Resurfacing and Playing Catch Up!

Please excuse my absence, friends!  I'm having one of those years that makes you feel like a brand new teacher again, and makes you appreciate the fact that, conversely, you have years of experience to fall back on. :)  I am really enjoying my year, and I absolutely LOVE my kiddos. I really like the challenge of teaching dual grade levels too.  I'm just plain tired to tell you the truth!  I haven't been able to keep up with blogging as much this year, and it makes me feel just a little guilty, but I want to thank everyone who messaged me asking if I'm okay.  I've been plodding right along, and I appreciate your inquiries.  I am simply feeling the pinch like every other teacher in the world! I've been trying to push my own students as far as I can...and it's been taking up a lot of my time!   (I know I am totally preaching to the choir! Right?!)  Since we just wrapped up the end of the nine-weeks and we've been in the midst of student-led conferences, I have had to take a little break from my online world, but hopefully I will be able to make up for that right now!  Get ready for a possible photo overload!

This is just a little looksie at how my focus board looks when it's in progress.  I realized that I took a picture of it at the beginning of the school-year, but it would probably be helpful if I actually showed how it looks once we're moving right along.  As aforementioned, now that I am teaching dual grade levels, I aligned all of the language arts skills so I can focus on basically the same skills each week.  This makes it easier to utilize my focus board and make the best use of my classroom real estate.  I display vocabulary and spelling words on color-coded anchor charts.  The teal charts are for the third graders, and the purple charts are utilized by my fourth graders.  It makes my life a tad easier.

 The third graders had a chance to do centers a few weeks ago for the first time.  I was a little slow rolling them out this year, but I am going to try to be a little more diligent from this point forward.  They just finished the "School Days Craze" set.  I decided to skip my Too Cute to Spook centers this year since one of my students doesn't celebrate Halloween.  I will be using my Gobble, Gobble set SOON though, and I can't wait! :)  Can you believe it's November already?!  If you are interested in checking out my monthly centers, you can check them out HERE!  My students always LOVE them!

The fourth graders read "Letters Home from Yosemite", and they created travel guides based on the information on the text.  I am very pleased by how they turned out!  Since our display space is pretty FULL right now, I stapled them up to the CAFE board for the moment.  I wanted to be able to showcase them SOMEHOW during conferences since they put so much work into the assignment!

The third graders conducted a little bit of research in centers as we wrapped up the first nine-weeks.  They researched careers that interested them, and they also wrote their own business plans after working through our Lemonade Economics unit.  While they worked independently, I worked with a group on a Close Reading passage, and our gifted specialist worked on a critical thinking activity.  I DID manage to sneak away while my kiddos were highlighting key words to make sure I captured a few different work samples to share with you!

This little one came up to me and said, "Mrs. Nickerson, you know how we are supposed to research a job at one of our centers?  Um, well,  is it okay if I use your blog to help me learn how to be a teacher?"  Precious.  I said, "Well, there's not a description of what it takes to become a teacher on my blog, so you may want to use search engines too."  She replied, "Okay, but I think I can learn a lot by looking at pictures of the kinds of activities we do too."  Color me flattered.

As a unit wrap up, we created an economics lap book using some foldables from Ashleigh Swinford's social studies interactive notebook file.  I was planning on making my own, but as I've mentioned before, I don't like to reinvent the wheel when someone has already created a quality resource, and this worked really well for us!

We finished reading "My Rows and Piles of Coins", and we did a character analysis of Saruni.  I had the kids work at their pods to discuss Saruni's appearance, character traits, motivations, and feelings.  Then, they shared out their answers, and I filled in my own chart with their responses as they added pertinent information to their own webs.

We spent some time learning about onomatopoeia to add to our personal narratives, so we read "Harry Hungry" because it is SHORT and just has 2-3 examples of onomatopoeia.  Then we added sound words from the text to an anchor chart before searching for examples in other books and recording words from our schemas!

During that same period of time, BOTH of our copying machines were broken down, so we had to improvise and use notebook paper for our spelling tests instead of my usual template.  I have a few perceptive students, so my name was written at the bottom of more than one paper.  It kind of cracked me up, so I had to share!  It's time to do a little lesson on common and proper nouns though.  Can you tell?!  ;)

We've been having some fun with iPads too! I think they are wonderful for visualizing lessons.  I read "Jacob O'Reilly Wants a Pet", and the kiddos drew their most vivid mental pictures. 

Every now and then, the kids use "My Story" as an early finisher activity, and they create stories.  I really like this program too.

Another piece of technology that I am LOVING is I-Ready.  Our school district is using it for progress monitoring and as a diagnostic tool since it's a state approved vendor.  It's made my life a little easier because we don't have to write SLOs since we use this program.  (I am grateful to have one thing lifted off of my plate!  Ha!)  My partner and I are also part of an efficacy study, so we are going to be using it during our intervention/enrichment period for more individualized lessons while we pull small groups.  One of my favorite features is the I-Ready Toolbox.  It has really great interactive lesson components, and I LOVE that I can bump it up or down depending on my kids needs.  Since they are rocking main idea right now, I bumped the lesson up to the sixth grade level for both groups, and they did SUPERBLY in both classes.  It definitely prepared them for a partner activity that they had to complete for "Penguin Chick", so I am a very happy teacher!

My third graders are currently working on a Penguin Research Project by Hope King, and my fourth graders are researching Presidents.  Ultimately, the third graders will be starting an Animal Wax Museum that I've been working on SOON, and my fourth graders will be working through my Biography Wax Museum resource.  I can't wait, and they are absolutely chompin' at the bits! All of our main idea lessons have really helped to prepare them for the structure of the reports, and we've worked on question generation as well since questions drive our research! :)

Other than that, I've been trying to tame the paper mountain, and I've been surviving on Crock Pot meals and Stauffer's.  ;)  True story.  See...

Oh, and I've been dealing with strange things like this in the process.  Yes, this happened.  Life in an elementary school is never dull.  That's for sure!  ;)

I know another thing for certain.  Time is FLYING by!  The tree outside of my classroom window just screams FALL, and November is officially here.

 I'm afraid to blink because before I know it, I'll be administering our state test and packing up for the summer.  In the meantime, you can be sure that I will be making every minute count!  Happy Weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!