Monday Made It! Student Planner and Monster Math

I am OBSESSED with planners. I love decorating and doodling in mine, and keep a colorful set of markers handy wherever I go for the purpose of color coding. My first year of teaching, I rewarded myself with a Erin Condren planner, and now as I begin my third year, I've ordered my third and am impatiently waiting for it to arrive (seriously, I've been tracking it for days-- it's currently in Indiana). This year I also ordered the Life Planner and can't wait to have another lovely planner to organize!

That said, I would love to pass on my need for organization to my students, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted. Usually, I give homework on Mondays and collect the following Monday. My students are so busy with after-school activities, family obligations, and travel that it made sense to let them organize their own time. However, many lacked the forethought to spread their work over the week (no matter how many times I stressed the importance of it!) and would come in on Monday with an empty packet and a, "My grandma came over on Sunday and I didn't have time!" excuse. Grrrr!!!

I think I'll use the alien cover this year!

I got the idea to make my own planner from a post by The Ladybug Teacher Files. She posted about using a comb-binding machine to keep her spelling journals, and I fell in love with the sleek look of the spiral comb (I can't stand the traditional comb-bindings! They drive me nuts!), and thought that would be a perfect way to make a planner for each student. After a few days at the computer, I created a printable planner that I think will work well for my students (it's on TPT with all four covers included). 

At the beginning of the planner, I have a few resources my students constantly need: login information (we use Kidblog, Code.org, a class website, and I'm thinking about Biblionasium this year too), a multiplication chart, and a page to record our class rules. Next come monthly calendars. We do a few big projects and usually our team prints out a calendar to keep track of important dates, but now it'll be handy with our other important dates (learning celebrations, concerts, book club dates, due dates, etc.). I think before I make copies I'll write in our school dates. I was also thinking this could be a great get-to-know-you activity if each had to ask each classmate their birthday and record it in their planner. I have a teammate who uses individual calendars with Calendar Math- her students record the day's pattern in their own calendar, and I may do the same! I am obsessed with inspirational quotes, so I put a children's literature quote on each month, too.

I love the quotes and hope my students will too!

Last but certainly not least are the weekly planning pages. These are very tailored to what I've seen my students struggle with. First, recording the date; each day of the week is pre-dated. There is a box for activities, and I'm planning to teach my students to fill this in on Sunday or Monday with their families. There is a big box for homework, but I didn't include subject dividers. My thought there is that I can use the box any way I'd like then. I can assign an exit-ticket style math problem to go along with a flipped classroom video (more to come on my idea for that later!!), a reading response, etc. and have students record directly in the box. I could display the week's homework on the board and have students individually fill out when they'll complete each assignment if I still want homework due on Monday's. I think it'll give me and my students more flexibility!

This is my organizational style- hopefully it works for them too!

I use The 40 Book Challenge in my class, and students are supposed to keep their charts in their portfolios, but a few lost theirs when they brought them home (that's why they stay at school, sillies!). In the planner I included a little box for them to record what they read, how many pages, and how many minutes. I've also included a spot for spelling words. I think if they need to record them themselves rather than me handing out a spelling list, it'll hold me more accountable for meeting with each spelling group to do a word sort on Mondays.

Anyways, I wish my Monday Made-Its were more crafty, but anything I make has to come back with me in a suitcase, so I make plans for my Made-Its, and hopefully can stay organized enough to put them together when I go back to Italy. I can't wait to see how they turn out!!

I also made a monster version of my Math Workshop Rotation Board in primary colors. My previous board was cute little love bugs in pink, purple, turquoise, and green. I'm considering changing my classroom color scheme this year, but we shall see :) This too is on TPT!

Monday Made It: Getting Ready for Processes that Shape the Earth

I'm super excited share what I've been working on so far this summer! I love making "teacher things,"  and while my parents are at work this summer, that's much of how I've been spending my days. That, and stocking up on things I can't find in Italy, like peanut butter and Funfetti mix.

Our second unit of study in 4th grade usually starts at the beginning of the October, and I've been getting ready with some new materials for that. The unit is on Processes That Shape the Earth, and while last year I felt pretty good about introducing types of landforms and getting into plate tectonics, the kids were super interested in natural disasters. One of my goals for next year is to deliver content in a more focused way- sometimes I feel like I have to cover absolutely EVERYTHING, and end up doing too much skimming. To combat this, I created a project that will let my students research a type of natural disaster and then present to the class in the form of a news report. 

My plan is to teach either volcanoes or earthquakes (or both, depending on time!), and then let them delve deeply into another type of disaster with their groups. In their research, they'll answer important questions, including what happens within the Earth to cause their disaster, how to prepare for and stay safe during it, what parts of the world are effected, etc. I absolutely love projects, and am hoping that the earlier in the year I introduce research, the better. You can find the packet on my Teachers-Pay-Teacher's site if you're interested!

Okay, I know I said that I wanted to focus in more on the natural disaster part of the unit, but they still have to know landforms! I made two PowerPoints about the different types of landforms we'll talk about throughout the unit. I'm not sure if I'll have a sweet little group of lovebugs who adore cutesy things like my end-of-the-year-kiddos last year (they were the sweetest), or if they'll have the "we're cool 4th graders who HATE cutesy" attitude my same little end-of-the-year-lovebugs had at the beginning of the year, so I made a cute PowerPoint with adorable little bears from Scrappin' Doodle's clipart, and a more basic one that I'm also pretty pleased with (whew!! Run-on sentence?). Either way, I'm so excited about the beautiful images I found and hope the kids will be too. I even used a few I took myself :)  My students have been very well-traveled these past two years, so we might do a graphing activity along with it to see which landforms we've seen most, and which none of us have seen. I can't even wait for October now! This is also on my TPT store as a bundle with both PowerPoints. 

Cute little bears :)

More simple and basic design

Genius Hour: The Adventure Begins!

I am BEYOND excited to share with you something we're adding to our weekly routine! 

After reading about Genius Hour all over Pinterest and various teaching blogs, I was hooked; it encompasses so much of what I love about teaching! Genius Hour is based on Google's 20% policy, where Google gives their employees 20% of their work time to focus on their own projects. The thought behind this is that if employees are passionate about what they're working on, productivity will improve. If the rumors are true, Google was right- amazing resources we all know and use (Gmail, anyone?) have come out of this initiative! In the classroom, Genius Hour is a time given to students, usually about an hour each week, to focus on their own Passion Projects, exploring and investigating topics that fascinate them.  

In both undergraduate and graduate school, we were asked to write our 'Philosophy of Education.' I remember researching all different theories and ideas, but what stuck with me most were two quotes:

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." Albert Einstein

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards." Anatole France

In my mind, those two ideas were going to guide my teaching, and that is still my hope and the words that guide me. Above all else, I hope students leave my classroom loving to learn. My long-winded point here is that I believe Genius Hour does just that; it involves students in learning in a meaningful, exciting, authentic way. Passion Projects engage students in their own curiosity, drawn in by their desire to know more. 

Anyways, enough chatter, and onto Room 213's first Genius Hour!

Sometimes my excitement has unfortunate consequences and I'm unable to keep secrets. It's not so bad; I can keep those of others, but never my own! Long story short (something new for me), I blabbed about Genius Hour a few weeks earlier than I intended. Their reactions were amazing, and their enthusiasm infectious! Even though I accidentally spilled the beans back in December, I treated our first 'official' Genius Hour like it was truly our first. 

We began our session by watching Kid President's hilariously inspiring 'Pep Talk,' and talked about what Kid President's message for us was. Our take away: never give up, keep trying, make the world awesome, do something! I told them that we were going to be starting something extra awesome in our class, and showed a quick PowerPoint introducing the idea of Genius Hour- their reactions were everything I could have hoped for-- there was actual cheering! Needless to say, the questions were ENDLESS! They wanted to know everything: Could they work with a partner (no)? When would we do it (Friday afternoons)? When were projects due (we'll see)? Could it be about Pokemon (depends...)? Honestly, I didn't have answers for all of their questions yet- as it's my first time with Passion Projects too, I want to see how this one goes and let it evolve naturally!

After the PowerPoint, we went through the guidelines for the project.

Many already knew what they wanted to study, and nearly everyone surprised me. I had them go through a brainstorming activity, where they thought about what they loved doing, learning about, and wished they knew more about. The idea is still very foreign to them, and I think that they don't quite believe me that they can do their projects on anything they want as long as it is guided by a question, is researched, and presented. If they finished during our hour they could move on to submitting a formal proposal, convincing me that they should be given class time to work on their projects. I also had everyone, even if they finished, take their brainstorms and proposals home to talk over with their parents.

I love how focused and excited everyone was! One of my boys is very new to English (he moved from Korea this past summer), and though we spend a lot of time working one-on-one, and he goes to ELL lessons each day, I still worry that he isn't picking up on what we're doing always. Luckily, one of my girls is also from Korea and a complete rockstar- she spent half of the time sitting with him, going back and forth between Korean and English, helping him understand the project, and working with him to create a mini-dictionary for his topic (words on his list included leopard, leopards, cubs, hunter, and hunting)... in addition to being fantastic to see students helping other students, it was also a great lesson in plurals/nouns/verbs for him! Woohoo!

Anyways, I am PUMPED and hope that my students find a topic that they're as passionate about as I am about Genius Hour! You can find all of the materials I am using in my Genius Hour: Explore Your Passions! packet on Teachers-Pay-Teachers. 

My students added their inquiry questions to the heater/board (I'm out of bulletin board space!) as they had their ideas
approved. There are still a number who need to finalize their ideas! I'll post a list of our questions next week :)

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 :)