The students have been busy blogging for a few weeks now and I am so excited to see how it has grown in such a short time. Each week, I set aside an hour for students to write posts for their blogs. I teach  mini-lessons on topics like post organization, internet safety, and plagiarism. Then, the kids set off to write their post.

In the process of researching blogging with students I found this great infographic created by Sylvia Duckworth. I also put a link to the infographic so that you can see it more clearly.

10 Reasons for Student Blogging

The benefits of student blogging are huge. I love that the students are given a voice while at the same time it has created a motivation to write! Over the weeks, I have seen the students start to plan for blog posts. Some have begun pulling out iPads and taking pictures or filming an experiences so that they can write about it later. Others have asked parents to upload pictures of fun outings. The kids are really starting to look their daily life for inspiration for future posts.

It has been fascinating watching the students write. As the year goes on, we will add more and my expectations will increase. We have already talked a lot about copyright laws, public audience and appropriate comments. I look forward to seeing where else this world of student blogging takes us!

Today we celebrated our first stories in 4th grade. It marked the completion of a mini-unit we started on the first week of school. Our Kindergarten buddies came to visit and listened to the kids read their short stories.

They heard stories of small moments from the lives of the kids in our class. They heard about a lightning storm, a trip to Disneyland, Christmas morning, a trip to the water park and much more.

We used this mini-unit to establish the routines and behaviors of the workshop. The students were assigned “thinking partners” at the rug. By talking to the same person everyday, my hope is they build a comfort level with their partner that allows them to think deeper and share more readily.

We start each workshop at the rug where I share one strategy a day that writer’s use in their writing. The students get a chance to try that strategy out with their thinking partner. Then I send the kids off to work on their own stories independently.

I walk around and have individual conferences with students and support them in their writing. I will also pull small groups at this time for students that have similar needs.

We end by coming back together to reflect on our hour of writing. The kids have grown so much in these first few weeks. They have increased their stamina to sit and write too. Some of them actually complain when workshop is over!! Your child will share their first short story with you at conferences. Have a wonderful weekend with family.

We have been hard at work creating a safe and collaborative classroom community. This school-wide PBL was launched the first week of school with a team challenge.

Our Driving Question:

How do we create a school community that ROARs (Respects Others and Acts Responsibly) at all times in all environments?

I asked the kids to build the tallest tower with cups. Each group received an equal number of cups. I did not give many directions and I did not speak of expected behavior. While they were building, I walked around and jotted down positive actions as well as negative ones but I did not intervene very much. I shared in general terms things we were doing well and areas we needed to work on. This was our base-line challenge.

As the days went on we studied  collaborative videos to establish norms for working with groups. We tested our progress with another team challenge. Make a tower of cups but this time with an added twist, they could not touch the cups with their hands!

The kids reflected on their growth from challenge one and two. We then focused on the type of classroom that we wanted so that we could create a classroom pledge that would reflect our needs.

We continued to study strong examples of collaboration and engage in class and group challenges. Each time we reflected on our growth and established norms for our class or determined areas of focus.

We have spent the first 3 weeks dedicating time to challenging, reflecting and creating a community of learners that trust and respect each other. We ended by creating a bulletin board that will be up all year that answers the driving question in our classroom. It is filled with statements made by the kids and pictures that they staged to model these ideals.

We now turn our focus to the wider school community. We will spend the next week determining a need for our school community and deciding on a way to support De Vargas and help us all ROAR!

These kiddos just amaze me! I can’t wait to see what they decide to do and I share it with you all! Go Lions!

Two weeks ago, we launched our newest PBL in 4th grade! We gathered all the fourth grade classes into to the GLC to listen to a special guest. We were fortunate to have Terry, from Santa Clara Open Space Authority, come present about her park and some local animals that she works to protect.

At the end  of her presentation, Terry asked the kids for their help. Many of the animals in their park are threatened in some way. She asked the kids to create some kind of informational tool that would inform the public of a threatened animal and ways they can help protect it. Terry explained that they would post these projects on the Santa Clara Open Space website and Facebook page!

When we got back to class, each teacher presented their class with the driving question:

As wildlife biologists, how can we make a positive impact on California endangered animals?

In the last two weeks, the kids have researched which animals are threatened or endangered locally. They then got to pick an animal they wanted to help protect and were put into groups. In the coming weeks, your student will continue to research and learn about the habitat, diet, adaptations, life cycle and food chain of their animal. They will determine their cause for the decrease in population and propose a solution to the public.

This is such an exciting project and I can’t wait to see some of the solutions your children propose. We will gather together in late March for the final presentation of their projects. I will keep you posted on our progress and the date and time of our presentation.

We have had such a great start to the year. I feel so blessed to work with this group of students again and excited to get to know our newest members as the year progresses.  The overall emphasis of these first 3 weeks has been building a safe and strong community in our classroom. The students have been the leaders in deciding the direction of our room and expectations.

On the first day of school, I asked the students to picture the way they wanted their class to be. They made a big list of  ideals for our new room and new grade. The next day, we set about making a list of rules and expectations to ensure we had the class that we hoped for. In small groups, students brainstormed lists of rules.

The students came up with a large number of rules they thought were important.

Over the next few days, we began to look for patterns and started to group the ideas. We were able to narrow the ideas down to eighteen rules, but that was still far too many rules to live by in our room.

I printed out the eighteen rules and had the students group like ideas.

We were left with four main ideas. From there we edited the sentences to make sure they sounded the way the students wanted.

We were able to consolidate all of our expectations for our room into these three rules:

1. Be considerate of DeVargas citizens and supplies.

2. Stay positive.

3. Try your best and have fun!

It was amazing to watch the students discuss and consider every word. They decided to use the word considerate instead of respectful because they felt it was a more powerful word. Citizen, they felt,was a better fit than others. They took pride and ownership over these rules and wanted them just right. The students signed them and they now hang proudly near the rug.

I love these rules! They are simple yet powerful. Through the process the students saw that rules have layers and encompass many expectations depending on the situation.

We are just finishing up our multiplication unit and PBL. Last week, I gave the students a set of 6 multiplication equations on sentence strips. Each group had the same set of 6 equations. Their first task was to find answers to the equations.

Once the groups solved each equation, I asked them to organize the equations in some way.  The students began to analyze the equations and find relationships between them.

As students started to find ways to organize their equations, I asked that they label their thinking. As I walked around, I was pushing the students to more precise math vocabulary.

The students below organized the problem by single digit, double digit and triple digit factors.

These two groups organized the equations by tens, hundreds and thousands products.

Once a group organized their equations, I challenged them to come up with a new way to organize the equations. Students listed these at the bottom of their boards.

At the end, we walked around and looked at the different ways each group organized the equations. It was a fun and quick activity that required they critically think about multiplication equations and using precise vocabulary.

We have been analyzing non-fiction texts on polar bears for about a month. The students are getting good at identifying how an article is structured. They can identify concepts and use those to construct a central or main idea of the text. However, we do this together as a class.

I could tell from our conversations and their writing that they were ready to try this on their own, in small groups. I started by reading the  article, “Dangers to Polar Bears,” out loud. I then handed a copy to each student and gave them five minutes to think and take notes on the article.

After the five minutes, each student got a card that indicated which group they would work with.

The students gathered in theirs groups near the white boards with their group number. The only instructions they were given was to organize their thinking in some way on the whiteboard. The kids did not hesitate, they were off and working.

Almost immediately immediately a few groups wrote “threats” on the board. This word is never stated in the article but it is a key concept.

Other words and lists started to pop up on the boards. It was clear that not only did the kids understand the article but they were grouping and categorizing information.

Soon after, the students started to write central ideas above their organized thoughts, using the key concepts they had identified.

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“People are threats to polar bears but scientists are finding ways to protect polar bears and their habitat.”

“Humans used to be a big threat to polar bears but people started to pass laws.”

“Humans are threats to polar bears but many people are now helping polar bears.”

It was so amazing and rewarding to watch the students take what they had learned over the past few weeks and apply it on their own. I was so proud of them!

We are in the middle our newest PBL. We launched a few weeks ago with our “Stone Soup” activity. At that time we presented the kids with their driving question:

How can we, as farmers, successfully plan for a variety of crops within a predetermined area?

Since then we have developed a great list of “need to knows” that are guiding us through our learning.

Our Need to Knows:

Some examples include:

What does predetermined mean?

How can we make sure our farm is successful?

What is area?

How many plants do we plant?

What is a crop?

As we discover the answer to one of these I cross it out in red.

To start the students collected research about Northern California crops. We were particularly focused on the word “successful” in the question.  They looked for crops that were the most profitable in California. In addition, they looked for information about how expensive or cheap a particular plant is to grow. Students noted calorie counts, popularity and price when sold, anything that may help a crop or farm to be successful. They also had to research the distance that is reccommended between each plant  so that they could properly plan their map.

Once the group had all the research, they then were given a grid, their “predetermined area,” for their farm. They then had the task of determining areas of the different crops.

Students drew out initial arrays for each crop and cut them out and set them on their plans. The students calculated area and made many adjustments along the way.  Each group went through many redesigns in the process. They needed to make decisions on the space a plant would take up and how many plants they felt their farm should have.

As students settled on a plan they could then draw the rough draft on their paper. From here, the students will create a final map of their farm with a key and write a report about their farm with specific information and data to show their farm’s success.

The kids seem to really be enjoying this PBL and the math that they are doing to find the area and quantity of their crops is impressive.

On Thursday, before break, we celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early. Every year I give each of my students a box of Conversation Hearts and have them add up how many of each color they have and create a graph. After that, I lead them in figuring out the sum of all the hearts in the entire class.

We have been moving to more Project Based Learning here at DeVargas and I knew that I needed to do less of the decision making and give that ownership over to the students. So I simply posed them with this question:

Can we figure out how many candy hearts we have all together?

The students immediately said they could but I urged them to develop a list of “Need to Knows,” in order to solve this problem. Here is our list:

We were able to answer two right away. So I noted these on the side and checked the “need to know,” to indicate we know the answer to this. But there was still a lot to figure out before we could find the answer.

To help stay organized I gave the kids a recording sheet that simply had them write down how many hearts they had.

They kids happily started dumping their boxes and counting.

The kids soon started talking to neighbors and asking for their totals to try to add up everyone’s in the class. At this point I stopped the class and directed them back to their list.

We know knew there were 23 boxes but each box did not have the same amount. I pointed to the line that said, “How will we share or communicate,” and asked them what they thought. Some said go ask everyone, but we quickly realized that everyone would be working very hard and it would be confusing. “How can we make it easier” and referring to their chart, “how can we organize all the numbers.” One student suggested writing it on the board for everyone to see. Another student added that we should figure out the group totals and then just add the total for the group on the board. Some students just wanted to add the total hearts while others were curious to find out the total for each color in addition to the heart total. After a vote, the class chose to find both the total for each color and the total for all the hearts. I then created this chart on the board:

The kids came up and added their totals to the list. Meanwhile kids started feverishly adding totals.

So now we had all our “Need to Knows,” covered and they were ready to start solving. The kids decided that there was no need for everyone to add up every column so they each picked one color to add up. As the kids totaled each color up they wrote it at the bottom:

Now all the kids had to do was add up each color total and they would find the answer! Easy right?

The kids excitedly added up each color total and started calling out totals as they wrote them in each column:

At this point, we gathered as a class and added each column and row together. Together, we found a few mistakes in the chart that we were able to correct.

In the end, we found out that we had 601 candy hearts in class. It was such a fun way to spend an hour. I am so glad I gave ownership to the children. They were able to organize themselves efficiently and work toward a common goal and eat some yummy candy while doing it!

Hope you are having a wonderful break!

We do Critical Literacy pretty much every day in class. We take 20- 30 minutes to have collaborative discussions surrounding  a fiction story. The children think deeply about what the story means and what it teaches us about life.

Recently we finished reading the story, She Come Bringing Me That Little Baby Girl by, Eloise Greenfield.  We had rich discussions about a boy who was disappointed by the gender of his new sibling. In addition, the attention his new sister was getting made him feel jealous. He eventually began to resent her and reject her as his sister. Luckily, his mom and uncle shared their experiences as big brother and little sister. This made him realize the important role he had as an older sibling. By the end, he had accepted the baby and his new role.

Below is a photo of all our analysis through the story. We make one of these each time we read a new story.

Once we have finished the story we get right to work on writing theme statements. Since we have been exploring truths and theme statements, we have been adding to the chart below. Looking at the chart, you can see that a theme statement must include the conflict and resolution of the story and must leave out characters names making it a general statement about life.

Thinking about the conflict and resolution of the story the kids set off with a white board in pairs. They collaborate to come up with the best themes statement they can together.

Once the students write a theme statement they feel good about, they write it up on the class whiteboards. They do not write their names. Once it goes on the board, it doesn’t belong to a particular pair of students, rather it belongs to the class. This thinking has come this far because of all of our thinking. So by the time we get to theme statements it really is a collective effort.

From here, we come back together as a class and pick one or two to edit. Sometimes I pick one, other times a student picks one, one time a few kids laughed at one so we used it to show what a great start it was and what it could turn into with a little help.

Here are pictures of the editing marks on the two we picked. The first one focused only on the conflict, so we added the solution to make it complete. The second one was too general, so we added detail and specific concepts from this story.

From here, we add it to our chart of theme statements from other stories that explore sibling rivalry. We use these theme statements to support our writing around the story.

Now that we have finished our fiction unit up in Critical Literacy, we are going to be focusing on non-fiction articles about Polar Bears. By sticking to the same subject it is very easy for students to see the different ways non-fiction writing is organized.