Whatever Wednesdays Part 3

WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON?

Sweetest Sentence Sort

We are hard at work in class on all things sentence structures.  We started out the year with understanding simple sentences vs. fragments and introduced sentence content vocabulary.  Well, now we have introduced compound sentences and more sentence content vocabulary.  We believe it's important for our students to be able to identify

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Fall Favorites Friday

There is something special about September 1st.  It's not only that the Pumpkin Spice Latte is back on Starbucks' menu, but something more. Maybe it has something to do with school's in full swing, Friday night lights, sweater weather, and pumpkin patches ... IT JUST FEELS

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Team Building Activities

BACK-TO-SCHOOL TEAM BUILDING

Great teamwork is one of the key factors to a successful school year.  At the beginning of every new school year, teachers want to help their new students get to know each other better, improve communication, motivate them, and learn everyone's strengths and weaknesses.  So each year we plan various activities that are both fun and challenging for the first weeks of school.  Over the years, we have tried many different activities.  Through trial and error, we have come up with a list of our favorites and added a few new ones.

JENGA

BTS Jenga - This activity is perfect because all students can participate with their new classmates. Not only that,

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Becoming a Tribe

The first days of school are so important for establishing your classroom's climate. So every year we try to begin with great mentor texts that help build classroom expectations, a positive atmosphere, and contribute to great lessons. This year we decided to change it up and try some new mentor texts. Each of the text will be used at some point later in the year, but for now we will really focus on the goal of building camaraderie, classroom ownership, and strong friendships. Below is our new and improved list:

1. I Like Myself 

by Karen Beaumont

It is a great lesson on appreciating yourself for who you are. We plan on reviewing character traits with our new 4th graders and emphasizing the positive traits and building self-esteem. They must first be strong in who they are before they can become a great friend to someone else.

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Focused Poetry

Since April is Poetry Month, we thought a post about our focused poetry units would be the perfect way to kick off our new blog.

Although we have been using focused poetry all year long, we’ve been extra busy reviewing poetry elements in our fourth grade classrooms to prepare them for our state test that is quickly approaching. We know if we hate using the boring, old poems that the kids definitely despise them, which is why we decided it was time to become poets. Scary, right? Surprisingly, we aren't that terrible, or at least  according to our sweet kiddos.

Here is an authentic look inside our classrooms for a week in the life of our focused poetry. Keep in mind that each day is intended to be roughly 10 minutes--depending on the working speed of your students. It seems to move faster with the more practice they have.

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Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. We hope that you enjoy your visit!

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