5th Grade Free Write

Having students participate in a "free read" or "free write" successfully, takes some practice. One thing that seems to be motivate most students simply involves watching the teacher participate in the activity. I typed up what I wrote during a fifth grade free write activity in one of the classes that knows me pretty well.

"Free Write 2/16/16

 I LOVE being a teacher. I love watching students learn, grow, change, experience new things, make new friends and start figuring out what they are interested in. I think, looking back, that I taught my high school guys at ~ a 5th grade level. There are so many new things being learned in 5th grade. They are learning how to LOVE reading and writing. Things I love! For so long I wanted to help people figure out how to be successful in college, but now I'm learning that what I REALLY want is to teach people how to LEARN. Learning how to LOVE reading, how to LOVE math, how to LOVE writing. 5th grade seems like a good place to accomplish this."

Thinking about what grade I want to teach the MOST, is difficult. Some of my favorite things to teach:

• Lab Reports!
• Genomics
• DNA

These subjects are not really applicable in 5th grade. So, what do I do? Teach middle school? Go back for a masters in elementary ed? Tough it out in an affluent high school? It's weird to be at a crossroads once again in my teaching career, but exciting and exhilarating at the same time.

 

Teaching Economy in 4th or 5th grade

I am not a licensed elementary teacher. Subbing this year has shown me so much about the workings of the lower grades. I have tried to piece together how teachers work with state and national standards, and it's a bit confusing. One aspect is teaching financial and economic literacy. In several classes I have been in, part of the reward/consequence system involves "payment" and "fines."

Here are the methods I have seen in action:
Method Ja
background: This is a fifth grade class with GLAD influence.

• students have jobs they get paid for. Some jobs are paid better than others (teaches that resources are allocated differently)
• Students make wallets where they keep their money.
• Students are fined for misbehavior and not turning in homework. They must take home their fine and get it signed and then pay the teacher out of their wallets. 
• Students may buy privileges from the BANKER (one of the classroom jobs) 
• examples include comfy toes, teacher chair, teacher desk, seat bump, computer time, etc.
• loans can be given and interest is collected. 

Method Je

background: This is a fourth grade class with GLAD influence. 

• students start with 5 fuzzies. They can be taken away for misbehavior.
• Fuzzies can be turned in for raffle tickets.
• raffle tickets buy objects students may need (pencils, spiral notebooks, emergency bathroom passes, etc.) or want (sharing time, extra recess, homework pass, lunch with teacher, etc.) (teaches the difference between need and want at a financial level.)
• students are responsible for their own tickets, BUT teacher has set up baggies in each cubby to hold tickets and fuzzies. 

At some point during the school year, students should be prompted to write about their experience with the fuzzies or job scenarios. This would likely be done without the students even knowing it was an assessment for economy standards. 

Student Swags

Creating swags are so popular right now and they could be used in classrooms in a variety of ways.

1. For each assignment hang a collection of student work to display the activity. 

2. Have students create their own swags as a portfolio to show off their work for the year.

3. Create a swag to show students what work they are currently working on (A way to show the week's assignments.)

A GLAD 4th grade 9 (J)

I subbed two days in a row in a fourth grade class that is probably 1/2 bilingual. She runs her classroom with heavy GLAD influence.

Observations from her class:
1. Fuzzies. She uses fuzzy balls to reward students for good work. I LOVE this. They are fun and fun to say.
2. She has baggies pinned to the inside of each cubby for students to hold fuzzies and raffle tickets that they can then use to buy different things in the classroom, either privileges or objects.
3. Her reading time is set up basically as a rotation. They have the choice to read to self, read to someone, word work, listen to reading or free write. They have to do a variety of options throughout the week.
4. She has taped reminders to each of their desks, the names with the multiplication chart, ruler, etc., talk moves, and their group number (GLAD component).
5. She has a list of week assignments for students to be working on at all times. This includes items like scholastic news, etc. for automatic filler.
6. She has a cork board with pushpinned sticky notes alerting students to what hw is missing. I love this because I do it anyways!

Books to read

I was in a bit of a book slump. Nothing could really hold my interest. THEN, all of a sudden I can't get my hands on enough books. EVERYTHING is interesting. I am seriously thinking about transitioning my license to elementary school. This means that I need to get caught up on some common reading group books!

Here is my list:

Rats of NIMH

Wonder

The Tale of Desperaux

The story of Ruby Bridges

Hatchett

Peak

The Light Princess

The Wall

Babe Didrikson Zaharis: The Making of a Champion

The Year of Miss Agnes

A Single Shard

Older YA books:

How it Went Down

Chain Gang Elementary

Working in the correctional facility last year, I realized how important it is to find culturally relevant books. I'm still looking for books for a primarily hispanic community, primarily african american community and a "projects" community where there is a lot of diversity. Small town books seem to be pretty well covered. 

Harry Potter release partay

PART A
One of the fifth grade classrooms I sub in consistently has worked really hard to fall in love with reading. Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter plays a big part in these kids reading experience.

PART B
I grew up as HP did. We loved having the new books come out and we all tore through the books in a matter of days. I want that for students who LOVE to read.

SO
What if a classroom held HP release dates? A collection of HP books that were not put out on shelves until certain dates. Then the students would have a glimpse of what it felt like to grow up with HP... anxiously awaiting the next release date.