Eating and Reading! Two of My Favorite Things

It's been a busy time in my fourth grade classroom.  We have been working our behinds off (in between snow days-of course). One of the things we just began was a Lunch Time Book Club.

I read the first two books of the Keepers of the School sereis by Andrew Clements to my class.  They loved it and wanted to read more. So we decided to create a lunch time book club where we can gether once a week to chat about what we have been reading at home.  The problem- the reading level of the book is too high for most of my kiddos to read independently.  So I did what any teacher would do and recorded my own audio book.  Yup just me, some snow days, ITunes, and me reading aloud to my dog Copper.  


Once the audio recording was completed I downloaded the playlist to 10 IPods I have for use in my classroom.  (They were a Black Friday deal a few years ago and have been worth every cent.)  

The kids LOVED that all they had to do was pop in some ear buds and they could listen to me read to them during Readers Workshop.  Since I only had 10 IPods that means some of my studnets, the ones who could, would have to read the novel themselves.  Of course they wanted to listen to an IPod, but they were real troopers when I reminded them that this was differentiation and that meant everyone gets what they need to get better. This was a concept we have discussed since September and one they have really embraced.  

Here is one of my lovelies reading listening and reading along.
(Notice the IPod on his chest)

We started this past Thursday and were supposed to have our second meeting today, but Snowmagedon had other plans for us. I REALLY love the fact that instead of heading to the APR for lunch they would rather hang in the classroom eating...AND TALKING ABOUT BOOKS!

Stay Warm Buddies!
-Damien

Remember Us?

Well hello friends-

Remember us?  It's Kelly and Damien-The Reading Buddies!  It seems like we have neglected this little blog of ours BIG TIME as our last entry was November, that's right November 28th!  

I am making it my goal to blog at least once a week from here on.  That way we can continue to connect with our digital teaching friends becasue, we've missed you.  Here's my first attempt at a more consistent, weekly, blogging! (Wish me luck!)

Here's a glimpse of the one Super Bowl activity that I was able to squeeze in this year.  My kids were all about the Super Bowl this year as it is being played in New Jersey (yes NJ despite what New Yorkers think- they must not know their geography) and a player from our school district is actually playing in the Super Bowl. 

We have been working our butts off on our multiplication facts.  Part of that unit has been the exploration of factors, multiples, fact families, and algebraic expressions.  So in Math on Super Bowl Friday we created our own Football jerseys with an number higher than 41 that is not prime.  After we created our jerseys we had to display the factors, factor pairs, multiples, fact families, and two algebraic expressions that include the number.   Here is our finished display and a few close-ups.  

This would be a great activity for Super Bowl Monday-regardless of how disappointing the game is (it's currently 43 to 8).

Happy to see you, and now on a more regular basis, buddies!

Damien and Kelly

P.S. If the snow forecast is true it looks like another shortned day in NJ so I might be back as soon as tomorrow.  

Cyber Monday/Tuesday Sale

Although the turkey is still in the oven (dinner is at 4:00) it's time to think about holiday sales. 

We will be participating in the TPT Cyber Monday/Tuesday Sale. Best thing, no need to get up at 5:00AM and wait on long lines. Ahh shopping from the comfort of home. 

Being Each Other's Super Heroes

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...Village Avengers!

This week we acknowledged School Anti-Violence Week by becoming each other's Super Heroes.  It was a school-wide theme that cluminated in the wearing of Super Hero capes (decorated in Art class) on Friday.  The goal was to convey to our students that they can be each other's heroes by being upstanders when they see someone being bullied.  We did quite a few things this week to convey the message. 

Don't we look SUPER heroic!



First, we watched a Brainpop.com video on bullying and one on cyberbullying. We took the wuizzes together as a class on the SMART Board so that we can discuss and review the inforamtion we learned from Tim and Moby. 

I read One to the class and we participated on a class discussion of what it means to be "the one" for someone else.  This is a phenomenal story with simple pictures but a deep message.  In the story, the number 1 stands up for the colors being bullied by red.  It may sound "young" but I promise I read this to my fifth graders for years and they enjoyed it as well. 

We also spent some time discussing the qualities of a hero.  To introduce this idea I showed a clip from The Avengers that was posted on Youtube and had the kids start documenting the traits they see in the Super Heroes.  They discussed their ideas together and then we shared them as a group.  As I charted their suggestions we discussed how those Super Hero traits could translate to being a hero to someone being bullied.  

As our culminating activity we made Super Hero comic strips where the students played the role of the hero swooping in to help "save" someone who was being bullied.  They really did a GREAT job! Here are a few samples below....

Well that's it for now.  

Up!       Up!  and     AWAY!

Damien

Halloween Candy Math- "Sweet" fun for all Learners

With Halloween over there is tons of candy laying around.  Although this is bad for my diet, it is great for my Halloween Candy Math activity. 

This is a place value, addition, comparing numbers, and rounding activity that I did with my class this week.  It was perfect for the few days before and the few days after Halloween.  In my class it started with me giving the kids a large pillowcase of candy.  Later I though this could be done by giving the kids fictious amounts of candy on a class table used by the whole class.

A pile of delicious Math Manipulatives

Dumping the candy out of the pillowcase

My kids needed to find out the total number of pieces they had of each type of candy.  They immediately began sorting their candy into piles, estimating the number of pieces, and eventually tallying up the total.  

Let the sorting begin!!!

Over the next few days we spent time comparing our candy totals, rounding to the nearest tens and hundreds, solving addition problems using two methods, and-most importantly- thinking and writing about our thinking!

I always like to add a reflective piece to each activity we do.  So in this activity, besides asking about their enjoyment, I asked them what skills they felt they had a strong grasp on and what skills they feel they need to revisit and how they want to revisit them.  I am very interested to see what they say about what they need to revisit and how they want to revisit it.  

I'll keep ya posted!
Damien

If you are intierested in my activity it can be found here: Halloween Candy Math

Working on Writing

Want to know a secret?   Well, do you? 

Here it is:  I'm not the greatest writing teacher.  

There, I said it. phew! Thanks for listening blogging buddies. 

Well, this year I have decided to do something about it.  This year I am teaching a looping class.  That means I will ahve the same kids in fourth grade that I do when I return to fifth grade. That means I will be the last teacher they have in elementary school and I have two years to kick their writing into high gear.  

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! 

My entry in my Writing Notebook about a
time I rode Splash Mountain.

One of the things I did was to seek out a thrid grade colleague of mine who is a phenomenal writing teacher.  She just gets it and thankfully is willing to help me out.  

A LONG entry (along with sketches) in a students notebook. 

A student sketching out his ideas to help
create a picture to write about. 

Our first unit of study is a narrative writing.  We started in mid-September and are getting pretty close to publishing our pieces of writing. 

Our curriculum is built on Writing Workshop and I would love any writing tips our blogging friends have to offer.  

What do you do about writing?

Have a Fantastic Day!

-Damien 

Pumpkin Math-Seriously everyone should do this!

Let's go back....way back....to my first year of teaching!  

My classroom is directly across the hall from a first grade classroom and I watched them celebrate and learn through thematic teaching.  You know what I mean apples on Johnny Appleseed Day, pumpkins around Halloween, you get the idea. 

I was determined to add some of that fun to my fifth grade classroom.  My first activity, Pumpkin Math was born! It has undergone quite a few changes in the last seven years, and now it is ready to share with you. 

On day #1 of the activity my students use a variety of materials to discover the circumference, radius, and diameter of a pumpkin that a parent volunteer has supplied.  We work in small groups and estimate and find the weight.  Students also write a physical description about their pumpkin so that everyone can identify which pumpkin belongs to each group.  

Using pop cubes to find the radius

Collecting our data

On day #2 we get REALLY MESSY.  We take a guess on the number of seeds inside the pumpkin and then start scooping out all of the seeds and pumpkin guts.  Here I am able to see a great deal about my students and their problem solving techniques.  For example who is counting one seed at a time and who is making small groups of seeds.  This gets messy and makes for some awesome photo-ops. I take the seeds home that day and season and cook theme to be shared as a treat as we analyze our data the next day.  

Guessing the number of seeds in our pumpkin 

Emptying out the pumpkin in our to count the seeds

 Creating piles of 20 to count the seeds

On day #3 we analyze all the data that we have collected in order to find the mean of the pumpkins we have in the room.  We also pull out the pumpkin carving kits and create jack o'lanterns out of our emptied out pumpkins.  

This is an activity that my kids have LOVED year after year.  When they come back to visit after leaving my class Pumpkin Math is one of the things we did together that always want to reminisce about.

You can grab this activity at my TPT Store: The Reading Buddies Pumpkin Math 

Can you smell the pumpkin in the air?

Damien