Flip That Room!

There seems to be a theme in my 5th grade class….(I’m not sure if I should take it personally, or just be really impressed that my kiddos are so creative….).

Today was a day full of lots of things: learning, noise, fun, business, reading, noise, creating, collaborating, noise. But luckily most of it was not just what I call “noise noise.” Much of the noise we made today was “learning noise.” Noise that indicates lots of thinking and creating and sharing is happening. And yes, it was loud. But sometimes that’s just how we roll. Especially when there are 25 of us in the room all talking at once!

So back to the theme I mentioned….we had to stop at one point today and regroup a little bit. Writer’s Workshop was a wee bit rocky, and so rather than fight against the trouble we were having, we stopped, gathered together and agreed to try that lesson again another day.

Instead, I had them help me with a problem. I told them that I need their help to figure out how I could help them best be learners during our last few days of 5th grade. We have work left to do, and we want to try to have a little bit of fun, too. They had some great thinking, which culminated in the idea that parts of our classroom (or how they were using it) were not really working for us. We agreed that we could work together to fix that problem and create a space that we could do some amazing end-of-the-year work in for a few more weeks.

We started with every kiddo creating their own dream plan of what our classroom would look like. Then kiddos met in their tribes, presenting their plan to the 4-5 kiddos in their group. From their, the tribes created a new plan incorporating the best features from each individual plan. Then we shared out as a class, and voted on the one we thought would work best for us.

Here’s what is sounded like during that time. Remember, it’s loud, but it’s not. just. noise. They are busy solving problems!

Can’t wait to share the final product next week! Seems like another theme this week is that I forget to take “after” pictures! Stay tuned!

Geometry Creations with Power Polygons

We were recently working on geometry in Rm. 202, learning some pretty great things about polygons, angles, area and perimeter. While I have many things I could share (and probably will!), this post is about an art project we made using some pretty cool manipulatives called Power Polygons. They are similar to pattern blocks, but kind of on steroids. Each one is labeled with a letter, that makes then easy to identify and talk about with other mathematicians.

We spent a couple of weeks learning about angles and polygons, triangles and quadrilaterals. After we’d gained some new geometry knowledge, I had them put it to use in a Polygon Picture Project:

It would be GREAT if I had pictures of the final products, wouldn’t it? Yep, you guessed it, I don’t. But I do have some pictures of Rm. 202 mathematicians hard at work creating their fabulous pictures!

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Squzzles

Ever heard of a Squzzle? I hadn’t either, until earlier this Spring when I was searching for some activities to use to help my kids with GRIT and persistence through struggles. My friend, Mrs. Berger, who works with our gifted and talented kiddos (but helps us with countless other amazing things, too!), volunteered to share a big, ole crate of problem solving games with us to try, one of them being Squzzles.

Basically, Squzzles are square puzzles, made of 9 smaller squares covered with designs. The challenge is that they only fit together one way, and the images spread from one piece to another.

Because there are so many talented Robinson Roadrunners working on Squzzles (Mrs. Berger has shared them with many other classes besides mine!), she started Squzzle Hall of Fame bulletin boards where you can get your picture posted when you finish a Squzzle. Just thought it would be great to give our Squzzle puzzlers a shout-out here, too! Check out the smart thinking and GRIT-using that has been happening!

Jacob

Sam and Max

Cate and Grace

Jacob

Grace

Sam

Sam

Grace and Mary

Kane

Lily and Grace

Way to go, Rm. 202 problem solvers! You are amazing!

Have you ever heard of Squzzles? What other kinds of puzzles do you like to do? Tell out about them! 🙂

Can We Persuade You?

A couple of weeks ago we were invited to attend a very special writing celebration. Our next-door-neighbors (Ms. Turken’s class) had been working on writing persuasive arguments and wanted to share them with us!

She had kiddos divided into small groups, and everyone went around the circle and read aloud their essays. Their writing was great! We heard about a variety of topics, from girls being able to play traditionally “boy” sports, wearing helmets while skateboarding and bike riding, wearing seat belts and many more. We were definitely treated to many great essays, and are thinking differently about these topics because of the evidence they shared with their opinions. It was also helpful because we were getting ready to start this unit in our own Writer’s Workshop next! It has been great to be able to use this day as a touchstone in our own persuasive work. Great job, Ms. Turken’s class!

Check out a few more pics from this super learning opportunity:

What do you know about persuasive writing? What topic would you choose to write about if you had an opportunity to write an opinion essay? We’d love to hear your ideas–we’re just about ready to choose the ones we’ll write about! 🙂

Did You Bring Your GRIT?? WE DID!!

First, a moment of cute that happened last weekend:

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Don’t you just wanna squeeze those cheeks??

Ok, so back to that GRIT question…

We are now smack-dab in the midst of state testing, so GRIT, stamina and focus are essential this week! This is a poster hanging in our room right now to remind us to believe in ourselves, try our best and show what we know. That’s what assessments are for, after all, right? 🙂

Here are some other motivators from around our room:

Ms. Shifflett helped us out and got creative with paint the other day. 🙂

Another one. 🙂

Covered up some vocabulary words with encouraging ones!

There’s a calendar under there…

Even Mrs. Sisul got in on the fun! What encouraging words to remind us that we got it!

I have to say how PROUD I am of how much grit, stamina and focus I am seeing as my kiddos work this week! I am seeing examples of all of the smart testing strategies we’ve been talking about in action and I KNOW that we are SHOWING WHAT WE KNOW! PAT YOURSELF ON THE BACK, RM. 202! You are ROCKING this test!

Are you down with OBPP?

Ok, so I have to admit making a really old reference to a less-than-great song from the early 90s with that title, but hey, it sounded good. 🙂

What is OBPP, you probably wondering? OBPP stands for the Olweus (ohl-vay-us) Bully Prevention Program that we have recently started at our school. It’s not new–just new to us–and is actually been around for years and based on some great research.

We began our Olweus journey with a very important definition. Regardless of what we (or our students) thought bullying was, this is now our school-wide, shared definition:

We started talking about this definition last fall, after we discussed what we thought it meant. What we found out was that we were not all on the same page. How important that we’re all now speaking the same language!

The second part of starting Olweus with our kiddos came by way of learning some new bullying rules. They are related to the Robinson Road Rules that we already have in place, but are specific to what every kiddo (and adult!) should do if we see bullying happening:

After we’d been working with these two important documents for a little while, and after the staff/teachers had done some learning together about OBPP, we were ready to officially kick this off with our kiddos. This happened on a really spectacular half-day in January.

Check it out!

We started the day off together as a whole school in an assembly. The energy in the gym was so great–wish we could do this every Friday!

5th Grade sang “Everyday Heroes”

Following our assembly, 3-5 grades rotated through some activities designed to get us motivated and excited about the work ahead.

First, we had a class meeting around our new bullying rules, and our thoughts about them.

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During our 2nd rotation, we got to go to the gym to work with Mr. Lee on some tae kwon do. He’s been to our school before, and always has a great presentation for us.

Here we’re learning about how bullies are more likely to target people who seem like they don’t have confidence….

Among some other things, we also did some exercises. In this video, Landry did an AMAZING job of leading us. He is BEAST!

For our last rotation, we participated in something that teachers around Robinson do all the time–look at data. As part of the Olweus work from last year, every kiddo in grades 3-5 took a bullying survey and we were looking at the results. There were graphs up all around the cafe, and our job was to silently comment on what we thought about what we saw. (As a point of clarification–our answers are represented by the 4th grade data.)

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What an amazing day of inspiration and learning! We are ready and motivated to make a difference in our school and our world!

How Do You Feel Cared For?

This week we were revisting some EQs from earlier this year as a means of reflecting on our behavior, as well as how we’re doing as a community. One that was really interesting was “How do you feel cared for?” There were so many different answers, and I wanted to see them all together, so I made a Tagxedo of our responses. Here’s how it turned out:

What do you notice? Do you notice any patterns? How would YOU answer this question? 🙂

40 Book Challenge Revisited

It’s been a while since the excitement of the 4o Book Challenge began. And I HATE to say that that excitement may have weaned a little bit. Remember back when I told my class about it, and everyone was really energized by it? Ready to do it and not at all worried? And remember how my friend Brittany asked if I would do it, too, and I ~~begrudgingly~~ gladly accepted? Yes? Well let me update you on how it’s going.

First of all, I feel like I should share with you what my kiddos are saying about it. Of course, as with any important thing in our class, it becomes a topic on our blog. I’m excited to say that the topic has come up multiple times in the “What I liked…” section of their notes for student-led conferences (yes, that is a topic I’m going to add here soon!), and that many have WAY over half of their challenge done already!

As a reminder, the challenge looked like this:

Requirements for the 40 Book Challenge, which is inspired by Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer.

Not surprisingly (at least to me), most kiddos started with what they know and what they love: fiction. Many of them knocked out Realistic Fiction first, then did their chapter book choice, and then tried mystery before they got a little annoyed by my list. Still, they trudged on, heading towards informational and poetry. I was noticing, though, that there has been very little traditional literature or biography/autobiography/memoir showing up in the hands of my readers lately (more on that later).

What? You want to know how I’m doing with the 40 Book Challenge? Me? Well….

I’m gonna be really honest with you that I have not been doing my part to keep up with the 40 Book Challenge like I’d hoped and like I’d expected. I think I am probably at 5 or 6. I know, right??? YUCK! I have had very good intentions, and I truly believe in the importance of showing my reading life to my students, but like I mentioned earlier, I’m having a hard time ~~finding~~ prioritizing time to make it happen. There always seems to be something else to do, you know?! But I WANT to make it happen (I really feel like I’m letting my friends down!), and since I don’t make resolutions, I guess it’s time to make a goal and a plan to achieve it. And I’d love your help!

How do you make time to read inside your busy life? What do you leave out so that you have that time (there are, after all, only 24 hours in a day!)? What suggestions do you have for me to achieve my challenge goal by the end of the school year? Come on, I KNOW a lot of you are readers, and I want to be one, too! 🙂

You CAN Take it With You!

I love learning. I am pretty sure that I always have. There is something really exciting to me about digging in deep to a new topic and learning something new. Besides being able to chew on new things (and talk about them with other nerds like me!), I love being able to apply that knowledge to things in my classroom the next day. And the next and the next. I don’t learn something new and just use it for the next five minutes and then forget it. I take that learning with me to new places and challenges.

So that takes me to the title of this post. We’ve been talking a lot (focused in writing for right now) about suitcases. Yep, you heard me: suitcases. A couple of weeks ago, during our informational writing unit, we made this chart:

Look at all the things we’ve learned that we CAN TAKE WITH US to new learning situations in the future!

I’m pretty sure I have even shared this picture before, but it’s so great because it keeps coming up. Over and over and over again. Which is kind of the point, right? You should continually be filling your suitcase so you can take all that fabulous learning with you wherever you go. Today we talked, too, about how your suitcase can look like whatever you want it to–whether that be Harry Potter’s trunk, Mary Poppins’ carpetbag or Hermione Granger’s magic bag (that she can pull a huge tent out of! WOW!). That last visual was really powerful to my friends.

The thing I’m really aiming for, though, is when my friends start using this language for themselves. That’s really when the evidence is there that they’ve internalized it, right? When you’ve learned something really well, and understand it deeply, you start to use it in your conversations, applying it and then teaching it to others. And so that’s what we’re working towards. Helping our friends both learn to pick up their own suitcases and take them along their journey, as well as encourage their friends (wizards and muggles alike!) to do the same.

Have you talked about filling suitcases with your students? What about your own kiddos? Parents–have your kiddos told you about our conversations about taking learning along the journey? What kind of suitcase would you choose for yourself? 🙂

Are You Smarter Than a 2nd Grader?

I know, you expected to see a different grade up there. But in this case, it’s the 2nd grade that my 5th graders can learn from.

I’ve been meaning to share this picture for a couple of months now, because it’s such a great reminder of how to use punctuation correctly.

This poster hangs outside Mrs. Driscoll’s second grade class. I know Mrs. Dix has a similar one that’s called “No More Weird Capitals!”

We walk by this everyday on our way back from our specials and lunch, and I keep thinking we need one in our classroom, too. I know that kiddos learn these things early on, but have such a hard time remembering to show that in their writing!!

So maybe I need to ask my 5th graders that question when they are editing, did you show that you’re smarter than a 2nd grader? 🙂

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey

Category Archives: Classroom

Flip That Room!

Geometry Creations with Power Polygons

Squzzles

Can We Persuade You?

Did You Bring Your GRIT?? WE DID!!

Are you down with OBPP?

How Do You Feel Cared For?

40 Book Challenge Revisited

You CAN Take it With You!

Are You Smarter Than a 2nd Grader?