified phrases! Kudos to my creators.

Appetizing Adjectives ( With Printable Freebie!)

In our class we have been working diligently on adding details to our writing. We have talked this week about making sure our writing is crystal clear! We began the week by talking about adding adjectives to our writing. 

I love reading and my kiddos do too! I find that relating what they are learning in writing to what authors use in the books they love to read, really encourages them to challenge themselves. 

For this lesson, I asked the students to pull our their journal. Since it is still early in the year, the students  don't know a ton about me yet. I got them interested by saying, "I want to see if you can guess where I live. I will show you where I live but I would like you to draw it first. I'm going to tell you about my house and I want you to draw it in your journal. After you show me, we will check to see if you were close." I then proceeded with this very vague sentence, "My house sits on top of a hill." With that sentence only, I asked the students to draw my "house" in their journal. After about a minute, I walked around saying, "What! That looks nothing like my house!"

On the projector, I proceeded to pull up a picture of a giant castle.



The students were shocked and replied with, "You didn't tell us that! You just said it was on top of a hill!" This lead to a discussion about how I could have altered my sentence to include more adjectives to make it more vivid for my audience. They agreed that if I used words like, giant, huge, regal, and royal it would have been more evident that I lived in a castle. I even had one sweetie reply with, "Wait, so if you live in a castle, doesn't that make you a princess?" I had to agree with her reasoning.

I had the students try again. This time, I wanted them to draw my breakfast. I said, “ Coffee steaming, sizzling bacon, and butter melting on top of my three, steaming hot pancakes sat in front of me. The smell in the kitchen told me breakfast was ready."  I then asked the students to draw what I ate!

Again, the students held up what they drew. Their drawings were much more detailed and more accurate. We then discussed how adjectives  helped them to draw a better picture.

I wanted them to show off their skills at this point! In their journal, I had them list five adjectives describing their favorite food. I then passed out the napkin foldable. I created this by printing it two sided. (Word doc. here)

 On the foldable, I had them describe their favorite food without using any of the five adjectives they listed ! The best writers showcase versatility.

On their paper plates, I asked them to illustrate their favorite food. We matted the plates and the napkin foldable on a red piece of construction paper and we put together this adorable bulletin board! The students loved reading their classmates favorite food and guessing what they were. Let me tell you, my amazing authors made me hungry!

Picture books to Teach Writing

This week at school, we began to teach writing! It is always a fun experience to introduce a new subject at the beginning of the year to a new group of students. Every student learns differently and it is important to remember that as a teacher, it is our job to make sure we cater to each child's needs. 

I began by introducing the first of the 6+1 writing traits; ideas. I have worked on this particular trait all week, and I plan on moving on to figurative language this week.

My mind has been hard at work thinking of the best way to introduce things like idioms, similes, and other things that make writing so spectacular! I decided I would use picture books to introduce some components of figurative language.

I went on a bit of a Amazon shopping spree. If you have Amazon prime, it can be a wonderful and affordable way to get great books quickly and for a great price. Today, they came in the mail! I curled up with my Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte and read through them today! I love every single one.

Happy Fall ya'll!

I ordered the following books:

Misery Is a Smell In Your Backpack: This is an adorable book! The author goes through the pages of the book showing many takes on the term "misery". Many of these examples will get your class giggling because they are so relatable! I plan on using this book to teach details. This author does a great job with painting a picture and that is exactly what I plan on using it to teach!

Ralph Tells a Story: This is a book that tells of a problem so many of us have encountered at one time or another in our lives, having nothing to write about! Poor Ralph searches all over for an idea. Little does he know ideas are all around him! I will use this lesson to delve into the 6+1 trait of ideas. It is a wonderful tool.

My Best Friend is as Sharp as a Pencil: This book is great for teaching similes. In this story, a little girl tries to tell her grandma about her day at school but her grandma always asks so many questions! She decides she will make it crystal clear by using similes. This book is not only filled with wonderful similes, but also beautiful illustrations. I truly enjoyed reading this book myself and I can't wait to share it with my kiddos!

My Momma Likes to Say: I love this book for teaching idioms! It's packed full of adorable idioms that every grandma, grandpa, mom, or dad has said at one time or another. I love that every idiom is accompanied by an adorable larger-than-life illustration that depicts the idiom perfectly. Can you guess which idiom the cover depicts?