Poetry Is In The Air

April is National Poetry Month! It has also been the month of testing...testing...and more state testing. We needed something creative to re-energize our kiddos.

We launched a Reader's and Writer's Workshop poetry "mini-unit"! Welcome to 10 days of creativity and bliss (can you tell I'm biased...I LOVE POETRY!)

We began by "sketching out" what those 10 days would look like. We wanted to blend the learning between both reading and writing, so one lesson often led into the other with regards to content. We also thought about where we left these kiddos last year with their poetry learning/understanding. We created a combined unit plan in a Google Doc, so all members of our teaching team would have access and be able to contribute. We analyzed the standards that were applicable first, so we could ensure that our lessons were connecting to them.

We poured over other blogs, Pinterest, and more looking for fun inspiration for our kids. What would be new to them? What did they need? What interested them? We settled on creating a personal anthology. Last year, in 4th grade, we introduced them to different styles and terms of poetry. The kids were really drawn to the "funny" poems and just wrote what they felt inspired to do. This year, as 5th graders, our hope was for them to take their poetry to a more sophisticated level. We did some immersion of books and analysis for themes. We let them read as many poems as they could, take notes, and seek out common themes. We then had a grand conversation and created an anchor chart of their ideas.

Now that they had analyzed theme, we asked them to think about a theme that was personal to them. One that could represent something important in their lives, or a pertinent emotion to them. We, then, introduced the concept of a poetry anthology to them as a collection of poems surrounding an idea. Their task: To create a personal anthology of poems of any style of their choosing all tied to their "theme/big idea"

To support their writing, we provided them with an "ABC's of Poetry Mini-Book." This mini-dictionary has 60 definitions and terms tied to poetry. Each one also has an example with it. It was printed back to back and folded. They used this to draw ideas that they could incorporate into their own poetry.

Click image to be taken to our TpT store

In Reader's Workshop, we taught them how to closely read and analyze poetry (a tough skill for kiddos!) Each kid received a reading poetry packet to support their thinking. Within this packet, they had mini-anchor charts with questions to consider when analyzing poetry, figurative language helpers, and template they could use to help them analyze. As always, we provide this packet as a resource for our kids, but we also encourage them to create their own that supports their personal learning style best. We have many of our kids that prefer our templates. They really benefit from that guidance and support. On the other hand, we have a large percentage of our class that really enjoy creating their own, personal templates using tools like Prezi, Emaze, or Google Presentation.

This packet can be found on our TpT store, and not only includes the anchor charts, but it also includes the entire unit lesson plan for both reading and writing. It also has the analysis page templates for students, two different poems to analyze, and a 4-point assessment rubric.

Click image to be taken to our TpT store.

We began by doing a shared reading of a poem, "Millions of Strawberries" by Genevieve Taggard. We went over the different questions they could consider while analyzing poetry, then they read it by themselves for their first read. They tried annotating on their own. We got lots of "I don't get it", or "This is hard." Which, made us as their teachers, thrilled! 

Annotation of "Millions of Strawberries"

We, then, came back together to discuss what they noticed on this first read. Once they realized that their noticings were actually great analyses, then the room erupted in discussion/ideas! We wrote their annotations from their first read in one color on a class anchor chart. Then we sent them off in partners to annotate more! They wrote their new annotations in a different color. We then came back together for a final time to complete our analysis and theme thinking. The grand conversations that we had during this activity gave us goosebumps!!

Partner annotation

Our final anchor chart

In writing, we discussed different techniques that they could use in their poetry (example: figurative language, stanzas, line breaks, speaker point of view, etc.) We used some great tools to support that. The Brown Bag Teacher, has a great blog post about how to use "Let it Go" to analyze stanzas and theme! We also used fun online resources to practice line breaks like Magnetic Poetry and Storybird.

In reading, we then analyzed poetry of their choosing for these different things! We also tied into our Revolutionary War social studies unit by analyzing "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" as a way to tie all of their new poetry learning together!

We are about halfway through our unit, and the engagement is off the charts for our kids! We have had to build in extra "discussion" time for each workshop, because they are SO excited to share their writing and analyses! 

Their anthologies are starting to take shape! Even our writers that often struggle or dislike writing are engaged right now. Poetry is such a universal tool. There is something for every style, interest, and emotion! We cannot wait to see how this all wraps up! We'll post again soon with examples of their beautiful words!

How have you taught poetry? Do you have any other fun resources that you have found beneficial? Please share in the comments!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela

It's Learning Model Time!

Oh, how my Saturday nights have changed...I can remember a time, not that long ago, when I used to be getting all dolled up to hit the town. Now I find myself curled up on the chair, NCAA basketball on TV, a glass of wine nearby, working on our upcoming "Learning Model" for math.

We just finished a unit focusing on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. Prior to the final assessment later next week, the students will be spending time on Monday and Tuesday creating their end of unit Learning Model. We use Learning Models in reading and math workshop, as a form of assessment. Our students have a choice in how they demonstrate their learning and proficiency of the standards that we have taught. 

From Powtoon to Educreations...Screencastify to Emaze, our students always put forth incredible effort and they create some amazing work using a variety of platforms! They choose the questions they want to use, create their learning models in their chosen form, and share with others via their digital portfolios! 

To check out our latest Fractions Learning Model, or any of our other unit Learning Model, check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store! 

~ Kate 

DocHub- the cure to your PDF problem!

Many of us have used PDFs in our classrooms. They are quick and easy to create. They have the ability to compress enormous files into something more compact. They're self contained, meaning you can preserve the visual elements between computers, across applications, making them visually appealing- a definite plus for most elementary teachers that love their clip art and cute fonts. The list of benefits go on and on...

As much as I love PDFs I have always been frustrated with the fact that they're difficult to edit. By nature PDFs are created so they can not be changed, revised or manipulated. They are not an editable document- they're basically an image of a document, almost impossible to edit, until now...

I have been trying to tackle this challenge for years. I have talked to many teachers and tech. directors and have been mostly unsuccessful. I tried converting the PDF back to a Word doc, but it wasn't pretty. Leave it to my AMAZING students to figure it out, almost by accident, how to edit and save a PDF. 

It all started when one of our extremely responsible students forgot their Genius Hour folder at school. Our kiddos write weekly reflections on their passion project work, and this young lady had left her folder and reflection form in her mailbox at school, but was determined to find a way to finish her homework! Knowing that the PDF doc was saved on our Genius Hour website, she downloaded the PDF to the DocHub app, wrote her personal reflection, then saved the edited PDF to her Drive and printed it for me the following day. YES...you read that correctly...she edited a PDF, saved it, and printed it for me! 

When our wonderful student got to school the following day and explained what she did, Angela and I just looked at each other in disbelief. For a minute this young lady thought we were frustrated that she had forgotten her folder at school...little did she know that she had just helped us solve an ongoing frustration without even realizing it. Enter DOCHUB!!

Needless to say, I quickly checked out this amazing website (also an app in the Chrome Web Store). Once on their site, you can easily create an account using your Google Drive or Dropbox.

Upload a file in seconds and let the magic begin! The amazing part of DocHub is that it allows you to edit and share PDF's online. It gives you the ability to insert text, draw, highlight, comment, even insert images. These items are "layered" on top of the PDF. You can save and come back to your edited PDF within DocHub as many times as you like. If that wasn't awesome enough, you can reorder pages, rotate pages, even delete pages you don't want included!! 

Collaboration is key in our classroom, and that is definitely an option with this app! When you're completely done editing, you can share your edited PDF with others via email, link, or save to your Google Drive.

Like I said earlier, two of my students introduced this amazing tool to me a few weeks back. I hope to share it with my entire class next week. Before that, I decided I should play around with it to better familiarize with all it has to offer. SOOO glad I did that! My students will be using it soon, so I'll let you know if we learn any other amazing features! 

~ Kate

Proud Teacher Moment

Most days our students are asked to bring their composition books to the carpet for the math mini lesson. Sometimes we have learning models to tape in, some days we work through example questions, some days we just use as a note taking tool. We encourage the students to keep their composition books organized so they can use it as a tool during work time or test time.

The students are really good at using the composition book to house the handouts from class, but most kids do not take the time and energy into their own note taking. If we ask them to write something they will write it, but the majority will not take the time to write out their own examples...except for one child!

Meet T! This sweet boy takes it upon himself to write math notes from our mini lessons in his composition book each and every day. T has realized this is how he learns best. During the mini lesson he listens intently, then takes a few minutes before his Must Do time to jot down hints to help him when he's working independently. He does this diligently, without being told. T can also be seen going back to his notes during work time. I am so proud of this young man and his willingness to tackle this project. T understands his own learning style, and has created a tool that he'll carry with him to middle school and beyond!

T has also inspired me as his math teacher to reflect on my own practices and find a better way to organize my students' math journals next year! I spoke to him about his post-it note tabs. T thought it would be helpful for next year's students if the book was organized by math strand. What a fabulous idea, T!! So proud of you! Thank you for being you!

 Just recently T's added tabs to his composition book so he can easily see the concepts. 

~ Kate

Historical Fiction Launch

Now that our amazing fantasy unit is over, we continue our journey in the fiction world, but this time with HISTORICAL FICTION!! Even though the kids loved our fantasy unit, they were ready for a change of pace. And what better change than to transport our readers back in time!

To launch this unit, we introduced our students to 4 different time periods: Early Colonies, Revolutionary War, Civil War/Slavery, and WWII. We utilized a Prezi to launch the unit.

Click to view our intro Prezi

After they were exposed to facts about the different eras and a few possible book choices, we had our students vote on the era that they most wanted to immerse themselves in using a Google Form.

From that point, we put the kids into era-alike groups of 3 or 4 kids. The best part about this unit, is that we are encouraging all students in a club to read different books. This allowed for our groups to be completely heterogeneous! 

We also created an open-ended packet for our students to utilize as they needed for this unit:

Click to see the packet in our TpT store!

In this packet, there are lots of opened-ended templates for the kids to utilize to house/organize our thinking! Many of the pages match the major touchstone lessons we will cover in this unit. In our environment, the packet serves as a guide, not a requirement. Many students choose to use it. However, many students choose to create their own format. Lots choose a digital format (Google Spreadsheets, Prezi, Google Presentations, etc.). The students like to create collaborative docs where all members in their club can contribute their thinking in one place. I absolutely love the creativity and ingenuity that our students show. They truly know how they learn best and how to best display their thinking in a way that is personal to them!

Next, we got the students immersed in their era using picture books. Each group chose a picture book from their era to work through together. They used sticky notes and marked all over it! They had grand conversations and wrote long and strong thinking's about their new era learning!

The next step was to build more background knowledge about their era. Students self-selected nonfiction books tied to their time period. They, again, dug through them in partnerships, pulling out interesting facts and new learning. They shared their learning as a book club. The final step was to really collaborate and put together all of their ideas into a collaborative long and strong. The goal was to include a piece of everyone's great ideas into one big thinking! It was magical to see them put their heads together! Some groups needed more coaching than others, but what they came up with was remarkable!

An example of an organizer from the packet

FINALLY...it was time to dig into their new historical fiction books! They were SO excited to see the cart and buckets full of books to pick from! There was something for every interest and era! After our build up of information, all they wanted was some time to dig in and READ!

We are so excited to see where this unit takes us! Check back soon for more unit updates!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela 

Fantasy Learning Models

Whew! That was fun! We just wrapped up our absolutely amazing Fantasy Unit of Study in Reader's Workshop! The kids learned and grew so much as readers. Kate and I are SO proud of their efforts, discussions, and excitement!

Now that we are done, it is time to assess their understanding. While we have our pre and post assessments and Fantasy Packet Rubric, we still want to give our students ownership over their learning. As we have mentioned in other blogposts, we LOVE using "Learning Models" to assess our student learning. We find them to be more authentic, our students love them because they are in charge, and they really raise the depth of knowledge levels!

Here is our Fantasy Learning Model:

Click image to be taken to our TpT store!

This time around, we really wanted to explore some new tools! Our students are kind of "done" with Google Presentations. They have done SO many in their 2 years with us. We are always looking to "mix it up". They love to help with this, too! One of our very "with it" students, introduced us to:

Click to go to the emaze site!

Now, prepared to be "emazed" :) This tool is so cool! It is a great new way for students to present their information. They love the options and the 3-D effects that they offer! There is a paid component to this for educators that we will be exploring next year. Being so late into the year, we are testing it out using the "free version" for now! We had so much fun learning how to use it. We decided to complete our "mentor learning model" using it, too!

Click to go to our "Emazing" example!

As is typical in our environment, lots of kids chose to use this new tool once it was introduced. But we still had a few that chose to go with other options (one even chose to CODE his learning model using Khan Academy! #mindblown!!!)

Here are a couple of fun examples for you to check out!

STUDENT #1 (Prezi link)

STUDENT #2 (Emaze link)

STUDENT #3 (Emaze link)

Like I said, we couldn't be prouder of their work! We even had a few groups that chose to continue on with their series outside of our Reader's Workshop block (wowsers!). Up next?-Historical Fiction! We have a fun spin on how to run these book clubs, so please check back soon to read all about it!

What fun tech tools have you used for student work? Do you know of other fun presentation tools? Feel free to sound off below! We would love to grow and learn with you!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela :)

Technology Thursday Link Up-Weebly

Link Up Party Hosted By Teaching Trio

Okay, friends, this is our first attempt at a "link up party"! We recently found the Teaching Trio blog (linked above), and were excited due to the multiple teacher view points they provide! They offer a weekly "link up party", so we decided to try it out and see how this goes!!

For our Technology Thursday Link Up, we wanted to share more about Weebly For Education. We've blogged about this amazing tool before HERE, but it is so awesome, it is definitely worth sharing again!

So, why this tool??--It is great for anything that requires a website or a house/hub for information. The number one way we use it, is for our student's digital portfolios! Last year, we utilized Google Sites for our digital portfolios, and we found the tool to be clumsy and definitely no where near as user-friendly as other Google Tools! When we looped up to 5th grade with these amazing kiddos, we were on the hunt for a better resource!

Enter...WEEBLY for Education! Our students have a page for each subject area, as well as an "All About Me" page. Each page houses artifacts and reflections that they feel demonstrate proficiency in different standards. They also keep track of the weekly goals, actions steps, and reflections in a blog-style posting under their "All About Me" tab! 

Besides the digital portfolio use, there are many reasons we absolutely LOVE this tech tool. Here are just a few:

• It is so incredibly user-friendly! Everything is "drag and drop", which makes it really manageable for kids!
• It is extremely easy to personalize each page. The kids love messing with the hundreds of themes, fonts, styles, etc.
• You can control your class sites! Which gives you easy access to each one (super beneficial for us with a class of 53!), rather than hunting or trying to find links you saved.
• It can be password protected
• It can be free (although, we paid the extra money for the upgraded version and found it to be completely worth it!)

Another way that we utilize this great resource is as a "hub" for information for our students. We can make as many different sites as we want! This makes it really easy to update or change them in a unit of study! Here are a few that we have made for various inquiry units:

Age of Exploration Weebly Site: We used this as our main hub for our social studies unit on early explorers! We were able to update resources as kids found them, they had tools at their fingertips (docs we created), and more! We "married" reading (nonfiction), writing (informational text) and social studies for this great unit!

Genius Hour Weebly Site: Like many other personalized learning environments, we also have "Genius Hour" every week, where our students explore topics of their choosing and interest (see link to previous blogpost). It is one of my favorite times of the week! They get SO excited about the different things they are learning about, from interior design to robotics and everything in between! We also try to connect our learners to members of the community that work in the field or have expertise on their topic! Truly magical learning! This site helped launch and give ideas for our kids (and parents!) 

Next year, we plan on using Weebly for Education for our classroom site, as well! We had to keep our classroom Google site this year, since we looped with our class and our families were already familiar with our old one! The ease of Weebly makes it easy to switch!

Hope this helps you on your own "site-building" journey!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela