Stations, Stations, Stations!

Recently, stations/centers/independent work has been a hot-topic on my campus. All of us teachers love working with small groups of students, but we sometimes struggle to find ways to manage the other 24 students while we are working with the small group. I've used this system to manage my station-work for the past couple of years and it works well for my classroom and teaching style. 

I usually set up 12-14 stations and students rotate through them. I don't get to stations every day, so these 12-14 stations usually last me for about 1 month. That means I have to spend a couple of hours getting my new set of stations ready, but once they're done, I don't have to worry about them again for an entire month. 

Another way I make the work-load easier is by using some stations repeatedly every month. My Spelling Station is always the same. Students don't get bored of it because they only get to it once or twice a month and it's always with different words. My Word Builders station is always the same, but with different letters. Buddy Reading and Vocabulary expectations always stay the same as well. Then I just rotate my more specific skill-based stations in and out of the monthly line-up based on my students' needs. 

Students are able to choose their own math stations/games as long as they are listed in the Math Stations section. I rotate game options every month as well. Finally, there are Finished Early Stations for those quick-finishers. 

All of this structure frees me up to work with small groups for intervention and enrichment!

 

Life in Early Arizona

We recently finished our study of cultures in prehistoric Arizona. We focused on the Mogollon, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), and Hohokam cultures. As our final project, students wrote first-person narratives from the perspective of a child in one of those cultures. They created foldables that included interesting facts about their culture, a narrative about a day-in-the-life of a child in that culture, a diagram of their home based on research, and a self-portrait that included cultural elements. They turned out great! Here are a few of my favorites!

Where in the World?

For the past several years, I've noticed that my students truly lack a sense of geography. They have a hard time differentiating between cities, states, countries, and continents. They have no idea if they live closer to Canada or China! This summer, I ran into a friend from high school and found out that she teaches in China. She asked for my school address and started sending my students postcards about her experiences there! Then, we mysteriously started receiving other postcards from all over the world! It turns out that Hana had sent our school address to her friends and family who have pretty much adopted our classroom. Almost every week, we receive a postcard from somewhere in the world. After we read it, we post it on our map. We also find the locations of events (real or imaginary) as we read and we mark those on our map too. This simple 5 minute weekly activity is helping my students expand their worldview beyond their own neighborhood. We feel like we're taking a trip around the world!

Gradual Changes to Earth's Surface

We've been studying gradual changes to Earth's surface in science: weathering, erosion, and deposition. First we did an investigation involving the difference between the effects  on a mineral of one weathering agent (rocks) and two weathering agents (rocks and water). We found that two weathering agents cause more weathering than just one. 

Then we did another model involving sand paper and wood. Sand paper acts as the weathering agent on Earth's surface (the piece of wood). Then we watch as wind erosion carries the sediments (wood dust) to a new location. 

Today we modeled the three processes using clay. I want to give a shout-out to Mr. Avery, our amazing art teacher, who provided us with the clay so Miss Barber didn't have to go buy it! Woo hoo!

Character Trait Charlie

This idea was a collaboration between our fourth grade team. We noticed that our students needed more exposure to character trait vocabulary words and their meanings. They also needed to practice proving that characters were displaying these traits using textual justification. So we created Character Trait Charlie! Each week, we replaced 6 of our regular spelling words with character trait words. We study the words and describe the actions, feelings, thoughts, and words that a character with this trait would use/have. Then we categorize each trait as positive or negative. It's so easy to refer to these words as we are reading now that we have studied them and they are always visible.

Happy Holidays!

Our class had a wonderful day together on the Friday before winter vacation. First, we were surprised by a group of "carolers" - some of our school's advanced band students! We were quietly working in our classroom when we heard music coming from outside our door! Miss Barber peeked outside and saw the ensemble with our band director, Mr. Graca. We all went outside and enjoyed our mini-concert with all of the other fourth and fifth grade classes in this wing of our school. What a wonderful surprise!

We also completed some elf projects. My students are so creative! We had teacher elves, security elves, reindeer elves, toy-making elves, ASU elves, and so much more! We also wrote notes to our Secret Santas - the student who we watched all week in order to catch them doing something kind, generous, caring, respectful, responsible, etc. It was so fun to read the kind words that our friends had to say about us and to find out who had been secretly watching us all week!

The Pumpkin Patch

This idea came from a colleague last year who did a "Secret Santa" activity with her students each year. I adapted it and started doing it every month to encourage positive behaviors. We love it! At the end of every month, my students receive a special mission. They are given the name of one student to watch and observe all week. This is a top-secret assignment. No one knows who is watching them! The goal is to spot that person doing one or two kind, friendly, generous, respectful, responsible things during the week. Then, at the end of the week, each student decorates a pumpkin, turkey, snowflake, heart, clover, rainbow, etc. (depending on the month) for their top-secret person. On the back, they write about the great things they saw that person doing. Then Miss Barber collects them and posts them on the board. At the end of the day, each student receives the item with their name on it and gets to read about the positive things they were spotted doing that week. It's such a fun surprise!

On the last day, we all are dying in suspense because we see our name on the board but we still don't know who was spying on us all week! Even Miss Barber participates in the fun and watches a students all week (and has a student watching her all week). Many of the students keep their pumpkins in their pencil boxes as reminders of the ways that other students appreciate them and their good behavior. What an encouragement!

Welcome Back!

Miss Barber's class is in full swing after a wonderful summer vacation! Look for some summer pictures coming soon!

I wanted to share two awesome things that we've been working on already in fourth grade! First is our mission statement and social contract. These two documents were student created and they direct everything we do in our classroom. I'm so proud of their wonderful ideas!

Secondly, we've been studying plant structures and pollination. One of my brilliant students - "L" - created this pollination diagram with our blocks during free choice time today! Notice the bee at the bottom flower. The bee then leaves with pollen (green triangle) on it's back and visits another flower. Then the pollen creates a seed which is released from the flower and becomes a new plant! So amazing! Great job, L! :)

We Will Rock the AIMS!

It's that time again - time to show the world what we know and rock the AIMS test! Here are some inspirational videos we're watching every morning to get ourselves pumped up and ready to go!

Never Give Up - Lopez Lomong

No Excuses

I Can Do This

Make It Count

Seeing the Lightbulbs Turn On!

Thanks to a wonderful professional development provided by SRP, Miss Barber's class received some amazing materials to help us investigate electricity! We learned that the flow of electrons is called an electric current and that's the type of electricity that batteries produce. To demonstrate, we set up a battery on the floor with tape. Then the students stood on the wires in pairs of protons and electrons (+ and - stress balls) with a group of protons on the + side of the battery and a group of electrons on the - side of the battery. Finally we modeled the flow of electrons and showed how a battery "goes dead."

The next day, we created simple circuits, series circuits, and parallel circuits in groups. Thanks for helping us experience electricity, SRP!

Which circuit is a parallel circuit? Which is a series circuit?

How do area and perimeter change?

We have recently been investigating area and perimeter. We know that perimeter is found when we "ADD ALL SIDES" and area is found when we "COVER UP" or find the "SPACE INSIDE."  Last week we investigated what happened when we took a rectangle or triangle, cut it into two pieces, and rearranged them to form a new shape. What happened to the perimeter? What happened to the area? Here are our answers!

Teaching Theme

We have recently been learning about finding the theme of a text. The theme is the THE MEssage for your life and oftentimes the author writes about a main character that learns a lesson in order to teach the readers that same lesson as well. Patricia Polacco's books are some of the best examples of texts with themes. On Friday, we read "The Bee Tree" and found the theme after identifying characters, setting, plot events, problem, and solution. We recorded our learning using a "somebody wanted but so then" summary that includes the theme/moral at the end.

We just put up a "common themes of literature" poster to help us as we read. 

Dialogue Journals

Dialogue journals waiting to be read and replied to on Sunday night

We use dialogue journals to practice writing friendly letters and to develop student-teacher relationships. My students and I write notes back and forth to each other throughout the year and it gives me a chance to really get to know each one of them on a more personal level. It also allows me to assess their writing growth as the year goes on and to watch as their punctuation and spelling improves and their ability to write using the friendly letter format with appropriate ideas/content develops. 

An example of our letters back and forth  (student's name has been blurred)