A Moment (Again)

About a month ago, I shared a moment that occurred in my classroom while reading the book Wonder. I had another moment with my students, but this one wasn't so... umm, well, I don't want to give away the whole story. 

Brace yourself. This was one of those brain farts (for lack of better terms). 

We are studying the states and capitals in social studies for the remainder of the year. I was all jazzed up talking about the Northeastern region and calling on kids left and right. We came to the state of New York and I said, "Bob (pseudonym for obvious reasons), what's the capital of New Yorrrrrrk?". Yes, you can imagine that I was singing it like Alicia Keys. I like to add my (non-existent) musical talents to my teaching.  

He confidently shouted back, "New York City!!!"

I replied, confidently, "YEP! You GOT IT!"

.........oops.

No more than 5 seconds after I shouted the wrong capital, 98% of my class shouted, "it's ALBANY."

Let's hope that my face was calm, cool, and collected as I cheerfully responded, "Oh good! You're all paying attention! I was just testing you."

I mean, really! All you can do is laugh. 

Book Hall of Fame

As a little end of the year activity, my class voted on a Book Hall of Fame!

Students were given the chance to nominate ANY book they read this year or in previous years. We compiled a huge list of titles on the computer. Once I had everything copied and ready, students voted on their top five choices. 

Our classroom TOP 3 winners were:

Wonder by R.J. Palacio 

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Drizzle by Kathleen Van Cleve

Now, I have a bulletin board ready with book suggestions for next year's students! Hopefully, my students next year will use the billboard when selecting books to start the year. 

What bulletin boards do you have planned? Do share! I'm a planner. :)

Civil War

Happy May! I cannot believe that school is winding down. Someone will have to grab me a box of tissues if I keep thinking about it. Since state testing is over for the year (wahoo!), we're able to go back to having fun in the classroom again. On Monday, we kicked off our Civil War unit. Instead of using our social studies time for this unit, I'm using my Communication Arts block because we're tying in so many reading strategies and skills.  I decided early on that I wanted my students to participate in the Civil War simulation by Scholastic. Side bar: it's currently $5.00 as an e-book!!! 

Have you done a simulation before? This will be my first attempt, but I'm really excited to get the students talking and writing about Civil War experiences. Before diving into the simulation, I wanted my kids to have a little background on what caused the war, important people, and common vocabulary. 

To begin, I divided my classroom into the North and the South. The simulation has students assume a roll of a Union or Confederate solider - I decided to tie in a little geography as well. 

I assigned each table a region of the United States. I know what you're thinking! Yes, we used a modern map to assemble our regions. Considering many states nowadays were not states in the 1860's, this led to a great conversation! 

As a small group, students had to cut out the states in their region and assemble them like a puzzle. I put three regions on the northern side and two on the south. I needed the Union to have more students, so the west was flexible. :)

Region... Assemble!

After small groups assembled their region, I laminated and hung them above their tables. If you've been a follower of my blog, you know about my pods. You can read about those here.  In short, I like to name my pods, or groups, terms that I want the students to remember for-ev-er. 

Now, we have 5 regions of the United States hanging in our classroom and we made a HUGE red, white, and blue paper chain that cuts the classroom right down the middle. The picture below was taken during M.A.P. testing and prior to the regions hanging. Trust me, the classroom is a more cheerful place now. 

Pre-Regions Hanging - During MAP testing, yuck!

Whew! Are you still with me? 

The paper chain thoroughly intrigued my students and they were DYING to know if they were in the North or South. I was mean and made them wait through Spring Break before I told them. 

This week, we have been A Classroom Divided Against Itself. Well, for an hour and half every day then things go back to normal. :) Our week, prior to the simulation, has consisted of these activities:

• Jigsaw of important and influential people from the Civil War: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglas, etc. 
• Video of the causes of the Civil War, afterwards we completed an Cause & Effect diagram
• Mapping out the union and confederate states on a map

I've also read aloud a few picture books about the Civil War. I LOVE reading aloud to my students and now I feel like we have the time available. Some of the titles we've read and plan to read are:

The Silent Witness

Pink & Say

Abe's Honest Words

On Monday, we are going to put together our Civil War journals for the simulation. Look for an update next week complete with fun pictures and feedback from my students. 

What have you done in your classroom to study the Civil War? Do share! 

25

Do you hear that? Listen closely...

It's the sweet sound of the END of state testing! When school resumes tomorrow, things will go back to normal - well, as normal as they can be during the month of May. 

Last week I celebrated my 25th birthday. Are you familiar with the movie Miss Congenitally?  My birthday's claim to fame is a line from that movie!

(Pardon my screenshot from my iPhone - oops!)

Since it was my golden birthday, turning 25 on the 25th of April, my sweet boyfriend made me a golden cake to enjoy! It was even polished off with gold sprinkles. 

All day long I received lots of sweet messages, cards, and goodies from my friends and family. I was certainly spoiled on my birthday as well as the entire weekend. 

To round out the festivities, we celebrated with my family in my hometown. My cute (almost) 4 year old nephew was more than willing to assist in the candle department. 

... as you can see, I didn't quite think that one through. The look on my face, my Dad's face, and BDE's face cracks me up. 

Now that we're doing with the MAP test, my creative juices are flowing again. Tomorrow we're starting THREE brand new units in Social Studies, Communication Arts, and Science. For a few weeks, I felt like I was swimming in a pool of test prep - not anymore! 

Happy Monday :)

Dear America & Prezi

With all the madness of standardized test prep, I wanted to give my students a little shift in our classroom tone. I felt it was time to implement book clubs, but I wanted to challenge many of my readers to stretch outside their comfort zone.  A small percentage of my readers engage in historical fiction and I wanted to expose others to the greatness as well. First, we started with an introduction to what historical fiction is: 

Bless Pinterest for the assistance I needed with this anchor chart. Although, I can't quite find the source at the moment. I'll keep hunting!

Then, I went to the library and checked out almost all of the Dear America series of books. We have a wide variety of male and female diaries that cover a vast timeline. Immediately, I thought about the incredible conversations students can have across topics. How is WWII experienced from a daughter of a newspaper editor? How is that different from a solider? How about from a resident of Pearl Harbor? I presented the books to my students with great excitement. I let them check out the books and their synopsis with their small groups and approve my selection. I wanted the students to be interested in the subject matter and not feel like I'm forcing them to read them. Surprisingly, all of my students kept their books. Now that they're finishing the stories, I have several students swapping titles. :) I can also thank the 4th grade teachers in my building who read the Oregon Trail book to my kids. 

While students have been reading, I've given them time to chat within their small group about the plot, setting, and most importantly: perspective. Since we're reading "Wonder" right now, we've had great discussions about the power of perspective writing and reading. 

So many titles - So little time!

As a final product, students are creating presentations in Prezi. I gave my students a mini tutorial on Prezi and warned them that at times, it is easy to get frustrated, but to stick with it! Each book group was given a Prezi Planning Guide. If you want a copy of my planning guide, email me! [jordon.furnell@gmail.com] The planning guide helps students draw out themes, character traits, historical events, golden quotes, and so on. Several groups finished their novels today and got started on their planning guides. Also, the project can be modified to create power points or poster presentations instead.

One of my girls finished her story, "Early Sunday Morning", on Friday afternoon. I was a little alarmed when I heard, "WHAT! IT'S OVER?" from across the room. I walked over to chat with her and she was very distraught over the ending and how the author could just leave her.... like that. It was obvious she was extremely invested in the story and her character, Amber. 

How's everyone else out there? Swimming through test prep like us? 

Woof. 

A Moment

My 5th graders and I are completely captivated by Wonder. I had so many bloggers share their experiences while reading this story with their class a few weeks ago. Today, I had a "moment" with my students.

Let me paint the picture for you, my students were chomping away on their birthday cookie cake and I was reading aloud from the front of the room. I begin reading about Auggie's first Halloween at Beecher Prep. If you're familiar with this story, you know what part I'm referring to. I won't spoil it for everyone else. As I read about Auggie's heartache, I looked up and realized I had 21 sets of eyes locked on me. Eyes that were wide open with horror, amazement, and empathy.

I closed the book to stop reading for the day - gosh I'm mean - and looked up at my students. All eyes and voices were begging me to continue and I said, "Doesn't that just break your heart?" In unison I heard a sympathetic "yessss!" in reply.... and one, rather loud, "NO." I was a little taken back and I asked the student, "what makes you say no?" He responded simply, "It's fiction. He isn't real."

Being the reader that I am, I wanted to hop on my soapbox and say, "YES HE IS! YOU BE NICE TO AUGGIE! HE DOESN'T DESERVE THIS."

I refrained. Instead, I hopped on another soapbox, one about the power of fiction writing. I told my little naysayer, that yes he was right - it is fiction and Auggie isn't real, but what Palacio has done for us is create a character that is so lifelike and relatable that we can't help but feel emotions for them. Powerful writing holds your attention and makes the characters (real or imagined) feel as if they're sitting in your living room. I asked my students if they've ever thought about the characters while they aren't reading? I asked my students if they've ever put themselves in the characters position? Suddenly, I realized that my little naysayer has sparked a beautiful conversation in my room about the power or storytelling and reading. I shared personal experiences with my students where I, too, had worried and wondered about the fate of characters. I asked a gentleman who is in book three of the Harry Potter series if he thought of Harry and his pals outside of the book and he quickly nodded his head in agreement.

This little incident only lastly about seven minutes, but it was probably the most important and most authentic conversation we had all day. I realized that my students were reading (and listening) because they truly enjoy stories. They aren't reading for the sake of levels or because they have to, they're become life long readers and I wish nothing more for them.

Let's Blog, Folks!

Do you blog with your students? I can officially say we're bloggers now! Last week, I gave my students the task of identifying one scientist, inventor, or discovery to research and write and informational blog post on. I'll be honest, when I FIRST introduced the project you could hear crickets in the room. Even after a few failed attempts at pumping them up... I still heard crickets. I'm fairly certain the only thing they heard me say was "research". 

As a class, we used the blogging platform KidBlog.org. I created an account (for free) and entered all of my students. The great part about KidBlog - you must have a password to read ALL of the posts. You can see the title of the blog, but in order to read anything a password must be entered.

The first question I had to tackle was, "what is blogging?". I relied on my good friends, Tim and Moby to do that for me. In their short BrainPOP, they hit the big ideas of a weblog being an online journal. They even go as far to describe different purposes for blogging. Perfect jumpstart for our project. 

Click here to take you to the BrainPOP about blogging. The best news is that it's FREE!

After giving my students the rundown on blogging and KidBlog, I gave both of my science classes this task: 

You will research the biography of one famous scientist and inventor. Determine the nature of their work, ethnic background, gender, and area of study. In a typed blog post, you will describe how their work contributed to science and technology. 

In 5th grade, we have several GLEs regarding the impact of science, technology, and human activity. I was (and still am!) confident that this project was a successful one to cover those areas. 

On our first day of class, I had my kids identify who they wanted to research. We started small and gathered resources. If you would like a copy of our research page, email me! [jordon.furnell@gmail.com]. I love sharing resources!

Each day of class, we spent about a week on this, I gave a mini lesson on different features of blogging.  One day, I showed them how to edit and publish their blog. On Friday, our mini lesson was about inserting an image into the blog. For the most part, students really got the hang of things. While I was explaining our blog, I even had a student leave me comment that said, "okey dokey." Clearly, he had things figured out. 

Do you blog with your students? What types of things do you blog about? What other social media outlets do you use? I would love to expand our blogging outside of science and biographies. Share your ideas!