Bio Word Clouds

Our class has been working to better use descriptive language in our writing.  Sometimes we use worksheets to practice using adjectives, but that is often tedious, and students fail to transfer what they have learned into actual practice.  To get us started, we brainstormed words to describe ourselves.  I had students think of words that describe their appearance, words that describe their personality, words that describe their interests, and words that describe their values and beliefs  We partnered up to get feedback and advice from others.  After we had our initial lists, we worked on correcting spelling.

Using an on-line word cloud generator, we typed in our first names, and the list of words. We used Tagxedo.  From there it was a matter of selecting a layout, font, and color scheme.  We saved the finished word cloud to our computers as a jpg.  I was amazed how quickly students picked up the necessary skills. 

Our next step will be to embed them in our Kidblogs.  Then I will ask students  to write a paragraph or two describing themselves, using many of these words.

Park Your Writing Here!

Like many fourth grade classrooms, we do a lot of writing.  That writing takes many forms.  Sometimes we take our work through all the steps of the writing process.  Often we do quick writes in the form of reading response and exit slips.  I have seen several ideas for creating a parking lot for the completed writing in the form of a Ticket Out the Door or a Numbered Chart. Both of these ideas use sticky notes.  These are both a great use of sticky notes.

The downside to sticky notes is sometimes they are not that sticky and end up on the floor.  They can also be expensive, and it is very limited amount of space to write.

Then I remembered I had this pocket chart, that would let me accomplish the same thing.  Instead of numbers, I wrote student names on a label for each pocket.  For some responses, I just give students a quarter sheet of notebook paper or an index card.  In this case we did a book review about our read aloud book.  

This book review form is something I had stored away in my files.  The original form was just a word document, and I did some cut and paste to get four forms per sheet.  I ran it on colorful card stock, which is totally unnecessary, but I like color. 

The advantage of a parking lot or chart for posting ideas is that it enables students to share their ideas easily.  My students are eager to post their response.   It also lets me see at a glance who has completed the assignment.  I used the top row to post the question or topic they are responding to.  I also placed additional forms there.  

The kids like the Parking Lot so much, they were trying to fit some other work in there as well. 

If you are interested in the book review form, you can see it here.

Here is the back of the book review form. 

Once again I got the idea from Pinterest.  I have found some great writing ideas on Pinterest.  Here is a link to my Pinterest Writing Board. 

Fraction Bingo

We started working on fractions this week.  Once again I turned to my friend, Pinterest, for ideas.  I am gathering resources on this board, Fractions.  I liked the idea of creating a Fraction Bingo game, and I found this post from Primarily Speaking. Since my kids are older I decided to create a game that gave them more choices.

I created a board with figures divided into fractional parts.

They determined what fraction of the figure to color.  They cut out each square and glued it into a square on the BINGO board.  This way each student had a different board.

In order to make the game fair, I labeled a craft stick for each letter of the word Bingo.  

I also wrote each possible fraction on a square of cardstock.  Then I placed the sticks and fraction cards inside an empty oatmeal container.

It was easy to reach my hand in and pull out a stick and a fraction to call out.  I recorded the fraction called on a sheet of paper, so we could check accuracy.

Finally we tested the game by playing it.  The class gave me feedback as to what worked and what didn't.  Next time I will pull out all the fifths and sevenths, since I didn't have any on the game boards.

As we played, I realized that we can use this game again next week as we learn about equivalent fractions.  It will be easy to cover not only the fraction called, but equivalent fractions as well.

If you are interested in trying this game here is the Blank Fraction Board  and
here are the Fraction Bingo Pieces.  Please let me know if you have any difficulty accessing these.

Good Choices

It's been three months since my last blog post, but I have a good excuse.  I haven't really been at school much lately.  In fact Wednesday was my first day back to school after spending the last five weeks recovering from foot surgery.  I fractured my foot and ankle in a fall down the stairs on Christmas Day, and eventually had to have one of the broken bones repaired surgically.  For four weeks I was not allowed to put any weight on my foot, and now that I can walk, I'm still wearing the lovely black boot.

While I couldn't be at school, I kept touch with my students through letter writing and our Kidblogs.  It was a great way for us to communicate back and forth, and I have become an even bigger fan of introducing students to blogging at an early age.

Besides blogging with the kids, I spent my weeks of confinement knitting, reading, watching too much television, and exploring pins on Pinterest.  I found lots of great ideas to try out once I did get back to school.

I really liked this idea for using a hundreds chart for behavior management.  I talk with my students a lot about making good choices, so that was the title I used,  along with this quote that we all have posted in our classrooms, "Work hard, be kind, dream big!"

When the class makes good choices, draw a number from the point can.  I put the numbers from 1 to 100 on craft sticks, and put them in an old canister that I had.  When something good happens, I have a student draw a stick.  They color in the corresponding number on the hundred chart.  When we have ten in a row, we earn an extra recess or class celebration.

It's easy to set up and administer, and provides many opportunities for positive reinforcement.  I like it!  It's working well so far! The kids like being the one to draw a stick and color the chart.  As a side note, it's also a great opportunity to teach about probability.  We have control over the making good choices, but luck plays into which numbers are drawn.

It's great to be back, and this is giving us something new to work towards.