Question Jar can help spark NEW lessons!

The question jar has been a great way for me to see students misconceptions and to help spark their interest! :) 

The question on the pink post-it says "If the Union did not win the Civil War where would we be today?"

I thought this was an EXCELLENT question and one with many different answers so i made students do a writing about this question :) 

Each student had a different idea and had different approaches to the question! I loved challenging the students and really getting them to think! 

Cause and Effect

What better way to teach cause and effect than using ANGRY BIRDS! My students are obsessed with computer games and Angry Birds is one of them. I created this fun anchor chart which my students LOVED and think I'm an artist! 

The cause and effect concept was difficult for my students to understand so I wanted to teach them to relate and for them to understand that every action has an effect. Teaching this will come in handy next week when we start learning the causes for the Civil War. 

The Wall of Language Arts and Grammar

Here are some images of our language arts wall. I have posted out different anchor charts for idiom, hyperbole  simile, metaphor, alliteration, figurative language and imagery. All different parts of language we were learning. 



Student Led Conferences

Tonight we had our fourth and fifth graders lead their conferences. My school is a next generation school and does things a little different but, in a good way! My students have red conference folders that they keep organized  This folder includes their reading goals, writing goals and math goals. Each quarter the students will create new goals for themselves or when they reach those goals they need to update them. Students also will add work that they are the most proud like daily 5 work, papers, math assessments etc. whatever they are personally proud of :) 

Then for conferences students are expected to introduce their parents to us, give a tour and walk their parents through their routine and everything in their folder. Of course parents still had questions for us but our parents LOVED seeing their child lead the conferences. As a teacher it was a great way to see exactly what the students have learned and know. The parents did a great job asking questions and really challenging students thinking. 

  Students fill out their writing, reading, and math goals that they set for themselves so they can continually challenge themselves throughout their learning! I LOVE this idea! 

I love the idea of student led conferences it truly shows the students independence and forces them to learn how to become independent along with setting reasonable learning goals for themselves. This is what the WAWM district uses so I did not create this. I would however do something similar in my classroom in the future! I just wanted to share the idea with everyone and give them an idea of what the goals sheet looks like :)

Earth Day

Part of Earth Week at our school was for each pod to do a hands on activity to learn about the environment. Our pod choose to weight how much food was wasted each day. More than half of our students are on free and reduced lunch and WASTE this food EVERY single day! So we decided to not tell the student what were doing and weight the amount of food is wasted along with the milk. The first day 64lbs of food was wasted and 28lbs of milk! THAT IS INSANE! The second day the number was more outrageous! Then we told the students what we were doing and then we talked about ways to reduce waste. The numbers went down- thankfully! This was an eye opener for myself as well as the students. We wanted to choose an activity that was relevant to students and that they could learn to make a conscience effort to change. 

Each pod at school needed to create a piece of clothing for our principal to wear either reducing, reusing, or recycling. Our pod had students bring in our t-shirts and then we sewed them together to make a dress for the principal.  

Here is the graph we created to show our findings and to hang in the hallway as a reminder. 

Myths

Another fun lesson was teaching my students about myths! :) I love love love love Greek Mythology. So it was difficult to teach other ideas about myths that was not just about Greek Mythology. My students really enjoyed learning about myths and began checking books out in the library about different myths in different cultures :) 

Plots of stories

Today i taught my small group in I-time (intervention) about plot and understanding what a plot is and the steps a story will go through. 

We made a flip chart before reading our Sarah, Plain and Tall. 

Here is an example of our flip chart that one of my students made. We made this and then used it as a book mark so students can reference as we read.