Blackout Poetry

Another amazing freebie from teachers pay teachers.

Check out the prezi at this link - Click me

My students loved this!

They loved it so much they have asked if it can be part of our guided reading rotation. 

It is perfect for everyone and everyone can be successful with this poetry lesson.

I photocopied random pages from Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent and Maze Runner.

All books they are familiar with, I did this so that the language they came across would have relevance and meaning to them.

We didn't practice on newspaper like the Prezi suggested, we just got straight into it.

Each student found an anchor word (a word that stuck out to them) and shared their anchor words with a buddy.

They then began hunting throughout the passage for more words that could help bring that anchor word to life.

They were very excited as they found words to make their poems work, this was quickly followed by frustration when they knew what they wanted to say but couldn't find or make that word happen.

This was a great activity for students to think about their vocabulary and share their poems with their peers without fear of judgement. 

Pros:

My lower readers and writers can create amazing poetry in a non threatening way

My top readers and writers are pushing themselves to think outside of the box to come up with illustrated poems

Students are all excited to share their poems with no fear or judgement (I believe this comes from them not actually writing the words but sharing what they 'found' in their passage)

Cons:

You need start in pencil (We didn't) and box around the words large enough that when you use the vivid it doesn't cut any of your words off

We didn't have enough black vivids - make sure each child has one

Next time I need to remember to discuss grammar 

Examples of some completed Blackout Poetry by P3 students:

White teeth

Oval Eyes

Dark Skin

Standing waiting for him

He looked inside to see the strange boy

Harry and Hermione drew their wands at the silver cat

Silence spread in cold ripples 

Then somebody screamed

Old and thin

Dark lord had tears pouring down either side of his snout

Violently Harry sped forwards

Pointed his wand at the unsteerable invisible barrier

Death Eater shot a curse

So close

I'm coming Harry, I'm Comin! 

Geometry Towns Assessment

I am always looking for new and fun ways to assess my students understanding.
They hate tests and I don't enjoy marking them, however they love using ICT and art.
This was a brilliant way to assess their understanding of geometry at the end of our unit.

I stumbled across the resource on TPT (My holy bible of resources)

Students had spent the term learning geometry vocabulary and concepts.
They were given the initial planning sheet and used their books/knowledge/computers to compile a glossary of terms with examples.

Students then completed a draft copy of their final map, the used this copy to communicate with me each feature of the map and how they had meet the criteria for the task.

Student's then began a final copy. Once completed the students glued the criteria and the first draft onto the back of their posters before laminating.

Student's then each took turns at presenting back to the class one aspect from their poster.

I would recommend this resource to all teachers who want to spice up their assessment process!


Pros:

- The vocabulary language used in discussion during the task was outstanding
- The student's didn't realize they were doing an assessment
- They had fun, it was hands on and suited to all learning styles
- They look fantastic on the wall and the back of each poster has all the learning
- Student's were all proud of their final product

Cons:

- This took way longer than I had originally planned, I had to hold a few catch up sessions
- Some students hadn't realized that you could integrate various features and their maps become quite hard to decipher

TPT: Drama Circles

Fluency boot camp and developing confidence in P3 has begun!

P3 are using these amazing drama circles for oral language and active listening.

They are set out in the same format as the maths game loopy. 'I have...who has...?'

Student's need to actively listen for the action that comes before their card, however if they do get lost all the cards are numbered and I keep track of where we are up to and prompt when necessary.

 We begin each drama circle by reading our card to a buddy and discussing how we could act out our set card.

We then do a run through, some student's have more than one card and it is by their choice that they take another card.

We then do a second run through where the student's pick one thing they could improve on.

I encourage my students to commit to the acting with their actions and expression. 

Each set has roughly 40 cards in it and can be purchased from TPT for around $3.

So far they have been a huge success and I have purchased most of Runde's Room Drama Circles. My Class beg for drama and fluency boot camp now and I have noticed an improvement in their oral language. 

Try out this free one below.

Free Drama Circle - Fairy Tales

Skittle Maths

There is no cooler way to engage kids into maths than with candy!

This skittle maths resource was a great start of year resource to evaluate my class's understanding of many maths concepts (Place value, understanding word problems, operations skills, decimals, percentages, collecting data, co-ordinate planes, fractions and graphing).

The resource is designed for numerous lessons. I bought 5 bags of skittles which was way too many! I ended up using 2 bags for 28 students. I had them work in pairs giving each pair 25 skittles. They began by recording down the colour and number of skittles they had at the top of the first page so that they had the data to work with in future lessons. After recording our data sample down we began with place value followed by operations skills and for my top group they created a pie graph of their skittle colours (next lesson they will be working the percentage of colours in their data sample). It was easy to scaffold and the students were happy to work independently to achieve their results. Of course the best part of the lesson was when they were allowed to eat their skittles!

The resource is now being used in our guided maths rotation 1-2 sheets a week. 

Click for resource

Interactive Journals

This year I decided to utilise three new resources I had purchased late last year. My goal was to engage my students and turn what I considered the boring stuff into fun and informative. I knew I needed a way to collect evidence of their learning, but didn't want to create more work for myself and bore my students. So far they have been a great success. They are engaging, relevant and make learning the basics fun!

Interactive Math Journal

Interactive Reading Journal

Interactive Writing Journal

Interactive Maths Journal:

I began these last year with my class towards the end of term three. It is the resource I recommend and show off the most to my colleagues. You teach a lesson on a skill, students create an interactive manipulative and then they show their own evidence of learning. I am excited to add regular entries to their journals. They will be able to take these with them to high school or keep them at home to remind them of the concepts they have learnt throughout the year. This year we have set up the journals with their title pages, table of contents, evidence of learning criteria and then their first entry (2014 goal setting). 

Interactive Reading Journal:

In our class this year we have been studying the novel 'Wonder'.  I wanted a way to teach reading skills to the whole class that I could then touch on during guided reading rotations and during our novel study time. Our first entry was on 'Internal Vs. External Conflict'. We created the interactive manipulative and recorded down the information. We then looked at two YouTube clips from 'Toy Story 3' that showed internal and external conflict. This helped my students to create their own links to the concept. To consolidate this we read 'The Stone' by Lloyd Alexander. It is a short story that my class loved! They highlighted the internal and external conflict that occurred in the story and recorded this down as their evidence of understanding. 

We touched on this the next day during our literacy circle and then looked at types of conflict. We looked at:

- Man Vs. Man (External)

- Man Vs. Nature (External)

- Man Vs. Society (External)

- Man Vs. Self (Internal)

This was harder concept for the students to grasp but after the activities they showed a deeper understanding. We created the interactive manipulative and once again recorded down our information. The students then cut out a number of scenarios and placed them under the headings they thought fit. We then discussed each scenario and how they fit into the appropriate category. Our next entry will be on story devices (flashback, suspense, cliffhanger and foreshadowing).

Interactive Writing Journal:

We have only just begun our writing journals. When I looked at our writing samples I noticed that my students needed a deeper understanding of literacy devices, grammar and strategies to self assess and improve their own writing. We have completed our first entry on 'Dead Words'. We discussed words we want to 'bury' from our writing during our literacy circle. We talked about overusing adjectives and being lazy with our vocabulary. Their writing journals will be used as a guide to improve their writing and to teach them sentence structures, paragraphing and the correct formats for the different genres of writing. 

Overall I think our Interactive Journals have been a huge success. My students are excited to add to them and the concepts we are covering are relevant and purposeful to our learning.