End of the Year ABC Book

A few weeks ago I was browsing blogs and found an awesome idea on ClassroomTested Resources!  The post was written by Beth from Adventures of a Schoolmarm and describes a collaborative ABC Memory book that she does with her students.  Since I have exactly 26 kids this year, I thought I would give it a try, and I’m super glad I did!

I introduced the project to the kids by telling them that we would be brainstorming ideas of things that we’ve done this year or things that deal with our class or school.  I gave the kids a graphic organizer and ten minutes to brainstorm on their own.  You can get the organizer for free here.

After they brainstormed on their own, we shared ideas.  They came up with SO many ideas!  We filled our whiteboard with their brainstorming.  Then we narrowed it down to one idea per letter that best summed up our year, but didn’t repeat ideas.  

After narrowing the ideas, it was time to assign letters.  A few things were student specific, so they got those automatically.  For the rest of the kids, I drew numbers and they got to pick a topic.  Then, it was time to write.  

Each student wrote a paragraph about their topic.  Beth’s product (which is available here) has a page for each letter that gives the kids about half a page of lines for writing.  After they wrote, I collected the pages and copied an entire book for each child.

They started illustrating on Friday and they are adorable so far!  This is definitely a project I want to repeat in the future!

If you want to keep reading, The following is a list of our ABC topics:

A – Amazing Race (our states and capitals “competition”)

B – Book Talks (a monthly requirement)

C – Camp SOLE (read about it here)

D – Miss Davis

E – Eating at the middle school (on our orientation visit)

F – Flags (the fifth graders have a competition to design a school flag)

G – Going to Marengo Cave (read about it here)

H – Homework Club (our incentive for turning in homework)

I – ISTEP (yes, they wanted to write about the state test)

J – JA BizTown (read about it here)

K – Kindergarten Buddies

L – Lock Down Drills (they think barricading the door is fun)

M – Making Rockets (we make rockets out of 2-liter bottles and launch them in the Spring)

N – Nicknames (we have a “Duck” and a “Llama” in our room)

O – Otter Trot (our school’s walk-a-thon)

P – Prosthetics (we build prosthetic legs in Science)

Q – Quizzes (Q was kind of a hard one)

R – Recycling (my class is in charge of the school’s recycling program)

S – Stealing Kids (The three fifth grade teachers sometimes borrow kids from the other 5^th grade classes. It’s harmless, but fun for the kids.)

T – Tornado Drill (We had a real tornado warning this year…while we were on a field trip)

U – The Unicorn Song (long story!  But here’s a link)

V – Video Rewards (We watched funny animal videos and the Evolution of Music as rewards)

W – We the People (read about it at the end of this post)

X – eXoskeletons (we had observations with insects in the fall, and X was hard!)

Y – Yummy Treats (I may spoil my kids…especially during state testing)

Z – Zern Zingers (our principal’s daily jokes)

Main Idea and Details Craftivity

With the kids observing the moon for a month between lessons in my Moon unit, I have been filling our science lessons with a variety of activities.  One thing I have noticed is that the kids love anything hands on.  That sent me searching blogs for fun, hands-on activities that I can use in my classroom.  I found this craftivity from Deb at Crafting Connections.  I'm excited to be using it as part of her Classroom Tested Teacher and Student Approved series.

I started my lesson today by reviewing the concept of Main Idea and Details.  This seems like an easy enough concept, but the review was definitely helpful to a few of the kids!

Then, I handed out the pages for the craftivity.  There are six main pages to this mini-book, a cover, and five pages with Main Ideas about the Earth.  The last page the kids picked up was a sheet of details.  The details are all listed on one page and have to be matched to the correct main idea for the book.  I let the kids work on this part with a partner.

 

Then we worked on assembling the books.  Cutting out the six pages, taping the construction paper together, and then gluing the pages onto the construction paper took a lot longer than I had planned!  The kids wanted everything to be just right, and it took them about half an hour to get things done.  In the future, I think I’d probably split this activity into two parts: do the thinking part on day one, and do the constructing of the book on day two.

The finished projects were really cute and I know the kids did a lot of thinking along the way!

 

In addition to creating this awesome product, Deb is kind enough to be giving this craftivity away to one of my readers!  You can head to her blog to enter the drawing! 

Saving Fred – A Science Activity

This week, I’m participating in Fourth Grade Flipper's Tried it Tuesday.  I’ve been reading all of the “Tried Its” for weeks, and am excited to be linking up today for the first time! (Correction....I tried to link up, but was too late....the collections were closed when I tried to link up)

Our first Science topic is “The Sun, Moon, and Stars.”  It’s a fun unit, but during the Moon section, the kids are required to keep a moon journal for a month between lesson one and lesson two.  The experience is great for them and they learn a lot, but that leaves a month’s worth of Science lessons without activities.  In the past, I plug the Stars lessons in during this month, but this year, I put that off a week to try a new activity I found called Saving Fred.

I can’t remember where I originally found this lesson, and I know I’ve seen it on several blogs, so if the original idea is yours please let me know and I’ll give you credit!

Saving Fred is a great activity to get kids thinking about problem solving strategies, team work, and procedural journaling.  The kids are given the scenario that Fred (a gummy worm) has been trapped on top of his upside down boat (a cup) and his life preserver (a gummy ring) is trapped beneath the boat.  Their job is to get Fred through the life preserver using only paper clips to move any of the items.

I modified this long lesson into three short ones.  On day 1, we brainstormed a list of problem solving strategies.  I took a picture of our list, but the dry erase marker on the white board didn’t show up well.  Our list included:

Think about what to do
Ask someone else
Use common sense
Pick the easiest path
Make a pros and cons list
Test your ideas
Make a cause and effect list
Use time wisely
Think ahead
Make a plan
Be organized

On day 2, I gave the kids the scenario and they actually did the activity.  Here are a few photos:

Several of the groups were able to save Fred pretty easily, so I challenged them to try it with only two paper clips instead of four.  One group felt like challenging themselves even more and tried it (successfully) with only one!

After they had all finished, we discussed the strategies they used.  We also discussed how much harder it was with two paper clips than with four!

On day 3, I had the kids do a reflection journal.  They were to write about the procedures they used, what worked and didn’t work, and working with a partner.

If you’d like your students to try Saving Fred, it is available here.  I’d say it’s definitely worth a try!

Multiple Intelligences Survey

The beginning of the year is all about getting to know the new kiddos in your classroom, and creating a great classroom environment.  But in my classroom, I like the kids to get to know themselves a little better, so I use a Multiple Intelligences survey to help.  The kids read a series of statements and either check that the statement applies or leave it blank.  At the end of the document, they use a scoring guide to determine which of the eight multiple intelligences they display.

After the scoring is complete, the kids write their names on note cards and display their names next to the intelligence that they display.  We leave this display up for the first quarter as a reminder of the ways that we are similar and different in our learning styles.

Both of these items are available on my (brand new!) Teachers Pay Teachers store here:

Survey

Posters