March Madness

I LOVE March Madness! I don't follow college basketball, but come March, I'm looking at teams and getting my bracket ready to go. My first year of teaching, I knew I had to do something with it in my classroom. I assigned the students a school and they had to research that school and then present it to the class. They also needed to complete a bracket and update it/score it each day. Their brackets were better than mine! But, that was that.

This year, I changed it up. The students were still assigned schools to research and present as well as complete a bracket. In addition, they had to pin where their school was on a US map. Once plotted, we discussed patterns and trends we saw with the schools that made it to the Big Dance. This map was also helpful because we had just started talking about Mystery Skype and the students thought up a few questions they could ask based upon the map.

The students loved learning about different schools and seeing where they were on the map. It's definitely something that I will be continuing in my classroom this year.

Leave a Comment 4th Grade, March Madness, Social Studies

Random Things from this Year

I'm trying to take more pictures of things I do in my classroom to use as a portfolio of sorts. Really it's so that I remember what I did that worked next year! :) 

I used to have these old posters on the back of my classroom for the parts of speech (Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb). Partway through last year, one of the posters fell and I never replaced it. That's how I started the year. One morning, I was thinking of something to do to get the kiddos to review the parts of speech and thought to have them make part of speech posters. Best. Idea. Ever. 

I wrote on a sticky note which part they were doing and told them they needed to have a definition and example. They could use their Grammar books if they wanted to. They worked so well together and were on task trying to make it all pretty. They are constantly referencing these so I am a happy teacher! 

My fantastic mentor teacher that I worked with a few years ago in 4th grade does a great spelling routine that I copy. On Monday's, the students cut out their spelling words and sort them into groups. We discuss similarities and then I choose a word and the students have to guess which word it is based on the clues I give. On Tuesday's, they get these letter tiles (Lakeshore Outlet purchase), and we build words. Once they build them, we chunk it, say each letter, blend it, syllables, etc. They use the word in a sentence and then mix up the word and re-build it. I really like it because the students that need more hands-on work benefit from this. It's also interesting how the students get their letters ready. Some put them in piles, others just have them in whatever order, and some sort them vowels (red) and consonants (blue).

In Social Studies, we are all about California. I had this same map last year, but this year, I upgraded my labels. I have the regions outlined and then multiple things labeled: the Missions, major cities, rivers, etc. I am hoping to add more to the map as we progress through the year.

In math, I have been using EngageNY and I could not be happier! I love the order of the topics and how they have me teach the concepts. I am using it as a guide and using many of their methods and word problems in my math classes. This was one thing I LOVED. It is a visual representation of multiplying by 10. I heard a lot of "a-ha's!" during this lesson and it made me very happy! I still refer to this chart when students get confused.

Leave a Comment 4th Grade, California, Curriculum, Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Spelling, Teaching