First Day Jitters? Nah!

Today was the first day of school. It was a great day and things went more smoothly than I expected with all of the construction going on around campus. I started the morning with 35 on my class roster and ended the day with 39. Yes! That's a lot of kiddos to house in one small space (Welcome to California education!). It's not likely that they will all stay in my room--all of our upper-grade classes are overflowing and I imagine a combo or two is coming to relive the stress (I personally would take 45 kids over a combo, if given the option.)

Anyhoo...I love all the first day, bright shiny hopeful faces just bursting with excitement. I love seeing the crisp uniforms, fresh haircuts, colorful tennis shoes, and funky backpacks walking through the door. My kidlets seem eager to learn and excited to be on the "big kids" playground now.

I'm not sure we accomplished all that much today--but we sure stayed busy all day. I did the usual full hour of rules and regulations including the new Character Counts pillars, took a couple brain breaks, had a mingle party with the other 4th grade class, started 4 seed stories for Writer's Workshop, had recess and ate lunch, and went over first-day packets. Whew! Now that I think about it--we did a lot! I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Figurative Language

Last year our district came up with a whole new set of tests for our students (oh joy) called checkpoints (I guess the word "benchmarks" is no longer the buzzword.) It's sort of our district's way of being test-ready and gauging progress through out the year. We actually give 4 sets of checkpoints (Gasp...Yes, 4 more standardized-type testing...don't get me started.) One of the areas the 4th and 5th grade checkpoints really focused a lot on was figurative language.



I wanted to come up with an on-going figurative language practice that my kidlets could do--maybe during Daily 5--maybe as a bell ringer activity. Last year I made a new anchor chart everyday for this type of practice and my kidlets copied down all the info into a generic comp book. It's my hope that this will become second nature to my kidlets and they will naturally start incorporating figurative language into their writing. Last year we tried to learn a new idiom every day and by the end of the year the kids were so excited to find examples of figurative language in their own books. So here is my work-in-progress. It is in no way perfect yet. I may need to change it once I see how my kidlets progress. It's actually a 2-page document that needs to be copied back-to-back. It will go in a 3-ring notebook and my kidlets will be able to see both pages at once. Download here: Page 2 Page 1 (sorry...I don't know how to make them into one download yet.)

Whole-Class Writing Journals

I saw another idea on Pinterest and knew it was a great idea for my classroom. Today I made 10 whole-class writing journals. I plan to let these journals circulate around the room during Daily 5 (Daily 3?) and want to encourage my kidlets to share their writing with the class. Some of my topics are hobbies, pets, vacations, deserted island, music, and college. The original pin links back to a really great website you need to check out. This teachers has some really wonderful ideas and a few freebies, too (I used her doc for my journal labels and then just threw in some graphics.) Click Here: I Love My Classroom

Writing Journals: Ribbon Bookmarks

I saw this idea on Pinterest (sorry--I don't know where the original post is but if it's yours please let me know). It was a pretty simple project. A little hot glue, ribbons, and now my student's new writing journals have a permanent book mark. I think they are so cute.

We Rock! Rocks & Minerals Lapbook

This is the second year I made the rock and mineral lapbooks with my kids. This is a fun project that I use to wrap up the science chapter. I give the students only one or two pieces to work on per day. This helps with staying on our deadline AND less loss of pieces. I also give each student a manila envelope to keep all their pieces in them until they assemble the full project. This was another item I have ready for Open House.

The cover (designed any way my kidlets wanted to make them):





The Inside (my kidlets were encouraged to glue in their pieces in any way they wanted):




The elements inside. I noticed that I left off a picture of the vocabulary cards. They are inside the white envelope.

All About Me: Figurative Language "Foldable"

All year we worked on Figurative Language to the point where our class could hardly read a paragraph in a book without one of the students shouting out some sort of figurative language that they found. For a culminating activity, I purchased this really neat figurative language project off of "Teachers Pay Teachers" which was made by "Working For the Classroom". The kids had a great time making them even though they were time consuming. They were a big hit at Open House.


Here are some inside photos of the project:

My Teacher's Toolbox

After seeing these all over on Pinterest and various blogs, I decided to make my own teacher's toolbox. I found the Stack-On at Home Depot for $16.99 and quickly made a pattern for both sizes of drawers and simply cut them out of scrapbook paper. I made the labels in just a few minutes in Word. Saved a lot of ink, too. :-) I think the whole thing took me about an hour and a half...most of that time was taping the cards to the inside of the drawers.



I'm not sure if I like it or not, but I added wall stickers from The Dollar Tree because the tops and sides looked boring. I chose the flowers because of our Universiity of Hawaii connection. The stickers are removable so they may not last long.

Book Clubs and a Story Wheel

I tried Laura Candler's Book Clubs on a small basis this year. When groups of students (a book club) finished their reading selection, I gave them free choice to do a group project as a culminating activity. Here is a story wheel they did for the book "A Dog's Life" by Ann M. Martin. Five fourth grade students completed this project. I was really proud of their work--and the way they worked together as readers and writers.

The students chose the book they wanted to read and when they finished they pulled out 8 major events in the book then wrote about them and illustrated a scene.

No Excuses: "University of Hawaii" College Theme

Our entire school follows the "No Excuses" program and each class has a college that we promote through out the year. My class is the University of Hawaii. Each class at our school has a flag that flies outside their classroom and dedicates a bulletin board to the college through out the whole year. In addition, students wear collegiate shirts (I'm going to tie-dye mine with the kids this year) and we kick off the school year with a huge college pep rally every September. I think it's a great idea. We encourage the students to embrace the idea that school does NOT end in Twelfth Grade.


This is my University of Hawaii bulletin board. I made the "H" logo and other letters on my Cricut.





Our poster for the college pep rally.


This is the year the kidlets will graduate--college. It hangs in our room all year long as a reminder.

Open House: Spring 2012

Here are some of the photos of my classroom I took right before Open House. On the student desks are book report dioramas, animal reports, various art and language arts projects and/or journals. For Open House, I love pulling out stuff from all year and loading it up on the desk and then I let the students arrange it the way they want. That way, each student has something they feel special about on display.


A display attached to the back of the chair to show how many AR reading points each student earned that year.




From the back corner of the room where the my teacher's desk is located (that I never sit at.) You can see my "University of Hawaii" bulletin board that hangs all year long in the class on the far wall with the green background.

"My Future Looks Bright" Sunglasses

Here's something I saw on Pinterest and tweaked for my classroom's needs. These are sunglasses we completed for Open House. They were tied into goals my kidlets set at the beginning of the year. Our whole school is part of the "No Excuses University" program in which we instill in the students all year long in every grade that school automatically includes college, no excuses. So many of the students wrote on their sunglasses from a perspective of being a senior citizen and looking back on their life and all they accomplished (where they went to college, what their major was, what their career was, and other successes.)





I made the master for the sunglasses by tracing around a pair of those big plastic sunglasses that they sell at The Dollar Tree. Then I just added lines for text. I photocopied them onto large construction paper. They were a big hit at Open House!

Back-to-School and Back-to-Blogging

It's been a couple of years since I worked a blog on Blogger, and I have been trying to decide if I even need a blog. I see lots of great --and wonderfully creative-- teacher blogs out there and wonder if I have anything to offer the blog-o-sphere. I have been following links all over the place from Facebook, Pinterest, E-mails, Teacher's Notebook, and Teachers Pay Teachers...and I decided, if anything, I can blog/archive my own activities, lessons, successes, and failures in the classroom for myself and just maybe, someone might stumble upon something they can use along the way. So here I am...back at the keyboard trying to organize my thoughts and entertaining myself once again ;-) I made a header--and away I go.