Linear Measurement Foldable

After the craze of Foldables Week I really wanted to implement more foldables into my classroom...so we started our measurement unit off with creating a vocabulary foldable for linear measurements.

Take a look!

As you can see some of my students choose to be creative with their foldables and some like the minimal approach!

Frindle Storyboard

Sorry for my absence all last week. After a crazy few weeks filled with report cards, parent-teacher interviews, a workshop I led for parents AND a bathroom renovation here at home I just needed some time off!

My grade 4 class and I are reading Frindle by Andrew Clements together as a read aloud. I have planned this primarily as an oral communication project. In the Ontario Language Arts Curriculum students are expected to listen to oral texts and analyze them just as they do when reading.

Expectations
- demonstrate an understanding of the information and ideas in a variety of oral texts by summarizing important ideas and citing important details (e.g., present an oral report to the class after listening to a guest speaker; use a graphic organizer to map the important ideas in a text; represent the important ideas of an oral text through visual art, music, or drama)
- make inferences using stated and implied ideas in oral texts (e.g., listen “between the lines”to detect bias in an oral text)
- extend understanding of oral texts by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights; to other texts, including print and visual texts; and to the world around them

This is the assignment handout and rubric that I have given to my class. The rubric is based on on the Grade 4 Ontario curriculum so it will need to be adapted for your use unless you also teach Grade 4 in Ontario!! (All clipart is from Scrappin Doodles.) 


We have started off very slow with this assignment. We wrote the retell for Chapter 1 together and created a checklist of what makes a good retell. 

As a class we then brainstormed the important ideas from Chapter 2 on the board before they started writing their retell independently. For the third chapter, the students brainstormed the important details in groups and then did a gallery walk to gather any missing ideas from the other groups. Finally, for Chapter 4 they were on their own!!

I just read through the storyboards tonight and I am very proud of my students are doing on this assignment. Chapter 5 is quite long so instead of doing a retell the students will just be drawing a picture of their favourite part of the chapter. 

Here are some pictures of the kid's assignments so far...just Chapters 1- 4. 

I am excited to keep going with this project. Along with more retells we are going to be making connections, inferring and so much more!!

Foldables Week: Friday Foldables

Thanks to everyone for a great week! I have found so many great foldable resources and will definitely be  incorporating foldables into my class as much as possible.

I would like to send a HUGE thank you to all the contributors during Foldables Week and an even BIGGER thank you to Leslie from Kindergarten Works who created all of the amazing Foldables Week graphics and buttons. She is amazing and so is her blog...check it out!

Here are some great all around foldable resources:

Get In the Fold

Foldable Wiki

How Make Minibooks from squid

Lapbooks combined with foldables from Sunny Days in Second Grade

Larry Ferlazzo's List of Best Teacher Resources for Foldables

The Foldables Week link party will be open for a full month so please, please, please link up as often as you like! Thanks again everyone!

Foldables Week: Social Studies Thursday

Mrs. Howard's Class site shares some resources for teachers about Social Studies foldables

Review Activities using Foldables (specifically US content) from US History

Real Classroom Ideas has a great pdf download to help create your own foldables! MUST HAVE

Catawba County Schools Foldables Resource This one is a wow resource, great pictures.

A huge list of Social Studies foldables related to US curriculum

Plus don't forget to check out these blogs that have volunteered to contribute to Foldables Week for Social Studies when you get a chance...

Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes

Classic Crafter

If you have a foldables idea that is related to Social Studies and would like me to post about it please leave a comment below with a link to your blog post and I will share your great foldables as well.

Coming up tomorrow:

Foldables Week: Science Wednesday

I am not teaching Science this year so I am really hoping there are lots of you out there who are interested in foldables for Science and link up!! Here are a few that I did find on my searches...

Vocabulary/ Scientific Method from My Science Lessons Blog

Ocean Ecosystem Foldable from Nicolette Speziale

Free foldables from Science Inquirer

Plus don't forget to check out these blogs that have volunteered to contribute to Foldables Week for Science when you get a chance...

Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes

The Teacher's Cauldron

Jack of All Trades


Charmed in Third Grade

Classic Crafter

If you have a foldables idea that is related to Science and would like me to post about it please leave a comment below with a link to your blog post and I will share your great foldables as well.

Coming up tomorrow:

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Foldables Week: Language Arts Tuesday

This is one area that I haven't used any foldables yet but through all my searching and pinning I have found some great ideas that I am excited to use. I think foldables in the Language Arts classroom is a great way to differentiate your instruction and to keep the kiddos engaged! I am hoping to make foldables a part of my student's weekly Reading Response in the near future!

Main Idea, Inferences and Supporting Details from A Teacher's Treasure

Making Connections to Characters from Get in the Fold

Parts of Speech Flipbook from Jimmie's Collage

Parts of a letter and types of sentences from ELL Classroom

Layered Story Elements from Foldables are Wonderful

Plus don't forget to check out these blogs that have volunteered to contribute to Foldables Week for Language Arts when you get a chance...

The Teacher's Cauldron

Charmed in Third Grade

Classic Crafter

If you have a foldables idea that is related to Language Arts and would like me to post about it please leave a comment below with a link to your blog post and I will share your great foldables as well.

Coming up tomorrow:

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Foldables Week: Math Monday

Welcome to Foldables Week! I love the concept and idea of foldables but this year has been crazy and I haven't been able to incorporate as many into my daily program as often as I would like...but I sure have found a tonne of good ideas from other fabulous bloggers out there.


We are going to start with Math!

 This is the first area that I found a foldable in (via Pinterest...of course! and Sunny Days in Second Grade) and it's the first foldable I used in my classroom as well. This foldable is used to demonstrate the different ways of representing a number using place value. My students loved doing it and did a great job if I do say so myself!

Here are some more foldable ideas to use in Math class:

Regrouping from Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons

Problem Solving Strategies from Old Shoe Woman on Flickr

Subtraction Strategies from Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons (Gotta love that Mrs. Lemons!)

Plus don't forget to check out these blogs that have volunteered to contribute to Foldables Week for Math when you get a chance...

Runde's Room

The Teacher's Cauldron

Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes

I {heart} Teaching

Multi-Grade Matters: Ideas for a Split Grade

Jack of All Trades

Charmed in Third Grade

Classic Crafter

If you have a foldables idea that is related to Math and would like me to post about it please leave a comment below with a link to your blog post and I will share your great foldables as well.

Coming up tomorrow:

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Parent-Teacher Interviews

Calling all experts!! Yes, that means you!

I am leading a workshop next week for the new teachers in my school about parent-teacher interviews. I am the lead teacher for the mentoring program and I want to put together some tips for successful interviews.

What's your BEST advice for a teacher conducting their first parent-teacher interview?

Currently...

I have been wanting to join in with Oh Boy! Fourth Grade's Currently linky part for awhile now and just never seemed to find the time....until now.

Anchor Photos

I finally found some time to take pictures of the current anchor charts up in my class for Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes' Anchor Linky Party! Yeah!!!

Here's what I've got for you.

We are starting a 5 week long unit on inferring and media forms. This is the schema chart we made together today before we started the diagnostic task. I am excited to start this unit and apprehensive at the same time. I am a little worried about my students being able to do well...here's hoping.

We just finished the Writer's Notebook assignment that I posted about here and this is the anchor chart that we created together before starting to create our good copies.

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction Anchor chart- we are using this as a part of our ongoing study of genres and features of non-fiction.

Our first novel read aloud of the year is Frindle by Andrew Clements and as we read through the book the students will be retelling each chapter in the form of a story board. This is the chart we created together to help us remember the elements we need to include in our retells. I found this chart on Pinterest and LOVED it so mine looks pretty much EXACTLY like the one I found...but I can't find the original owner to give credit  because the blog/site wasn't pinned. If you know the original owner or are the original owner PLEASE let me know. 

Lastly, this is the chart we created together to help us choose just right books. I had the students differentiate between challenging books and too hard books because I wanted them to challenge themselves some of the time without feeling like the books had to be monsters!