Tag Archives: back to school

Appletters

Ok, so first of all, before Sunday, I didn’t even know this game existed.  Did you?

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I mean, I know about Bananagrams, and we had a TON of fun playing a variation of it last year at the beginning of the year.  So really, Appletters is just another version of Bananagrams (and there’s even Pairs of Pears, too)–really it’s just a fruit-shaped bag filled with letters.  But this one was cheaper. 🙂

So like with last year’s Bananagrams, we started by giving everyone a letter.  Then they had to find other friends and make words.  The first time around there are no rules (outside of the one that says you have to make words, hee hee), and we came up with these:

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So for the second round I added the guideline that the words had to be at least 4 letters:

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I wasn’t sure this one was actually a word, but then was informed that it’s a character from iCarly. I think next time we’ll change the rule about names.

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I like the story behind this one. It started as “bands” until we noticed that there were two friends with I and T who needed a group. Voila! BANDITS!

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I am hoping that this is a game we can come back to again and again this year.  I am excited to see how the words we make grow and change as we work with words and vocabulary throughout the year.  I’m thinking I might make it an option during Reader’s Workshop, too, as a word game.

Have you ever played Appletters?  What about Bananagrams?  How do you use them in your classroom? What other games do you play with words or vocabulary?

Dance! Dance, I Say!

So hopefully by now you’ve read my Welcome to Rm. 202 post from the beginning of the year.  If not, you totally should.  Really.  Right now is even ok. 🙂

Well, I have many kiddos in my class who did, and the reason I know is that they sent me this:

 

And this:

 

And in case you still didn’t read it, there was a part at the end that challenged my new friends to send me a victory dance that they did once they got done reading the post.  All 2049 words of it.  Gotta love it! 🙂

What does your victory dance look like? 

Reading Museum

All during the first week of school, we spent our time in activities to get to know each other better.  During our second week, we continued, but with the focus of getting to know each other better as learners.

So on Friday during Reader’s Workshop, we held a Reading Museum.

The idea was simple, really.  Each reader in our room–including me!–set up an “exhibit” that told something about themselves as readers.  Then we went around to each exhibit (after having a quick conversation about expectations–you have to act a certain way in a museum, after all) to see what each person laid out.  We made connections to other readers’ books and asked questions we had, too.

Once we were finished, we debriefed on what we had learned during this activity and how it would help us in the future.   What a fun way to spend a Friday afternoon!

Check out some pictures from our museum:

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Have you ever been a part of a Reading Museum?  What books would you put in your exhibit?  We chose books that we liked, that we’ve read over and over, that someone read to us when we were little, etc.  We’d love to hear about your selections!  Leave us a comment, please! 🙂

Standard Practice

Remember when I told you about figuring out our class norms?  Well, another thing we worked on last week was related to the same idea–how are expected to act in our classroom.  But instead of talking about how to work with each other, this time it was about personal standards.
Now to be fair, I had a little more lead in this activity than I have in others like this.  There were some things I new I wanted to have on this list, and then I wanted them to talk to me about examples of them, or what they needed to think about in order to make them happen.  While I value kid-created ideas in almost everything we do, there are just some times when you have to start the conversation with something and help lead them in a certain direction.  This was one of those times.

 

This chart now hangs next to our class norms near our meeting area:

 

I love how these two anchor charts make it very clear the kind of people we want to be every day in our classroom!

 

 

Our New “Norm”al

I work at the most amazing school ever.  No really, I do!   But it didn’t get that way by accident.  Our school culture is one built on respect and acceptance, and these things are expected and encouraged by all the adults that work here.  Our school has Road Rules that help our students (and teachers) know how they are to act, and our staff then has another specific set of norms that we follow in our interactions with each other.  My team, then, has also agreed upon norms for our collaboration.

So the next step would be my own classroom, right?  This year, instead of focusing on class “rules,” I had a conversation around norms with my students.  We discussed how norms help us know how to talk to each other, how to act in a group, how we want our room to function.

We started by reviewing the Road Rules, since they are the universals for our school, and everything we do in our room should relate to them.  In our tribes, we brainstormed ideas.  Then we shared out and began the big job of weeding through all the suggestions.  We looked at any norms that were similar or even the same as others, or ones that maybe just were not our best thinking.  Here’s what we ended up with:

 

And then since we needed a fresh copy that we could easily read (and that matched our theme!), I made the final copy that now hangs next to our meeting space:

 

These norms help us work together smoothly and productively, and since they were everyone’s ideas, no one can really argue with them!  They’re helping us do great things already!

What norms do you follow in your school or your classroom?  Parents: do you have norms for your house? How are they working for you?

Bananagrams

Have you ever played Bananagrams?  Well, honestly, I haven’t either.   I know that it’s a little like Scrabble, and is a banana-bag filled with letter tiles.  At our “opening day” staff meeting, my fabulous principal, Mrs. Sisul, did this version of Bananagrams with our staff.  I thought it would be really great to try it with my 5th graders.  Here’s how we used it in our room on Thursday.

Every kiddo was given a letter tile out of the banana, and then were given these directions:

1. Find as many different other letters as you can and make a word.

2. No talking.

3. Sit down after you have a word.

4. If you can’t use your letter to make a word, wait by the easel.

 
During our first round, we made the words NUN, PEARS (which later became SPEAR), BOW (which became BROW when we added someone who needed a group), I (it’s a real word, right?), and RIO.  They did great, and followed all of the rules I gave them.  I was a little surprised with how easy it was to do the “not talking” part–that’s usually the rule that gets broken first.  Not these kids, though. 🙂

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We did another round where we added the rule that they had to make words that were 4 or more letters.  They LOVED this game, and have requested it multiple times since we played it.  I’m excited to come back to it often, with different rules each time.  The possibilities are endless, really.  I’m excited to try it for spelling.  Our program is based around a different “generalization” each week, and so they’d have to make words that follow that pattern, i.e. short vowels, “r”-controlled words, long vowels, etc.  I know they’ll be up for the challenge!

Have you played Bananagrams?  Have you used it in your classroom?  Do you have a suggestion for us for a rule we could add to our game?  We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Marshmallow Challenge!

Welcome back to school!  We have been very busy already this year–hence the reason why I haven’t updated in a while–and are getting into a groove.  Forgive me if the next few posts are out of order (at least the order in which they happened); I still need pictures of certain things before I post about them.
Anyhow…we have spent much of the last 6 days getting to know each other better as learners (and people in general, really), as well as focusing on how to work well with a group.  One thing that our tribes did together early on was to take the Marshmallow Challenge.  What a great idea shared with me by my new friend and teammate Mrs. Hong! When you’re done here, you should definitely check out her class blog. 🙂

Alright, so here’s the basic idea:


We got ready, and I set the timer.  They built and taped and created, and at the end of the challenge we stepped away from our structures and….Every. Tower. Fell. Over. 😦

For a few minutes my friends wanted to claim “FAIL” on this activity and say it didn’t work.  But instead, I led them to reflect on what went right.  After a conversation, we figured out that many groups had the right idea of focusing on building a strong foundation, many had made a plan first, each group had a common goal and all groups worked well together to create a spaghetti structure.  Even if they fell over, we were successful in a lot of ways.  And so that day, we planned to do the challenge again, knowing that the next time there would  be many things we’d change–but many things we’d try again. 🙂

And so today was that day.  We planned and prepared before we went to lunch, knowing that when we returned we’d get down to business.  It was so great to watch the tribes busy, talking together about what to do this time around.  Many had plans drawn on paper, and most mentioned specific things they wanted to do differently.  Many groups decided that instead of trying to make their tower really TALL, really FAST, they’d focus instead on making it STRONG.

We got ready, and I set the timer.  They built and taped and created, and at the end of the challenge we stepped away from our structures.  This time, this happened:

WAY BETTER, RIGHT?! I was so proud of them!  And yes, granted, two of them still fell over, but sadly it was right at the last minute!  Those last two were upright and fine until the timer buzzed.  Bummer!

Like I said, we focused on what we can learn from this situation.  It wasn’t about the tallest tower, or whether or not it fell over.  It was about the team, the working together, the learning about our strengths and building on them.  And they totally rocked all of those things!  I can’t wait to see the other amazing things they are going to accomplish together this year!

TRIBES!

We have a new theme in the room this year–WILD about learning.  I will add pics to show it later on, but just picture lots of animal print.  Believe me–it’s FABULOUS!

So one thing that I always do at the beginning of the year is create a set of groups that we use all year for a variety of activities.  These groups don’t change, unlike many others in our class.  I always have a name for the groups, which is usually based on our theme.  They originally started back when I taught 4th grade and needed to have groups to vote on laws that we made for our class state.  They were legislatures, in effect.  Back then they were called Districts, and then last year (during a construction theme) they were Zones.

As I thought about this year, I latched on to the “wild” part of our theme, and that lead me to thinking about tribes.  That tribe idea lead me to Survivor.  You know, the show on CBS?

Originally I was just going to use the idea so that I had something clever to call our groups, but then I realized that there was actually more of a connection to that show than I had realized.  We made a link to the purpose of the tribe on Survivor–to help each member of the group “make it,” to focus on the strengths that each member brings to the situation, and to work together to solve problems.  Then I remembered how on the show, each tribe gives themselves a name–a name that tells something about the group as a whole.

So a new tradition was born.  One of our first activities together was to create tribe names and explain what that name meant about the group.

May I introduce to you, the 5 tribes of Rm. 202:

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to save the explanations for another time, but I wonder: do you think you can figure out what they may mean?  And if your kiddo is in one of those tribes, can you figure out which one?  Teachers: do you have groups like these in your classroom?  Tell us about them!