'Tis the Season! (to cover your classroom with glitter)

Tis the season to get crafty!

How do you spend the last day of school before winter break? Many students leave a few days early, and the ones who stay are so excited they can hardly contain themselves. The fourth grade team decided to hold Pajama Day that Thursday as a way to celebrate the hard work we'd been doing in our realistic fiction writing unit. Thursdays are my favorite days because our only special is Italian (we have Italian every morning, and I have one or two other specials on each other day) and I feel like I am able to teach so much more. I prepared myself for stress and craziness, and yes, there was some intense craziness, but it was actually one of my favorite days of teaching I've ever had! It was a wonderful day of bonding, sweetness, holiday-spirit, and tons of glitter. Here are the three crafts we did throughout the day: 

Decoupage Candle Holders

She's very focused on her candy-cane inspired jar!

I grew up with decoupage, but most of my students had never seen it! I found a market-type store in the city that sold little jars and bought one for each student, then went on a tissue paper hunt around school. We used Elmer's Glue instead of Modgepodge as a sealer. Most chose to do either light blue and white for a snowflake effect, red and green, or red and white. I found a huge bag of tea-lights as well to add in the end. Once our jars were dry, we glittered the jars to pieces! They ended up beautiful and so unique! I love how our jars turned out, and hopefully my students will enjoy giving them as gifts!

Glitter everywhere!

They're very easy to make. Mod Podge works best, but glue turns out just fine- it does leave the glass with a 'frosty' look though! To make them, rip your tissue paper into small pieces- about a square inch. Then paint a thin layer of your adhesive onto the glass and lay a piece of the tissue paper onto the glue/Mod Podge. Afterwards, paint another thin layer over the paper, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles.  You can overlap the edges of the tissue paper pieces, but be careful because some colors will look muddy when they're mixed. Once they are dry, you can add glitter and a candle!

She's doing some excellent smudging! The kids wanted to hang up their snowmen to decorate the room until they brought
them home that afternoon, and you can see one in the background :)

Aerial Perspective Snowmen

This one's looking up and has a mustache!

When I found this idea on Pinterest, I loved it! Before lunch, we drew snowflakes and swirls in white crayon and then used blue watercolors to paint over our drawings. Even though they knew that the crayon would resist the paint, they were still in awe as they saw their snowflakes appear! After, we traced various objects around the classroom to make the pieces of our snowmen. Yes, I could have made stencils, but the base of our globe, the top of our pencil bins, and the bottom and top of our skinny-marker container worked just fine and there was never a single problem with sharing! After tracing the shapes onto white paper, we used blue oil pastels to outline the pencil marks and used our fingers to smudge the blue in. This made it look like a shadow and gave each piece of the snowmen dimension. Eyes were drawn in using sharpies, scarves colored with markers, and carrot noses and stick arms cut from construction paper. After our backgrounds dried, we glued the pieces together. They came out so adorable!

This little guy doesn't speak English and usually is very eager to head out for his ELL time each day, but lately (today included!) he's been asking if he can stay in class instead! :) 

 Golden Snitch Ornaments 

 I run Harry Potter Club as an after-school activity, and when my class saw what we'd done last week in Harry Potter Club, they were so jealous that I decided to do it with my class as well! We made golden snitch ornaments with glitter, ribbon, and small gold ornaments and they turned out beautiful. It's really easy- I found 2" ribbon with gold embellishments and wire edges to use for the wings. We cut pieces about 3-4" long and cut them in half, rounding out the edges a little on both pieces. Then we cut small slits all along the ribbon, stopping right before the wire to make them fluttery. Next, we glittered the ornaments (my carpet was absolutely COVERED in glitter by the end of the day!). One of my very responsible students, who is also in Harry Potter Club, helped me man one of the glue guns and we used that to attach the wings. They are so simple to make, but are a truly beautiful decoration! A few students who hadn't fallen in love with Harry Potter (yet!) just made glitter ornaments.

When a few finished early, they made them for our librarian, principal, director, and office assistant. They're so sparkly!!

It was such a magical day! No, we didn't get much academic time in, but we finished our math unit two days earlier than expected, and took some time to share our stories. My intention was reading, math games, and story-sharing during craft down-time, but they were just being so sweet! They wanted to make cards for absolutely everyone; their families, me and the other two fourth-grade teachers, the principal and director of the school, their different Italian teachers, everyone! At one point, a few of my boys barricaded off our classroom library with a white-board they thought I couldn't see over. When they emerged a little while later they had made me a life-size Nimbus 2000! It was the most wonderful, special day and such a fabulous way to end 2014 together. I'm excited to see them all again in January, and know they left school that day happy. Yay!

The three things each student brought home at the end of the day :)

Activities to Encourage Enthusiasm for Reading

It's very challenging to start a career overseas. Not just start a new job, but an entire career. I am obsessed with Italy and feel so blessed to be here, but answer me this: how tough would it be to start a teaching career where there is absolutely nothing even close to Target, Jo-Ann Fabrics, or Dollar Tree? Shipping anything from Amazon (even UK) is a challenge because all of my packages are sent to school, and it's a challenge to find books in English (Ikea is great though!). That said, I was BEYOND excited for our biannual book fair last week! I've been trying out a few new activities this year to spark interest in reading, and am really pleased with how my three most recent activities have gone!

1. The 40 Book Challenge

Inspired by Donalyn Miller's "Book Whisperer," I've challenged my students to read 40 books this year. We've been working for about two weeks now and it's been so exciting! My students record each book that they read on a chart in their portfolios. They also add a sticker to our genre graph. I made a few changes to the genre requirements, as well as made a language amendment to the rules (I only have two native English speakers and want to respect and nurture first languages while also encouraging my students to read in English). I have been struggling with putting requirements on reading. My kids love Geronimo Stilton and Beast Quest; am I being terrible by forcing them to read something else? Last week we sat down together and talked it out. I told them that I want to expand their reading horizons and help them to find new interests and was so encouraged by their responses! Most said that within the last few weeks they'd already found a book from a genre they didn't usually read that they loved! We decided that we're open to changing the requirements at a later point if we need to, but for now we like the way the challenge is structured. 

2. New-Book Auction 

I went nuts at the book fair. I think I spent almost 100 euro during my first trip, and then went again a second time! But I'm so pumped about every book I bought, and so were my students. We took some time to go through each one together, reading through the backs and hearing from anyone who'd read the book before. Afterwards, each student was given five tickets, and we held a Chinese auction for the books by bidding for which we'd like to borrow for a week. We just finished studying probability, so it was interesting to talk about chances if you put all tickets in for one book, or a ticket in for five different books. After everyone had a chance to bid, the auction began! I absolutely loved how excited they were! The best part was when a student won more than one book. Since they could only borrow one, they had to choose which book to borrow for the week. This made things extra exciting because even if you lost out on the book you wanted most, you never knew if that book would end up being auctioned a second (or third!) time! In the end, I had a room full of eager and excited readers!

 3. Speed Recommendations

I haven't come up with a catchy name for this one yet. Basically what we did was speed dating with books. Each child picked a book that they wanted to recommend to their classmates. It had to be a book that they loved, that they thought their classmates would love, and that they thought might be new to their peers. I had them fill out a short form to prepare for the main event, where they wrote out  the title, author, and genre, a short summary (no spoilers!), and a brief explanation about why they thought their peers would like the book. You can find the worksheet I used free on my Teachers-Pay-Teachers site! We lined up in two rows, facing a partner. For the first few round, each partner had one minute to "sell" the book to their partner. After we'd gotten the hang of it, we moved down to 45 seconds. If your partner recommended a book you thought you'd like, you would write it down on the back of your paper. After each round, everyone would scoot over a spot to meet with a new partner. Logistically, I need a better plan next time. With each person scooting, they always skipped over someone. Next time it will work better for sure! Anyways, everyone came away with a few books they couldn't wait to read! The two books that seemed most popular were "Awful Auntie," and "Tuesday's at the Castle."

Taking some time to explore some of the book's
awesome features!

So many students loved the sound of "Little House on
the Prairie!"

Monday Made It: November

Hey there! I've loved keeping my travel blog this past year, and am now joining the lovely community of teacher bloggers! For my first post, I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It, a linky party that I've been spending Monday evenings stalking for a year :) Anyways, here goes!

After seeing The Teacher Garden's "Scientist of the Month" bulletin board, I wanted to create my own! My students last year loved learning about Isaac Newton during our energy unit and about different inventors before our Invention Convention. My plan is to have our "Class Decorator" (one of the favorite class jobs) switch out the materials each month. I introduce the scientist at the beginning of each month and borrow a few books from the library to have for my kiddos to read.
What I'm really excited about is the QR codes! I've been looking for new ways to use my school's tablets in the classroom, and this should be a lot of fun! I'm not 100% sure of when I'll have my students access the board, but maybe during Daily 5 Read to Self or for my early finishers.  Students will be able to grab a tablet, a pair of headphones, and explore the different resources.
Last year one of my little guys had a tough time finding his strengths as a learner. He was the first I ever went to the Child Study Team for, and ended up loving having a 'team' focused on just him. Anyways, he LOVED nonfiction, especially anything about scientists like Thomas Edison. He loved that his idol had trouble in school just like he did, but that didn't mean that he wasn't smart. I love that this will give the kids exposure to different people who have done some wonderful things and inspire them to keep learning :) I've posted it on my TPT site!

We had some boring unfinished-work type things on the board that day but I keep forgetting to take a better picture!

I am OBSESSED with Daily 5, but didn't love how I taught math last year. This year I'm using a similar model for teaching math (we use TERC Investigations at my school). This was the first thing I put onto TPT, and am SO happy to finally have it all set up! I'd like to do a post soon on how I'm teaching it in my class, so be on the lookout! The background of my board is actually made from pillowcases that I found on sale at Walmart for a few dollars last year (what I would give for a Walmart or Target here in Italy... *Sigh*). 

At least the iron's getting some use!

I had a slight problem when setting up the board; I was more excited about my new laminator than anything else I bought this summer and was so pumped to start using it at home, creating teaching materials I could use every year. While in the USA, it worked WONDERFULLY on a new set of task cards, but when I plugged it in here in Italy, it started smoking and stunk up my whole apartment with a horrible burnt plastic smell! I knew not to use an American blowdryer or straightener in European plugs, but it didn't even cross my mind not to plug in my laminator. Drats :( Anyways, I still wanted to laminate my new materials, so put them into the laminator pouches, the pouches between two tea towels and ironed the whole thing! It definitely didn't work as well as my beautiful laminator, but still, mission accomplished :)