Youtube as an educational resource

Youtube is blocked in my district. That means I can't show Youtube videos on my Smartboard. This has been a source of frustration for me for years. Over vacation I was determined to find a way to download Youtube videos so that I could bring them to school on my zip drive. I figured it and I've been downloading like crazy.

America The Story of Us is a great documentary from the History Channel. It is possible to download short clips from the documentary from Youtube. The one above is about the battle of Lexington and Concord. In Science we are building ladybug laboratories to study the behavior of ladybugs. To build background knowledge I will show my fifth graders this short clip about ladybugs:

The fourth graders are writing personal narratives about a great day at an amusement park. The small moment we have worked on together is a ride on a roller coaster. I showed this short clip during writing class to inspire them:

Who would of thought Youtube was so educational? Christine

Teaching about flashbacks

A few years back my 4th graders completely misinterpreted the meaning of a text because they didn't understand that the character was now explaining something that had happened long ago. Flashbacks can be confusing to the reader. I really like The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson as a mentor text for teaching  about flashbacks.

I got this book from Teaching for Deep Comprehension by Linda Dorn. The teaching resource has a DVD which shows a 4th grade teacher modeling how to use the book. Also, I really recommend this blog: Life in 4B http://lifein4b.blogspot.com/2011/12/were-baaaack.html if you don't already follow it. Its been a great resource for me for the last few years. A few weeks ago I was reading Sarah Plain and Tall with my 4th graders. I like using the story Dakota Dugout after reading Sarah Plain and Tall and then comparing the two stories. I got the idea for using Dakota Dugout to teach about flashbacks from Miss Bongers at Life in 4B.

If you have any great suggestions about what books to use to teach children about flashbacks let me know. Christine

Patricia Polacco

I love stories that show how a character changes. Mrs. Mack by Patricia Polacco is a great example of this. I got the idea for this lesson from a great blog: Get In The Fold http://getinthefold.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-we-love-patricia-polacco.html I had the 4th and 5th graders make the foldables prior to reading the book. We read up to page 14 and then completed the questions on the left side of the foldable:

• What did Patricia do?
• What did Patricia think or feel?
• How did others respond to her?

• How did she look?

After we finished the story we answered the same questions on the other side of the foldable.

The Get in the Fold blog has much better pictures that I do of what the inside looks like. After finishing the left and right sides of the foldable we worked on the inside sheet:

It includes three major events from the story and how Patricia reacted and how others responded. I narrowed down the major events in the story and put them on the above poster. This sheet gets tucked inside the foldable. This was a great activity for that week before Christmas. After we finished them I had the kids decorate the covers. Many of the students got interested in my collection of  Patricia Polacco books after reading Mrs. Mack. Christine

My Side of the Mountain

We have been using My Side of the Mountain as a mentor text for our WEX writing assignments. In this lesson the students needed to find text based evidence of Sam's character traits.

Those super large stickers came from http://www.exclrecycles.org/donate.html
Each teacher in our school got a free one year membership to Extras For Creative Learning from the EDIC. Its a store filled with all kinds of misc. school supplies and materials for art projects. I got piles of those stickers and thought long and hard about how to use them. Each group completed one sticker by adding a character trait and the text based evidence from various parts of the novel. Then  we posted them on our anchor chart. If you can think of any other great ways to use all those stickers, let me know!

Our next lesson involved producing a timeline for the book. Chapter one is confusing for the reader because it takes place in the middle of the story. The journal actually begins in chapter 2. The timeline helped the students to determine importance. They could only list 10 events. This caused much discussion over which events where the most important and why.Christine

Whole Brain Teaching: Grade 1 Classroom

This is for Meghan. Christine

More on Chris Van Allsburg

I love reading The Stranger and The Sweetest Fig by Van Allsburg. with children, but I have never used The Mysteries of Harris Burdick before. Some Van Allsburg books take some time to "get". I didn't like The Stranger the first time I read it, but now it is one of my favorite books. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is just a group of unconnected pencil drawings, each with a title and an introductory sentence.Here is an example:

It all started when someone left the window open....

The reader is left to wonder what happens next. Its a great book to use with young writers who have great imaginations. Questions instantly come to mind: Who left the window open? Why? Is that bird on the wallpaper coming to life? 

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick was recently published. It is like an answer key for those pencil drawings. A short story was written for each of the drawings by famous authors like Louis Sachar and Stephen King. I couldn't wait to read it and share it with some of my young writers with great imaginations. Here is a website to explore more if you are interested:

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/harrisburdick/index.html

Christine

Happy Birthday Statue of Liberty!

This week, the Statue of Liberty turns 125! My fourth graders are reading  Lily and Miss Liberty by Deborah Kogan Ray. Its a short historical fiction story which explains how children throughout the country raised pennies to help pay for Liberty's pedestal.

We also read A Picnic in October by my favorite author, Eve Bunting. In true Bunting fashion, she leads the reader to think the birthday party the children are preparing for is for their grandmother, an Italian immigrant. At the end of the story we learn that Grandma and family celebrate Lady Liberty's birthday in front of the statue every year. It's become a family tradition, a way of thanking America for welcoming Grandma when she was a young Italian immigrant.

To add to the fun this week we did a few more projects:

Here I am in my Halloween costume. I don't look bad for 125 yrs old!

Here is an art project we did on the Statue of Libery