Monday Mentor - Goal books

I've been meaning to start this since the summer, but haven't thought of the perfect way to do it. I want my students to set weekly goals for themselves. It can be anything from finishing their AR goals, to bringing their SS grade up, to staying in their seat. They get to pick, but I try to guide them into choosing things that I have to constantly remind them to stop doing. I repeat the same instructions to the same children over and over that I should bring a tape recorder to school.

But, like the good man says, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is the definition of insanity. It's time to shake things up.

It came to me out of the blue as I was walking around during math class on Friday. What about small individual notebooks that they can keep in their desks? Then I can write in the goals and make notes or do little punchouts on the pages for each day they are successful during the week. It will keep them on track and hopefully keep me sane.

I found all these cute little notebooks at Target and Jo-ann's. I now need to figure out how to let them pick their notebooks. Do I let the frequent flyers in my room go first so they they buy into the whole idea? Do I do it by the best behaved kids? Or pick names from a hat?

Monday Mentor- Snowball Fight!

I found this great idea in a book on Differentiation. Here's what you do: As you are studying a unit or concept, have the students write something they've learned today or the past week on a slip of paper. They come to the carpet and make a circle. Have them crumple up the paper and flex their muscles. At the count of 3 everyone TOSS their snowball into the center of the circle. Next, have a small group of kids at a time reach in and grab a snowball. When everyone has one, at the count of 3 have them TOSS it into the center again. Do this for as long as you can stand it (a minute was all I could take).

Finally, everyone grabs a snowball to read out. You can applaud the interesting new facts students have put in their memory banks and also say, "Let's talk about that," when misconceptions are brought up. Everyone gets a chance to participate without feeling pressure that they might be 'wrong'.

Fun, right?

Tuesday Tried it - Genre Exposure

My good friend, Nick over at Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason wrote about something he called Read Beads on September 7th. I was casually skimming through his idea when it dawned on me just how cool it really was. See, he had read The Book Whisperer and decided to require his students to read across the genres. All except horror which he wouldn't require his students to read (*GASP* my favorite genre!). Then they could fill out a short Book Review before they would earn their 'Bead' for that book. Each student has a string on a bulletin board that they add their beads to as the year progresses.

I began thinking that I'd like to try this in my class as well. So I started with his Reading Interest Survey (you can see the pictures on his blog) and then explained the idea behind the Book Review. Each of them would be required to read a set number of books from each genre throughout the year.

Nick has both of these forms at this link:

These two forms come bundled in my TpT store for just $1.

The students were interested right away, so I started hunting through my craft collection pretty certain that I had some of those colored pony beads Nick used. Yeah, I couldn't find them. What I found instead was a bag of leftover colorful plastic links I had used to make friendship bracelets last year. I got the bag at Jo-Ann's Fabric store for $3.99. One of my early finishers was put in charge of separating the links out into different colors. Then I tried to think of what would have a chain attached to it. It reminded me a bit of a leash. Puppies! I had each student come up and pick an animal.

Then I strung a clothesline across the back windows and clipped the student pictures on to that. I like the idea of having this visual in front of me so I know who to call up to discuss what are they doing to meet the requirements.
 

We had to talk a lot about what makes a good book review. I modeled several times what information to put down in this section of the Book Review. They kept wanting to just tell me the story and not include any personal opinion statements at all. We had to go back and forth a few times before I started seeing some results I could be happy with. I'm thinking they will get better and more elaborate with their opinions as we progress. 

Thanks Nick for a great idea!

Tuesday Tried It - Save Fred!

Have you seen this awesome lesson over on Fourth Grade Fanatic? It's all about that first week with your kiddos and how you can take stock of their problem solving abilities, plus how well they will work together in a group.

***Due to overwhelming request, I am sharing the document I made based on Fourth Grade Fanatic's post. Apparently, the links aren't going to the correct place. I take absolutely NO credit for this sheet, since it is not my work. But I love sharing as much as I can.

Save Fred Worksheet

Saving Fred is a fun little lesson about a careless worm. Since worm's brain are by nature pretty small, Fred is at a disadvantage. That comes into play as he is out on his boat without a buddy. Now, Fred isn't completely without thought, he did bring his life preserver. As these things go, Fred's boat capsizes trapping his preserver beneath it with Fred on top. Fred can't swim very well, so it is up to your students to help Save Fred!

They are armed only with the two 'oars' that Fred brought with him. In our world, these oars look suspiciously like paper clips. The students aren't allowed to touch Fred with their fingers or hands. He's got a thing about that. Your students must get Fred's life preserver around him before the time runs out and Fred drowns.

I call up the Online Countdown Timer and display it on our SmartBoard screen. They are given five minutes to save Fred from certain death. The boat is a plastic cup, the life preserver is a gummy life saver, and Fred? He's a gummi worm.

Be prepared to handle it if some of the groups don't save Fred in time.

But for the most part they will work creatively to save their poor little worm and have fun doing it! After this activity there is a timeline for them to draw pictures of what they did to save Fred and also an area to rate their team on effectiveness.

Back to School Swap Results

Can you imagine me doing a little dance in my car as I pulled up to the mailbox to see a HUGE package sitting there?

I knew exactly what it was all about as soon as I saw it. Bethany Hunter from Hunter's Tales from Teaching sent me a chunk of cool stuff.

Look closely and you'll see what I am talking about. From right to left can you see those awesome Super Hero erasers? Oh, yeah. My boys are going to fight over those! Always have room for more Expo Markers. Especially since I plan on having the kids use white boards more often. There is a very large pack of pens in a multitude of colors, so no fear that I will be grading papers with the dreaded red pen.

At the top are some super large push pins. How did she know that I bought a few of these to use on my anchor charts for the bulletin board? Now I have plenty! Umm, there were some tictacs in there as well. Is she trying to say something??

The list keeps going. A oversized pack of sticky notes, which I think I'm in love with. Never saw them this huge. There are two different colors of Washi (ish) tape. My newest craze. Some great sharpie colors for me to get creative with.

Finally, there are some fun stickers for my kids. I ran out last year after using all mine for the AR goal chart. Now I am replenished AND have some star stickers to use instead. Yay Yay Yay!

I can't thank Bethany enough for thinking of me. Plus I need to thank those two fabulous brains of Covered in Glitter and Glue and Adventures of Ms Smith for putting this whole idea together. It really was great getting to know a fellow blogger better!

Student Motivators - Traffic cones

Joanne over at Head over Heels puts on this great linky party about motivating your students. She's got a great idea about how to engage students in complementing each other!

This fits in so perfectly with my theme for this year. I want them to pay more attention to what others are doing. This skill is going to help build that Common Core ideal of deeper thinking. Conversations are going to be different in my room this year as well. Instead of everyone just shouting out their connections to a book or a topic, they are going to practice listening to others and responding to their thoughts as well as incorporating their own.

So for my student motivating idea to share, I have my student of the week be in charge of putting out these fun traffic cones with encouraging phrases on them. I get them at the Dollar Store.  As we are working on a lesson I might tap the student of the week to search for someone showing off exemplary skills and they would place the cone on that person's desk. The cones are turned in later for reward points. They like the attention and I get to reward those that are doing good more.

Yay!