Starry Nights

Saw this on Facebook today and wanted to put it where I could see it over and over and share it with others. Amazing demonstration of muscle memory.

Look at the center of this image for 30sec. Then watch Van Gogh's *Starry Night* come to life.
Posted by Popstar! Magazine on Monday, February 23, 2015

Free Tumblebook a Day

Did you know... you can add a free 'book of the day' e-book to your website for the summer from Tumblebooks?
 

 Find out how you can do it here.

Week One - Mystery Location, QR Codes, Daily5 and Brain Breaks

On Friday, August 8, I got to meet my new 4th graders. It was the first day of our new school year and I was in for quite a surprise. We planned for only three sections of fourth grade becasue we didn't have enough students registered to warrant four sections. Well, by the end of the day each teacher had over 36 students in her homeroom. Yikes!

A request has been put in for another teacher, but it takes a while to be processed. In the meantime we jumped right in to our new year. Friday was moslty about getting supplies organized and labeled, doing some teambuilding, and getting to know our procedures.

When Monday rolled around we were ready to switch classes and start implementing the Daily 5 in ELA and the Daily 3 in math. I love that we are teaching our students to build stamina during the read to self block of Daily5. My students managed to get to thirteen minutes of stamina by Friday. We used this Word Work Choice Board with our weekly spelling unit for that section of Daily5.

During the Work on Writing part of the Daily5, my students started writing their first personal narrative of the year. Most chose to write about something they did this summer. No one has completed all of the 6 Traits steps to get their work to publication yet, but I hope by early next week they will. The students also enjoyed hearing the following read alouds during the Listen to Reading part of the Daily5 structure. I put the YouTube URLs through safeshare.tv to eliminate the "clutter" from the YouTube videos and then created QR codes using goo.gl.com URL shortner. Here is the document. 

One of the activities my students enjoyed doing was making posters about how to be a bucket filler after we listened to Have You Filled a Bucket Today? They did a great job working in a collaboartive group to create their posters. Here are a couple of examples. 

In math class we have worked on standard, word, and expanded form of numbers up to the millions. We also sharpened our addition and subtraction skills with larger numbers. Getting to play games was a big hit this week and even with all those students in our room. they kept the noise down to an acceptable level. We are using the classroom computers to complete a math placement test on MobyMax and will then be able to add computer time to our math daily rotations. 

This week in social studies we learned about the continents and oceans and practiced our mapping skills. One of the best ways I know to get kids to love learning about the geography of the United States is by playing Mystery Location via a video conference call using Skype or Google Hangout with another class. We were able to do just that with Mrs. Regruth's class located in Indiana. Over Skype using a series of yes/no questions they guessed our location first. My students had a blast and were thrilled when they figured out their location too.

We had a super first week, worked hard, learned new things, cooperated and collaborated nicely with our classmates. and even took quite a few brain breaks using one of our favorite sites - GoNoodle. So far our favorite GoNoodle brain break is Ice Cream and Guacamole.

Working on My "Flipped" Math Homework

One of the things I will continue to work on over the summer is my version of "flipped" homework. I began doing this in November last school year and want to start out the 2014-2015 school year with all of my weekly homework sheets ready to go.

"Flipped" math homework simply means that my students were given time in class (I had a 90 minute math block) to complete their HW. Why? Well, first of all they had support in the classroom if they got stuck. They could ask me or another student for help. Second, they got the valuable practice time they needed on the types of questions they would be having on their quarterly assessments. Third there were no more excuses for why homework was not completed.

Each Monday my students received their weekly math homework sheet which had problems for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on it aligned to the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) for math that were being coverd on the next interval assessment. These included new standards and review standards. Below is an example of a weekly homework sheet. (Click here to see full size Google doc.)

Here is another example of one of my homework sheets showing new skills and review skills on it. 

During my math block, my students rotated through math stations. I used the word MATH to set up our stations. A and H were done every day by every student. M and T were done as needed or as time allowed, usually three times a week.

       M - Manipulatives - Students work with hands-on materials or play games to reinforce skills.

       A - At the Computer - Students complete work on websites such as IXL, LearnZillion, TenMarks

       T - Teacher Time - This is where they meet with me for small group instruction.

       H - Have a Go - This is where they work on their assignment and homework for the day.  

By allowing my students to work on their math homework in class, I was there to offer support and correct misconceptions that arose. If for some reason a student didn't finish their homework during class then it had to be completed at home. I had my students show their homework to their parents each night and had the parents sign it.  Each day we checked the previous day's work via our interactive whiteboard. I pulled up the Google document and we annotated right over it to show solutions. 

Using this type of formative assessment allowed me to see each day how my students were doing in math. It also eliminated so many of the stresses that traditional homework can cause. Each and every one of my students had their needs met on a daily basis. Once a skill was taught and tested, my students knew they would be held accountable to remember it. 

It will be great to start the 2014-2015 having all of my "flipped" math homework sheets ready to go. 

Have you considered, or do you "flip" homework? What do you use for formative assessment? Please share in the comment section below. 

Happy 2014

Happy New Year! I am excited to get back to blogging which I've sadly neglected this school year as I spent my free time learning how to properly implement Common Core State Standards (CCSS). While I thought I was prepared after a year of transition last school year, I soon realized that I had so much to learn. It was definitley a struggle during the beginning weeks of school and stressed me out a lot, to the point where I even stated out loud that this would be my last year of teaching.

Luckily after the disasterous first round of ANET interval testing, I found my stride with regards to CCSS and figured out how to teach my students math in a way that would make me happy and my students successful.  Read about my "flipped" homework here. I have settled down and there is no more talk of retiring!

Tomorrow I return to school after a nice two week vacation where I was able to relax and recharge my batteries. I also accomplished a few things that had been moved to the back burner of my busy life. I have missed my teammates and other faculty members, but most of all, I have missed each and every one of my wonderful students.

http://www.donorschoose.org/ 

I have exciting news to share with all of you. I finally got a DonorsChoose project written, accepted, and posted. But the best news of all is it was fully funded in less than 24 hours. (Thank you to those who made donations.) Shortly after we return to school we will be receiving a package - a new Chromebook! I can't wait to see all of the wonderful ways we will put this computer to use. (My second project is up and almost half of the funds have been donated, so hopefully a second Chromebook will arrive in February.) Happy New Year to us!!!

The 2013-2014 School Year Begins

Friday, August 9, was our first day of school for this school year. It was exciting to meet the new members of my homeroom, most of whom I will teach math, science, and social studies. We spent the morning in homeroom organizing our classroom supplies, getting our cubbies labled and organized with our new books. The students also wrote a paper called Three Truths and a Lie, which they shared with the whole class, as we tried to figure out which of the four statements was untrue. They also created a "mini-me" which holds a notecard telling important facts about them.

During the afternoon, we fired up the netbooks and learned how to create a PowerPoint slideshow. Ms. Naugle demonstrated by using our Promethean board how to open PPT, create a title slide, add new slides, add imagines, and save the work. Then the students had a chance to create a three slide PPT about their passon. The students also learned how to create a folder on the computer's desktop so that they can save all of their creations to their personal folder. Everyone did an awesome job with our first tech assignments of the year.

Before heading to PE (our last period of the day), they had a chance to flex their math brains by completing fact games on www.multiplication.com.

I can't wait to meet the rest of my class who didn't come on Friday. Hopefully everyone will be present and accounted for on Monday. I have created fun and engaging lessons for us to do next week.

What a great start we had to our new school year! 

Earth Day 2013

Well as luck would have it our Spring Break (April 18 - April 22) fell right when I'm usually in full swing for Earth Day activities in our classroom. I've had to modify my usual Earth Day celebration and will extend it until the end of April, which is the end of Earth Month. We did not take part in the Earth Day Groceries Project because of when state testing and our Spring Break occurred and that makes me sad. I have loved being a part of this project for the past 5 years.


Instead my students are creating  Earth Day mini posters, writing acrostic poems on their blogs, and are completing my Environmental Heroes Web Quest. I created this web qquest as one of the artifacts for a graduate class in took in 2010. Since it is a mini research project, I think is aligns quite nicely to CCSS. 

Please feel free to share my web quest with your students. I will be posting pictures and inks to their other work for Earth Day when we return from Spring Break.

What are you doing to celebrate Earth Day? Please share by leaving a comment. 

Images from Free Clip Art  from Hubpages