Last Minute Thanksgiving (seems to be a trend)

I must quit reading blogs and catching up and write this post, I have SO much to share with you all. But will try to pace myself.

If you don't remember or are new to my blog...I posted a few Thanksgiving lessons last year (click here). One "addition" I made this year was to expand the Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving lesson.

This year I am reading the book to my kiddos, after a few leading questions and discussion...I hope that they will realize the similarities to Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving. I will then give them the Venn Diagram with the QR code in the corner (see below). The QR code links them to a You Tube video of an animated reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas. They will watch the video then use the Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the two poems. Click below for the printable, there are two per page so they can glue it into their Reading journals.

After we share our "findings" and complete a class Venn Diagram they will then make their Turkey Survival Kit booklet (what we can sell to turkeys so that they can survive Thanksgiving without becoming dinner). 

Finally tonight I'm going to leave you with one of our art lessons....I had a lot of fun with this fall/Thanksgiving craft. Sorry in advance for the sideways pics, when I uploaded them from my phone they are showing up correctly in my gallery but as soon as I put them in blogger they flip! 

Step 1: Go on a nature walk and collect leaves, who doesn't like doing that?!

Step 2: Using fall colors complete a leaf rubbing, overlapping the leaves and colors. 

Step 3: Print (in different fonts) words such as Thankful, Fall, Thanks, etc. Have the students choose one and tape it to their desk. Then discuss the definition of overlay and give examples. Hand them an overhead projector sheet (transparency)...they flipped out that they were going to use one! Give them a Sharpie and have them trace the word from the printed page to the transparency, by laying it on top of the one taped on the desk. 

Step 4: Make a frame out of a long piece of art paper...it's hard to explain without pictures, but when I did it with the kids they were AMAZED!

Step 5: Tape the leaf rubbing inside the frame, tape the overlay over the rubbing, close the frame and tape it shut if you want. I LOVE how these came out (did I say that already)

Here are a few more

As an added bonus for my loyal readers I am attaching some QR codes! Here are two sheets of codes that when scanned will just show text...the numbers 1-36 (each QR code is a different number). You can use these for many things. 

My students wrote descriptive paragraphs for their monsters from the I Need My Monster glyph activity. When writing the paragraph they used the descriptive words and such that they wanted their monsters to actually look/be like. They were also "cryptic" in their writing, so as to not give away which monster was theirs too easily. 

Using the paragraph they wrote and the glyph key students from another class, and their parents, had to try and find that monster...located on our monster wall (each monster has a number attached to it). Once they guess which monster fits that description they then scan the attached QR code to reveal the correct monster's number...to see if they were right! I can see us doing many different activities like this in the future. Feel free to use these codes and let me know what you use them for!! Click here to download. 

Finally I leave you with this...I have changed my behavior management by adding Class Dojo! THEY LOVE IT, and so do my parents!!!! I'll have to update you on that soon!

Have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!

Topic Charts

I am alive and well...like most teachers you dive into the school year and are lucky to come up for breath before Thanksgiving! We have done some fun things, and every time we do something I think..."I would love to blog about this!" Then before I know it...another week has past.

One of these days I'll catch up...no promises though!

I did want to share my old and new topic charts that we are using in the room. It's just a general chart that shows an overall "snapshot" of our topic we are discussing/learning. I don't really consider them anchor charts, to me those are more specific. But they are a quick reference for the students.

Sorry for the short post, but enjoy the pictures (my good camera is on the fritz so these are taken with my phone).

I LOVE books!

For the past two weeks my class has been enthralled in some amazing books! We have been working hard on comparing and contrasting different elements of text. I thought I would share some of the books we have been using and what we have been using them for. (Some of these I may have posted about before)

We used this book to compare and contrast character dialogue. Before we even charted using a simple t-chart, I read the book. Then we went back through noting the dialogue. They were shocked to realize that one of the characters didn't say a thing in the beginning and middle...but when he did speak it was important and the climax of the story!

This book is SO powerful! I used it to talk about how setting can affect and change a character, also how a character changes, we compared and contrasted how she felt in the beginning versus the end.

I know that I talked about this next book before, but I love it...and so do the students! There is so much to discuss about in this book. We first used it to compare and contrast the two characters.

We then read Teammates and compared the two characters. The next day we compared and contrasted the two stories (Pink and Say with Teammates)...it was AMAZING some of the things the students came up with: "they are both battling the same thing even though they are decades apart", "the both wore uniforms". Great discussions!!!

We then compared and contrasted stories written by the same author (how the story itself was structured, written, etc.)

As we moved on we started a Character unit. I will share my Reading notebook and classroom focus/topic poster soon! But I wanted to share the students' favorite book, they couldn't stop talking about this one and the character traits that they discussed were great.

ENJOY these great mentor texts!

I Need My Monster UPDATE

Hey guys...just want to give a shout out to the person that shared my I Need My Monster Packet! My email has blown up with requests to share the packet, LOVE IT! So thank you for the "share", not sure who you are :)

Anyway to maybe make things a bit easier/faster for some of you, I have uploaded the packet to my TpT store. Some people were having problems with the Google link and not being able to print. Thank you again for the massive amount of interest and I hope you all enjoy!!!!

Here is the TpT Link:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/I-Need-My-Monster-Packet-922729

Here is the link to my original post about the activity:
http://dandelionsdragonflies.blogspot.com/2012/10/we-need-our-monsters.html

Visitors

The past two weeks I have hosted a few visitors in my classroom.

One of my student's asked if his Aunt could come teach some Yoga to our class, SURE...seeing that we don't have PE teachers and are in charge of it ourselves...I thought it was a wonderful opportunity.

Here are a few pictures

Only down part was some of them were a little "too" relaxed afterward!

The second group of visitors just came today. Our district board of education "popped" in for a little visit.

My kiddos did AWESOME. We were in math centers working on many different things. Here are some great resources I have used for our Decimal Place Value and Factors/Multiples Review.

Center 1: Moby Max (this is a great website, with free portions, that really helps with support and review)
Center 2: QR Self checking Place Value and Factor/Multiples (LOVE this seller's stuff on TpT!)
Center 3: A QR code weather decimal/website worksheet that I made
Center 4: Meet with teacher
Center 5: Salute

The HR director also thought he would do a little decorating while he was in my classroom!

Finally earlier this week we also had our walk-a-thon. 

Here I am with my co-teacher...a little cold out and both supporting our teams!

This was our classes walking back to school from the Middle School track...you can tell they were a little tired! 

Hope you guys are having a great week and I'm looking forward to the weekend!!!!

Open House and QR Codes

We had a great busy, but great week ...picture day, hearing/vision screening, a guest visitor, and open house! I'm tired just typing it.

I was a little nervous about open house, not sure why, because it was just that...open house! I didn't have to give a speech or present anything, just be in my room and say hi to parents.

The next task was to do or have my kids make something that they would be proud of and want to share with their parents. I of course also wanted to use technology.

So what better than a paper slide video! Click here if you didn't read my post about paper slide videos.

We have had a little difficulty getting our iPods updated and going, so we used a flip video camera to film them. I let them choose any topic they wanted, but it had to be something we have done, read, wrote, or learned so far this year (which has only been a few weeks). I didn't get picky or make them be "perfect"...this was their first video, plenty of room for improvement. :)

Some of them came out great! I then wanted to also to have something up, outside my classroom door. I saw a cute board posted on Pinterest (I think), but it was the little MP3 players with the student pics and it said "iRead"

Then light bulbs went off!!! Why not make QR codes (those fun looking squares that you scan and can take you to a website or enter you in a contest) for the student's paper slide videos?!?! Then glue them on the little MP3 players that have their pics on them???

Here is what the display looked like.

The QR codes are right below their picture. The parents came in and scanned their student's code and BAM watched their video! If they didn't have a QR app or didn't have a smart phone I had six iPods available for them to use. I had only one video that didn't work because I had so many private settings on it that it didn't allow us to scan and view it.

So how do you do this you ask? I uploaded the videos to my teaching partner's You Tube site, his was pretty well set up and had some great security features chosen. From now on though I will be uploading to School Tube. I would have done it for this project, but it took the website a few days to verify that I was an educator. I HIGHLY suggest you use School Tube! It's AWESOME!

Once they were uploaded I simply copy the video link and pasted it onto this site QR Stuff. It generated the QR code and I downloaded it. Once it was open I printed it, cut it out, and glued it on the student's MP3 player.

Here is one of the QR codes for one of the paper slide videos. You can even scan QR codes right off the computer!!!

It was a HIT!!!!

So I'm glad to say I made it through Open House with flying colors!

The next thing I am going to use QR codes for in my classroom is my "focus walls". Our district asks that we have focus walls for at least reading and math. Now as to what a focus wall should look like or can look like...that is up for interpretation. Well I have a hard time covering my walls with too much stuff, sensory overload (for me...not saying it's wrong or bad). So my interpretation was more...focus wall posters!

They are posters that have our topic for the week or weeks. During that particular week the poster is a work in progress, usually hung on my board during that class period. Once finished it hangs in that area of my room until the next topic is completed, then I change it. Here are my last three focus wall posters.

But what do I do with the old posters? How can the students use the old posters and topics to reference?

ANSWER: QR CODES!!!!

I can make, print, and post on my wall...in that subject area of my classroom the QR codes for previously taught topic posters! The kids can use their iPods to scan the codes and the picture pops up!

Here is one of my other math posters...but scan the QR code to take a peek, ENJOY!!!

Do you use QR codes in your classroom? How?

Here are some updated pics of my room I took during open house.

Prefix, Suffix, Root Word Trees in bloom

Finally got all my writing drawers and got them numbered!

My book boxes came in!!!!! I LOVE LOVE using the book boxes!