The Writing Process

We have been actively working on and have completed our first published writing piece! I always start with a short twisted fairy tale story to go through the writing process with my kiddos. They enjoy it and we work on each step in great detail. This helps outline the process for the rest of the school year!

I always have trouble with finding posters that are Upper Elementary friendly. My kiddos are fairly advanced writers and really need to be able to dig deep and challenge themselves to become better at revising and editing. I used this chart for them to record their own notes and add to their writers notebooks.

I was not very good at using their Writer's Notebooks last year, but this year we are off to a great start of making them a useful organizational tool for writing! So we hole punched this and added it to the reference section along with this checklist:

My room is all fun chevron design so I tried to make these fit the mold. They are informational and I plan to use them as a clip chart to help track the writing stage my kids are at. This will also help the problem of "Who is ready for Peer Editing? So-and-so needs a partner!"

These posters (the full set), checklists, and graphic organizers are all available in my TPT Store HERE! I included the chart/organizer for ARMS and DARE to Revise. I personally like the DARE to Revise because I feel like it is easier to remember than ARMS. :) 

Teaching the US Regions

My students love to become the teacher, well 99% of them! Public speaking is a major emphasis at my school, so this project meets MANY of our needs! Meet the 

US REGIONS GROUP PROJECT!

The students are grouped into 5 groups, one for each region. Each student is assigned a job and each group will present their information to the class. So essentially them become the teacher!! My students are combining their information into a PowerPoint and presenting it to the class. I create some organizers for each student to record their research on. (Too bad I created this after my students completed this project...oh well!) Here is an example of two of them. 

The jobs descriptions for this project are:

· Travel Agent- presents major tourist attractions in the region  (minimum of 5 locations)      

· Food Guide– researches food that are famous to the region (minimum of 5 location based foods)

· Historian- Researches interesting facts, events, and people from the region

· Geographer- studies and describes the climate, landforms, and uses of the region

· Cartographer- involved with creating a map of the region and doing a population study (map must contain all states and capitals that are in that region)

You could add or remove jobs according to the needs of your classroom. There is a research organizers page for each job! 

Next week my kiddos will present their regions to the class. They will each have to document their travels on these sheets: 

This hold the students accountable for learning about the other 4 regions. At the end of the presentations students will have a test over the 5 regions. I will make the test based on the information that was presented to the class. It will be up to the students to take good enough notes to use in studying for the test. 

There you have it!! A hands-on project that requires public speaking, research skills, reading non-fiction text, using technology to present, and all of the geography/history standards as well! You can pick up this project and all of its organizers in my TPT Store! 

Up next for these kiddos, memorizing the states, capitals, and their locations! 15 days of school left! 

  

TEACHnology in the Classroom!!

I attended a local conference here on campus (Missouri State University) for RCET and gained SOOO many new technology resources for my classroom!! Let me introduce you to a few of these gems!!

The first one is called "Lino"  (find it HERE)

Lino is an online sticky-note board that your students can post to. I posted "Name a positive personality trait" and the kids all added their traits to the board. These are updated live and can be moved around on the board! I just gave my students the web link to my sticky-note board and they posted away!! I know the options on this one are endless and that you can even create student accounts, but this is as far in it as I have gotten! It is VERY easy to use and is FREE!!

Another one I have used is called Literably!

This is a website that you can upload your students names to and helps with Running Records. You input your students names, select their reading level, assign a passage to them, and then they read the assigned passage, answer comprehension questions, give a re-tell, and POOF!! POOF means you submit it to the site (or use the APP that is WAY easy for your kids to use) and they complete the running record for you!!! Yes, you heard me...they analyze the running record and comprehension FOR YOU!!!!!!!  You can only submit 10 a month or else you have to write the small company and work out a small fee, but BAM within 24 hours they return the record to you ANALYZED!!! Talk about a time saver!!

Doceri is an APP that will allow you to navigate your computer screen FROM YOUR IPAD! It is also FREE!! This app can be downloaded on your IPad and your desktop computer in order to be able to access both! So for those of us who want to teach from around the room without being tied to the computer, this is perfect!! I have not been able to put this one into action yet, but I have heard AMAZING things about it!!

Diigo is another APP that is wonderful for adding to your browser! It can be downloaded on a desktop computer or IPad. Diigo is an annotation app that will allow your students to capture what they are reading, highlight from a website, collect and store information from websites, share information from sites, and sooo much more. This is geared towards an upper ele or middle/high school audience. When you create an account you can highlight something on a webpage using the Diigo browser tool bar and it will save it to your Diigo account! This would be PERFECT for students who are emerging into research papers! Check it out!!

Finally, my FAVORITE and my kids ABSOLUTE FAVORITE...KAHOOT!!!

Kahoot is a "Game Based Class Response System." You create a multiple choice "quiz" through Kahoot and then launch it for your students. The students can use ANY device to access kahoot.it and then enter the "Game Pin" to sign in to your quiz. Once students are signed in you begin the quiz. It presents the question on the board and they select their answer on their device. It gives them points based on how fast they respond and if they are correct or not. It displays the score after each questions which is fun for the kids! At the end it displays the top 5 and allows you to download all of the kids' scores. You can then look at it in an excel sheet and see exactly what questions each student missed. There are also THOUSANDS of quizzes that you can use that other people have created! We use this for inside recess too! There are random quizzes for logos and Disney movies as well as every educational topic imaginable. This is a BIG WINNER in my class! (*Note each student must have a device of some kind to do this. My class is 1:1 laptops, but I allow them to use any device when playing. Some choose to use an IPad, Tablet, or even phone.) 

What are your TEACHnology favorites??? 

Fraction Action and Character Types

My last post was a long one about our Character Study Unit! We are almost finished with our book and have been getting into how to write a character analysis essay. I am forcing them to really dig deep with this one! Here is one last Character "Thing" that we have done...

I made this page for them to fill out on their own and paste it into their Reading Interactive Notebooks. (This will be added to my Character Analysis packet on TPT-See previous post) We fill it out together and talk about specific examples. There is also a good flat/round character YouTube Video that we watched that can be found HERE.

We made an anchor chart similar to this one found on Pinterest with nothing other than the image:












We are going to begin our Characterization Foldable Friday and being with Thesis statements and the Analysis on Monday!

We have been studying fractions this week and I found these awesome FREE Fraction Task Cards! They are from HERE. There were only 3 in this set, but it worked great for my classroom. The task cards are designed for students to create fractions based on pattern blocks. Then they have to justify how they know their design represents the fraction that they were given. Explaining or justifying is not a strong point for most. BUT some of them just amazed me with this!!

 Here they were tracing their design. Next they had to color it to match the blocks they had used.

Finally they had to explain or "Convince Me" as the Task Card says how they know it is an accurate representation. 

Here is some of their work:

Yesterday we did this Fraction Smarties activity:

FOUND HERE - Click on the Image to go to the ORIGINAL BLOGGERS POST WITH DOWNLOAD LINK :) 

What are your favorite upper level fraction activities?? 

Character Analysis Unit

I have really started to love all of the Character Study we have been doing. I think the depth in which my kiddos are thinking is just amazing!!

One of the lessons we started with was on Inside/Outside Character Traits. We talked about how you often have to infer and use Text Based Evidence to justify inside character traits. We practiced by reading Amazing Grace and making the foldable picture below that came from HERE (I forgot to take pictures so here is the blog that shows the orginial). The site even has the printable frame to make this!! My kids listed the outside traits on the outside and the inside traits WITH TEXT BASED EVIDENCE on the inside. I made them realize they had to SHOW ME how they know what the character is like on the inside.



Up next we did a project where they were the character and they had to describe themselves using TBE. Here is some of their work (only a couple bc I don't have time to blur out pictures-which I don't have to, but feel as though I should). Also I always take their picture on that day to print so that if they save the assignment it will show how much they have changed!

Now we have started an AMAZING novel by a Missouri author called The Man Who Loved Clowns. It was written by June Rae Wood. She is a Missouri author and the book is set in MO and has locations that my kids can relate to throughout the book. I am loving it.

We are reading the novel as a part of our character analysis study. We are taking everything we have learned about characters (which is more than what I have listed above- I will post more later!) and are applying it to the characters throughout the novel. We are doing an in-depth analysis.

The students have packets of organizers for note taking that can be seen here on TPT. We are working up to creating something that looks like this:

It is the character analysis project from Teaching With A Mountain View. She is AMAZING and I use her blog and ideas almost daily!! There is even the rubric and instructions for this project along with her completed pictures. The picture above is my model for my students. 

Here are some of the pages from their packets for notes available at my TPT STORE: 

So we are taking notes about everything character related throughout the novel. We will work on the characterization project and a written character analysis at the conclusion of the novel. My kids are already loving it and are really thinking deep! 

*Note- The TPT link above is linked to the The Man Who Loved Clowns edition of these organizers. There is a generic version too that did not get uploaded yet, but I will hopefully get it next week. This version does include blank pages though and would work for any novel. :) 

Enjoy your weekend!! 

Character Changes

We have been working on studying characters. We read both Amazing Grace and Boundless Grace this past week to work on inside/outside character traits and changes in character traits. I will post more on that tomorrow! BUT for now...I took a lesson/foldable idea from HERE about using a Patricia Polacco book to teach character changes. I think P.P. by far has the best selection of upper elementary read alouds! Here is the foldable we made (picture from HERE) THIS IS NOT MY PICTURE!!! SEE THE LINK ABOVE FOR THE SITE IT CAME FROM!! I WILL POST MY PICTURES TOMORROW!!



I used a newer Patricia Polacco book titled Bully. And it was absolutely PERFECT for my group of kids!! I could not have randomly picked a better selection for my 5th graders! This hit the reality of social media on the head! Not to mention it show character changes perfectly!! I will even use this when we dive into character conflict later this week!



An upper elementary read aloud MUST in every classroom!!!!!!!

Valentine's Day Metaphors! (FREEBIE)

I have so much to get caught up with on here, but for now here is what I am giving you...

We have been studying similes and metaphors this week. Since Valentine's Day is coming up quickly I decided that my students should write a metaphor for love!!

So here is what I created...

We will hang these in the hall on our bulletin board, but you could make a class book out of them as well! I had originally thought of just using it as a writing prompt, but then had a light bulb moment *METAPHORS*!!  I always love to hear what 5th graders relate love to! Stay tuned for the finished product!!

Click the picture above to get your Love Is... Freebie!!