It's still crazy to think that we have one-to-one Chromebooks in fourth grade. It's not super natural for me to consider the incorporation of technology when I'm lesson planning, but I know that the more I give kids the opportunity to use the Chromebooks, the more confident they'll be when it comes to using the technological tools and resources we have available to us. The biggest hurdle for most kids is their typing skills. Some kids don't use computers at home, so they haven't had much exposure to typing. In addition, I remember literally having typing classes when I was in school, with lessons on how to place our hands on the keyboard and lots of practice to build up our typing pace and stamina. That's not the case anymore, and to be honest, I think it's a bummer. It already feels like there's not enough time in the day, so it's a challenge fitting typing practice into our schedule. But we'll do what we can! I have a bunch of typing games on the "For Students" page of my class website, and I've started giving kids a little time to play them in school in hopes that they'll play some of them at home. During intervention block, I've started creating assignments through online programs like Readworks.org and Commonlit.org. I can select and revise assignments based on the particular skills and strategies kids need to practice, and having the majority of the class working on Chromebooks allows me to focus on teaching differentiated small group lessons. We've also used an app called Kahoot!, which the kids really like. I created a multiple-choice pretest for our fiction unit, and the kids used their Chromebooks to select their answers. This past week, we took the quiz again to track the students' understanding of the standards and vocabulary addressed during the unit. It's an engaging way to gather data in relation to student growth and understanding of a topic, and I'm going to try to use it on a regular basis.

We used the Chromebooks on Friday to continue our focus on writing about characters. Students are typing up a paragraph about a character of their choosing, and then creating a word cloud displaying traits and other information about their character. The word clouds are a lot of fun for the kids to create, and a good incentive for them to work hard on the paragraph itself, since they can't do the word cloud until I've approved their writing! Another activity we did this week addressed one of the concerns the kids had during our post-test reflection, which is their lack of character trait vocabulary. It's hard to come up with traits for characters when you don't know a lot of traits in the first place. So we worked in small groups to explore about 20 new words and their meanings using characters in short fables. Both classes did a great job during this activity.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Kaleah and Basilia. Kaleah had her best week yet. She's been working hard on developing a growth mindset, and I love when I see her proud of herself for not giving up and persevering through difficult work. She excitedly came up to me a few times this week after math class, and I love seeing her eager to share her achievements with me. Basilia has made it known since the beginning of the year that she really values the feedback I give her on her work. She wrote me such a nice note this week regarding the feedback I gave her in her writing notebook. Going through all the kids' Quick Writes takes a lot of time, but it's so worth it when students appreciate and learn from my feedback. Nice job, ladies!

Our first ELA test of the school year? Check! We had our fiction test this week, which covered everything from fiction reading strategies and characteristics of fiction texts, to analyzing figurative language and writing a text-based essay about a character. Though only seven questions, this test wasn’t easy in that there were a lot of two-part questions. It ended up taking most of the kids a solid two class periods. Whenever we take a test, I always set aside a class period post-test that gives students time for revisions and reflection based on my feedback. It’s important that students view learning as a process, and that assessments don’t just receive a final grade without an opportunity to take my feedback into consideration and apply it to their work. Prior to revisions, I don't include any scores on their answers. Instead, I provide comments and questions in hopes of guiding them to make revisions that result in stronger, clearer responses. We discuss the questions as a class, talk about trends I noticed, and clear up any misunderstandings the kids may have. It isn't until after revisions that I attach a number to each question and grade the test. Students will bring those home this week to show parents, and we'll continue working one-on-one, in small groups, and as a class on various "trouble areas" that were revealed through this test and our whole group reflective discussion on the unit.

On Thursday, we concluded our unit for health, which had a teacher named Mrs. Schneider come in and teach fourteen 40-minute lessons on various topics. Between this unit and the twice-weekly yoga classes we had at the start of the school year, we unfortunately haven't done much social studies. But our schedule is finally back to normal, which will allow us much more time for writing and social studies when the students are with me in the afternoons. Our first unit is on map skills, and on Friday Ms. Tosches came in and integrated this focus with STEAM. Students applied their knowledge of the cardinal directions to create a scratch simulation that had them directing a cat around Somerville. It was cool to see them code, as they know more about coding than I do!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Kailynn and Colin. Kailynn worked really hard on her ELA test. I didn't hear a single complaint from her, despite its not-so-fun length. Lately she's shown a resilience and ability to bounce back from frustration that makes me proud. Colin is hilarious. He makes me smile everyday with his witty remarks and insightful comments. I can't wait to have lunch with him and a friend tomorrow :) 

Most teachers dread coming into school the morning after Halloween. Most years, I fit into that majority, cringing at the thought of the kids’ excessive candy consumption throughout the day, and the inevitable sugar highs and lows that come with it. It doesn’t exactly make for a normal day at school. But this past Thursday morning, I couldn’t wait for the kids to show up. Though many of them were bound to come in bursting with excitement, stories from the night before, and backpacks full of candy, I was so pumped for them to see the surprise bulletin board I had been planning for the last few weeks. Back in September, I got an email from Viola and Will’s mom with a photo of them both engrossed in books on their couch. It was awesome seeing my students in action at home. I love reading, and I love seeing kids love reading, so it led me to an idea. I sent out an email to all our 4th grade parents, asking that they try to discreetly snap a photo of their child reading outside of school, and then send the photo to me. Over the course of 2-3 weeks, I gathered these pictures of my students reading at home, and then got them printed at CVS. After school on Wednesday, I put together a bulletin board with all the photos, and at the top of the board I included a title that says “Look Who Got Caught Reading…” I want the kids to know how important reading is and how much I appreciate an enthusiasm for reading, and I’m hoping this motivates those kids who don’t read enough at home to start doing so. So, getting to see the looks on the kids’ faces upon noticing the board, and the photos of them (and their classmates) engaged in books at home, made for a pretty exciting morning-after-Halloween. 

This week, Mrs. O’Keefe’s homeroom got a chance to do the character trait stop motion animation. Then on Friday, we did stations that focused on various skills and strategies we spent time on during our fiction unit. Two of those stations involved STEAM, made possible (yet again) by Ms. Tosches. She designed one station that integrated character traits with Makey Makey, an electronic tool involving circuits and a connected Chromebook, and another station that used Beebots. The Beebots station required students to show their knowledge of story elements (as well as differentiate between traits and feelings) through coding. These activities, along with the other two stations, served as a review for the fiction unit test we’ll be having next week. Though it’s a test, it’s important to note that our fiction unit isn’t coming to an end just yet. Following the test, we have 1-2 weeks of reteaching that will be based on how they did on the assessment and what areas the kids would most benefit revisiting. While there’ll surely be some common trends, areas of need will vary from student to student, and the test will allow me to determine which students could use further instruction in each standard associated with this particular reading unit.

Our Bucket Filler this week was Mihali. I’ve known Mihali’s family for a few years now, and I was really looking forward to having Mihali in class. It was easy to anticipate that he’d be a pleasure to teach, but honestly, he’s surpassed my expectations. He’s kind to others, hardworking, respectful, and silly, and he’s made me grateful in his own appreciation for the high expectations I set for my students. Go Mihali!

 

 

The Kennedy School is so lucky to have Lindsey Tosches. For the last three years, Ms. Tosches has taught sixth grade at the Kennedy. This year, she continues to teach sixth grade science, but she also has a new role as our school's STEAM/Innovation Learning Specialist. She works with all grade levels on a weekly basis to incorporate STEAM into the curriculum. Now, as an ELA/Social Studies teacher, I've always found it a little more challenging to incorporate STEAM into my lessons and units in an authentic, beneficial way. There are so many ideas out there of how to do it, but I just haven't felt confident in implementing them. And in reality, STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics-- Science and Math are literally part of the name! So when Ms. Tosches took on this new role, I viewed it as an opportunity to seek some guidance in how to apply the STEAM approach to my subject areas. She began the year in Mrs. O'Keefe's room, and this past week it was my turn to benefit from Ms. Tosches's expertise. Right now our focus in ELA is on character traits, and using evidence from texts to support those traits. After sharing this focus with Ms. Tosches, she found a way to integrate character traits with stop motion animation. The kids read a story called The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco. After digging into the story's characters, students were grouped in twos and assigned one of the characters from the text. Their goal was to identify at least two traits to describe their character and explain their thinking using specific evidence from the story. On Friday, my homeroom selected one of the traits to illustrate using the character's actions and words in a scene from the text. They created the characters and props for the scene with pipe cleaners and paper, and physically manipulated those materials in small increments while taking pictures with an iPad. When the series of frames are played back as a fast sequence, it will create an illusion of movement. They'll have a video displaying their character's actions, which represents the trait that they came up with for their character. Pretty cool, huh? Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom will get started on this project tomorrow, and both classes will complete it by the end of the week. I can't wait to see the finish products!

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Braedyn and Emma. I love how much Braedyn participates. He is always raising his hand and putting himself out there, and he's very kind, patient, and positive. He is just an all-around great kid. Emma is fabulous. Her love for reading and writing is a dream come true for an ELA teacher like me. She makes me smile on a daily basis with her creativity, wit, and insight. I'm loving being her teacher!

 

 

As I sit here thinking back on this past week—our focus areas during class, memorable activities, special events—one word comes to the forefront of my mind: compliments. This year, Mrs. O'Keefe and I are being flexible with our use of time on half day Wednesdays. Each week we have a half day, we check in with each other the Monday or Tuesday beforehand. Since the time on half days is so limited, we discuss how we want to schedule the day, particularly when there are certain assignments or subjects one homeroom is further behind in than the other homeroom. That being said, we've been consistent in regards to allotting time for Second Step. I, personally, love Second Step, as I think social-emotional learning is so important. Having a common language when it comes to the ideas we've taught into (like empathy and "listening with attention") allows us to use this vocabulary in a variety contexts. Plus, it's always beneficial to talk about feelings and coping strategies, and I tend to get pretty invested in the lessons...Well this week, the focus of our Second Step lesson was compliments, which naturally got me even more excited. For the last five minutes or so of the half-hour lesson and discussion, we cautiously attempted an activity that required students to pass around paper and write compliments to each other. BUT they had to do it in complete silence. Almost 40 kids...in one room...writing one-sentence specific compliments about their classmates...then hand-delivering them to each other. We had ten pieces of paper going, creating chain-reactions of compliments. And guess what? You could've heard a pin drop in that classroom. The kids took it seriously, and what they wrote to each other was so kind. Five minutes ended up being way too short, so we'll definitely have to do a "part two" sometime soon. On Friday afternoon when I had Mrs. O'Keefe's homeroom, we engaged in a similar idea, which is a compliment chain as we sit in a circle on the rug. I do these a few times a year, and love hearing the nice things they say to each other! 

On Monday, we attended a performance in the cafeteria put on by the National Theatre for Children. This program travels to schools around the country and performs improv based on topics students are learning about in school. Our show was called The Energized Guys: Powered Up. Two performers came and taught the kids about energy, electricity, and energy conservation while incorporating ideas from audience members and even inviting a few lucky volunteers to take part in the skits. Check out the pictures of Seriyah on stage, as she was selected as one of those participants and did a great job representing us fourth graders.

Seriyah was also one of our Bucket Fillers of the week. Her start to the school year has been unparalleled when it comes to self-awareness and growth. At the beginning of the year, she set goals for herself based on past years and areas in which she felt like she could improve. Her maturation over the course of just two months has undoubtedly been a highlight of my school year so far. Will was also a Bucket Filler this past week. What a phenomenal kid. He is so darn likable, a genuinely kind classmate to all. Not only that, but Will has gone above and beyond when it comes to extra homework. He is constantly doing writings outside of school and bringing them in for me to read. I loooove when kids show me effort and enthusiasm, and Will is constantly doing that when it comes to writing. Nice job, Will!

 

 

Well it’s official: on Friday we had the best day we’ve had all school year. After a rough day on Thursday, I had an honest discussion with both classes about transitions. Now that we’re in fourth grade, there are a lot of transitions. Students need to transition between classrooms and activities several times a day. It’s in those times, when there’s not as much structure, that kids...let’s just say...let loose. Unfortunately that makes it really hard to get settled back down and get back on track and ready to learn. I really don’t like raising my voice, and yet I can’t sit and wait for too long for the noise level to go down and commotion to subside. Well I presented my concerns and frustration to the kids, as I feel like they’re old enough to recognize that we’re a team and that we can problem solve together. Something must’ve clicked because Friday couldn’t have gone better. Transitions were smooth and calm, and not only that, but I received the best report I’ve gotten all year from the music teacher Ms. Ward when I picked up Mrs. O’Keefe’s homeroom from music. We reflected on how good it feels when we do get positive feedback and how proud I was of them. 

Another time Mrs. O’Keefe’s homeroom made me proud was in the afternoon on Friday. I took a course this past summer at Lesley University with a professor named Helen Sisk. The course was one of the best courses I’ve ever taken and Helen's expertise and enthusiasm for teaching inspired me. I think she could tell, because upon completion of the course, she expressed that she would love to work together this year. This partnership is an incredible opportunity for me, but trust me, it’s the kids who are especially going to benefit. She came in on Friday to introduce herself to the class and to talk to a few kids about choices in writing. She plans on using some of the information she gathered to teach a workshop at Lesley on writing instruction. I met with her after the kids left at the end of the day, and she voiced how impressed she was with the students' excitement for writing and learning. She also said that when she spoke with the whole class for a few minutes when she first got there (check out the picture below), she was blown away by how welcoming, eager, and respectful all of the kids were. The plan is for Helen to come in at least once a month, and I could not be more thrilled!

This week during our fiction unit we began our focus on character traits. Kids tend to have a hard time differentiating between physical traits, character traits, and character feelings, so on one of the days, we did a sorting challenge in small groups. After a brief discussion on physical traits versus character traits, we moved on to the bigger hurdle: traits versus feelings. In our challenge, the first step was to take an envelope full of describing words and categorize each word as a trait or feeling. Every group of 3-4 students got a different pile of words, and some of the words were pretty darn tough. So each group was given a Chromebook with access to a pre-downloaded Learners Dictionary app to look up words that were unfamiliar to all group members. Oftentimes kids tend to deviate to general traits like nice, mean, and brave. Incorporating more challenging words, like innovative, distractible, and courteous, forces the kids to explore new character trait vocabulary. After the kids sorted their words into traits and feelings, they put the feeling words to the side. The next step was to categorize the trait words based on similarities they noticed as a team. I didn’t tell them how many categories to have, I didn’t tell them what categories to have-- they had to decide that together. Many groups sorted the words into positive traits, negative traits, and neutral traits. Other groups came up with more specific categories. Regardless of the groupings, I really enjoyed seeing them discuss the meanings of the words and collaborate to sort them. Getting to know characters in fiction is something we will continue to explore over the next few weeks of this reading unit. This was just the beginning!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Leila and Petra. Leila was one of the students who shared a writing with Helen. When I chatted with Helen after the kids left, she told me how much fun it was to listen to Leila talk about her writing in such an excited and animated way. She really enjoyed her time with Leila, which isn’t very surprising considering how likable Leila is! And then there’s Petra. On one of the homework assignments this week, students were asked to write about a friend, family member, or someone they admire using character traits and evidence to support those traits. Well Petra knew I had a rough day the day before and chose me. She included a detailed paragraph for each trait, resulting in one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever received. I love thoughtfulness, and Petra's thoughtfulness was the perfect way to kick off an overall wonderful day in room 210.

Picture this: It's Monday morning. The kids stroll into room 210, ready to tackle another week of 4th grade. It's (relatively) quiet in the classroom, as the kids get started on their Quick Write and I put the finishing touches on the lesson's learning target. I open my mouth to speak when, all of a sudden, music floods the classroom. It's loud, and it's catchy, and we have NO idea where it's coming from. With puzzled expressions on our faces, we hastily crane our necks every which way in hopes of finding the source of the spirited tune, and as I begin to mentally rehearse my "No cell phones in school!" lecture, the music is interrupted by a thundering voice. "GOOOOD MORNING BOYS AND GIRLS! COACH MARSHALL HERE, AND WELCOME TO HEALTH AND FITNESS WEEK!" It. Was. Hilarious. And it definitely kicked off our first community week of the school year with a memorable bang. I really enjoy the themed weeks we have sprinkled throughout the school year at the Kennedy School, and this one was especially nice in that I got to wear comfy workout clothes every single day! Some of the events included a school-wide dance lesson, a fitness challenge, an obstacle course in gym class, and school-wide mindfulness led by Ms. Vendola over the intercom. The kids were soooo good during the mindfulness exercise, and even though it lasted close to five minutes, I got to participate too. I genuinely didn't have to redirect anyone or quiet anyone down-- it was awesome! It was ironic that our last week of yoga fell on this week of health and fitness. Jess, our yoga instructor, is absolutely wonderful. She's such a talented instructor that by the end, the students were leading the sun salutations. It was incredible to watch them progress over the four weeks. We'll miss her, but she plans on visiting us as she moves on to her next cycle with the 5th graders.


This week, we began implementing a focus on words. Every year, I've noticed that kids have trouble with vocabulary and spelling. So this year, I really want to foster my students' awareness of words, build their vocabulary, and explore spelling patterns. I'm working with our ELA coach Mrs. George on developing a systematic vocabulary routine that will eventually lead to students selecting and "digging into" unfamiliar words. (The two words we focused on this week? Plot and context...test your child's understanding of the two words!) For spelling, Ms. Fudge, Ms. Jareo, and I will be working together to plan and lead spelling lessons and activities 3-4 times a week. We are using a program called Spellography that introduces students to spelling patterns and rules that they can apply beyond just weekly preselected lists. I have high hopes for this approach, and I'm grateful to be collaborating with so many of my colleagues.

Our Bucket Fillers of the week were Dylan and Rakia. It's funny that these two got picked on the same week, as they both stand out to me for their thoughtfulness and positive attitudes. They both help their classmates and teachers without expecting anything in return. Dylan helped me clean up every single yoga mat on Thursday after he saw me start helping Jess roll them up. He seemed unfazed by his classmates eagerly grabbing their belongings to go home, as he continued to quietly and calmly roll up his peers' mats. It was really admirable. Rakia is new to our school this year, but you'd never know it. She gets along with everyone, and is the first person to ask me how my day's going or to wish me a good afternoon. I love how polite and attentive she is. Nice job, Rakia and Dylan!