Moving Monday...Top 10 Lists

Here is the next active learning strategy to help get your students up and moving and learning at the same time, it is called Top 10 Lists.

This is a great review activity for the end of a lesson, day, week, unit, or year.  There are many ways to incorporate this active learning strategy into your daily lesson plans.

Let me know how you adapt this activity for your classroom and your learners.

Download Here: Top 10 Lists

From: Udvari-Solner, A. & Kluth, P. (2007). Joyful learning. Active & collaborative learning in the inclusive classroom. Corwin Press. See www.paulakluth.com for related content & ideas.

Daily 5 EEKK Poster

I have been making more anchor posters for my classroom.  Here is the poster I made for EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee) for the Daily 5 rotation Read to Someone. 

This poster really helps my students remember what EEKK means with the spider on it.

Enjoy!

SNOW

We got our first snow storm today in Wisconsin and no I am not excited about this.

Not only did we get way more snow then they originally predicted but it started 6 hours before they said it was going to.  That means we had a whole school full of kids who were so excited about the snow they could barely control themselves but no snow clothes to go outside at recess to play in the new packy snow.  So, all of the recesses were inside today making the students become even more stir crazy and itching to get outside.

And, I forgot to mention it is WKCE testing, our wonderful standardized testing.  So now we have students who just want to go outside but instead they are stuck inside taking a test that means nothing, nothing to them and I spent most of my day making sure students' eyes were in their test booklet and not looking outside.

Anyways, here is a picture from the window in my classroom.  Wonderful, isnt it?

Hopefully it melts by the weekend, I think it is suppose to be in the 50s!

Field Trip to Cranberry Marsch

So, it has been a while since I have blogged and I have a lot of stuff to catch up on.  School has been pretty busy so I plan on taking the next week and updating my blog with activities that we have done and pictures I have.

First, today I have pictures from our trip to the Cranberry Marsh.  As part of the 4th grade curriculum, the students learn about the process of growing cranberries and how they are harvested.  Part of the curriculum is visiting a Cranberry Marsh to see how the grow and are harvested first hand.  This is a great trip and the students learn a lot, I even learned a lot, who knew that cranberries did not grow on top of water (the commercials are so deceiving)!

Walking around the marsh.

More walking and looking at the bogs to the right.

Harvesting of the cranberries.  That big machine sucks up the cranberries off the top of the water and separates the berries from the leaves and stems.  The trucks then bring the cranberries to the Ocean Spray plant for processing.

Eating lunch in a park after visiting the marsh.

Tomorrow is our Cranberry Fest at school.  More pictures to come...

Guided Reading PLUS

This year, I have decided to use Guided Reading Plus as a framework for my guided reading intervention groups.  So far I really like having a specific structure to follow, especially that I am still a new teacher.  I feel like I learn more and more about Guided Reading each day and this has really helped give me an easy framework that I can follow. 

Guided Reading Plus is also a research based RtI intervention so I feel better knowing that I am doing something that has been proven to work. 

Here is the lesson planning sheet that I have made.  I have a different sheet for each of my groups (3 right now) and I keep them at the back of my lesson plan binder.  This has really helped me become more organized and not like I am grabbing at straws during Guided Reading. 

Please use if you can! Lesson Plan Sheet

Labels

Each year, I try to figure out how I can become more organized and to make sure everything I need for the day is in one spot.  I hate when I am running around my classroom like a maniac trying to find the lesson I am looking for, a misplaced book, a file folder game, or a worksheet. 

This year I invested in a hanging file folder thing with pockets.  So far, this has worked to help keep me organized.  I made these labels to keep each day organized. 

Hopefully this works this year...

I will add a picture of my new setup as soon as I can.  Please use if you can!

Another Daily 5 Poster

Here is another poster I made to help my students remember what we are learning during the Daily 5 lessons.  These posters really help make our classroom library look more welcoming and they are a good reminder to the students. 

Here is the poster for the I Pick lesson on helping students choose good-fit books.  And it matches our jungle theme in our classroom!