Valentines Ideas for Bigger Kids

I'm gearing up for the last big holiday celebration before the end of the school year/my maternity leave: Valentines Day! Even though I teach 4th grade, my student's are always ready to celebrate whenever they can; I just try to make it educational too.

A year or two ago, I saw a fun idea from Ideas by Jivey, and I challenged my homeroom students to this last year. It really got them to thinking. Nothing like throwing in a few fractions to make decorating a Valentine's Day bag more fun.

Working with figurative language, while it can be difficult at times, it can be fun change of pace for the holidays. Last year, student's worked with similes and metaphors to describe their families and share the love a bit.

To try and brush up on skills before the "big test" I created some centers with a Valentine theme to help my student's review. Learning through centers and games are a classroom-favorite.

A very sweet paraprofessional with an artistic flair, helped me create some valentines for a few ladies in my building who don't always get the recognition they deserve: the lunch ladies. A freebie for kiddos to color and surprise the cooks with. I know the ladies sure enjoyed the extra showering of appreciation.

A little Valentine's Day flair found itself in one of my RTI groups. A fun game to work on nonsense long and short vowels. 

Here's hoping you and your student's have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Nonfiction Finds for the Upper Grades

Hi friends! It's Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road. I hope you are enjoying your summer break, I know mine is flying by faster than I care to admit at times!

This summer has been busy, but I have found some time to look around for new ideas in the coming school year. One goal, is to incorporate nonfiction more purposefully into the school day. I'm sharing a few of the resources I've found so far (some were tried last year), and I would love to hear of any resources you have utilized before too!

1. Dogo News. Free nonfiction articles for kids, a website started in 2009 by a parent has grown exponentially. The content is kid friendly and engagement. Content is updated regularly too.

2. Erin, shared about Achieve3000 last year and I utilized it several times throughout the year. I was able to access the articles for free using the username and password "CommonCore.Teacher" if you purchase an account, you could assign articles to students, but I made the free version work for me. The best part of this site? You can differentiate! Each article is offered at various lexile leves so that you can give students an article at the level they need!

3. ThinkCera. Another nonfiction article source with some really fun features. The articles are offered at several lexile levels as well as having an audio option! I have several students that need that accommodation, and it's great to be able to access that option straight from the website. With a built in dictionary and the ability for me to add response questions, this site is going to be great I think!

Where else can nonfiction articles be found? 

Scholastic News

Dig: The Archeology Magazine for Kids

The Why Files: Science Behind the News

CNN Student News

I hope this gives you a start in some nonfiction finds for your classroom. Again, if you have other go-to sites, please leave a comment below!

{P.S. Be sure to stop by my blog in the next could of weeks. Celebrating 1,000 followers soon!}

Relay Recess: Relay for Life!

Hi there, it's Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road. School is ending for me in just a week {crazy how fast this school year has been!} In the last few weeks, there have been many fun filled events around my building, but none quite as great as the one I'm sharing with you now.

 Relay for Life has been a huge event in our community, and one of the teachers in our building made it an event even our students could participate in.

For 25 cents, students could purchase feet in honor or memory of someone with cancer; with all donations going to Relay for Life. It amazed me, in only five days, students had purchased enough feet to line the walls both upstairs and downstairs. The two homerooms (one from 4th and one from 5th) who raised the most money, had their homeroom teacher sumo wrestle the principal at the Relay Recess.

The Friday that we held the event was beautiful. Our principal ran the music. Students, teachers, community members, and survivors walked the path around the playground that had been lined with luminaries that the students had decorated. Throughout the playground centers were set up so that students could learn about healthy lifestyles.

Various laps were taken, some to the song, but none as moving as the survivors lap. 200+ students cheering on true heroes was priceless.

The afternoon ended with the sumo wrestling match. Our principal lost both rounds, to the many cheers of our students. Another Recess Relay event was planned for the 2-3 building as well.

Has your school done an event such as this? I'd love to hear about if you have. I know that my students loved taking part and that we are looking forward to making this event a tradition in our school!

Phonics Intervention Freebies

Hello again! It's Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road, and I have a few fun resources to share with you.

I teach in a 4/5 building, and although I work with "big kids" we still have students who have gaps in their reading. We use Aimsweb testing, and the QPS (Quick Phonics Screener) for students who are not meeting benchmarks. Often, this is due to a lapse in skills along the way. We have a small group intervention time for reading, in our MTSS (multi-tiered systems of support) know as RTI (response to intervention) in many parts of the country.

During this time, there are small groups, 1-5 students working on individual skills. There are also three larger groups working on vocabulary and fluency. We are hoping to add in a multisyllabic words in the near future.

Today, though, I wanted to share 3 tried and true resources with you. Some of these at the 4/5 level are useful for students who have more significant needs, but would be great for younger grades. Others, have a wide range of applicable ages and skills, so take a little bit of time to peruse to you hearts content!

West Virgina Reading First

The first free resource comes from West Virgina Reading First. There are multiple lessons and most of the needed resources for each lesson are included (ex. flashcards). This resource is great for younger grades, and I used parts of it for students in my building who had a high need and the super explicit lessons and activities worked great.

Florida Center for Reading Research

I absolutely LOVE this resource! Florida Center for Reading Research is worth checking out for awhile. A variety of topics, activities, and applicable grade level skills. Love, love, LOVE! Block off some time to see everything and have plenty of ink on hand!

Phonics Genius

Phonics Genius free app with tons of phonics combinations. I have my students use the flashcards set up for a new card on a swipe and the word to be pronouced for them with a tap. This way, students can try out a word and have the ability to listen and see if they were correct. If they were, I have them listen and try to repeat while they look at the word. A quick little activity we do from time to time, and the students are super engaged. More so than if I were to have paper flashcards. There is also a game mode that can be utilized as well.

There you go! Three FREE resources to help support your phonics instruction and intervention work!

Synonyms & Nursery Rhymes

Hello again! It's Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road. I hope that you are enjoying this blog; I know I enjoy checking in and seeing all of the wonderful ideas posted daily! 

This last month, I started teaching a vocabulary intervention group and I thought I'd share a quick activity that my students enjoyed! 

Part of this intervention time has been spent working with dictionary and thesaurus skills. To put some of our skills to work, we took nursery rhymes and altered them by finding synonyms to replace some of the more 'boring' words within them. Students then created a poster showing their new-and-improved nursery rhyme renditions. 

They looked good and gave students a chance to use their thesaurus skills. A win-win!

Hey Diddle Diddle

Row, Row, Row, Your Boat

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Hey Diddle Diddle

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

 

On a slightly unrelated note, if you are planning ahead for St. Patrick's day, I have a couple of freebies in my TPT store for both primary and upper elementary. Click on the picture to see these holiday themed math freebies.

Hidden Number Activity

Rounding and Coloring Activity

I hope that you have a wonderful week!

Multiply Yourself! {An App Idea}

Hello everyone! I'm Christy from Teaching Tales Along the Yellow Brick Road, a second year teacher from the great state of Kansas. I teach in a 1:1 iPad school, so I am constinently trying to figure out ways to implement this wonderful technology. I am so excited to be a part of this blogging group. I hope you are enjoying all of the ideas each day; I know that I am! 

Do you ever have days where you wish there were more copies of yourself?

{Ha, we're teachers... I'm sure we've all wished for an extra set of hands at some point!}

I'm here to help you out a bit.

Enter... Educreations.

With this app, as the teacher, I can create a presentation, but not just any ordinary presentation. The app takes not only a video of what is done on the screen, but also records my voice. (The only bummer being that there isn't an undo button. I've learned to hit the pause button between thoughts, so that I make fewer mistakes in my recordings).

Students create accounts with either a username or email address; I love that student's don't have to have an email address, and that I can hand out the usernames I'd like my students to have. The first time students login to Educreations, there is a one-time password to join my class. {The password is given to you, the teacher, when you set up your videos to share with students.} From there, students can view any videos I've shared with them! It truly is an easy process; hopefully through my description I haven't discouraged you to play around!

Now to the fun part... seeing this app in action!

Super easy interface. Love it.

With this app, as a teacher, I can create a presentation. The app takes not only a video of what is done on the screen, but also records my voice. (Only bummer is there isn't an undo with voice recording...I've learned to hit pause between thoughts, so that I make fewer mistakes.) Students create accounts with username or email address as an elementary school teacher, I love that the student's don't have to have an email. Once they login to www.educreations.com from Safari, they can watch any video that I assign to their class. (They have to have a one-time password to join a class.) Really, this is simpler than I'm making it sound, I just want to make sure, that if you want to try this out you can! From there, students can view mini-lessons or full lessons that are created by me. 

Here are examples of how I have used this application:

Last year I was a special education teacher and I covered 2 schools.  I created one lessons to touch on points and concepts even when I couldn't physically be there. Even though this school does not have iPads, the videos can still be accessed by logging in online. My para created an account and viewed anything I posted to share with the students. 

{Please be kind... I'm not the biggest fan of hearing myself recorded!}

  

In  math, on our maiden voyage with the application we were able to differentiate a lesson for the various needs of all of my students.  I put my students into two different groups. One group watched the same touch point money lesson that I created for the other school. The second group watched a video on decimals. Both videos had places where the students were to hit pause and work out examples on their whiteboards. I thought this made the process more interactive, and I or the paras in the room could see if the student's were starting to "get it", attempting... rather than just watching a video and zoning out. Once they hit play, the answer was given on the video and they continued until the end of the video. After the groups were done, we did hands on activities to apply what they learned about.

I've put other little videos with multiplication songs and tips/tricks as a reference for students to utilize throughout the day or at home to help them refresh on concepts.  

Students have also used Educreations to share with me. The most recent project using this app, had students creating a timeline based off of an information book that we had read. Students used the app to add pictures, text, and voice overs to explain what happened during each historical period. They've turned out great!

I love this application. I think that it has the potential to be used with a wide age range; both teacher and student led. With the Common Core State Standard initative, I know that students will need to explain more. Giving student's a problem and having them create a video to explain how to solve it to show their understanding could be another way to utilize this app. Explaining how to do a center and leaving an iPad or laptop for students to listen to as a reminder. Differentiating lessons. The possibilities are endless.  Currently, student's can't upload to a class on Educreations, but our tech gurus found a way to do this through My Big Campus (I think Edmodo would work as well, if you wanted students to upload their creations to you).

So what do you think? How can this app be used in your classroom?  How might you multiply yourself in your classroom?