Writing Buddies Day 1

Writing Buddies!

I wanted to create a way to collaborate across grade levels better this year. I approached a second grade teacher, Mr. Hall, about working with his students in writing. As many educators know, we struggle across the nation with writing. In an effort to develop our students into stronger writers.

Today we launched our Writing Buddies. Our 2nd grade friends had stories they've already been working on. As fourth graders our job was the help them edit, revise, add "fancy language" and help them expand their ideas and thinking.

It worked out very well for day one and we cannot wait to share again next week!

What Is An Atom?

Fourth Grade Electricity Masters!

Our class has started to work on studying Electricity this week in Science. With that, we learned all about atoms. The students were introduced to the vocabulary words, provided opportunities to explore the idea of atoms in our world, and then we watched a STUDY JAM video about ELECTRICITY. While watching the video for the second time we started to take notes- where I then explained the ideas further.

Finally, the students used their notes to create ATOM drawings. See below.

What Is Magnetic?!

We have been studying Magnetism and Electricity for the past two weeks or so. They've had all of their introduction notes and vocabulary thus far and have also completed two labs. One of our labs was prediciting what contents they thought would be magnetic in their bags they were given (full of aluminum foil, string, cotton, rubber bands, nails, screws, etc.). Then they were to use a donut magnet and test their predictions out. Afterwards they were to explore items around the room and predict what items they thought would be magnetic and then TEST their predicitions out.

Their job the next day was to create a visual representation to show what they knew was MAGNETIC and what they knew was NOT magnetic. They also had to include a definition and some additional details as they knew them.

Reading Goals: Reach For The Stars!!

REACH FOR THE STARS!

I have started my school year for 2012-2013. I am now teaching fourth grade at our year round school. Last year I taught fifth so there will be different projects and assignments to share this year!

We started Reading this year looking at individualized Reading goals. We created these hands with our reading goals printed on them and our names. Then the students were able to decorate them as well. The theme "REACH FOR THE STARS".

EOG Testing Treats

I found many of these printables on various websites (teachers pay teachers, etc.) and had some parents help me out in making these GREAT treats for my students throughout EOG week.  I gave them one treat per day and they really looked forward to seeing what they were going to get each morning before testing began.

Thank GOD for fantastic parents and friends.

Day one I had the parents write an encouraging letter to their son/daughter and provided them with a treat.

You're WRITE on track, GOOD LUCK on your EOGs. Contents: pencil, eraser, and highlighter.

You're One Smart Cookie with two Kashi cookies inside and then INSPIRATION water (label found online).

A Good Student Always CHEX Their Work with chex mix inside baggies.

You were MINT to succeed with small starlight mints inside.

Color Poems

We had been working on poetry a lot in the spring and had gotten to the point of creating a poem/project centered around the idea of a COLOR Poem. Students picked a color that they wanted to focus on and then created a poem that incorporated all things that colored. From there they were to choose one item from their color poem to create a visual representation for it and paste their poem on the poster.

See items below for details.

Movie Theater (color was yellow) focus was yellow popcorn at the movies.

Jeter Jersey. Color was Blue and focus was on the NY Yankees.

Party In My Mouth. Color was Orange and focus was on the bright summery colors at a party.

Ice cream.

Tree. Color was green, focus was on the ecosystems in our world and how to keep our Earth alive.

Glasses. Color was clear and the focus was on seeing things clearly through clear eyes and clear mind.

Team Building AND Writing Combined

Today is "Team Building Tuesday" in my classroom for morning meeting. The activity they completed today involved the following:

I split the students into small groups of about 3-4 students. There has to be an even number of groups. After the students got into their small groups I told them their instructions. Each group was going to be assigned ANOTHER group in the room. They were to create a story using the group members from their assigned team as their characters. Example: Group A consisted of Student 1, 2, 3, and 4 Group B consisted of Student 5, 6, 7, and 8. Group A writes about students 5, 6, 7, and 8 and Group B writes about Student 1, 2, 3, and 4. They had the first 5-10 minutes to brainstorm character traits and strengths about the classmates they had been assigned as their characters. After that time they had about 15 minutes to create their stories.

Afterwards, we came together and the students voted to read each of the group's writings. They were HILARIOUS and very positive! The students gave a lot of positive feedback and even asked me to do it again in the future weeks.

Great way to incorporate writing into a team building activity!

Excerpts from their writing:
"Once upon a time there were three friends named Jacob, Emma, and Maegan. Jacob was funny, goofy, and creative. Maegan is intelligent, a great artist, and caring. Emma is a great softball player, she's smart and creative. One day they all met up at the jungle by their pet monkey named Mr. What'cha'ma'call it. When they got to the jungle Maegan said "Do you want to paint a picture of monkeys and bananas?" They hung the picture when they were done in a tree and started playing softball when WHACK! Emma hit the ball through the picture. Jacob quickly said "Uh oh girlfriend."

Their first instinct was the repaint the picture but they realized they were out of paint. Then Jacob started climbing the tree to Mr. What'cha'ma'call it and he was dining on bananas so he grabbed him and smaced him on the canvas. The next day when they went back to school they gave the picture to Ms. B and she said it looked like an elephant."

IDIOM ACTIVITY

I typed up a list of popular idioms- one for every student. They had to create an illustration for the literal meaning of their idiom. Just like a laffy taffy joke you have to unfold the flap to find out what idiom the illustration represents.

See photographs:

I'm shaking in my boots.

I have butterflies in my stomach.

I'm all ears.

I'm keeping an eye on you.

Give me a hand.

You broke my heart.

You're pulling my leg.

I'm sleeping like a log.

I'm in a pickle.

I'm a couch potato.

It's raining cats and dogs.

The cat's got my tounge.

I'm feeling under the weather.

They turned out AMAZING!