April 2015

Anyone else have the Sunday night blues? I don't usually have regrets about starting back to school on Monday mornings, but this is testing week for my Smarties.. and well I'm a big fan! I think part of this is because I have to give a new test in a new state this year, and I don't know what to expect. Eveyone is our district has been uptight about test administration, so I don't know what to expect! We are testing Monday-Wednesday this week, so I wanted to plan a few fun things to do once we are finished.

In ELA we are going to watch Wall E and work a little on our CCSS standard for media comparision. We are going to work on character traits, theme and symbolism within a science fiction genre. This lesson is courtesy of my good friend Erin at I'm Lovin Lit. She is so put together! It is in her Spring ELA Bundle.

In Math I'm going to continue with Surface Area by doing a measurement lab with my students. I gathered together boxes of rectangular prisms and pyramids, laminated them, and cut them into nets. We are going to use our handy dandy measuring tapes courtesy of IKEA to measure and find the surface area. You can find the Surface Area Freebie I made {HERE} if you need something.

In Science we are going to use our Board Builders program to create projects on the Planets in the Solar System. We have a huge grassy playground so we are always going to measure the distance of the planets if it stops raining long enough!

I'm going to use this awesome clipart from Messare Clips and Design to create planet signs.

So, what have you Squared Away this Sunday? Any fantastic plans for the week that I should know about?

My Smarties have just finished a quick study of The Great Depression. I wanted to have them work on their publishing skills a little, so I assigned them a poster to review the concept. Thankfully Jennifer Findley, who blogs at Teaching To Inspire in 5th at came through for me with a rubric Freebie. She made my life super easy, and it is just what I needed. My students really loved doing this project. I loved doing a gallery walk through my classroom when all of the posters were finished. Each poster was unique. I love their creativity!
Here are just a few of them. I hope they can inspire you!

I love the way this student made her poster interactive. She drew pictures of the 5 criteria we used: The Stock Market, Hoovervilles, The Dust Bowl, Failing Banks, and People losing their jobs and wrote about each underneath. I appreciate that she took the extra time to draw her own illustrations for the project.

This poster is similar to the one above, but the student used photographs from the era. Again, he made the poster interactive. I guess all of our notebook work is rubbing off on them!

This last poster was unique as well. I love how my Smartie color-coordinated her writing and pictures so as we did our gallery walk students could discuss the connections. It made a really appealing presentation.

I also tried to incorporate some of the books written for the time period. One of the most famous is Out of the Dust.

But have you heard of The Gardener? This is a sweet book about a young girl who goes to live with her uncle in the big city. She brings with her a suitcase full of seeds, and changes the hearts of the people in the neighborhood. I also love this book because there is a series of letters that Lydia Grace Finch writes home, so it is a great companion book for letter writing if you are cross curricular. The book is very short, and meant for younger children, but it was quick for me to use with a group of students who are struggling readers.