Tech Tuesday --The Walking Classroom

This is a really cool tool for 4th and 5th grade classrooms.  It's called The Walking Classroom.  The materials are aligned with the 4th and 5th grade Common Core Standards for Language Arts.  

This is how the program is described on their website:

The Walking Classroom Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and education of all students.  The Walking Classroom program is an in-school obesity intervention that promotes health literacy and develops and supports lifelong fitness habits for all students while addressing different learning styles.  The method combines standards-aligned academic content and exercise during the regular school day.  Using WalkKits pre-loaded with a year's worth of standards-aligned audio content students walk, listen, and learn.

It is a bit pricey, $3,000 for a class set, but they do have scholarships available to apply for on their website.  It would be cool to purchase and perhaps share with the other classes in your building.  And the teacher blogs I have seen this mentioned on tell about how their students just LOVE it.  After you get things set up, the podcasts are only about 15-20 minutes.  Perfect for those inclement recesses or an afternoon break from the walls of the classroom and their desks.

The Third Wheel

Today's blogger is Mrs. D at The Third Wheel.  She is a special ed teacher turned 3rd grade teacher turned instructional coach.  This morning I was reading her class management tips.  As an experienced 20 year teacher, it is still good to sit and read and be re-inspired about class management.
This year I do have the dream class...the kind of class that substitutes leave gushing notes and messages about and can't wait to return to...15 um, I mean 16 as of last week of the best 1st graders ever!  If only I wasn't being dragged down by meetings and more meetings and new curriculum to ponder, then I could spend more time enjoying their 16 smiling and eager faces!  Ah, such is a teacher's life :)

Back to Mrs. D....

She shares great insight from the perspective of a teacher and a coach.  She also has a very well stocked TpT store HERE.

I love the Edible science experiments, as I'm sure her students do as well :)  They say they are geared to 2nd-4th grades, but I'm sure you could find some inspiration for a 1st grade or for you STEM class lessons!


I also found that she has a large number of novel studies...for many popular titles. I bet you could find one that you use each year!






And for those of you who haven't gotten a raise in a number of years...like me...there is the FREEBIE STUFF.  I mean A LOT of Freebie stuff!  Very exciting to find a talented author/teacher with free stuff!

Having Fun While Learning in 4th Grade

As the importance of Common Core Standards and Teacher Standards and Merit Pay and Testing all get bounced off the walls of every teacher's meeting and staff room, we forget the the two most important parts of teaching.  First that to learn, students have to love to learn and second to learn to love learning...it HAS TO BE FUN!

Today's blog hop find is Heather from Read and Black and Learning All Over. She is a 4th grade teacher in Pennsylvania.  And she knows that learning has to be fun for it to stick!

She has intermittent posts on her blog, but I was inspired by her Synonym lessons she created.  I don't get to spend a lot of time on these in depth word studies in 1st grade, except with the high readers, but the first graders love when I can fit in a lesson here and there such as this one.  I might be able to fit it in when I do my insect study in the spring....

Heather does have some great things posted in her TPT Store, so stop by there and see what will fit into your lesson plans this winter...your students are sure to find them FUN!

Day 89 Classroom Caboodle Blog

What a fun find today on TpT...a neighbor teacher.  Yes, we aren't in the same state, but Spokane is just across the border from where I live in North Idaho.  They have Trader Joe's...we have moose.  They have hockey and baseball teams...we have little league.  They have big concerts like Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood...and we have Scout-o-Rama and the rodeo at our fair grounds :)  Good thing they are our neighbors! (But the gas at our Costco is about 20 cents less a gallon than theirs so we can afford to drive over the border more often :)

Betsy has a lot of resources for teachers.  She has a blog a website and a TpT store!   She has done just about everything but fix the kitchen sink in her school district.  But I wouldn't put that down as not being a possibility too!  Her resources are mostly for grades 3rd and up...but much of what she does and says can be brought down to the level you need it.

I love, love, love this lesson she has posted about teaching your class to line up!  I thought this was just a 1st grade problem, but apparently it's something that doesn't stick with the kids and has to be retaught each school year!  Her lesson is called: Teaching your students to Master the Art of lining up.  I just have to chuckle...because next year I plan to try a whole new attitude and approach to this simple task...but one that tends to hold us all up from leaving the classroom at least a couple times a week.

If you are looking for ways to incorporate technology into your classroom...then Betsy is your gal for that too!  She has just gotten a set of iPads for her class!  That is so cool!  I would love to just have a center full of them for all of our primary classrooms.  Betsy has an awesome series of posts about using the iPad and the apps to try with your students.  Click {HERE} to go to the posts.  She is posting more as she is working the kinks out with her students.  It's a great resource to get you started!

And then if you can't find enough treasures in her blog...she also has an actual website and a store on TpT.
Although most of her resources are for beyond the primary years....I found a treasure that I have added to my TpT Wishlist.  Betsy has a lot of math and science in her store.  And this cool lesson, Stacking Heart Challenge, now turned Valentine's Day and conversation hearts into a science project, not just a math project!!

Love it, Love it, Love it!  Can't wait to use it next February!  One of the things I love, even after 18 years of teaching, is discovering a new way to use something old!  Cuz when I'm excited, my students get excited...and when they are excited...they learn more!  Thanks Betsy!!

Today I didn't have to hop far...where shall I hop next?

Day 71 Fourth and Ten

Fourth and Ten is a creation of Lisa, a 4th grade teacher in Ohio.  If you are a 4th grade teacher...then her blog is where you should be!  She has lots of creative ideas she shares as well freebies, sales and giveaways on her blog.

Here is one of the cutest game sets I've seen in awhile:

I love the Leprechaun theme to this  Fry word game.  It's the 3rd, 4th and 5th hundred words...so it's not for primary...unless you have some pretty advanced students.  But it's another cool thing to laminate and have for a center for those of you in 2nd-5th grades.  Or a great one for a resource room activity.  I have found that it's always tough to get those kids to learn their high frequency words unless it's something fun!

Day 69 Fancy Free in Fourth

Fancy Free in Fourth is a great resource for those of you who teach those kids that are taller.  (I teach 1st grade).  Actually, reading through her site, there are some things that could easily be adapted to my 1st graders.  

With it being March...and needing a little luck of the Irish...here is a great freebie to add to your collection.

Click Here to download it.

I love Fancy's clear and simple creations.  They are easy to copy and use with students.  Be sure to visit her blog and TpT store!  

There are a lot of creative and organized teachers out there...Here is another great management tool to add to your bag of tricks.  I love putting the responsibility into the hands of the students whenever possible. Students who are involved are better behaved.  Fancy hands out all her graded work on Wednesdays and has the student fill out their own Week in Review.  So when their parents ask "how is school going?" they can't say they don't know...because they have filled out their own grades! Simply genius!

Day 61 Teaching Fourth

Kelly teaches 4th in Alabama.  In her About Me section of her blog she says she teaches Reading, Writing and Language Arts.  This is the second 4th grade teacher that I've come across this week that doesn't have to teach all the subjects. Just the other day I posted about Elizabeth and her blog Fun in Room 4B.  She teaches just math to the 4th graders in her school.

I think that's neat because you can get really good at something and you can work with more students.   Lesson planning would be so much easier.  The down side is that you would want that person to be an awesome teacher if they are going to teach ALL your 4th graders to read.  At the school I was at last year the 6th grade teachers tried that.  There were three of them.  Unfortunately, there was a weak link on the team, and the other teachers had to make up for the deficits from that room.  (this meant more work for them in the long run and lots of unhappy parents - never a good thing!)

But what I am finding is...for the most part...the quality of what teachers are blogging is amazing.  I'm not sure if it's the chicken or the egg.  Good teachers blog...or blogging makes teachers better teachers. Maybe it's a combination of both.  I know I learn so much from all the bloggers I find.  I am inspired and it gets my creative juices flowing to see what other teachers are doing and creating and what their students are producing and learning.  That's what collaboration is about!  {Don't get me started on district collaboration - but perhaps some time cruising the internet for strategies and ideas would be a better use of our time!}

Sorry Kelly, back to your blog...Teaching Fourth.  Kelly has some great freebies.  

One is her Pirate Homophone: Their, There, They're activity.

She also has a wonderful informational text graphic organizer packet for sale on her TpT store.  But she has a freebie for you to check out from it.

It's always hard to just pick out one of two things to share.  Kelly is so creative in so many ways that it makes it hard to choose.  This past week our principal showed us a video about school climates.  How to keep your school from looking institutional.  One of the things she showed a lot of was PAINT on the walls!  Something that wasn't that institutional beige or cream!  If only they would let us paint our rooms!  I should show them some of the work that Kelly has done to her room!  It's so warm and comforting...

even with those ancient desks!  Goodness...what century are they from?

Those owls are sooo stinkin' cute aren't they?

Kelly also has some cute bulletin board ideas too...

Makes the wheels turning for what I want to do this coming summer in my classroom!!

1st I'm purging...then I'm painting.

If they won't let me do the walls, at least I can do my bookshelves!

Thanks for hopping by my blog...hope you were inspired to do something wonderful!

Day 59 Fun in Room 4B

Elizabeth teaches math to 4th graders in South Carolina.  Wow...getting to teach just one subject and not having to enter the nightmare world of Junior High.  That doesn't happen much around here.  Primary teachers such as myself must be a Jack of All Trades and must be a bit ADHD to teach...skipping from subject to subject all day.  My dream would be to focus on one thing/subject for more than 30 minutes!

Silly me...back to Room 4B.  What is the B for?  I have never had a letter with my room number...is it a two story school?  Hmmm...dang...there goes that ADHD problem again.  See, teaching one subject at a time would really help with that.

Fun in Room in 4B is a fun blog.  Elizabeth combines humor with WBT (Whole Brain Teaching), the Common Core and adds a big dash of clever ways to teach those hard abstract skills to her students while making them easy to understand.  She spent most of the last couple months working on Fractions and Decimals.  Regular 1st grade fractions aren't an easy skill for some 7 year olds...but then when you start teaching equivalent fractions to 9 year olds...many of them start shaking and then when you ask them to change them into decimals...well their eyes can roll back into their heads and they are down for the count!

Elizabeth has some fun games and activities that get her students moving and thinking and best yet, understanding those hard skills.

 Elizabeth has made two versions of her Poke game.  One has a Valentine's theme (below) while the other one (above) is her non-holiday "ipoke" version.  Very cute and clever games to get your students practicing and using the skills you may be teaching.  You can find both in Room 4b's TpT store .

 Here is a close-up of the actual game cards.

Students just understand things better when they are moving...you must try this fun activity with your students:  

They are acting out the decimal number line.  They look like they are dancing don't they?  I think she should name it the Decimal Boogie! 

Here is the full description on her blog post {here}

At some point Elizabeth taught or teaches something other than math...I found this really cute "Poet-Tree" unit on her blog as well.  You can also find it in her TpT store.

Day 56 Flamingos and Butterflies

Today I have found Mrs. Dunn. She teaches 4th grade somewhere that most of us probably wish we could go to on vacation...in her pictures it looks way too warm and there's a beach...and flamingos...and green things growing year round....perhaps that would be a fun place to have a blogger hook-up!

Mrs. Dunn doesn't sell on TpT...she is a straight-up blogger and a self-proclaimed book junkie.  She has the most amazing collection of books (I think I saw the word hoard in one of her posts...lol)  On her blog, Flamingos and Butterflies, she has a great link called Picture Book a Day.

It's hard not to read her posts about all the books she finds, uses with her students and just plain loves and not have my Amazon Wishlist open and add many of the titles she shares!  She truly does love books and even though you (and I) may not teach 4th grade...there are books for all of us to use.  I also think it's important for teachers in the older grades to remember that picture books aren't just for little kids...but there is a time and place where maybe a chapter book just doesn't fit in with your lesson and a picture book might just make your point much better.  It's like those animated movies.  They may seem like they are for the littles...but older kids and even adults can find something to enjoy in them too.

I do have one question I would like to end with...how come flamingos has no 'e' and tomatoes and potatoes need to have that 'e' when you add the final '-s'.  That has always puzzled me!  Any grammar know-it-alls that can help me with that one?

Day 52 Fourth Grade Flipper

 I spend most of my time in the primary world...but lately I've been in search of other grade levels who teach those kids taller than me.  This pretty much covers 3rd grade and above (tall has never been an adjective used to reference me!)

This wonderful teacher teaches in a rural district in New York...yes, there's more to New York than 'The Big Apple'.   I teach 1st grade, but I find great ideas from any all levels of teaching.  4th grade was where I did half my student teaching (kinder was the other half--yes, night and day difference there).

I actually found a great resource for fluency on her blog that I shared with my school's reading coach and she in turn shared it with all the 3-6th grade teachers in the district and they went gaga over it.  So thank you Flipper!

I was looking at her list of blog topics in the right column and I saw a link for Class Pet.  I clicked on it and expected to see a rat or a guinea pig...or some other animal that would be sure to gross me out, smell really bad or make my eyes swell shut!  (Nope...I'm not describing 4th graders at least not until May when it gets warm in the classrooms and they come in from gym or recess!)

This is her class pet....

This is the coolest thing ever!  You don't have to worry about the kids killing it when they take it home over a weekend.  No food to buy, no smell and no mess to clean up.  It's perfect!  She sends it home with a journal for the kids to write about their adventures with the class pet.  This is such a great idea I think I will use it next year in my 1st grade classroom.  Thank you Flipper!

Day 48 Teaching 4 Real

Pam is a Georgia teacher who blogs.  Her blog Teaching 4 Real...keeps it real.  She has a great mix of her ideas, shared ideas from other bloggers, freebies and of course my favorite...the giveaways!  She combines it all with a mix of humor and southern charm!

Most of her teaching over the years has been 3rd through 5th...so it's a bit above my young first graders...but there is more than just first grade in the world.  I'm sure there must be...I've heard rumors.  ;-)

I loved  her lesson on Geometry when she was teaching Angles and Lines.  Kind of reminds me of the Line Boogie I made up for my firsties to remember horizontal, vertical and diagonal.

I could just see my principal coming in on a walk through evaluation when I'm doing this.  Oh wait...she did come in once when I was doing my Line Boogie :)  She got quite a kick out of it too!

So what sort of embarrassing lessons have you got caught in the middle of by your administrator?  lol  Please share!

Day 24 Simply Centers

They named their blog incorrectly...It should have been called Center Heaven! Because you will be in heaven when you start digging around on this blog.  Simply Centers has literally thousands of ideas for centers...just (simply) centers!  The best part is how it is all organized by subject and grade level!  Lots of different bloggers contribute links to their center activities.

There is not only math and reading, but science, social studies, technology and writing!  It has everything grouped in grade categories too.  K-2  3-5 and 6-8.  And if you are new to centers or if you have a group of students that need something different this year then they also have a category for "Organizing" centers!

You see, this is way cool!  Anyone can do centers now!  check it out!

  

My journey continues, one blog at a time :)  Come along with me!