Learning about the Titanic

The 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is tomorrow. Scholastic had the first book of the I Survived..... series on sale for $1.00 a piece! What a great book! Both the 4th and 5th graders thoroughly enjoyed reading it.We started learning about the Titanic with an article in Weekly Reader. The more I use Weekly Reader the more impressed I've become. I'm always looking for nonfiction sources with great text features. This month WR had an awesome map/timeline of the sinking of the Titanic. I also found some great Youtube videos about the Titanic to use in class. After we finished I Survived The Sinking of  The Titanic we had to write a two word summary. Here is a picture of the poster we made together.

Some children chose words that described George, the main character, others chose words  to describe the feelings they had while reading the book. A few children felt an object from the story or a theme was most important. Coming up with only two words to describe a whole book can be challenging!

We also spent some time reading about the Costa Concordia that sank off the coast of Italy in January in an old WR edition.. The article gave us lots of room for comparison to the Titanic. It also had another great map to help us visualize what exactly happened to that ship.
If your students are very interested in the Titanic and you are looking for even more resources,
http://www.wegivebooks.org/books has the book Titanic Sinks! available to read online for free.  Christine

Sqworl

http://sqworl.com/hchfxh
Sqworl is such a great site to use as a search engine for teacher blogs and websites. I liked this one: Teachers bag of tricks. Christine

Website to share

http://web.me.com/krissyjperkins/Site/Welcome.html
I really like the comprehension and fluency ideas on this teacher maintained website. She also has help for reading coaches. Christine

sqworl | literacy sites

sqworl literacy sites

I really like the Sqworl bookmarking site because it is so visual and easy to use. I love Symbaloo for my student page, but Sqworl might be my new Delicious. Its a great way to discover new sites that other teachers have already bookmarked. Check out the link above. Christine

Building Background Knowledge

Vietnam is not a topic most fourth graders know much about. The story, Two Lands One Heart is in our Trophies anthology. It is the story of a family separated by war. The mother and son go back to visit family in Vietnam. To acquire background knowledge on the country before we read the story, I like to use this site:
http://www.pocanticohills.org/projects/bestwork.html The work on the website was produced by kids at Pocantico Hills School in Sleepy Hollow, New York. I was able to show the slide show to my whole class on the Smartboard. When you look under their BEST WORK you can also find topics such as:

• Ben Franklin
• Abe Lincoln
• The American Revolution
• Harriet Tubman

The kids like this because it was written by other children. Christine

Character traits

While reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott Odell we did some work on Karena's character traits. I made a Wordle of character traits that I thought applied to Karena during various chapters of the story. The assignment was to list the trait and the text based evidence.

http://www.wordle.net/Here is a Smartboard lesson I used after reading the story. Was Karena a real person?

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7F2yr3X_5kzMjBiYTk5YjAtZWY5NC00ODQyLTg3NjktMzg4MmRjMjI1YWMw&hl=en

Christine

teacher blogger

http://www.cherylsclassroomtips.com/. This teacher has so many great ideas. I spent at least an hour combing through her blog. I bookmarked quite a bit on Delicious. Check it out! Christine

reading website

http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/readingliterature/menu.html
I love the posters about conflict on this site. She is a middle school english teacher, but she has lots of great ideas about how to use picture books to teach literary elements such as imagery, foreshadowing, and theme.
Christine

My delicious

http://www.delicious.com/cjken42
If you are interested in sites full of Smartboard lessons for 4th and 5th grade check out my Delicious bookmarks. I have been adding to the account any site I like that has interactive whiteboard lessons.
Christine

Blogging with 5th graders

I recently started blogging with my 5th graders using http://www.kidblog.org/

I did a little research to make sure the site was safe and then I plowed in. I have to say I am impressed with what they have done so far. I have children blogging about: wolves, myths, ponies, the Red Sox, summer vacation and so on.They are commenting on each others blog posts.Some are posting pictures and Youtube videos about what we are learning in class. I have posted a few questions to get them going like: What did you learn from our M.O.S. program, and what was your favorite book we have read so far this year.

We did have to come up with a few rules. Here they are so far:

• Be positive in your comments (if you don't have something nice to say, don't comment)
• Use correct spelling, capitalization  and punctuation. This is not texting with your friends. It is a school site. Proper language is required.
• Make sure someone can learn something from your blogging. This is our purpose - to learn from each other.

They learned what a moderator was (me). This is still a work in progress but so far it has been a success.

Christine





websites I like

http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/free-resources/professional-development I really like this website for teachers. Christine

Websites I like for teachers

Here is a great website to visit for intermediate teachers http://teachingvision.org/classrooms.html
Christine

Glogster website

http://cjken.edu.glogster.com/gr-5-books/ Here is a copy of my glogster. It is like a poster you create. Children could do these as projects. Christine

great website

http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/index.html#4    This is a great site for all things technological if you are a teacher. I have blogged about some of them. Christine

Donors Choose

I started using Donors Choose few years ago. http://www.donorschoose.com/ I wanted class sets of books that would compliment my curriculum. Donors around the country have to pick your project through the website. You can choose whatever materials you would like and write up a proposal. I teach American History so I chose The Discovery of the Americas by Betsy Maestro. I also use a Social Studies textbook but it is pretty old.This book gives the students so much more detail and the pictures are great. The story of Phillis Wheatley's life fascinates me so I got a class set of the most beautiful book: A Voice of Her Own: The Story of Phillis Wheatley, Slave Poet. This is a great book to practice all of the reading strategies with. She lived in Boston at the time of the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party so it is a terrific choice for teaching the Revolutionary War. I also got three class sets of Eve Bunting books from Donors Choose. Every year I do an author study on Eve Bunting. I particularly like Gleam and Glow, Smoky Night, and Fly Away Home. Not all of my projects have been funded but I have to say I have done very well by Donors Choose. Christine

SMART Boards in elementary school

I want to try this SMARTboard application. Its from Laura Candler's website http://www.lauracandler.com/ Instead of pulling names from a cup to call on students or make groups you can do it on the SMARTboard. http://www.lauracandler.com/filecabinet/misc/TheHat.pdf See Laura Candler's website for free materials. I also like her poetry cards. They cover our 5th grade standards pretty well. Christine

tagxedo or wordle websites

I've been using http://www.wordle.net/ in the classroom for a few months and I really like it. I used it to make the cover of the class yearbook. Another thing I did with it was I took all of the character traits that applied to Karena in Is. of the Blue Dolphins and made a wordle out of them. I had the students pick three of Karena's character traits from the wordle and write a paragraph using text based evidence from the story. I just found this new site http://www.tagxedo.com/ and I like it even better. The shape option is really cool. Christine

Using Storybird.com

I really liked this site: http://www.storybird.com/ . You can use the beautiful artwork they give you and make up your own stories to publish and share. Its a great idea for kids and parents. I will have to work on potential uses in the classroom. Christine

write on the wall

We are building our background knowledge about John F. Kennedy before we visit the JFK Library next week by reading biographies about him and writing a report. This site,http://www.wallwisher.com/ allows you to "post" individual thoughts, quotes or ideas on any topic. This is a picture of my Smartboard wallwisher page for the question: What do you know about JFK? The class loved it. I love my Smartboard! Christine

interesting websites

I thought this website was really cool. www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp