Souper Bowl

Tomorrow at Donovan the teachers all bring in soup and we have a Souper Bowl party.  Get it a "Souper Bowl" party.  I will not lie...I love this day.  Any excuse to get to sit and eat a bunch of different soups with breads sounds great to me.  Of course on the day we have hot soup served it is going to be the hottest it has been in the last thirty days.  I just finished my chili and it seems like it might be a good batch.

Tonight I have been working on finding a few infographics that we are going to use to look at the real Super Bowl and the separation of powers in our government.  I love looking at infographs.  I just found infographs a few years ago but I love how they show information in a visual way.  Here is an example of an infograph about vinyl records.

Sorry I realize that might now show up perfectly on the blog.  I think these infographs are just another type of text that students have to learn to read.  It also allows us to look at different types of charts and graphs.  I find the information inside of the infographs amazing.  For example one of the infographs that we are going to look at tomorrow claims that enough guacamole is going to be consumed on Sunday to cover a football field at a depth of 11.8 feet.  That is insane, but to be honest I know how much guacamole I will be eating so it might not be that implausible.  

I need to keep it short tonight.  I hope you are all having a great week.

Small Words

We have really started to work on the parts of words.  Each week now we are looking at a suffix or a prefix or a greek or latin root.  I really wanted the students to understand why we are looking at these small parts of the words, so I went searching on youtube and found this great video.

We watched this video in class last week.  I think it really helped the students understand that if they understand the smaller words or parts of a word they will be able to spell and understand bigger words.  

I have been so impressed with the class.  Obviously we have not been able to string together a large group of days.  Even with these constant breaks the class is working so hard.  Today I just started asking some rapid fire questions about the prefixes, suffixes, and greek roots that we had discussed.  It was amazing to see the retention the students were able to show me with their answers.  

Today also allowed us to get into our hero unit.  We started by reading an article about two cross country runners.  As a class we read the article and wrote our thinking all around the text.  The class shared some great thinking and I was really impressed that we also noticed some of the amazing writing from the piece.  

After reading the article we started to make a list of characteristics of a hero.  The class added that a hero is willing to help others and they might be persistent.  We will continue to add to this list of characteristics as we read more.  

Hope you are all having a great week.

State of our Classroom

Perfect night to fill you in on the state of our classroom.  If I had to pick just one word to describe our classroom right now it would be transition.

In social studies we are transitioning from learning about early Ohio history to government.  I love our unit on government.  In fourth grade we study state government.  We will dive into the topics of the different levels of government (federalism), the branches of government, the powers given to state government, voting requirements, the role of citizens, and much more.  One thing that I love about teaching about our government is that we will be reading selections of the U.S. Constitution and the Ohio Constitution.  I know these documents can seem daunting but we look at small sections of the text to determine their meaning.

In writing we are soon going to be transitioning from learning about poetry to looking at text structures that authors use.  I am excited for this unit.  I have never really taught a unit that was centered around text structures.  I think that giving the class the opportunity to look at how authors organize their non-fiction writing will allow them to think about why authors decide to use these different structures.  It will also allow students to understand that there are different options to present the information that they are trying to share.

In reading we are transitioning from learning about how Native Americans talked about the earth and sky to learning about heroes.  Yesterday I talked about how we started having students think about what they thought made a hero a hero.  Now we are going to jump right into the unit learning about heroes from the past and present in literature and real life.

Our last transition is that we just started a new read aloud last week.  The book is a change from the other types of books we have read aloud this year.  In the book Flora and Ulysses Kate DiCamillo and the illustrator K.G. Campbell include comic book pages along with the text.  Comics or graphic novels have become a very popular form of text in the last few years.  As I mentioned yesterday this book just won the Newbery medal award.  I got to tell the class the news of the award yesterday and they were extremely excited.  I have just found a group of interviews with Katie DiCamillo and I cannot wait to share them with the class.

I am so excited to get these transitions underway over the next few weeks.  I hope the students have been able to rest up over these extra few days because we are going to get to work.

Hope that you are having a great week.

Newbery Medal

Today the Newbery Medal was announced and the winning book for this year was Flora and Ulysses.  I am so excited about this announcement.  A few years ago when Mr. Franz became our principal we sat at the Junior High and went around the room and shared some of our goals.  I remember my goal was to read aloud or book talk the Newbery winner to the class before it was announced.

In the past I had book talked and read aloud honor books but never the medal winner.  Last year my luck started to change.  I read the book The One and Only Ivan to my class and then it won the Newbery Medal.

This year the winner is Flora and Ulysses.  

Sorry I could not find a picture that had the medal just yet.  I love that as a class we have found this book before it was announced.  Sure we are not finished with the book, but now as we finish the book we can start to think about why this book was selected over the other amazing titles that the committee considered.  

One of the reasons that I picked to read Flora and Ulysses for our next read aloud is that it fits with the theme of our next topic in reading.  Today during reading we started to discuss our next big idea...heroes.  Over the next several weeks we are going to discuss the idea of a hero.  Today we started by having the class write about what they think makes a hero.

I was so impressed with the writing/thinking around the room.  Two students who shared at the rocking chair shared a common idea.  To paraphrase their thinking, "a hero does not have to wear a costume or have gadgets or superhuman powers, they just have to help and protect others."  I loved this thinking and we just started.  I cannot wait to see where our thinking goes after thinking about this topic a bit more.  

Hope you are all having a great start to your week. 

Picture Walk

Today I had the students do a picture walk.  I found five pictures that went with an article that we were going to read about the Elk River chemical spill.  Here are just a few of the pictures that we used on our picture walk:

During the picture walk the class walked around the room and wrote down their thinking about the pictures.  Some students wrote questions or wondered about what they were seeing or just described the scene.  It was interesting to see the students try and figure out how the pictures fit together.  

After the picture walk we read an article about the chemical spill in the Elk River.  As we read the article the class was trying to figure out the 5 W's in the text.  Tomorrow we are going to have the students finish reading the article and write a news report about what happened in West Virginia.  

We have also started a new read aloud book.  Our new read aloud is Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo.  We actually started to read the book yesterday, but today we really started to get into the book.

I had started to read this book myself right before winter break.  By the time I got to the fourth chapter I had laughed out loud multiple times and knew this was going to be our next read aloud.  I hope you will ask your students about this book.  I know I love it and we are only on chapter four.  

Hope you are all staying warm and having a great week.

Back Again?

Another little mini-break there but I was glad to get back to school today.  The first thing I wanted to do  once we got started this morning was show the class a bit of something I read this week.  Many of you may not know this about me but I am a gigantic Kansas Jayhawk fan.  Both my parents raised me this way so the blame lies solely in their court.  That should explain why I found this little nugget of writing:

Two weeks ago, who could have envisioned this? Two weeks ago, Kansas was 9-4, sliding down the national rankings after a 4-4 stretch in November and December. Two weeks ago, the Jayhawks weren’t finding ways to win. Two weeks ago, Kansas coach Bill Self kept imploring his team to play with more passion.

Now, this.

(I added the picture I could not help it)

This writing came from a piece written by Rustin Dodd of the Kansas City Star on Tuesday.  I love so much about how this article was written.  Mr. Dodd puts so much craft into the article which made it a joy to read (and not just because it was about Kansas blowing out Baylor).

I want our students to work on finding and sharing their favorite writing with me.  I created a little sheet and gave it to the class where they can find and share this writing.  I hope that the students will start hunting for writing that makes them stop and notice all the craft of the author.  

I am hoping that this hunting for great writing will have two effects.  First I want the students to recognize how authors use words and string them together in interesting ways.  Hopefully the students will be able to find writing that is excellent and they will begin to appreciate the beauty of the writing.  Second I want the students to find this type of writing so they can try it in their own writing.  Authors learn from other authors.  I have been reading and watching lots of interviews with authors and the one thing that I hear repeated over and over is that good writers read.  When you read, you can expose the tricks that authors use to make their writing better.

In fact earlier this year we had seen this same trick that Mr. Dodd used by Cynthia Rylant.  In her book Scarecrow Rylant wrote:

So he doesn’t mind that there is always a smile on his face or that his eyes are always open. He doesn’t mind being up high. He doesn’t mind staying there

Rylant repeats the line, "he doesn't mind" just like Dodd repeats the line, "two weeks ago."  Our writers can take this technique to make their writing better.  If you would like, ask our students to share this "Great Writing" sheet with you.  You could also find some writing that you love and share it with our students.  If you find something amazing, send me a link or let me know in the comment section.  I would love to keep sharing amazing writing with our authors.

I hope you are all having a great week.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/01/20/4765060/halftime-report-kansas-37-baylor.html#storylink=cpy

Polar Bears

Today we read an article about polar bears.  Before we read the article, I showed the class the title of the article, "It's Even Too Cold For Polar Bears."  What a great title!  As we looked at the title I asked the class to think of questions that they thought they would be able to read while reading the text.

I stole this idea from a professional development day we had earlier this year.  I love the wording of that question.  It forces the students to come up with their own questions but it also forces some limitations on those questions.  The class came up with a great list of questions:

• Where did this happen?
• How cold was it?
• Did any polar bears die?
• Hom many polar bears was it too cold for?
• How did polar bears get too cold?

It was that last question that I wanted to know the answer to as well.  I mean they are polar bears.  After making the list, I passed out the article and the class read the text.  As they read the text they would put an "A" above the spot where they found their answer.  Here is the text of the article if you want to read and find the answers.

It's too cold for Chicago's resident polar bear.

The city's Lincoln Park Zoo says its polar bear, Anana, was kept inside Monday because of the record-low temperatures.

Zoo spokeswoman Sharon Dewar says that the below-zero weather might be comparable to what polar bears experience in the wild. But Anana doesn't have a thick layer of fat that bears typically get from eating things such as seals and whale carcasses.

That extra insulation would make it uncomfortable to live in Chicago during the rest of the year. So Anana gets a different diet.

While she stayed inside, Anana lounged in her comparatively balmy indoor climate that's kept at 40 to 50 degrees.

Anana usually has access to both an indoor and outdoor area. She'll be allowed to venture outside Tuesday.

I thought that was an amazing article. I think the class was pretty interested to learn about how polar bears are different in the zoo than in their habitat. What I love about the exercise is that students are creating their own questions as they read. They also are realizing that the answer to their questions can be found in text.

Hope you are all having a great week.