
Teaching in Room 6
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Hi! I am Stephanie, an upper elementary teacher(a 4/5 split class), who is obsessed with creating rigorous, engaging, and long lasting lessons for my students. I share practical ideas that can be implemented in the classroom immediately.
Teaching in Room 6
2M ago
I am newly back in 4th grade from a very long hiatus and I am SO excited to teach state history again! It is just something I find so interesting. Between the actual content and the projects, I can't get enough! So to start our year right, we did a VERY traditional and quintessential 4th grade activity, California Regions Salt Dough Maps.
We started by researching the four main regions of California. To make things a bit easier, I gave the students a few paragraphs that had all of the basic info that I wanted them to research. The kids read the passages, filled ..read more
Teaching in Room 6
2M ago
Each year, I like to do something different for the gift the students give to their parents during the holiday season. I like to keep it less holiday focused and more family focused, as I truly don't know what holidays the kids celebrate (or don't celebrate) at home. Because of this, I tend to steer clear of ornaments or traditional Christmas-themed faire. So this year, I decided to do a Silhouette All About Me. This project, which we did for our holiday family gift this year, actually would be awesome for the beginning of the year or Mother's/Father's Day...and I t ..read more
Teaching in Room 6
2M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
3M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
3M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
4M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
4M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
10M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
11M ago
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
Teaching in Room 6
2y ago
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