Science Week Starts Today!

A Look Inside My Teacher Bag

What a fun idea for a Linky Party! I love seeing other people's bags...I have a bit of a problem when it comes to purses and handbags. I own more than 30 (maybe 40) and even have framed my collection of antique purses and hung them on the wall in my bedroom! I. Love. Bags.

If you want to join in with this fun link party head on over to The Inspired Apple to check it out.

Here's my teacher bag. It's an old beach bag from Old Navy and I doubt it will be my bag all year. I switch purses at least every 4-5 days and teacher bags every few weeks. 

Here is my day planner...gotta write stuff down if I am going to remember it.

My assessment binder- made with clip art from Scrappin Doodles.

CASI- standardized assessment materials my board is using right now to create a baseline of data.

The Daily 5 and CAFE books because I am implementing them for the first time this year. They literally go every where with me these days so I can look over the different chapters.

A spiral notebook for planning. Right now it also contains my evaluations of the student teacher that is working with my class, and of course the ever present post-it note to-do list!!

Literacy Journals I need to read and mark (still haven't done)

Drama assessments I need to finish.

The random stuff-

- 2 pens (I bring home a different pen every night and then after a few 

weeks have no pens at school and need to empty my teacher bag of pens!)

- 2 mini-snack bars

- a broken necklace (it got caught on my classroom door and snapped last week)

- old receipts and paper

- 2 old staff passes (and 2 different hairstyles!)

- a yoga pass for a studio near my house

- bandaids

And look how that pile has grown....!

P.S. I found my Math planning binder on the coffee table after I had taken all these pictures...LOL. Even more full!

A Name Art Project- A Wonderful End to a Rainy Friday

I have become obsessed with teaching art over the last few months. During the summer I spent hours scouring through Pinterest looking for great art projects to use in my classroom this year. So when I arrived back at the school at the end of August and was told that I did not have art in my schedule I was quite upset....but then I got art back!!! So happy! In the Ontario curriculum for Grade 4 art we concentrate on the elements of design: line, colour, value, texture, shape and form, and space. I found a great resource for explaining the elements on this site. You should definitely check it out if you are teaching art this year.

For our first project I wanted to jump right into the elements but I also wanted to create a great project that could be used as a display for our Open House night (and even perhaps double as the cover of our art portfolios...I'm not asking too much am I? LOL) So off I went to check the inter webs...and what did I find?? THIS!!!!

What an amazing site...so many ideas, techniques, supply lists. Everything you could ever need to teach art!

Deep Space Sparkle had just the art activity I was looking for, Name Designs: Line Art...go take a look at this fantastic project to do with your class.

I started with a lesson on lines and patterns. My class and I looked at some art by Keith Haring, Van Gogh and others (multiple mediums) and discussed the moods, emotions and types of lines we saw. It was very interesting to talk to the kids about their impressions of the famous art works. Then we did a lesson on how to draw block letters and we practiced various size letters, shapes of letters and talked about the contours of the lines. Once we had spent a good deal of time on the block letters we moved on to different types of patterns we could create using lines... thick lines, wavy lines, round lines, thin lines...you name it. The students created a tic-tac-toe board on their practice paper and drew 9 or so different types of patterns. When we had finished that we did a gallery walk to get new ideas from what our classmates had tried. (This was my first art class gallery walk and I LOVED it!)

Now we were finally ready to start the project! I must say that the kids were focused, quiet and hard at work make their name projects.  As a side note: my teaching partner thought this project would be way too hard for grade 4 but I disagreed and felt that if we teach high they will learn high...and I was right!  here are some pictures of my students working away on a rainy Friday afternoon. Some are close to done, some are done and moved on to other line drawings but many are still in the process. I can't wait to see what they all look like when they are done and on display!

This student's name only has three different letters and they are all very angular, no curves. He has added a TONNE of patterns and I can't wait to see the finished product.

This is one of the finished ones! 

This student chose to use pencil crayons instead of markers for his letters. It's going to take more work to colour everything in so that it pops! but he is pretty determined.

This student used a ruler A LOT. It will be an interesting contrast to this students who worked free hand.

Their final project in due on Thursday (just in time for Meet the Teacher night!) and I'll take some pics of the final display!

Passing Along the Love

A huge thanks and shout out the bloggers who have passed along the Versatile Blogger award to me! It is very much appreciated!

Please check out these wonderful blogs!!

Our Camp Read-a-lot! (I also follow Laura's other blog Delightful Daily 5 Cafe)

Now I am supposed to
1. Thank the person who nominated you and provide a link back to their blog. (Check!)
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Nominate 15 other blogs that you've discovered.

Seven things about me...

1. I have just gone back to work after being on mat leave for the last 8 months and now my husband is staying home with our baby!


2. I was given a label maker for my birthday one year by my husband and I love it.


3. I have a puggle! 

4. I moved from teaching Grade 7 and 8 for the last 7 years down to 4 last year and am still adjusting.

5. Teaching math terrifies me everyday.

6. I love my kobo e-reader.

7. I collect antique purses.

Now to nominate 15 blogs....oh dear! I love sooooo many. I think I will direct everyone to my blogroll on the right hand side...I read all of these blogs everyday and have learned so much from them! Here are some of my absolute faves:

Dali's Moustache

Peace, Love and Rainbows

Delightful Daily 5 Cafe

Pray Teach Love

Science Week is Coming!!

Looking for a Smile on a Tuesday Morning?

Here's a video collaboration created by a couple of different schools in my board. It'll make your day!

The Daily Five

...or as it is becoming known in my class, The Daily Three. How did I not do this sooner? This is revolutionizing my teaching and it's only been nine days!

So far we have been working at Read to Self only and our stamina has been built up to 10 minutes. We seem to have hit a small plateau, which is fine, but I am hoping that over the next few weeks we can build up more and more. We have also started Writer's Workshop in our class and have been adding ideas to our Writer's Notebook so that once we get to the point of been able to add Work on Writing to our Daily Three schedule we have ideas to write about a writing routines to draw from. The last part we will add in Word Work a few weeks down the road.

I have also introduced my students to the genre requirement that came about from my reading of The Book Whisperer this summer (see the sidebar for more posts on this great book!) and NOT ONE STUDENT complained about the idea of reading 40 books from a variety of genres. I think this is going to be a great year with my class! We have discussed the characteristics of Poetry, Realistic Fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction and I really feel that just through our discussions of different genres I am already much closer with my students and know them better as individuals.

Last week I handed out my student's Literacy Journals. These are the notebooks they will use to write about their reading in, to demonstrate their knowledge of the reading strategies we will be covering in class. I have yet to decide how often I will have the students write in these journals and how often I will assessing them, instead choosing to let my class dictate my program. I do want to share our next Literacy Journal activity with you, however....

Through our mini-lessons before Read to Self my class and I have talked about choosing books and using the I PICK strategy outlined in The Daily Five. I have created these bookmarks/question sheets in order to assess my students' understanding of this strategy. I plan to have each student glue one of the strips into their Literacy Journals and answer each of their questions about the book they are currently reading. You could also laminate these and give them to the students to use as bookmarks so they have a constant reference of the strategy as well. Once I have collected their work I will be sure to post some examples so everyone can see how I used this in my class.

If you download these bookmarks/question sheets for use in your room please comment below with how you plan to use them so we can continue to pay the ideas forward!!

Reader's Notebook Cover

I think that the best I learned from The Book Whisperer this summer was the importance of celebrating reading and the readers in your class. I am in love with The Daily Five and my class has already built their stamina up to 10 minutes during Read to Self. I introduced the 40 book genre requirement today as part of my "voracious" reading mini lesson and not one single student said anything about 40 books being a lot to read!! NOT. ONE. In fact they looked like everything I was saying made sense and why wouldn't I expect them to read 40 books? A. Maze. Ing.

The next activity we are going to do is create a title page for our Reader's Notebooks. I have created this template for the students. I am going to have them write all the kinds of readers they are...for example:

I am a reader! I am a chapter book reader. I am a mystery reader. I am a blog reader. I am a Harry Potter reader. I am a magazine reader. I am a reader!!

Then they will fill in the box above their writing with some drawings of all the types of reader that they are, or it could be a collage, or any other kind of art they want! The basic idea is to create a cover page that celebrates each student as a reader! I am excited to get to Friday when I plan to do this activity and see all the ideas they come up with.

Three Days Down...187 More to Go!

Well, I am starting to feel like I actually have my feet under me and can take a moment to blog about my first week back at work. I am really enjoying my class, they are super cute and really eager to learn it seems. Implementing Read to Self as part of my Daily Three (adapted from Daily 5) is going fabulously! I even had a boy today ask if he could take his book home because in the past all he ever did was play video games but now he wants to read at home....aww, my little heart just about burst!

I have taken some pictures to show you what we have been up to in Grade 4 these past 3 days.

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The three ways to read a book and our stamina count...already up to 5 minutes!

This is hanging above our carpet area. We brainstormed appropriate carpet behaviours and create the I chart outlined in The Daily 5 for the start of Read to Self.

Here is my behaviour clip chart in action. So far there haven't been any moves down the chart and I have been trying to really emphasize the good things students have been doing.

I like to allow my students to have input into the classroom rules so what we did what brainstorm what each rule might look like and sound like in our room. The students each had a marker and walked around in a gallery walk and added their own ideas to each poster. I asked that they try to write an idea on at least 4 of the 6  posters and if their idea was already on the poster then they could repeat it because it must be important. Tomorrow we are going to add some other ideas that I want on the charts that weren't added by students and then the charts will be laminated and kept in the room for the year!

This was my first math lesson of the year. In the top right of the picture you can see the data table we created my collecting the birthdays of the class. We then took that data and created a bar graph of our class' birthdays. The students reviewed important terms such as x-axis, y-axis, labels, titles, and scale. This will stay up for the rest of our data management unit so that the students can reference it as we work on other data management skills.

And...I already received my first drawing from a student which I promptly hung up by my favourite poster!

Tomorrow we are doing a pretty complicated art lesson that I am excited about and my student teacher is finally arriving! Plus, it's FRIDAY!!