Author Archives: Jen Bearden

List-Group-Label with Weather Words

We just started a new unit in science this week.  It’s an Earth Systems unit on Weather.  So just like at the beginning of all of our units, we started with talking about vocabulary.  Check out how we did it in our geometry unit.

So just like last time, we started writing as many words are we could think of that were related to weather on post-its:


Notice how the first time around they’re not in any real order.  The directions during the “list” portion are just to write down words you think are related to the topic.  The grouping and labeling part came next (the next day, actually).  And ok, I’ll apologize ahead of time for the quality of the video–I’m still working on learning how to edit!  Hope it doesn’t make you dizzy….

I’m excited to see where this takes us.  I have a group of deep thinkers who will for sure continue to ask questions and make connections that will help us all learn more about weather!  Stay tuned to find out more about what we’re doing. 🙂

 

We’ve Been Busy!

Wow–these numbers impressed me.  Our kiddos have been busy:

We’ve only been blogging since December!  And ok, there are 25 people writing those posts, but hey–almost 1000 comments!  WOW!  And so I must also thank you, our faithful readers and commenters, because it wouldn’t have happened without you!

Have you been there lately?  You should visit if you haven’t. 🙂

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Hey, friends!  We need your help!

Remember when I posted the other day about Stray Rescue and we’re working with them for our service-learning project?  Well the project is just about to be in full-swing.  Why not yet?  Because like I said, we need your help!

We have decided to make and then sell dog toys and treats, because when Connie came from Stray Rescue, she mentioned several times that the thing they need the most is MONEY!  We threw around several ideas about how to help, and decided to merge our overall class craftiness with their need for money and are going to sell our handiwork to our Robinson friends.  So we’ll need your help with that (once Sale Day comes up on April 28), but right now we need your help to gather the materials we’ll need to make our toys.

So…if you know me, or a friend in our class, and have any of these items laying around your house and are willing to let us use them, please get to us ASAP.  We’re going to start creating on Tuesday or Wednesday–hey, I know it’s late notice, so if you can’t work that fast I get it, but we just decided the other day that this was our plan.  Ok, moving on…

Here’s what we need:

For toys–

  • tennis balls
  • rope
  • old jeans
  • fleece blankets (or other fleece material that you don’t mind us cutting up)
  • empty water bottles (16 oz. or so)–no need for lids
  • old socks (adult sizes would work best)

For treats–

  • flour
  • dry milk
  • peanut butter
  • honey
  • oatmeal
  • cookie cutters (dogs, paws, bones, etc)

We’re getting excited about all of this creativity that is about to spring forth in our room, and even more excited about how that will benefit our canine and human friends alike when we can give Stray Rescue our donation!  There are over 400 kiddos in our school, and there is a large population of dog owners (we collected data to find out how many there really were!), so we’ll need to make lots of toys.  The more you can donate the better!

If you can help and you are a parent or friend of a kiddo in our class, just send your goodies in with them to school.  If you are a friend of mine, feel free to contact me and I will figure out a way to get them from you! Add a comment on here or send me an email, Facebook message or Twitter DM.  THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP!

 

Can You Hear It?

Listen closely as you watch this video….can you hear it?

What, you ask?  Well actually it’s how quiet it is in there.  It was hard to capture, but besides the quiet there were just lots of little click, click, click sounds as everyone was posting to their blogs.  I LOVE that sound!  I love how serious they are about sharing on their blogs, and how much they focus in as they work on them.

And so if you have a minute, because to visit our blogs and catch up on what’s been happening lately.  Yesterday we added posts about something I shared last week, as well as other topics of their choice.  Definitely worth a read!  Thanks in advance!

And I’ll remind you again about our map.  We love to read your comments, and also love to know where you are when you’re commenting, so we can add you to the great many other people around the world who follow our blog! 🙂

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I have shared pictures of our classroom before, so I figure many of you know what our environment normally looks like.  But now that we’ve officially started our MAP testing, our “normal” is a little different now.  Well at least until the end of next week.

So here’s what our room looks like now:

Remember how we used to have science posters hanging there?

I know you remember the map that is under there.

No calendars allowed here.  Although I’m not entirely sure how that’d help you on these tests…

Ok, so obviously you can’t leave the decimal timeline out for everyone to use.  I get that.

We also had to cover up our little S.H.A.D.O.s that are taped to our tables.  Forgot to take a picture of that.  But you get the idea.  Imagine lots of 4 X 6 inch black rectangles.

It’s a little weird, but part of the process.  We started today and are totally rocking it already!  We are Motivated And Prepared to show what we know!

I’m Just Curious…

We used this as our “Quote Worthy” quote today.  I thought it was pretty straightforward and motivating, but it’s interesting what some kids said about it.

So I ask you–what do you think it means?  How would you apply it your life?  If you could please leave a comment to let us know what you’re thinking that would be great.  I’d love to add some other thoughts to our class conversations.  Thanks in advance!

It’s the Littlest Things…

…that make me the happiest! 🙂

You may remember when I shared my favorite links and when I told you about the new cleaner I found that we’re now using for our tables.  I have had a new inspiration for organization, and had to do another thing in the classroom that would help us save time and keep things clean and green.

So here’s a nice before and after:

Ok, so it’s a tub of colored pencils.  At least it’s a labeled box of colored pencils, but it’s also a big. fat. mess.  And not many of them are sharp.  Oh, and we can’t find a pencil sharpener in our classroom that will sharpen then!  I’m not kidding–we’ve tried every version of crank, hand-held and electric–none of ’em work! So unfortunately, when we want to use colored pencils, we spend a lot of extra time searching for 1) the color that we want, and 2) a sharp version of that color.

But not anymore:

Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?!  I think I might be in love. 🙂  So sharp and organized and pretty.  I’m excited to see how it works for us.

And again, I can’t take credit for this idea.  My very smart (and very organized) friend next door Mrs. LeSeure has had a tub just like that in her room for years!  Guess it just took me longer to realize we needed one.  🙂

We’re Adopting!

Hey–now that I have your attention, let me take a minute to tell you all about something new and great that started in our room today:

 

 

We are now officially a part of Southwest Airline’s Adopt-a-Pilot program!  Marcus Smith, a pilot and a 5th grade parent, came to visit us for the first time today.  Over the next few weeks, he is going to work with us, both in person and via Skype as we learn about all sorts of topics related to math, science, and communication arts.

The purpose of today’s visit was really just for us to meet him and build a foundation for the program.  First up, meet Mr. Smith:

 

He told us about his journey to his current job, and we found out about how he had wanted to fly since he was in high school.  He told us about his time in the military, and even showed us some uniforms he’s worn in his past “lives.”

After the introduction, he asked us a question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  We went around the room and told our names and the answer to that question.  I heard answers ranging from teacher and veterinarian to dermatologist and architect.  Stay tuned this week for more on this topic–I hope to share videos or blog posts later!

Throughout the rest of the lesson, we watched a video or two about flight (he was a pilot, after all!) and talked about goal setting.  He shared a great acronym with us to remember as we work toward those goals.  It’s based on the word FLIGHT (which makes sense, right?):

As we go through this program (and beyond that, I hope), we’ll keep coming back to these qualities.

 

We really enjoyed today and are looking forward to next week when he comes back to teach us more!  A few more pics before I’m done:

One of the things we’ll do each week in between visits is figure out how many miles he’s flying.  We’re hoping to find out if he can fly the equivalent of the distance around the world before we’re done with our program–that’s almost 25,000 miles!

We’re excited to see what’s to come! 🙂

Meet S.H.A.D.O.

I really hate it when I have an idea for a post and then time gets away from me.  Eventually I find the time (or I remember the post that I had forgotten to write!) and it happens.  Eventually.  Today is one of those posts.

We actually met S.H.A.D.O. weeks ago.  She is now our good friend.  And boy is she helpful!

Who’s S.H.A.D.O., you ask?  And why is her name spelled like that?  Let me tell you all about it.

This is S.H.A.D.O.:

And she is one smart cookie.  No wait–she’s an owl.  Ok, so she is one wise owl.

Her name stands for:

And while I would love to take credit for creating her, I can’t.  I found her when I was on www.prometheanplanet.com, which is a support site for the interactive whiteboard we use at school.  The flipchart she came from (and that we now reference frequently in our classroom!) was submitted by Melissa McGahan.  So, like many great ideas that I use in my classroom, I did not think it up, I just figured out the right time and place to use it!

Ok, back to S.H.A.D.O.  She has been helping us during the recent weeks as we prepare for MAP testing (which I talked about related to science the other day here ).  She helps us remember that there are some basic strategies that good test-takers use when they tackle a test (whether it’s a state test or just a plain ‘ol end-of-unit test) to help make sense of it.  There are different parts of her body that remind us of these strategies.

Here’s what they are:

I have been amazed at how this representation–in picture form–has been so helpful to so many of my students.  While I have always taught these strategies, I’ve always done it with words, not images.  We have always created a list of “smart” things to do, then had that list displayed in a variety of places around our classroom.  Just like in the past, S.H.A.D.O. is now displayed all around our room, as a reminder when you look at her to do what she suggests.  (As a side note, I love how the other day someone wrote a blog post about how they love S.H.A.D.O., but she’s a little creepy because she’s always watching us with those big eyes of hers!  HA!  The minds of 5th graders kill me sometimes!).  It’s simple, really, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of using a picture before–I’m a very visual learner myself, so it’s something that would have helped me, too!

So since we’ve become introduced to S.H.A.D.O., we’ve tried out her strategies on various assessments we’ve done in our classroom.  Is she helpful to everyone? No.  Does everyone need her reminders? No.  Do we always go through all of the steps she suggests?  No.  Just like every strategy I share with my students, they have learned which steps at what time with which assignment she is helpful.  That’s the key actually–know how to use the tools at your disposal.  So she’s there in our toolboxes if and when we need her.

And as a side note, I believe that S.H.A.D.O. was originally created to help with reading/communication arts tests, but we’ve found that you can apply most of her strategies to other subjects as well.  The other day we tried them with a math test and they were perfect.  Nice how that works out.

If you are a teacher, and you got through this post and you’re still thinking “Great idea, but I already do other things to prepare my kids,” I ask that you focus in on a part of S.H.A.D.O.’s suggestions that maybe you don’t specifically do.  For me, it was the steps related to bracketing and numbering the paragraphs, then marking the main idea next to each one.  Using that step has forced (in a good way!) my students to slow down and really think through each and every part of the texts they read on tests (both fiction and nonfiction–and heck, we even used it on poetry today!).  I think that if there is a magic bullet here, it’s that one.  Having the paragraphs marked like that has made it so much easier to go back to the text to find support for answers.  They now know so much more quickly exactly which paragraph to go to find the information they need.  Genius. 🙂

I’m adding a screen shot of what that step looks like next, because for me the words I just wrote wouldn’t make much sense (See?  Me=very visual):

So, I invite you to introduce S.H.A.D.O. to your class.  Come on, she has great ideas.  And hey, S.H.A.D.O. knows. (Ah, you didn’t think I could get to the end of this post without a joke like that, did ya?)

One more thing…if you’re a parent, I am interested in knowing what your kids are saying about S.H.A.D.O.  Maybe you were already introduced to her, or maybe you have another story about how she’s helped your student in class.  Share with us!

Quote Worthy

I was trying to find a picture of the “before” here, but as usual, I don’t think about it until after I’ve changed it!  So I’ll just tell you to remember the closet on the side of our room that had doors covered in black paper….can you see them?  They have a yellow border around them, and were originally intended for this great idea I had for a graffiti wall that never came to be.

Well now, they’ve become something even better, in my opinion:

Every year, just for motivation in general, but especially for motivation before MAP testing, I start sharing quotes with the class.  We talk about what they mean to us in general, and then what they mean to us specifically related to taking an important test.  So far we’ve only talked about five of these, but the rest (and others to be added this week and next) are coming soon.  I love how this looks and how these doors serve as reminders for us of smart suggestions for our actions!

Ok, the question for you: What motivational quote can you share with us to add to our doors?  What are some words that you live by?  Please leave us your ideas in a comment and we’ll add them to our collection. 🙂