So...I have not blogged in almost 3 weeks. I apologize for the absence. I had been in a great routine in the month of April. I was eating great, exercising like 5 days a week, blogging, etc. Then, I got sick and the routine got thrown off. Yeah, then I just realized I was tired and had been running on empty.
In the month of May, I have slept and read a lot and just tried to push through to the end of the year. The weekend before last I had a great time with my Big Sister from Big Brothers Big Sisters. We celebrated our 17 year anniversary since we got matched. She has been an amazing part of my life since I was 12. (It really is a fabulous organization that changes lives.) We had a lot of fun in Fredericksburg. We shopped at the trade days and visited some wineries. I bought a dresser for $85! It looks great in my dining room with my farm table (that I love).
Memorial Day Weekend was very relaxing. I got to go to the Taylor Swift concert. She is really amazing, but I felt like other than the moms of Tweens I was the oldest person there. I visited with the in-laws some and slept a lot. The house got cleaned, and I read about 4 books this weekend. I kept thinking about blogging or grading, but then went back to reading.
I also spent a lot of time in May trying to get all of my application requirements in to apply for a PhD program in Educational Psychology. I saw this on Pinterest and thought it was hilarious.
I found out last Thursday that I have been admitted to a PhD program in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Gifted and Talented Education at the University of North Texas. I start in the Fall for sure, but I hope to even take a class or two this summer. I will still be teaching and just working on my PhD part-time. I am excited to see how my classes and research inspire my teaching and blog posts. So stay tuned - I promise I really do blog regularly.
Just for fun I realized today is my 200th post. Have you ever had one of those days that would have been stressful if so much of it wasn't just funny? That was my day... It did end with happy hour though.
I still need to have my students do something for Mother's Day. One of my favorite lessons I have done for Mother's Day is from www.writingfix.com. The lesson is to write poems modeled after the book I Love You the Purplest. You can read the lesson, download handouts, and also download student samples for the lesson here. Students write a poem about their moms using color to describe them and what they associate with that color.
Sabra had a cute suggestion to make word clouds for moms and then mount them on scrapbook paper. We are definitely going to do this. We will also make cards. I am going to give them a large envelope to put their word cloud, poem, and card in. They can decorate the envelope.
I have a freebie in my store to make Mother's Day coupons, awards, and cards. I usually have my students write their moms a thank you letter.
Today is also Workshop Wednesday. The topic is how to motivate your students to write. Here are a few things I have found to be pretty successful.
1) Allow students to type when possible - Many of my students have been more successful typing than when they have to handwrite. (We do still handwrite though as well).
2) Give students choice - I love love RAFT (Role Audience Format Topic). It is a fabulous way to get kids writing, use higher order thinking, and allow for structured choice.
3) Model your thinking - I have mentioned this before, but I have seen more growth from my students when I model my own writing than even just through using mentor texts. Students like knowing that you write, too. It helps to see how writing really works.
4) Choose random points of view - My students get so excited about writing from the point of view of small animals or random objects. Why be a pilgrim on the Mayflower when you could be a rat on the Mayflower observing everything? Why not describe light from the point of view of a shadow? Why not describe the setting of a book from an object located in the setting?
5) Allow students to write with a partner - My students love writing together or swapping journals and finishing each other's stories. I have a couple students who have decided to start a daily comic together (that actually gets made like a couple days every other week, but they enjoy it).
These are the things that come to mind most when I try to remember what motivates my students to write. I am off now to see if I can find some scrapbook paper and envelopes for Mother's Day projects.
I realize I have not posted in a week. I came down with a cold last Tuesday night, and since then it has taken all my energy to get through a work day and then go home and nap. I also slept the entire weekend. Apparently, this cold told me I needed rest. I am ready to get back into my workout routine and even get back to blogging, etc.
I guess for this week, I am going to say my Tried It Tuesday is a thematic unit. We have been studying biomes in Science and English the last couple weeks, and so far it has been one of my favorite things we have done all year. We have used lessons from Science, we have done a webquest, we have done projects, and we have done a lot of reading nonfiction. I have been creating handouts to review all of the nonfiction Common Core Reading Standards while they read their book. We will do a major informational report next week after all of their research and reading for some more writing. (Hopefully in the next couple days I will have a whole Biome research unit to post in my TpT store. I am almost done with it.) After this, we will spend the last couple weeks of school immersed in Westward Expansion. I found it was too hard to do the Westward Expansion and Biome activities, so I decided to just focus on each for a couple weeks.
This is our last week of studying biomes. It really has been a fun unit. I have loved watching my students practice their nonfiction reading skills, research skills, and the creativity they have shown.
For their final project on the unit, I gave them a menu of options. Their projects are due next Monday. One of my students made a commercial for his biome (the temperate Deciduous forest) using iMovie. You can click here to view the video. One of my goals this summer is to play with iMovie and Garage Band more to think of fun ways to use them next year.
Yesterday, we were talking about adaptations. They spent some time reading their nonfiction biome books and looking for at least 5 plants with descriptions of the plant and the adaptations. They had to make a 2 column chart. You can see a picture of mine below. I usually try and do some of the same assignments they are doing. I am reading about Grasslands and Prairies.
Then, we watched the Magic School Bus episode "All Dried Up." The episode talks about adaptations and conditions in the desert. In the episode, Arnold who is usually terrified of field trips is prepared for once. He has created a field trip survival guide and survival kit. I thought this was an awesome idea and felt totally inspired. Here is a copy of the episode:
My students are still reading and taking notes in their books about adaptations. Tomorrow they are reading about animal adaptations. They will be creating their own field trip survival guides for their biome (just like Arnold did in the Magic School Bus episode). I made a little booklet for them to fill out. You can get a copy here.
Arnold made one for the desert, but each student will make their own guide for the biome they have been studying.
Today the students had to make a habitat for a polar bear that lives in a zoo in Arizona. They had to create a model of their habitat and write a paragraph about it. They had the option of drawing it, designing it on the computer, or trying to make it 3D. Most of them opted to make it out of paper. This is one of my favorite student made polar bear habitats:
Make sure you check out Holly's 500 Follower Giveaway. There are so many prizes, I got tired reading them all! I am contributing $15 to my TpT store.
Like everybody else, my TpT store is on sale for 20% off today and tomorrow. If you enter the code, TAD13, you can save up to 28% off. What are your favorite thematic units for upper grades?
We have been studying biomes. I have been loving loving this unit! My students are reading nonfiction books on biomes and practicing the different nonfiction Common Core Standards for Informational Text while reading. It has been a great end of the year project and fabulous interdisciplinary unit.
I decided I also wanted to try a webquest with my students. I decided to create my own. We have been working on it the last few days for Science, and it has been really fun to watch them engaged in student-centered learning, practicing reading and note-taking skills, as well as being creative. We used the Biomes of the World website for our research. They had to take notes on each of the biomes and then come up with their own idea for a zoo to represent all of the biomes. They will then create a brochure for their zoo and a map of their zoo. We are done with the web research and still working on the zoo projects. (I will show you pictures of the maps and brochures when we are done).
You can get a copy of the notes form I made here. There is a note page for each biome.
Here was a post from about a week ago from Technology Rocks Seriously with lots of different online games for kids to learn about animal habitats. I plan on checking them out to have my students try some of them.
Have you used webquests? This was my first time to make one, and I have really enjoyed watching my students work on this project.
I will be back later for a more informative post. I took this weekend to just get some rest and enjoy the nice weather. I wanted to announce the winner of my Be a Better You Giveaway. The winner is Jen Ormsbee. Congrats on winning the $30 gift card to a store of your choice to be healthier. I will be emailing you.
So the last two nights have been super busy, and I have been really tired by the time I finally stop moving. Exercising and eating better is great, but boy is it time consuming.
My students use laptops on and off all day long, and many of them are working at different paces. Helping everyone get organized has been a constant struggle. I have tried so many ways to help them keep up with when things are due and what is missing. We tried paper planners, which I could not get most of them to actually consistently fill out. I tried making different chart templates that they would fill out (but it was already partially filled out for them). This worked better for some of them.
I have been researching online student planners. I looked at quite a few, but most of them seemed more appropriate for high school or college students. They seemed a little more involved than what I needed for my 4th and 5th graders. I also wanted a tool that would allow me to send them assignments and due dates. I remembered from some Facebook posts people mentioning that Edmodo had a planner type application. I had signed up for Edmodo ages ago, but I had never done anything with it. Edmodo has all sorts of applications and uses, but it does have a planner application.
I decided to try it just for the planner part. We have been using it this week, and so far I love it. I can input assignments and due dates. They can upload assignments directly to Edmodo to turn them in. They also can add their own tasks to the calendar to keep up with when they are due.
(See, if you look at the planner I meant to blog on Tuesday.) One of my other favorite features is that I can set up different classes and within the classes I can setup small groups. I am doing three different book clubs (literature circles) right now, so I created small groups based on the Book Clubs. I can add different assignments for each book club, so not everyone in class necessarily sees the same assignments due on their calendar. As they finish assignments, they turn them in. For tasks they add themselves, they check the box when they finish them.
We are still new to using it, but so far it seems to be working better than the other paper type planners I have tried. I know Edmodo has all sorts of features and eventually it will be fun to test them out, but for now I am just excited about an online planner that was easy to setup and use.
So far my students all updated their profiles on their own and are sending class messages to each other with things like "If you were a super dog, what super powers would you have?" Do you use Edmodo? What are your favorite applications for it?
In my effort to get healthier before summer, I am having a Be a Better You Giveaway. It ends tomorrow, so I hope you will enter. You can earn a $30 gift card to a store of your choice to get healthier.
I had picked up this book at the library when I was searching for books on biomes and looking for possible read alouds. I decided after Tammi's post that this would make the perfect read for Earth Day. It has beautiful illustrations and is written from the point of view of Mother Earth.
Today we will read the book, discuss the theme, answer some questions, and then my students will write their own letters from the point of view of an animal or plant on Earth. They will have to choose what message they want to deliver. Click here for your own freebie copy of the activities.
