Retaining a Reading Life

Tis' the season!  Students are about to leave us for the holiday break.  Lots of time to relax, spend time with family, and hopefully do some reading... at least I hope...

It has been my personal goal over the year to teach my students reading habits that will extend beyond the classroom walls.  Because of that, I put together a Google Form that will allow each reader to make purposeful plans for their break, and think about when they can snag some extra time reading. We will spend tomorrow morning making sure we have books to read over break, and I will have conversations with my students about their personal reading goals.  

Feel free to use the form below, or tweak it to fit your needs.  It is a little last minute (I apologize) but this could easily be adapted for snow days, spring break, and even summer vacation.


Holiday Break Reading

-Micaela

Google Tour

Students here at English Landing have been working with Google Tour, a Google Earth experiment.  Check out the student example below:

Visit Tour

Book Club Blog

I have two small group book clubs made up of students from all three 5th grade classes who meet for 25 minutes each day. We are currently reading Missing on Superstition Mountain together. The students are having a lot of fun with this book, which involves a big mystery, skeletons, and treasure! One tool we use during our time together is a blog I created for these book clubs. Both groups use the same one, which makes it easier to manage plus they are able to see what students outside of their group are thinking.

The way I use the blog has evolved since the beginning of book clubs, from asking students general reading skills questions to questions that focus more on the story itself. I have really enjoyed using the blog for discussion questions and am able to use it as another way to check understanding. My favorite part is when the students reply to each other, especially when I don't specifically ask them to! I have included a link below.

http://petersbookclubs.blogspot.com/

Today's Meet During Read Aloud

     As we read our class read aloud, The Double Life of Pocahontas, students are logging their thoughts in a Today's Meet conversation.  This allows everyone to have their thinking heard and is a formative assessment for me to gauge their understanding.  I also shared this link with parents.  This allows them to see their child's input to our classroom conversations.

https://todaysmeet.com/DoubleLife/projector

Technology in Science

We are currently using new technologies to code and create digital games and animations. These sites shows kid how to create code from games already provided, and then create digital pieces from scratch.  The kids are doing amazing things through this process!  

http://code.org/learn...we then used the next site to create their own technologies....scratch.mit.edu

Data Notebooks

The students at English Landing have developed Digital Data Notebooks.  Check out the screencast developed by two fifth graders below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57XeKeABGI

Inferring: using photographs, paintings, music, and comics

As we focus on inferring in the next few weeks I decided to add some fun into our mini-lessons! Our 5th graders must understand that we infer all day every day! Today, we used photographs to make inferences. We discussed that to make an inference we use our schema and clues that we gather. The kids absolutely loved the lesson!!! Tomorrow we will focus on comics. My students will try and figure out what is happening in Garfield comics. Then, they will meet with a partner to create their own Sponge Bob comic. They will be inferring the whole time, but also having fun!

UC tried several new things...

Some things we have done since our PD: used Smart Response for collecting opinions on scenarios using life skills before a class meeting....Smart Response for Topic 4 and 5 testing...Padlet to post testable questions for science inquiry, followed by group discussion/collaboration...Screen-o-Matic to introduce body systems unit...Google Drive to jigsaw reading about the body systems and share out with others. Next week: Smore to create brochures for our colonies unit.