One Little Word Project

What a week!  After a wonderful two week winter break, we ended up with a two day extension thanks to some extremely cold weather, we ended the week with an early dismissal on Friday thanks to another dose of winter wonderfulness.  Despite only being in class for 2 and a half days we did manage to tackle and complete our One Little Word Project.  The kids really had a positive response to this project and choose great words for their year.

To get this project started I shared the book The Quilt maker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau and Gail De Marcken. I asked the students to think about words they thought would define the king and the quilt maker's lives.  They came up with words like magical and generous for the quilt maker and greedy, selfish and mean for the king.  Next we talked about how the quilt maker made a difference in many people's lives, especially the king's so they determined that a couple good words for both by the end of the story were give or share.
Next I had my students look at our verbs list in their reading/writing notebooks.  I asked them to think about what they could do to make this year different.  After they checked out that list I told them I wanted them to pick one word that they could focus on for 2014.  To help them stay away from "weak" words like "nice" and "fun" we talked about the fact that this is the time people set new goals or resolutions for this year, so they should try to find a word that really meant something to them. I then shared the presentation that Jennifer over at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings {check out her post} created to share with her class.  It was great-as they were watching, you could literally see the light bulbs above their heads turn on as the idea starting to sink in.  To end this initial lesson I had the students write down 5 words that thought might be good for their one little word and I told them we would return to it the next day to finalize their word after they had a longer chance to think about it.

Day two of this project I had the students pull out their sticky note with their 5 words and we watched the Pep Talk from Kid President.  We had actually watched this video earlier in the year, but I felt like it was a good message to get them to think about how they could be awesome. (Plus it fit in with the my launch of Genius Hour (I'm planning to do a few posts on that topic later) that I had planned for the end of the week).  After viewing the video I had the class do a quick group share with their words--I knew I had a few students who could use a little inspiration from their peers before they made their final decision.  Next came the creative element---(we don't have an art teacher in my district any more so it is up to the classroom teachers to come up with art activities--thank God for the blogging community and all the artsy teachers out there or I would be in BIG trouble), so using Jennifer's idea again, students created a little word art with their One Little Word.  To finish up the project students had to write how the word they chose could be applied to their school life as well as their everyday life.  I have to say I was very impressed by some of the deep thinking many of my students put into this activity.  Here is a little video clip showing our finished project. Enjoy!

Tried It Tuesday

Brrr! It's another freezing morning here in central Iowa!  I cannot remember a winter that has been this cold for such a stretch of time.  I can quite honestly say I have already started praying for Spring or that someone will hand me a ticket to a warm tropical getaway!

In the spirit of sticking to my New Year blogging resolution,  I thought I'd try to link up with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for

One of the new things I have tried out this year is Planbook.com and I have to say I love it!  In the past I have always created my own planning sheets using  Excel.  Last year I kept all my plans in one excel workbook with a tab for each month.  It worked nicely, but I still had to do a lot of copy and pasting each week.  We run on a 6 day cycle so everyday is a little different.  Needless to say I am always looking for a way to make my lesson planning more efficient and less painful. :)

I read a post this summer from someone else who was thinking about trying Planbook.com so I headed over to the site to check it out myself.  At first I was a bit skeptical about how easy it would be to use and if in reality I would use it.  I have experimented with online planners before without a lot of success and they can be pretty costly, so I held off on doing the trial until school actually started so I could see if this one would be any different.  Let me just say- this one is a keeper!

 Here are some of the reasons I particularly like this planner:

1. It's not as costly as many- it only costs $12 a year!  I know money isn't everything, but I spend a lot of my own money on school things.  I try to make sure I get the most bang for my buck wherever I can.
2.  It is super user friendly. The site offers several video tutorials to help you get started.
3. I like that I can set up my lesson blocks in the template then just add the specifics when I do  my weekly planning- no more typing it over and over or copying and pasting.
4. I can code the day's lesson with the standard code for the Common Core- at the end of the year, I can print a report that shows all the skill codes I taught which will make filling out my ICAT so much easier plus it's provides an artifact for my principal.

5. I can quickly adjust my plans either to extend a lesson or bump it to the next day.  Snow days or other events no longer make my plans look like a toddler scribbled on them LOL.
6. Another nice feature that I don't use a lot but does come in handy is that you can print your lessons out either for the day or by the week.  An emergency came up this fall that had me running out the door  with no time to lay out my usual sub sheets- all I did was print the day's plan and they were able to move on without me.
7.  You can also share your plans with other teachers.  Right now, I am the only one in my team using this so, I don't use this feature but think it would be great when team teaching.
8.  Lastly, I love that my planner is with me all time and it isn't an extra something in my bag.

Well that's my Tried it Tuesday.  If you are looking for an online planner, you'll want to check this one out yourself.  Have a great week!

Cold Day...Monday Made It-January

Can you say frigid?  Well, I can honestly say even that adjective is not adequate in describing today's temperatures in central Iowa.  When I got up this morning the windchill was a grand -51.  Yes, that is a negative sign :(  Needless to say we did not have school and won't tomorrow due to this lovely (yep-that was some sarcasm) winter weather.  I didn't mind the first snow day or even the second-they extended our winter break, but tomorrow will be our third day and it is only January 6.  I don't want to be in school in July, so I REALLY hope Mother Nature takes pity on us and sends Spring soon.   I am ready to head back to work and my children are a quite tired of being cooped up in the house in each other's company, so they need to go back to school too.  Ok, no more whining about winter. On to the more important stuff.

Since today was a free day and I was in the mood for school, I jumped on a couple projects that have been bubbling in my mind for a bit.  Knowing that it was Monday and I could link up with Tara over at Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It was also inspiration for my craftiness :)  So here's a couple of the projects I got done today.

Monday Made It #1: Homemade Broccoli Cheddar Soup and baguettes. Yumm!  Who can resist a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter day? Not me!  I'd recently pinned a copycat recipe for Panera's Cheddar Broccoli soup and decided today was the day to test it out.  You can't have homemade soup without fresh bread so I decided to try my hand at baguettes while I was at it.  Both turned out tasty, though the bread wasn't as pretty as Panera's LOL.  I love the smell of fresh bread baking!!

Monday Made It #2: Math Daily 4
Last week I read a post by Tina over at Mrs. Croft's Classroom about how she does her math workshop.  I really liked her set up and got to thinking about how it might help me solve a few problems in my own math block. We switched to Everyday Math last year and all I can say is I am not really a fan.  I feel like my high kids are being held back and my low kids aren't getting enough practice.  Before this switch we had been doing more mastery teaching and I felt like my students really knew their math when they left my room.  Anyway, after reading Tina's post I thought I could work at putting something similar in place in my classroom.  We already do the Daily 4 in reading, so the kids are familiar with the concept of rotations.  In order to hit the ground running with this, I put together my rotations board.  I plan to introduce each rotation (Meet with the Teacher, At your seat, Technology, and Hands On) one at a time and practice them just like we did with the Daily 4 in reading.  We'll make our I can charts to go along with each one.  I am really excited to try this out.  I'll try to come back and write up a post or two about how it goes.

Monday Made It #3- States and Capitals Foldable for Social Studies Notebook

This year I am trying to use an interactive notebook for Social Studies.  I have one that I feel pretty good about for science and thought it would be a good concept to put in place for Social Studies too. Unfortunately it hasn't been going very well.  Since I alternate between science and social studies and I knew I'd be starting a new SS unit after break, I've been trying to figure out how I could make a foldable that students could put in their notebooks to help them with the states and capitals.  I FINALLY got something to work and I must say I am pretty pleased with how it came out.  Each page has a spot for the state name, capital and abbreviation.  I filled in some of the information but students will have to fill in the rest.  They will also color the in the state on the map to help them work on state locations.  We always make a set of flash cards for each region, but I think having the information in their notebooks will be helpful too (especially for my young ones who are organizationally challenged LOL).  Once I figured out the set for our current region of study it was easy to put together ones for the rest of the regions.



Monday Made It #4 New Reading Daily 4 chart

After making the chart for the math rotations, I decided I needed to revise my reading rotation chart to make them match up a little better.  You'll notice a few blank spots on the board....my dog Faolan  decided he should help and managed to snag a few pieces while I was switching the laundry.  I'll have to do a reprint but thought I'd better pick it up and play with the puppy before he chewed up something else.

Overall it was a pretty productive day.  Now it think its time for bed.  I hope all my blogging friends are staying warm...anyone in the warmer states if you could send a little heat this way  that would be great!