On Thursday of this week, I got to sit back, relax, and enjoy as a bunch of fearless, hardworking students took over my role as teacher. The week prior, I had presented an extra credit opportunity that had students developing a lesson plan to teach the class about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The guidelines weren't very specific; they just needed a thought-out plan with the goal of helping the class define and identify these parts of speech. Why? Well, sometimes, kids can explain things to other kids in a way that makes more sense than when explained by adults. Although we’ve been doing a lot of practice around nouns, verbs, and adjectives lately, mastering these parts of speech is no easy task. Many students are having trouble identifying these types of words in sentences, and even those students who seem to be getting it needed some extra practice. The turn out? Well, FOURTEEN kids opted to take part in this assignment and design original lessons to share with their classmates. I was blown away by the effort and creativity, and it was so much fun. Kids had all sorts of lessons--Google Slides, whole class activities, small group games, handouts, Google classroom assignments--and the rest of the group were engaged, supportive participants for each student-turned-teacher. Not only that, but as I mentioned to them, if you can teach something, then that's proof you really know something. So by challenging themselves and taking on this opportunity, they truly needed to familiarize themselves with these parts of speech. I was very proud, to say the least!

Another neat activity this week took place on Friday. It began from an observation I've made recently around when students are faced with more challenging assignments. I've noticed that when students are having trouble or "stuck", it's tough to get them out of that helpless frame of mind. So, I brought in expert reinforcements to help me address this predicament: Ms. Tosches and her innovative brain. I shared what was going on with her, and we designed a lesson around growth mindset, mindfulness, and divergent thinking. It couldn't have gone better. We talked about how important it is to check in with ourselves and recognize our own feelings without judgement. We also emphasized that it's okay to be stressed or stuck at times, but it's what we do in those situations that can help us build resilience, move forward, and even strengthen the connections in our brain. Students were then given a few materials and told that they had five minutes to make something with them. They had to do this in silence, and we checked in with how we were feeling at the beginning and end of the five minutes. After time was up, we came together as a whole class to reflect and share the feelings we experienced throughout the activity. Many students voiced that the time constraint was anxiety-provoking, and that they ran into difficulties when testing out some of the components of their prototype's design. Students shared ideas of how they moved beyond those roadblocks, and we talked about what we can do and say to ourselves when we find ourselves feeling a similar way in the classroom. Then, they got a chance to try the challenge again. It was truly great, and I can't wait to use our talking points and problem solving strategies moving forward.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were James and Mihali. I was so proud of James this week when he read an entire paragraph in front of the class. I love when he reads out loud, because he is a strong reader! It takes more effort and energy for him to read aloud, but he is so capable, and seeing the giant, proud smile emerge on his face after reading immediately caused a giant, proud smile to emerge on my face. A little bit later, I saw James in the hallway when I was with my homeroom. I gave him a high five, and let this crew of kids know what a nice job James had done reading. Mihali immediately praised him and voiced his excitement on James's behalf. That's what I love about Mihali: he is not only bright and hardworking, he is a genuinely kind kid who is supportive of his classmates. He is humble, easygoing, patient, respectful, and reflective, and I think the world of him. Congrats James and Mihali!

 

 

  

 

 

  

    

It always blows my mind how brave kids are when they can get up on stage in front of a large crowd of people and recite lines from memory. I could literally never do it! So, needless to say, I was so proud of all of our fourth graders (Petra, Lacy, Dylan, Aden, Rakia, Shay, Leila, Annabel R., Annabel C., and Kaleah, with Lauren helping out behind the scenes) who were part of the school drama club performance on Monday morning. It was a nice way to kick off our week (especially considering I got back from a wedding in Texas at 2am on Sunday night/Monday morning......)

Our focus in ELA right now is writing about texts. The kids learned that giving feedback to student work is no walk in the park, as one of their tasks was to read six sample student responses to a text-based question and order them based on what's expected of this type of response. They then had to choose one of these sample responses and "play teacher". They had to type up feedback using the terms we associate with text-based writing (central idea, evidence, explanations, sentence stems, etc). Pretending like they were talking directly to the student who wrote the response, they needed to include some positive feedback, as well as specific suggestions for improvement. It was neat to see them take on that role, and on Thursday I presented the kids with an extra credit opportunity that again put them in my "teacher shoes". In this case, the goal is to design a lesson to teach the class about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I've already had a ton of kids share their ideas with me, and I'm loving the creativity I'm seeing in how they're presenting the information. Like I told them, if you can teach something to someone, then you really have to know it. So, by designing this lesson, participating students are strengthening their understanding of these parts of speech.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Owen and Viola. Owen was inspired by his classmate Ryker's extra credit project on the country of Monaco (Lacy also presented an extra credit project this week!), and he began doing his own research on a topic of his choosing. He even came in early the other day to use a Chromebook and find pictures to go along with his research. I love when kids elect to take time outside of school to do anything educational, like extra writings or projects. I can't wait for Owen to present his findings to the class! Viola is a gem. She is just consistently on. She works hard in class, she listens, and she uses the resources provided to her to ensure she's handing in high-quality work. She's grown so much in both her reading and writing this year, and she has a heart of gold. I really enjoy being both Owen and Viola's teacher!

  

  

 

We survived our first field trip, and fortunately our primarily positive behavior proved that we can handle more field trips in the future! We went to the Longfellow House in Cambridge. Since they limit the number of people in the house at one time, my homeroom went on Tuesday and Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom went on Wednesday. I got to bring both classes, and I had a great experience with the kids on both days. To get there, we walked to Porter Station, took the T to Harvard, and walked about ten minutes from there. When we got to the house, we were split into two groups. One group started with the tour of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house, while the other group started with the poetry writing workshop. Then we switched. The tour of the house was really neat. In each room, we stopped and analyzed a poem that Longfellow wrote. The poem always related to the particular room we were in. The kids got the opportunity to read parts of the super challenging poems aloud, make sense of them, and ask questions. In the poetry writing workshop, students talked about the word "inspiration" and how it relates to poetry, then they learned how to write a haiku. They then worked in groups of two or three to write their own haiku about a topic that inspires them. The goal was to avoid stating their topic in their poem, but instead use their senses to convey the topic. The rest of the group had to guess what the haiku was about. I loved seeing the kids use their creativity and teamwork to write poetry related to all sorts of sources of inspiration. Make sure to check out the haikus written by both classes below! Can you guess the topic of each poem...?

On Thursday after lunch, the sixth graders came in to teach the fourth graders some strategies for taking notes. They were grouped in twos or threes, and the fourth graders were expected to take notes while the sixth graders shared their Ancient Egypt projects. It was awesome! Kids often overthink note taking, especially in fourth grade when it's a new study skill for them. So it was really beneficial to have sixth grade role models give them advice and feedback on how to take notes in an organized and helpful way.

I was out on Friday because one of my friends from high school got married in San Antonio, Texas. Since I was also just in San Diego for a conference, I feel like I've been out quite a bit lately. Fortunately that streak is over! I got a positive report about the kids' behavior, and the substitute specifically gave me two names of stand out students. So, those are our Bucket Fillers for the week! Those two students were Seriyah and Lyla. Both girls were extremely helpful and polite while I was out. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, as they both have really stepped up in terms of helping me out whenever I need it. I really appreciate the favors they're both constantly doing for me and their eagerness to support me in keeping the classroom running smoothly!