SUMMER: Relax or Regroup?

So...

The kids have left...

The classroom is sort of put away for the year...

You take one last look around and then you walk out your classroom door for 80+ glorious days of summer vacation.

No students...

No grading papers...

No school on the brain...

STOP!

If that last statement fits you, then you are way ahead of me. I don't think that I EVER stop thinking about how to make my classroom a better place, how to tweak a lesson for next year, what book I need to read over the summer so that I can be a better prepared teacher in a given topic (currently, my assignment next year is that I am teaching writing to 64 student, and all the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade science).

Summer time for me, is a chance to rethink, re-plan, revise, revisit and "re-" just about everything I can think of. I tend to spend a fair amount of time in my classroom over the summer. I like to clean out my filing cabinets, my desk drawers, poster drawers, storage room shelves, and my computer files. (This year our school is getting new computers school wide, so I should be able to carefully select what I add back on. I just backed ALL my files on to a portable hard drive. That way they are backed-up AND I don't have to worry about putting all the files back. YEA!)

After I get my room all cleaned up, I turn my attention to my classroom library. If you haven't had a chance to see it, click HERE to see a post on my classroom. I currently have over 5,000 books that belong to me personally and I provide for students grades 4th-6th grades. I even have parents that will come and borrow books from me. I know it is bragging, but I have books from guided reading level J all the way up to high school. It has been quite the process to maintain and track them. I acquired a library system program that our school no longer used. It took quite some time but all my books are barcoded and in the program. Now I just check the books in and out by name. PERFECTION!

Okay, so that was a detour. Sorry. During the summer, I go through my library and repair damaged books, add the box of books that tends to build up near my desk during that final crazy month of school, and dust the shelves.

Once all THAT is done, I turn to my curriculum. Last year our school started rotations in the upper grades (4-6). That was quite the change and I was scrambling to find materials and lessons. I feel the year went pretty good. This year we are using Scholastic's writing program. I am excited about that. The curve ball this year will be learning 4th grade science from the ground up. I taught 5th grade for a few years and have a lot of materials that I saved. Now I know why I was hoarding those files for 8 years... ha ha. So, I am not too stressed about 5th grade science, and I already teach 6th grade science, so that will be a piece of cake. WAHOO! :)

This summer I am adding a new component as well. I am going to be the host of an on-line book club. If you are interested in joining a few friends and I as we post questions and reflections (of which we would LOVE your input too) then you need to order THIS BOOK:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1462507913/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I know this book say PreK-2, but the link will take you to the 3-5 book, which is the one we are doing!

More info will be coming soon right here on this blog with a schedule for reading and which blogs you will need to visit to participate in the discussion. Let me know if you are interested by leaving a comment below!

As far as relaxing, yes, I do that too! From little league games, traveling to see family and friends, vacation, and summer cinema night hosted in our backyard, there is plenty of time for rest... but school is always on my mind.

Have a great week! Don't miss the Share the Wealth Freebie Linky tomorrow- I encourage you to share up to THREE FREE RESOURCES!

-Mr. Hughes

The 12 Sides to a Great School Year!

I like to do things a little differently. Most people like to make memory booklets, writing assignments, or other more traditional formats to help their students remember the school year. Not me, people. Not me.

I wanted something that would be spectacular and eye-catching. Setting to work, I came up with a project that would require my 60 writing students to really think back over their year and make an effort to recall ALL the aspects of their learning.

I decided to ask students questions like: "What are three pieces of advice would you give to next year's class?" I like how this forces students to think about what they did well, and where they had struggles.

Not only did they enjoy reflecting on the year, they had a blast reliving our field trip, and many other silly and serious events that had happened over the past year. It wasn't a silent work time by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a learning-loud experience.

As you can see, the kids made their pieces colorful and and informative!

Then we began the assembling stage. That was an event. But 6 staplers and 30 minutes later, we had nearly all 60 dodecahedrons completed! Phew!

I love the display that is hanging in my room. To hang them, I used my mini-clothespin and hooked them to a long string that winds around my classroom. They are going to be awesome for our academic fair tonight. WAHOO!

If you would like to take a peek at this kit, you can click HERE.

Enjoy your day and Happy End-of-the-Year!!!

Cheers!

-Mr. Hughes

Poetry Tool #1- Rhythm

Welcome to Post #2 in a series of posts about my current journey teaching poetry to a group of 60 students composed of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students. If you missed the intro post to this series, click HERE and check it out. It was posted on All Things Upper Elementary of which I am a contributor.

I was excited to start teaching the tools of poetry because that is where the students would get the chance to actually WRITE some poetry. I also planned to integrate our grammar study into this unit. Having tried to do a grammar lesson and then integrate it into the writing later was a total bust for me. I figured that I would have a longer block to to teach poetry AND it would be more authentic for my students. Turns out I was right!

We started by labeling the top of "the next clean page" in our journal (the next page after our listing of the difference of poetry and prose, and of the 6 tools) with "Tool #1- Rhythm". Student then wrote what they thought the definition of rhythm was . It was an interesting discussion. My musical students could show me examples with clapping and tapping, but couldn't really put it into words. After sharing several ideas, we decided that rhythm is comprised of beat and repetition.

First, for beat, I handed out rhythm sticks (thick dowels cut into thirds) to each student and (after explaining the expectations for use like "When I am talking, both sticks are in one hand", "No drumming on your desk or neighbor", etc.) then I asked them what was something that most people had around them every day that  has rhythm.

It was pretty quickly decided that MUSIC has rhythm. What I did next shocked them. I cranked the music and we practiced finding the rhythm of different genres of music. We played everything from county to heavy metal- (WHOA ON THE HEAVY METAL- more than I can take, I think). But they LOVED it. Whenever they struggled to find the beat of the song, I would have them close their eyes and listen before tapping. It was amazing how fast they were able to find it when they weren't distracted by their neighbors tapping.

After we jammed out for a bit, I  read several poems and had them tap the rhythm. I read some rhyming poems, but also many that were not rhyming because I wanted them to see that more than just rhyming poems have rhythm to them.

Then we studied what was meant by repetition. Both in beat AND in words. I read them the poem "Negro" to them and we discussed possible reasons that Langston Hughes would have repeated the words, "I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa." at the end of the poem. I was surprised at their thoughts about this. Many picked up that he wanted to show that, despite the trials and problems his people had faced, they were still a proud people.

I then handed out all the poetry books again and had the students scavenger the pages looking for places where words were repeated. It was great fun to hear what they found and watch as they made connections between what we discussed to what they were reading.

For their homework, I gave them a poem called "Snowflake Souffle" by X. J. Kennedy . The students were to read it to a parent/family member and get it signed, underline common nouns, and circle proper nouns.

It was a wonderful end to a wonderful lesson. Don't miss Post #3 coming soon.

Cheers-
MrHughes

Bring in the NEW YEAR with a...MOBILE!

When I thought about what freebie I could make to share with my wonderful Created by MrHughes friends, I knew I wanted something that would be useful (a must) and creative (a must). I also realized that I like to have student work in my room. If you have seen my room, you will notice that I do NOT have much room on my wall because of the way my room is.

That means the only real "empty" space I have in my room is the ceiling. I told myself that I need to use this space better. Thus the New Year's Goals and Resolutions Mobile kit was born. I went through several different models of models before I settled on this one:

Okay, so that isn't a very good picture. The ones I wanted to use aren't all the great either. Sigh... However, you can totally get the idea! :)

I made the copies and stapled them into packets (or rather, the copy machine did that for me- I LOVE technology!). I knew that having 60+ students make these mobiles would be an undertaking, and I was excited for the challenge. So, with the copies are ready and me excited to go, I still have one challenge: HOW?

My next thought was... how do I hang 60+ mobiles without making a million (okay, okay.... 60) new holes in my ceiling. Then a good friend suggested that I just hang string around the room and use clothespins to hang them. Well DUH! That made perfect sense. So I ordered clothespins (mini-colored ones) from Amazon. That was an interesting experience. Let's just say that I need to read better next time. I spent over $15 on 250 one inch clothespins. I was VERY upset when they came. I must not have been thinking when I read 1 inch. I was totally expecting the "mid-size" versions. My wife just laughed at me. Oh well. When you live in the middle of no where you take what you can get. Ha ha. Here a picture of some of the costly beauties:

I do have rather large hands, but even so, those are tiny little buggers. However, they have some super gripping power. So, all in all, it wasn't a total waste.

Anyways, I hung the string around my room in a big "U" shape. If you do this, pull the string fairly tight, otherwise the mobiles will hang much too low. Then, as the students completed them I hung them up. That way I was not left with a pile of tangled mobiles to hang.

If you can't hang them as they make them (after all, not everyone is 6' 3" tall), then have the students lay them out on top of each other carefully so they don't get tangled. You could also send them home the same day they finish them. But, I like the idea of them being where the students can see and enjoy them for a week or three.

Here is how my classroom display turned out. I LOVE it!

As you can see, they make a very impressive display. And, the best part? This is a FREE resource in my TpT Shop.

You can click on the picture OR you can click HERE to get YOUR free copy now. Oh, and I plan to update it each year with the current year, so don't think that you missed it if we are in 2014 or 2045 or something.

THE 2015 UPDATE IS NOW AVAILABLE! WAHOO! Click above or on the picture to download! :)

Cheers!

-MrHughes :0)

LET THE SNOWBALL (sight word) FIGHT BEGIN (and it's school approved!)

Okay,
So my 6th grade students ask every year why they can't throw snowballs at school, and every year I have to explain that it is a rule of the school and we follow it. They moan and complain and then we move on with our lives (often with kids getting school write-ups for throwing them anyways).

Well, this year, my kindergartner has asked everyday since it has snowed if we could have a snowball fight. Sadly, during school hours I had to tell him that we couldn't. I keep thinking that I could take him out when we get home from school and have a few minutes of fun. However, by the time I would get home from school, it was too dark and cold to go outside (and he has been sick as it is).

So, I thought and thought about what I could do to have a snowball fight with my son. The idea hit me like a cold snowball in the face... WHY NOT MAKE A SIGHT WORD GAME THAT WAS BASED ON A SNOWBALL FIGHT? This would allow my son to practice his sight words/alphabet (he spells the ones he can't read) AND have that needed snowball fight.

I set to work yesterday and after about 4 hours had a game that I felt would "hit the spot". I love how it turned out and he (and his brothers and sisters) have loved playing it. Even my 12 year old enjoys the game. He keeps asking me to make a version with "big kid" words. Something to think about, however I don't know if many middle school teachers are going to have time/desire to play vocabulary games. This game might be an exception where it could be played in teams.

Anyways, I knew that my son would want the game to have some twists, so I added "miss" cards and "thaw" cards that would allow for alternate ways to play the game. Here is how it looks in action:

This game may not be exactly like being out in the crisp winter air with snow flying in all directions, but, this IS a game that I know my kids will play again and again AND it is school approved. I won't have to send any of my 6th graders or their 1st grade reading buddies to the office for being part of THIS snowball fight!

Happy "Fighting" and learning!
-MrHughes



P.S. If you would like to take a peek at the game, you can click HERE or click on the picture below.

Deck the Halls (with Dodecahedrons!)

Greetings Dear Friends,

I wanted to share with you what my 6th graders have been up to the last couple of days. I love using dodecahedrons in my classroom. The students never tire of them and they are such an amazing mathematical wonder to look at.
The holidays seem to be a vacuum on my academic attempts. I really need  my students to do some reading, writing, art, and math in a fun holiday format, and not get bored with "writing" and "reading", etc.
I put my mind to work and tweaked a few of my Holiday projects and came up with something that I feel is pretty special.

Here are few picture of my kiddos working on the individual assignments.

The students do many various activities. Here a student is rough-drafting a letter to Santa. The students must use persuasive writing and follow a specific format for the letter. My 6th graders rolled their eyes when I said "Letter to Santa", but found the actual assignment was much more challenging than they expected! TAKE THAT 6th GRADERS! HA! Just kidding. I was glad to see them a little worried about making it work.

SHOPPING TRIP!

Students get to go on a shopping spree and buy gifts for their family and friends. They decide in advance the amount of money they have (reasonable or crazy amount) and then use actual catalogs and flyers to find gifts. The math and reading involved (not to mention all the non-fiction reading skills practiced) are lost on them, but NOT ME! WAHOO!

This is one of my favorite activities. Not only do my students GET to read a classic piece of literature, they then must summarize the story in 10 boxes exactly- USING PICTURES! Everyone thought this would be a piece of cake, but they quickly found that it was much more challenging than they expected. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! (I use A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore, but I made it possible to use ANY poem/story that I want to in the future. There is even a space for the title and author on the circle!

WISHING STRAIGHT AHEAD!

Students get to choose their Top 5 Wishes for Christmas. Some of my students did reasonable items and some took creative license and asked for some pretty outrageous things. I love the minds of 6th graders. They make life exciting everyday, and by exciting, I mean CRAZY! 

Here is the snow globe scene. I have been amazed at the creativity of my students. Of course, they never cease to amaze me. You can also see a finished dodecahedron in this picture. They are pretty amazing when they are done. I am so excited to get our finished up so I can hang them from the ceiling in the hallway and dazzle all the other students in the school.

Update: Here is a picture with some of the dodecahedrons hanging.

What fun activities do YOU do with your students?

Cheers!

-MrHughes

P.S.

If you want to try this activity, you can see a picture of the kit below.

Click HERE if you would like learn more.

Next Stop: Fictional Narrative

I can't believe that a week has come and gone. With the new month, I have started working with my 6th graders on Fictional Narratives. I HAVE decided that I am going to take a couple of months on this genre and REALLY get into the nitty gritty of it. We have been studying the structure of fictional narratives, reading mentor texts, and talking about what we read during the day from a "writer's perspective". It is really fun to hear the kids start to talk about the things they read as a writer!

For my bulletin board, I had  my amazing wife do all the writing for me. I got the purpose (top left corner), the title, and of course... THE ANCHOR CHARTS started and posted.

Because I am taking it slow and covering the concept in depth, I am still working on teaching the lessons that will fill in all the anchor chart spaces, and I am working to do those quickly- but with understanding.

However, we just had a mini-lesson on the framework of a fictional narrative and the students drew the anchor chart in their journals. It took a little while, but I love that they have mini-charts in their notebooks. Shoot! I should have taken a picture of a student notebook. They did such a great job with them! My wife made this poster sized one for my board. I really like how it turned out!

I also love that since I started at the back of the chart book and am moving forward, the anchor chart for Personal Memoirs is still accessible to the students by simply lifting up the paper (as shown below)! I love when I have good ideas (because they don't seem to happen as often as I would like).

As we continue through our journey with Fictional Narratives, I will continue to share what we do so you can enjoy the journey with me. Today, we worked on studying mentor texts and writing rules for punctuating dialogue. We found that there are four different ways that dialogue is written. We will have our anchor chart made by the end of tomorrow and  my wife will take my sloppy copy and make it a thing of beauty- THEN I will share it with you.

I am excited to take the adventure with my students. I realize that the new core standards want us to focus on and push non-fiction reading and writing, and I will, but I feel that I need to get them excited about writing FIRST and then we can move on to those other concepts.

Writing ROCKS!

Cheers!
-MrHughes

Rewards Made Easy

If you are like me, you may realize that your good students need to be recognized just as much as your challenging students need to be guided.

I thought and thought and came up with this FANTASTIC idea to help recognize and motivate my students who worked hard in class and followed the classroom rules and procedures.

I searched on-line and found a FREE scrabble font. Next I decided on what "prizes" my students could earn. This is the best part because you can choose items that cost you ZERO. ZIP. NADA. ZILCH. Hey- as a teacher, this can be very important!

After deciding what I wanted to allow my students to earn (and I could live with), I typed up the prizes (careful to avoid words that, when partially spelled create words we want to avoid- like "class" which could lead to an embarrassing moment for you).

When you have your prizes typed, print TWO copies of the words. I printed one on colored cardstock for each of the classes I teach (Each class is assigned a specific color in our school). If you only teach one class, you can use any color you want- or go with the traditional brown scrabble tile color.

Next, trim down and mount the white copy on a sheet of colored cardstock and laminate. These will be your wall mounted game boards that students place their earned tiles on (see below). Also, laminate the colored copy of the words as well (these will be cut out and used to cover the gameboards).

After you have laminated the words on the colored cardstock, cut around each tile. I stored my tiles in zipper pencil bags.

When the students behave, or earn a tile, have a student reach into the tile pile and draw one out. I told my classes that the student who draws the tile gets to decide where it is placed. I roll a piece of masking tape and the student adds his/her tile to the chart. As you can see, students have different ideas of what they want to win.

When a class spells a word the class wins that prize and a date is set to redeem it (make sure it is reasonably soon, or students will lose their interest in playing). After a word is spelled, ALL the tiles are removed for ALL the boards and the games starts again. Depending on how generous you are with your tiles, you students could/should win about one time every 1-2 weeks.

I am enjoying great success with this and I hope that I have inspired you to try something new as well! :)

-Cheers!

What Do Writer's Write?

I knew this year was going to be different. Becoming the dedicated writing/LA teacher for the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes was an exciting opportunity, and one that I am thrilled to have. 

Today marked the 5th day of school, and over the last few days, I have really enjoyed getting to know my 60 students and a little more about what makes them tick.

One of the activities I did this year was to have the students work with a partner for 3 minutes and list all the things they thought writer's write in their writing journal. I did this in each of my three class rotations. After the three minutes, I had pairs share several items on their lists and wrote them on the SMART Board. At the end of the day, I had an amazing list of things that my students thought writer's write. 

Then I turned to my amazing wife and asked her to help me make a cool way to show what the kids had written. I told her I wanted a large pencil and she worked her magic. Below you can see the creation in process!

Here is the amazing creation on my wall! (I love her handwriting. I need to get it turned in to a font and sell it!)

As you can see- it is HUGE, and I LOVE it!

I am SO excited to be teaching writing and I can't wait to share more of the lessons that I plan to teach!

Later...

No P.A.W.ing Allowed (Classroom Management Tip)

This year, in our upper grade classrooms we are trying something new. We are going to rotate our 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students for three 80 minutes periods for the foundation classes: Reading, Writing/LA, and Math. The rest of the day will be used for science, social studies, art, and music. We will also do a bi-weekly rotation of mixed grades for PE and Health/Character Ed.

As upper grade teachers, we are very excited about this change. Not only has it forced us to address some common issues in our classrooms, it has caused us to work closely together to come to a consensus on many things- like rules, procedures, report cards, grading, planners, consequences, etc. Thus, we will have a very cohesive plan in place that everyone agrees on. Consistency will be key in the many large changes we are planning to make.

We have been working weekly for up to three hours each meeting during the summer to get everything ready to go. We still have a lot to get done, but we are really making some good headway!

I will be sharing our final outcomes over the next few weeks, as well as some of the posters, etc, we will be using (at least the ones that I created and feel I have the right to share with you!).

Today, I wanted to start with the one pictured above. I LOVE this. Our 5th grade teacher said that he started using this last year with several students on the advice of our school counselor. For some, it may not be new, but for me it is exciting and a refreshing way to approach those problematic students that want to pout, argue, and/or whine.  To get this poster, click HERE.

Then, I had a brainstorm (usually I just get flash flooding, so this was exciting!):

I have several of these posters up in my classroom (a tour is coming as soon as my room finds some resemblance of organization- we have been meeting in my classroom and I am waiting for its annual cleaning so I can start setting up the room). But, even with the posters on the walls, I wanted a way to let those few little stinkers know that they are on the verge of a serious problem. Hence, I also created a sheet with 6 mini posters (shown above) on it so I can simply set a card on the desk of a student who is in violation, or is PAWing, if you will. That way I can avoid the power struggle, and they get the message that they need to get their act together.

I am excited to try this out. It should work great! If you would like to download this set of six, click HERE.

I made several other versions of this sign, but this is the one I liked the most. Hope you can find a use for this idea and/or the posters.

If you do download, leave a comment so I know you were here.

Later...