A Week on Year 4

This week I was lucky enough to have one class for the entire week! I had a lot of fun. It's nice when you can plan a series of lessons that connect, rather than just turn up and do random, one off lessons.

So this post will be about my favourite lessons of the week, because if I write about everything, this will turn into a TLDR post.

For Literacy, I focused on The Gizmo by Paul Jennings.

I love his stories, I remember reading them as a kid and would spend hours reading them in one go. The Gizmo is a great story to do with the older grades as the story is interesting and has themes the students can relate to. If you haven't read this book before, it's about a boy called Stephen who is pressured into stealing by the school Bully, Floggit. Stephen feels guilty about stealing so he tries to make it right by returning what he stole. However he can't, so he tries to rid himself of the item in different ways. Along the way he faces a few entertaining mishaps and by the end of the story he has learned his lesson.

I had only read the first chapter, when the students started to ask and answer their own questions about the story (by themselves! I didn't even have to ask them to!). The main question; "Why would Stephen hang out with this Floggit guy when he is such a jerk?". So that started a big discussion on how sometimes people hang out with people they don't necessarily like because they don't want to be an outcast or seen as a loser.

Throughout the week we did a few activities around the book such as; coming up with excuses to tell Floggit to avoid stealing the Gizmo and character profiles. The character profile activity produced some great responses. I let the students design it however they wanted. So some of them did it as a wanted poster, some as a profile and one student drew a picture of Stephen and wrote paragraphs about his personality around the picture.

We finished the book on Thursday and I told the class that if they liked the story they could go to the library and check out other books by Paul Jennings. I also mentioned how he wrote a few other books about The Gizmo, so they begged me to bring them in for Friday.

On Friday I read The Gizmo Again.

Which, automatically lent itself to Text to Text Connections. Similar theme as the original; nice guy gets influenced by the bad guy to do the wrong thing and so he learns his lesson to not listen to the bad guy.

We also did some Reciprocal Teaching. I got to use my Reciprocal Teaching Pack (don't you just love shameless promotion?).

The text we used was Possum Magic by Mem Fox. To start off I went through each of the roles, the class was already familiar with this strategy, so it was a quick recap. Then as we read the text, students practiced using the roles. The text was good for the clarifying strategy, as it involved a lot of Australian terms and since some students were from different cultural backgrounds they didn't know what some of the things were. The internet was used to help with the visuals.

Another great Literacy lesson was about the book, A Little Election by Danny Katz.

After we discussed the story, I gave the students the task;
Imagine you want to be the 'Prime Minister of (insert school name here)'. What policies would you introduce and why? Develop a campaign to convince your teacher and peers to vote for you.

Students were allowed to work in groups or individually. They were allowed to develop their campaign however they wanted. Some students wrote a speech and some designed a poster. They used paper, computers and iPads to present their ideas.

I was pretty impressed, they came up with a lot of good ideas as well as justifying the reasons behind them. Was pleased to see that no one came up with the 'We will just play all day' idea :P

Our Art topic was 3D Illusion Art. Last week, I did the 3D hand activity and they were pretty impressed, so I did some research and found two more activities. On the Monday we did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.frubilledkunst.dk/)

On Tuesday, when I came back (on Monday, I had no idea that I would be back on that class for the rest of the week), a few of them had taken them home and completed them to show me. So, I knew that I had to find another one to do with them on my last day. We did this one;

(Image credit; http://www.teachkidsart.net/)

The thing I love about 3D Illusion Art is that it looks complicated, but it's actually quite simple and the kids just love it! It kind of makes me want to start up some kind of Art Club if I get a job next year...

I really enjoyed my week on the class. I've always seen myself as an Infants Only teacher, but I think I would quite enjoy having a year 4 class. I kind of wish I had put different preferences on my EOI for 2015. The kids kept asking me if I could be their teacher next year, lol. I wish!

Next week, I have work on Monday and then I am back to waiting eagerly by the phone. I seriously think I am the only nutter who is up at 5am each morning so I can be all ready to go if I get a call after 6am :P

In TPT news, I have uploaded a bunch of new products and revamped a few of my older ones. I'll write about them next time.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend :)

Casual Teaching on Years 3 & 4

So far this week, I have been working with Stage 2 (years 3 & 4). It has been a fairly good week so far.

On Monday, I had a year 4 class. It was a really great day, everyone was well behaved and enthusiastic about the tasks. That made the day go by smoothly and quickly. Sometimes, with the older grades you get the few students who like to test you by acting up and complaining about everything. Not the case with this class :)

Here is what we got up to;

* Literacy - Point of View with Dear, Mrs. LaRue.

Okay, I admit that I recycled the lesson I did with year 5 a few weeks back. However, when the text is this good can you really blame me? :P My favourite part of the lesson is the part where students have a discussion about why the illustrator has divided each page into two parts; b&w pictures and colour pictures. Some of the great responses were;
* the b&w shows the sad parts and the colour shows the happy parts
* the b&w shows what the dog is thinking about because you can see the thinking bubble
* the b&w shows what the dog is writing about

I'm always amazed with what responses students come up with!

We did not get time to do the reading response part as we had library at 10am. I had something really awesome planned with the iPads, but I can always do that next Monday :D

* Maths - Coordinates
 I introduced this lesson with the question; What are coordinates and why do we use them? The most common answer? Minecraft! To help introduce this topic, I showed a map with no grid on it and asked students to find a street. They struggled. Then I put up the same map with a grid on it, and asked if they could find it by going to the grid reference. They found it within seconds. We then went through how to read coordinates and played a game on the IWB.

After that it was time to play Treasure Battleship! This is a fun game that allows both students to get some practice in using coordinates. One player places their game pieces on the grid and other player (who can't see the grid) asks "Do you have a piece on ________?". The student with the board, then checks that coordinate. If they have a piece, they must remove it off the board. Players swap when all the pieces have been discovered.

We finished off the lesson with a worksheet and marked it as a group afterwards. I like group marking because you can always clarify anything students are still unsure of :)

* Art - 3D Hands
I have seen this on Pinterest for a while now and have been dying to try it out!
If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out this YouTube Video;

The students were impressed with the images I showed and were trying to work out how to do it. Some of them couldn't believe that the paper was completely flat!

A few of the students finished and theirs looked great! The rest who didn't finish kept asking me if we could finish it next Monday when I have them again. I will have to find another awesome art activity for those who finished.

On Tuesday, I was called in last minute to cover year 3. I was thankful that I had had year 4 the day before, so I recycled the same lessons. I only had 30 minutes to eat breakfast, make lunch, get ready and pack my bag! It was an interesting day, with some challenging behaviours at some points.

When I first started teaching, I used to take these days rather personally and as a reflection on my ability to teach. Now I have a more positive take on it and I chalk it up as experience. I think it's good to have to handle challenging behaviours because you learn pretty quickly as to what works and what does not.

Yesterday, I covered two classes. The same year 4 class and a year 5 class. For year 4, they did genius hour. I had read about it online, but never seen it in action. I ended up sitting with a group who were working on their drawing skills. We found a cool website that showed how to draw cars, step by step. I had a go at it too :P

Year 5 involved playing Multiplication bingo and taking them to the library.

Today I have a day off. Will spend it relaxing, scootering and swimming :D

Enjoy the rest of your week!