Get To Know Me

As some of you are starting back to school next week I thought I'd share a GREAT packet I purchased from TpT (click picture to go to the product).

I have used some of these with my summer school students and they LOVE them.

One of the favorites was Would You Rather...

They each got to choose a card from the middle, one at a time. The person who chose the card read it to the group, would answer it, then explain why they chose what they did. Some of the cards were: Would you rather live in space or under the sea? Would you rather learn to talk all over again or learn to walk all over again? Some were silly and some were very thought provoking. They really enjoyed it!

I would suggest with the Would You Rather activity giving the students some time to maybe write some of them in their journal and let them answer them, they really had to work hard not to blurt out what they would rather do!

Well it's August here and the smoke has rolled in from CA fires.

Our little valley is the perfect pocket for the smoke, no fun!

(there is usually a great view of our fields out there)

What's In a Name

Again I am exhausted...I have completed my first week back to school, and first week back in fifth grade. There were a couple of times I had to stop, blink, and think "that's right they are 5th graders"...and they are breaking me in well. I only had a few moments of panic and worry, especially when I began looking over the Science content/book to plan for next week...oh my! But I have a great co-teacher that is keeping me calm.

There were a few little things I thought I would share with you from this week. First to answer a common question: Where do you get your ladybugs to decorate your room? Well the cartoon looking ones are from DJ Inkers and I think I picked them up from The School Box. The ones that I have attached to my clothes pins and sometimes wall for decoration are from Hobby Lobby, they are painted wood and were about .49 cents each (when on sale). Another common question is how to I put things on the board and walls...I LOVE hot glue!!! Yep use it for almost everything. It comes off the board easily as well as the wall...especially if you use a paint scraper type tool.

Now as for a few little lesson that you may be interested in...

The first was a writing lesson on mini investigations. This was a county lesson plan that was a way that the students could get ideas for writing. If you are familiar with Ralph Fletcher...it went along with Ch2 in his book A Writer's Notebook (GREAT book!!!! the kids love it...and it's available for your Kindle, just downloaded it!). I talked about them making a list of things they would like to "investigate". We made an I WONDER bubble in the middle of the page and completed a splash of all their "wonders".

When the mini lesson was complete I read The Name Jar to the students (love this book)

I then gave them the assignment below...What's In a Name...I had seen many versions of this and couldn't find one with all the questions I liked, so I made my own. They had to do a mini investigation and find out about their name. They loved it...the next day we shared and learned more about each other. Well I am going to have to promise to attach it later, because my computer isn't letting me. 

Finally we ended the week using the Scientific Method and seeing what would happen to gummy bears when put in hot water and cold water. It was a lot of fun. I also found FUN song about the Scientific Method...I dare you to listen to it and not have it stuck in your head for the rest of the night.

Our First Day

I managed to survive our/my first day in fifth grade! This year I have been given the task of teaching fifth grade and transition. For those of you that don't know what that is, I have the students who failed the fourth grade end of the year test. They had a chance to pass it in summer school, most passed a few sections, but those placed in my class still failed a portion....this is about half of my class. I tell you this just in case you see a few things posted and think, "wait I thought she was teaching 5th grade this year!"

Okay so now on to our first day and what we did. The students had some board work, what we call Big 5 to complete. Big 5 is simply five math questions (and I also do 5 LA questions) that are possibly review of items we already learned or are struggling with. Seeing that it's the first day of school it was simple end of fourth grade math problems.

I also wanted to give them a little something else, so I saw a few of these questions on Pinterest. They were each given six sticky notes and had to write their answers and post them, I did allow them to be anonymous if they wanted.

Here is what they looked like, I LOVE some of the responses, I hope you can read them!

Student responses to What will you need to be successful this year?

 

 Next set of questions:

Student responses to What do you hope to learn this year in 5th grade?

Student responses to Our class should be _________________ everyday.

Next set of questions:

 

Student responses to What kind of teacher do you want?

Student responses to School is important because __________________.

 

Another activity we did was creating name bubbles. A good picture book to read with this is: The Name Jar. I was really pushed for time today, I did read You Are Finally Here! and This is the Teacher. Here is mine and my interner's bubbles:

Each student made their own name bubble. They then had to partner up and shared their bubbles with each other. Once partnered up they "introduce" their partner to the class and share at least two things about that person.

We then did a fun Twitter activity! They each got to make up their own Twitter name and draw their own avatar (I have a little mimio I made for it, I'll have to take some Hypersnaps and show it to you all later, I left my school laptop at school tonight, on purpose!). Once we had those two things completed they got to write their own Tweet, sticking with all the Twitter guidelines! Here is how they turned out.

A few of you had asked how my clipboards were mounted on the wall. Just plain hooks...hot glued on the wall. That simple!

Hope you first day goes as well as mine did!