IPC Integration

This morning's language arts pods found students integrating their IPC topic: Explorers and Adventurers, with various language arts tasks.  While we still did our pods with technology (Into the Book) and continuing to work on our novel study final project, the students also did a read and respond activity where they read a nonfiction card about early exploration while the teacher led pod worked on eliciting information from an article we read yesterday, Ancient Adventurers.  I was extremely pleased with the amount of focus and on task work the students showed this morning.

Shared Writing

The students are working on their last large writing project of the year: an expository essay on an endangered animal.  They have been hard at work doing research for their paper, and some of us have even finished.  As we all start to get closer to the next step, it means that we'll begin drafting.  To start our papers, we plan on writing an introductory paragraph.  This can often be a hard, wordy task and one which I like to model first for the students (do an example for / with them first).  Today we did just that and then the students participated in shared writing with a partner or small group to write an introductory paragraph together to get our papers started.  It was GREAT to see the collaboration between the students.

Learning Through Discussion

A key factor in learning in our classroom is being able to express your thoughts, ideas and answers both verbally and in written form.  In many of our reading units, learning comes from each other in the form of discussions.  As we discuss, students learn to hear other points of view, debate them respectfully, share thoughts, change opinions and answers, and just generally being able to discuss literature to educate.  This morning, students participated in a guided discussion group where we shared our thoughts to various questions.

Kidblog - Free Write

During one of our language arts pods this morning, students went on to their kidblogs and wrote a new post.  Today, their post was a free write entry, meaning they could choose any thing they wanted to write about.  Feel free to read and comment on their writing!

Free Writes

Time with Tech

On Wednesday mornings, 4th grade purple has the computer cart for the first couple of hours of the day and we utilize it to our full extent.

First, during pods the students participate in two out of four pods with the laptops.  Usually one of these two pods is based on reading, while the other is writing.  This is when we get to practice our writing skills on Kidblog and our reading skills with RAZ Kids, Into the Book, or another online reading program.

After our pods, we will often use the computers for another language arts based activity.  Today, it was to help us start our next writing project: an expository essay based on an endangered animal.  The students visited a website listing various endangered animals, choose one, and then using the research sites tab, and subsequent links on the page, began researching different facets about their animal.

Comprehension response

Read to Someone - IPC incorporation with ELA

Kidblog free write

RAZ Kids

A Morning of Pods

Pods in guided reading are a strong part of 4th grade purple's language arts program.  Students participate in a variety of related activities, in small group settings, for a specific amount of time that isn't too long.  This enables students to have a better student:teacher ratio during the teacher led, or instruction, pod, gets them to practice their skills independently and allows me to create small group discussions from which a large part of our learning takes place.  We love them and the time flies so quickly!

Peer Check-ins

During reading today, students did a peer check-in activity when going over their work.  In their table groups the students took a part of the work we were checking and used their peers to help them in ensuring the accuracy of their work.  As each person shared, the table group would give a thumb signal to indicate if they felt the students work was as per requirements.  If changes needed to be made, reasons were given as to why, it was discussed and they'd work together to find an appropriate solution.

Graphic Organizer Use

Students use a graphic organizer to find main story elements from chapter 2 of our Leonardo da Vinci book.  They located the setting, major and minor characters, problem, listed a few main events, and gave the outcome of the chapter.

Cube Creator

Using this great site from ReadWriteThink, students used information from the Lou Gehrig biography they were reading to make a Bio Cube.  This is a great task to see students' comprehension of a subject in other ways and to have them illicit facts from literature.  4th Grade Purple was able to save  these to their USBs which we can print at a later date and actually make into a cube.  

On the website, you can make a variety of different cubes and even generate one suited to what ever unit you are studying in class.

Cube Creator

Biography & Autobiography

In reading, students are looking at the genres biographies and autobiographies.

Through discussion, we noted that a biography is a real story about a real person's life written by someone else.  An autobiography is also a real story about a real person's life but it is written by that person, not someone else.

In starting this unit, we began looking at a biography about Lou Gehrig, the baseball player from the New York Yankees.  Students have read, discussed and analyzed the story thoroughly.  It is great to see the questions they come up with and the information they want to learn (although they do think I know everything about everyone lol).

Word of the Day

On of our goals in 4th grade purple this year is to build our vocabulary.  In order to do this, we need to learn a plethora of words and what they mean.  This way we can use them in our speech and writing, and if we come across them in literature we read we'll know what they mean.  We are keeping track of our "Words of the Day" on the blog so feel free to pop by and check out all the new words we're learning.

Shared Reading

As we enter in to our last week studying mysteries in reading, students are sharing reading responsibilities.  Reading is done in our classroom as whole class, small group (shared) and independently.  In "detective teams", students read an Encyclopedia Brown mystery together and then worked to solve the mystery.  Tomorrow their deductions and solutions will be shared and we'll see who was able to solve The Case of the Tennis Racket.

Tuesday ELA Pods

During Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, our schedule allows us to have a good chunk of time for language arts pods.  On Wednesdays we have the Macs to incorporate tech into our schedule and on Tuesdays we are creative in the various tasks we undertake.

building sentencesn

response to literature questions

detective case reports

irregular past tense verb matching

ELA Pods

Wednesday mornings we often start our day with reading pods where students participate in a variety of reading, writing, spelling and grammar activities.  It's a great chance for students to use a variety of methods to enhance and showcase their learning, and allows us to work in small groups giving a better student-to-teacher ratio for instruction or proximity of assistance.

Detective Case Reports

RAZ Kids

Blogging - Free Write day

Irregular Verb practice