How is it July already?! That seems unfair somehow. Summer goes by so fast...

As the beginning of the year slowly creeps its way to reality, I started revamping my beginning and end of the year activities. I use activities at both ends of the year that compliment each other. When the end of the year arrives, I like to revisit our beginning of the year thoughts when we first arrived in 4th grade... and use those memories and feelings to help out the kids that will be entering my room in the new year. I am putting together this bundle which should be complete by August. 

 I like to make the first couple of weeks all about building a community. The success of my class is 99.5% depending on the relationships we all build so in addition to creating class rules, I want my students to know that I am here as one of their teammates to encourage them to grow and succeed. One of the first activities I have my class complete is a letter to me.

I ask kids about their favorite things, what made last school year good for them, some things a teacher should always do, and how I can help them succeed. This is also the first time they will think about goals for the year.

After completing this, I give them letter's that last year's kids wrote. The format is very similar and covers a lot of the same information but with an emphasis on what last year's students would like this year's student's to know.

We circle back to this at the end of the year and I have the kids review all of the things the wrote. We talk about how they felt that first day, what they wished they had known, how they felt that first day, and then spend some time reminiscing on what a great year we had!

To get our math brains warmed up, we do this All About Me in Numbers activity. This activity also serves as a great quick assessment and gives me information on how my students think as mathematicians and as a gauge to see how confident they are with math. Some years, I leave the space open for them to create their own question. Other years, I give them this worksheet with prompts. They answer the prompts with an equation- the answer to the equation is the answer to the prompt. For example - "My age" could be 32-22. The equation difficulty level varies greatly from kid to kid and again tells me A LOT about their comfort with math, but also helps me get to know them more.

During these first weeks, I also do a lot of Growth Mindset work and team building- I will circle back to that in another post.

This year I had one of those classes that you just rarely get. First, I ended up with only 19 students (in 4th grade! Unheard of) so I am sure that helped... I always feel like my class is a family by the end of the year but there was something about this class and this year that was different. The end of the year... sucked. None of us wanted it to be over. I have had classes that I loved, that I was sad to see go... but I was always ready for summer lol Always. Not this year though... I am still sad the year had to end. So the last week we just had one prolonged group hug. Ha! Kidding. But we did have a lot of fun.

I had the kids jump on a shared google doc. They went person by person and wrote one positive adjective that described them
(I know- risky- but it isn't hard to see who is writing what and again, this is the best class I have ever had in my entire career so I felt good about this.) I then turned this list into a fun WORDLE, printed them out and gave them the word art with this poem on the back.

I will post more about the end of the year is a separate post, but for now... the weather has finally cleared up, the sun is shining once again and I am going to head out to enjoy the last days of summer!

I have really been struggling with what to do about keeping track of student reading this year. I have never been a fan of Reading Logs and the feedback I received from parents in my first years of teaching made me drop them completely. The Reading Logs (and at one point nightly reflections) were making my kids hate to read. 

I still wanted to keep kids accountable for their reading, so I had students and parents sign a sheet stating they did in fact complete their nightly reading... And I am sure most of them did!

Reading Logs just don’t work. Aside from keeping track of daily minutes, they are not effective as a tool to create life-long learners who love to read. This year I am going to try something new. I am going to have my students fill out a Reading Goals sheet. We are going to start with a mini lesson on different types of Reading Skills. We will brainstorm areas a 4th grader might need to work on and we will talk about strategies that might help a person obtain that goal. The key to this goal setting activity  is that the document will be a constant work in progress. We will check in, update goals, add to strategies as we learn new ones, and change goals to better suit us as we grow... I am hoping to instill the importance of self reflection. We will see where it goes! You can download my sheet for free below or in my Teacher's Pay Teacher's store!

Happy Teaching!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Reading-Goals-3360196

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It's been a while since my last post. I figured summer would give me plenty of time to work on all of the projects I've been itching to get done. Somehow, the summer slipped by and school is once again around the corner.

My latest photoshop endevour has been making posters for my room. I'm not always a fan of the stuff found in teacher stores and when I saw that Staples wa having a pretty amazing deal on poster printing I snuggled up with my computer and with a little help from photoshop, got to work! Here is my latest. I'm happy with the out come. Can't wait to send them to print!!

With or without owls?

When I made the jump from elementary school to middle school, writing a syllabus was a bit of a daunting task. I would have loved it if someone would have given me a template to follow so... for any of you beginning middle school or high school teachers out there- here is the syllabus I used. I hope someone out there finds it useful!

In my earlier years of teaching I was super thankful for any help anyone gave me. About eight years ago I stumbled upon this great PowerPoint template. It was so long ago I can't for the life of me remember where I got it from or who gave it to me. I thought I would pay it forward and post it here for anyone in need of a Back to School Night PowerPoint presentation!

The fonts and formatting will most likely get thrown off when you download it, but I adore the backgrounds and animations on this.

Enjoy!