Have you ever taught a lesson and just realized that it felt good?  Like good, honest, real teaching?  That is what this set of lessons on perimeter, area, and measurement felt like for me. We started off by reviewing how to measure using a ruler.  They all seemed to want to start measuring at the 1 instead of the 0!  So we used a few task cards to practice measuring, as well as some worksheets.  These little worksheets provided a great jumping off point for the kids.  They also just love task cards.  Not sure why they like them so much, but they do ..read more

Are you looking for a fun and QUICK little response to literature that your students are sure to enjoy?  Look no further!  This post is actually a long time coming.  I have done this for years, ever since the Zoom days of distance learning, and I just never wrote about it here on the blog...until now!  So here we go. I read the students the book The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be by Joanna Gaines.  It is a relatively new book (published right as the world shut down) and it is just the perfect way to get the kids thinking about their own talents and things they ..read more

The past few years we have learned a bit about some of the traditions of Lunar New Year.  One tradition we learned about came specifically from China -- the Chinese Wishing Tree.   We began by reading the story The Wishing Tree by Rosanne Thong. (my affiliate link will take you to Amazon)  It is about a grandmother and her grandson who make wishes on the Banyon Tree in Hong Kong.  This is a fictional story but has a great author's note with nonfiction information about the Lam Tuen Wishing Trees in Hong Kong.   We then watched this very short video about the Banyo ..read more

We have been learning about the Middle Ages in our CKLA unit and throughout the unit there are stained glass pictures, as well as Rose Windows.  We also coincidentally happen to be learning about angles, lines, and symmetry in math.  SO I decided we would use these two concepts and put them together into a fun (and quite frankly stunning) project!  Here is what we did. Stained Glass We began our geometry unit learning about points, rays, lines, and angles, so I decided to take that idea one step farther and have the students create "Stained Glass Windows" using the concepts ..read more

This is our first year with the program CKLA, so I am figuring out how to make what they give engaging and relevant to my students, as well as stick as closely as possible to the program.  The first unit, which is Personal Narrative, had us reading a story called Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio.  It was about a girl who contracted polio at the age of 12 and her year of recovery from the disease.  The story was VERY interesting to the students, who really enjoyed learning about the trials and tribulations of Peg, the main character.   To cap off the unit, and bring in ..read more

If you are anything like me, you probably spent the few days before Earth Day trying to find a quick and easy lesson (or set of lessons) you could do with your class that would be meaningful but not too time consuming.  I mean, with THE TEST only a week away, I wanted to acknowledge the day but still have some worthwhile rigor thrown in there.  So here is what we did to make sure that is exactly what happened. We started the day watching the Earth Day BrainPop.  It was free on April 22, which was perfect for my needs.  It gives a little history and insight into how the ..read more

This year, my district began using the iReady program across all grade levels.  It has been an interesting journey so far and I thought I would share a bit about the incentives we have in place in my class that are helping the students to progress through the lessons.  Here are a few things you need to know before we proceed: 1)  iReady is mandated for 45 minutes in BOTH Reading and Math per week by the district. 2)  We are only using the diagnostic and the adaptive MyPath lessons. 3)  I do not have admin access on my end, so the features I have available to me are ..read more

Do you ever have an idea for a lesson but you don't know 100% where it is headed or how it will turn out?  That is what happened this year in the days leading up to Thanksgiving Break.   I knew I wanted to use the book Balloons Over Broadway and have some sort of writing and art response to it all, but I wasn't exactly sure what that would look like.  What my class actually ended up producing was FANTASTIC and is now currently my most favorite place to gaze at in my classroom.   We began by reading the book Balloons Over Broadway.  This is the story of how a puppet ..read more

The beginning of the year is filled with lots of get to know you activities.  But this year I wanted to make it a bit more academic, getting right into the nitty gritty of academic language from the get go.  So I turned one of those traditional "get to know you" activities into a lesson in Inferring! First, I had the students create a "Me Box" in class.  I used these instructions here, but the basic gist is that they filled the box with items that were special to the individual student.  The student chose what items to include, all with the idea that these items told th ..read more

This month we have taken some time to discuss influential and important women in history.  To aid in that discussion, we read the book Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris.   It is a wonderful story about a little girl who sees women being described in a not so positive light but decides to turn those traits around and make them positive.   So once we read the story, my students and I created a list of attributes that strong women would possess.  We thought of the women in the books we have read, women in our life, and the women we have studied. After making that list, an ..read more