iPad Apps

Green Screen Fun

The kids have been studying Christmas Around the World in the library. So I decided that we would "travel" to their countries and have photos made. I had them use the iPad minis and find a background and they took their picture in front of our green screen.

We used the app Green Screen and this is what they did!

 I love the way they turned out!

Classroom Jobs

I've shared my list of leadership roles that the students in my classroom have. You can see my list here.

So, after seeing this huge list you're probably wondering what some of these are. So here's a quick run down of each job. 

Breakfast Buddy- Goes to the lunchroom in the morning to help younger students open things and clean up after breakfast.

Greeter- Greets people who enter our classroom. Just walk up and say hello and welcome to our classroom.

Tour Guide- When we have special guests in the school, tour guides take them on a tour of our school.

Capri Sun- Our school recycles Capri Sun pouches and students help with this process.

Recycling- Empty classroom recycle bin

Classroom Board- Updates all classroom boards and calendar.

RAK Leader- Random Acts of Kindness leader helps facilitate RAKs our class does.

Computer Lab- Gives hand sanitizer as we enter and takes up ear buds when we leave.

Library- Helps put books back on the shelf and anything else the librarian needs.   

iPad- Makes sure all iPads are accounted for and plugs them in at the end of the day.

Safety- Helps make sure walkways are clear of binders, jackets, and trash.

Communications- Runners who take things to other teachers in the building.

Attendance- Take attendance every morning and lets me know who is absent.

PE- Helps PE coach and even goes in to help K students tie shoes.

Environmental- Cleans up and empties trash cans at the end of the day.

Lunchroom- Lines up students to go to lunch, carries bucket to the lunchroom with extra forks, ketchup, etc. 

Lunch Count- Writes lunch choices on the board and writes the count on a slip to deliver to the lunchroom each morning. Also takes any lunch money to the lunchroom.

Phone- Answers the phone.

Music- We listen to Pandora a lot so this students starts our music.

Tech- Helps with any tech in the classroom. Very helpful when we have a sub.

Paper- Hands back graded papers and other things that need to be sent home.

Sign/Door- We have a Where Are We sign that must be changed when we leave and the door must be closed and locked when we leave. 

Lamp- I have a lot of classroom lamps so this student turns them on in the morning and off in the afternoon.

Desk Inspector- We switch classes and nothing can be left in the desk. This student makes sure nothing is left behind.

Behavior Monitor- Helps monitor behavior in hallway.

Cart Manager- Our classroom has 6 carts with tissue, paper towels, notebook paper, wipes, post it notes, index cards, and hand sanitizer. This student restocks anything that is missing. 

Find Your Voice/Morning Meeting- Find Your Voice is like Show and Tell for big kids. These students look at our Google doc that lists the students who have signed up to share and gets the process going. They also lead morning meeting on Wednesday.

Time Keeper- This student sets a timer any time we need it. This is very helpful when going to lockers or packing up in the afternoon.

Pencil- Makes sure pencils are out and sharpened.

Walkie Talkie- We have to take this to recess each day. This student makes sure I don't forget it. 

Our Giving Tree & Conduction Ice Race

I've been terrible about blogging this year! I'm so sorry to my followers. One of my goals is to get back in the habit of sharing what we're doing in the classroom.

If you've followed my blog for long you probably see that we love doing random acts of kindness in my classroom. I wanted to come up with a way for us to track the RAKs we had done so I decided to create a tree in the hallway. Each time the kids do a random act of kindness they write it on a heart. I plan to add the hearts to the tree as leaves. We are going to call it the Giving Tree.

Here's a picture of the tree before leaves & after a few leaves were added. I can't wait to see what it looks like at the end of the school year!

Our class was so excited that our Donor's Choose project was funded so we were able to get a few new Chromebooks. The kids used them for the first time this week and I can't wait to have them using them more often. 

Finally, we learned about conduction, convection, and radiation last week. 

I gave each student a piece of ice and they raced to see who could use conduction to melt it the fastest. 

Congratulations to the students shown below! They won a trip to Chick-fil-A in a limo! 

Dot Day, Nouns, & Word Problems

This week was Dot Day so I read The Dot to my homeroom class. Every year I use this day to start our random acts of kindness that we do throughout the school year. We pick a door in the school and leave many, many positive post it notes on the door. Of course, my kids wanted to start with Dr. Headen, our new principal. 

The only rules are they must be positive notes and they must sign their name. 

I'm sure she was surprised when she returned to see her door looking like this!

We have been studying nouns and I found this game to help them practice concrete and abstract nouns. The kids loved it!

They played the game in pairs and the winner of the game got a ticket for the good job jar. 

Do you need some games to noun practice? Games 4 Gains had this great pack for Nouns so I purchased it. The kids loved this game and I can't wait to use more of them next week. 

We have also been working on making word problems easier. This is something my students struggle with every year. I wanted to introduce them to this collaborative problem solving activity for 5th grade math. 

So I put the kids in small groups and had them work together to solve the word problem. Then I set up the screen and we used our 4 Mobis so that each group could share their thought process and problem solving. 

I love using the Mobis for this because there are times when groups solve the problem in different ways and they are able to share with the entire class. This time everyone solved it exactly the same way. I like using the groups to solve the problems because it helps those who may struggle with word problems because they help each other!

Simple Subjects & Simple Predicates

I've been a terrible blogger this school year and for that I must apologize. Things have been crazy at school and home. So I decided to share this awesome video a couple of my students made when we learned about simple subjects & predicates. I had them make up hand motions to go along with what we were learning. I saw several of them doing those motions during the test!

1st 2 Weeks- 4 Types of Sentences

I can't believe we've already finished 2 full weeks of school. The first week of school was full of getting to know you activities, learning how to open lockers, and getting back in to the swing of school.

We did several fun things to review the 4 types of sentences. First we watch the Explore webcam and wrote 4 types of sentences about what we saw. 

Later the first week my students went through old magazines and found one picture the liked. They cut it out and glued it to notebook paper. Each student wrote 4 types of sentences about their picture and then shared it with a small group. 

Finally, we wrapped up our review of the 4 types of sentences with this cute activity! Students punctuated sentences, sorted them into categories, and then glued them on to clothes lines. 

STUDENTS: Which sentence activity was your favorite and why?