My New Year's [Teaching] Resolution 2014

As standards evolve and change, textbooks find it hard to keep up. Teachers must find or create more materials on their own. High-stakes accountability tempts us to focus on rote, skill-and-drill learning. 

This year I resolve to focus curriculum on standards, use data to guide instruction, and plan engaging activities for my students. This looks like a job for Superman! 

Photo clip from Warner Bros. Online

Fleisher Studios Superman Cartoons:

"The Mad Scientist"

Public Domain

My first endeavor involves the study of energy. Data indicate that my fourth grade students need to review sound (a third grade standard) before the first state assessment in early March. Since I still need to hit quite a few fourth grade standards before the test, the review must be quick. The answer? Hands-on centers and an interactive website!

These will be field tested in my class during the first week in January. Soon thereafter the complete Exploring Sound unit will be available in my store on Teachers pay Teachers. It will be followed by Exploring Light, Exploring Heat, and Exploring Electricity.

Like other teacher-authors on Teachers pay Teachers, I resolve to make learning more engaging - - - and to share it with you! Be sure to check back here for free and inexpensive materials for your third, fourth, or fifth grade classroom throughout the year.

Integrating Math and Literature

Integrating subject matter makes learning fun! My class has been working on writing longer responses to questions (complete with evidence and citing). They've been making great progress, but constructing responses was getting to be a real drag.

In math, we were just ready to begin perimeter and area. "Why not merge math and literature?" I thought. It was simple, really. I took a common perimeter and area problem and wrote simple scenarios involving characters from our novels, Hatchet and Strider.

Students warmed up with problems from WorksheetWorks.com then continued with these novel-based problems. Free graph paper can be generated at Incompetech.com. (I chose the square graph paper with grid spacing of one line per centimeter.)

Interdisciplinary teaching seems like a blast from the past, but there's no time like the present to liven up literature and make math meaningful. 

Thanksgiving Parts of Speech

My students have been working on parts of speech all year, and the cumulative exam is fast approaching. How can I hold their interest in a little more practice? I'll put them in the driver's seat with a Thanksgiving theme!

"Where do you find _______________on Thanksgiving?" will give them a chance to use a little humor (or not) with prepositional phrases. For example:

Where do you find the potato on Thanksgiving?

in hot water

Where do you find my cousin on Thanksgiving?

between Grandma and Aunt Sally

I'll use this template to create foldables for their best ideas, which can be displayed on our classroom wall.

Next, my students will write their own Thanksgiving-related sentences and label them. Since I usually write sentences for them to label, this exercise will give them a chance to think about parts of speech from a different perspective.

Conducting Short Research Projects

Common Core State Standards W.3.7, W.4.7, and W.5.7 ask students to "conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic," and W.3.7, W.4.7, and W.5.7 instruct them to "interpret information presented visually or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, diagrams, ... or interactive elements on Web pages." I have found that flip books really motivate students to conduct short research projects using the Internet.

Here are a few examples:

Inner pages may be lined, bulleted, framed for drawing pictures, or blank. Simply stagger page lengths, staple, and set your students loose! 

The thing I love best about flip books is that they provide polished products with no fuss. Enjoy!

Teaching with the Poetry of James Whitcomb Riley

When the grass is airbrushed white and the air is crisp, I reach for Riley Farm-Rhymes as I head off to school. It's time to share "When the Frost Is on the Punkin" with my class.

The vivid imagery of James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, takes us back to a crisp autumn day on an 1880's Indiana farm. It's the perfect opportunity for a poetry lesson!

After reading the poem aloud, we discuss structural elements: stanzas, verses, rhythm, meter, and rhyme.

Skilled use of language makes this poem particularly compelling. We explore onomatopoeia, personification, sensory words, and dialect.

I use the first paragraph as an example; students practice locating these elements in the second, third, and fourth stanzas. Next, we discuss unfamiliar words, what the poem tells us about farming in the 1800's, and deeper meaning. To find out more about the life of James Whitcomb Riley, we discuss this article from the Indiana Historical Society. Now comes the grand finale: listening to Riley recite his poem! A scratchy, but authentic audio recording can be found in the Digital Collections of the Indianapolis Public Library.

Lesson plans and a corresponding PowerPoint presentation for "When the Frost Is on the Punkin" are now available in my Teachers pay Teachers store.

This won't be our last Riley poem. We'll use "Little Orphant Annie" (a real crowd pleaser!) when we study the Orphan Trains and "A Worn-Out Pencil" to analyze metaphor.

I hope you enjoy the poetry of James Whitcomb Riley as much as I do!

Note: The poetry of James Whitcomb Riley is now in the public domain and can be reproduced freely.

Fabulous Reading, Writing, and Grammar Resources

Every once in a while I'm lucky enough to stumble across resources that revolutionize the way I teach. This week I learned about DGP Publishing. Wow! Their newsletter, The Language Ledger, provides examples of their fabulous language arts products.

Created for teachers by teachers, these products really make sense. Check out the scope and sequence for Daily Reading Practice for Grades 1-10. Each week, students work with one passage to practice a variety of skills.

Grammar products focus on one sentence per week, as illustrated on the cover of "The Language Ledger" above. Students analyze parts of speech, phrases and clauses, capitalization, punctuation, and more! You can get an idea of what's covered with Daily Grammar Practice Scope and Sequence for Grades 1-5, Daily Grammar Practice Scope and Sequence for Grades 6-12, and Advanced Daily Grammar Practice Scope and Sequence for Grades 6-12.

After attending a session on the Burnette Writing Process, I'm hooked! Dawn Burnette advocates focusing (and assessing) six or less skills for each assignment. When the assignment is complete, students annotate, or mark, their papers to demonstrate how they've successfully employed those skills. This makes total sense. Her Focus Skills Progress Chart helps teachers track students' progress throughout the year and can be passed on to the next grade for a seamless learning experience.

I've been waiting for these products. They will really make a difference in my classroom!

Equivalent Fractions Sites

Now that my students know how to find equivalent fractions and reduce, they need lots of practice! Today they'll be working on fluency using these wonderful free games:

• Triplets - Equivalents Fractions Game, Math Playground
• Matching Math - Equivalent Fractions, Sheppard Software
• Fresh Baked Fractions, Funbrain
• Equivalent Fractions Bingo, ABCYa
• Reduce Fractions Shoot, Sheppard Software
• Reducing Fractions, Math Playground

Not only do we practice with these games at school, but I also share them out for practice at home.

Enjoy!