Building Blocks

To help us better understand a word (evidently) that we all missed yesterday during Read Naturally, we did a word building and sorting activity. Here is the audio of the discussion where students share the words that they built based on the letters of the targeted word.


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Why Are You Here?

Today we created a podcast where we discussed why we are all here. It proved to be very difficult, but it led us to a new way of looking at the classroom. Hopefull, if will lend itself to more gains.


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We continued to develop some fluecny with area and preimeter in math class. We played a new game with it's sights set on getting us to better understand how to read a ruler, something we struggle with as a class. Here are a couple problems we faced in calss today:

Area & Perimeter

Here is a graphic organizer we created in Math class today. We are about to start looking at perimeter and area. I like to take the time to think about who and where these two things are used in the real world.

Storm Stories

We spent a good portion of our time on Friday working on the preplanning and following through of this retelling activity. We have gathered some thoughts and stories from students in Salina, Penssylvania, and California. Hopefully there will be more to come.

Explaning Why is So Hard!

Putting the final steps together for our Throw A Party Project, my math class is having to provide some rationale for why they chose one thing over another. This is proving pretty hard to do for some of them. Here is an example,


Throw A Party Rationale - Free Document Templates

The Party is Almost Here

Rading class is starting to be very seemless, as the kids are starting to accept that they are here. Read Naturally even went pretty well. However, we are still having a hard time of pulling information from Hoot to answer the questions. We probably spent more time on that today than anything else.

In Math we started doing the heavy lifting with our Throw a Party project. Here is the information and the expectations I have of your childs work.


PartyProject - Get more College Essays

Making Calls

In reading class we continued to develop our powerpoints for the vocabulary word of our choice. Read Naturally also started back up. That is one things we are still focusing on getting on schedule with. It is taking the kids some time to get back in the routine, what with getting a week of school off, I think they were all in summer mode.

In Math we practiced our four operations and then made the calls to the different venues in Slaina where you could potentially have a birthday party. We recorded a podcast of our de-briefing conversations. However, a students said their last name so I wil not be posting it. Afterwards, I recorded a podcast to reflect on what I saw in the kids during the activity.


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Planning A Party

We finished up the week pretty strong. Today was also the first day we got through an enitre session of Read Naturally and I am happy to say that the student who made the most growth this week was Ryan. He improved his WPM (words per minute) by almost 60, congratulations!

In Math we began a project, Planning A Party. I thought this would be a fun way to begin the weekend. Each student will get to pick items that they will have at their party, but they only have a certain amount of money to spend. Therefore, they will need to make some choices as to what is the most important things for their party to be a success.

Top Fives

This morning we reached out to an eigth grader from Maryland via Youth Twitter. He is a musician who is actually putting out an album in a couple of weeks. After that we created short plays to demonstrate the meaning of our vocabulary words. This did not go very well, I don't think the kids are used to so much freedom when it comes to class and they are having trouble identifying boundaries. After some editing I will post the video we took. We also began our Read Naturally fluency today.

In math we attempted to make a math-based problem-solving video using Sketchcast.com, but it took too long to load, so we were unable to finish that activity. After finsihing the worksheet packet we practiced basic facts using Study Stack. Here, give it a try yourself:

More flashcards, word search, and hangman provided by StudyStack.com

Getting Better All The Time

Things are continuing to run pretty smoothly. Today in reading we got even closer to following our class schedule. This morning we worked on vocabulary by creating comic strips to illustrate the words we were defining.

In math class we worked more on identifying operation clue words and solving problems. We also tried out a new website, Twiddla. Although we all thought it was pretty cool, it was very clear that there was way too much freedom with it. But that doesn't mean you could use it, give it a try!

Moving Along

Reading class this morning went very smoothly considering we are only in our third day of ESY. We are still focusing on getting the routines down for coming in the room, learning vocabulary, reflecting on reading, and blogging. Some of the students are very focused on what they are doing and working hard. I hope to see that from all of my students. We talked today about how your attitude shapes your experience. Hopefully, those students who aren't too happy to be here can find some ray of sunshine in this whole process.

Math class also went very well. Today we practiced our basic facts with the Math Arcade at fun Brain. After that we the four operations and the clue words in problems that help us to identify how to solve problems. Once we know what words to look for, then I will have to do is worry about performing the operations. Using student-generated information we created the following diagram using Bubbl.us:



We finished class as a group going over multiplication facts.

It's Definitely Monday

I can definitely tell that it is Monday. To start with, we had a few people come in late. Once in the classroom things moved pretty slowly. There are a couple of reasons for this; one, a lot of new faces, two, a lot of new activites. Each day will bring some new challenges as we get oriented with the tools we will be using this summer. However, we did get into the first chapter of the book we'll be reading this summer, Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. Students have begun to answer questions over the first chapter and will finish them up tomorrow morning.

In Math we did a second pretest. I decided to go ahead and get these out of the way, so that when we start instruction we won't have to stop here and there to take more tests. Students did get to practice math skills by playing games on the Math Playgroud website, a link to which you can find under "Things We're Using."