State Reports and Floats

State Reports and Floats

    It's that time of year when testing is almost done, (hooray!) and I finally have time do all of the lessons I have been wanting to do all year! 
   One of my most favorite writing assignments for the year is our State Reports. I have the students pick a state, or assign one at random, and then they will do a report on their state. They will learn to research from different sources, such as books, articles, the internet, etc. They will collect research on their research notes page. They will learn about the state's history, geography, and all of the facts (the state bird, flower, date of statehood, cities, landmarks, attractions, etc). Then during school, they will follow an outline to write a muli-paragraph essay about their state. I love to integrate art where I can, and this assignment is perfect for that! Then students are asked to create a float at home. They can use all sorts of different materials, but I have a rubric that grades them on their information, creativity, effort, etc. The students love doing this, and it is a great opportunity to invite parents, and other classes from the school to come to the "state parade"! I love doing this project every year, and my students always look forward to it! 

Here is my a link to my product! 

It includes; aligned common core standards, how to use page, state list, state research notes, state report outline and rubric (two different versions), state float outline, rubric, and examples. I hope you enjoy! 

Happy Birthday Homework Pass

Okay...I am about to share one of my student's favorite products EVER! And the best part...it's FREE! For months, I had been thinking about what I wanted to give the student's in my class when it was their birthday. I thought about candy (nope...our school doesn't like us giving out sugar as rewards), what about a toy (lame...5th graders don't like very many toys, except for the expensive ones), then I thought what does a 5th grader want more than anything on their birthday...to have NO HOMEWORK! Hence, the Happy Birthday Homework Pass. I love it because I print them out before the school year starts and I have all the gifts ready for my students. It takes 5 minutes of prep and costs nothing! Plus, the students LOVE it! I have had many parents tell me how their child couldn't wait for their birthday so they could have their homework pass. I decided to create two versions, one black and white, and one colored. I hope you enjoy!

Click here to download your free Happy Birthday Homework Pass!

Daily Behavior Charts

The other day I got an email from a mother who said that she and her husband talked and decided they were going to start being more strict about their child's behavior at school (Wahoo!! I wish all parents cared about their child's behavior at school)! She wanted me to somehow track her child's behavior at school and let her know how he does each day. So as I always do...I turn to Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers to find the perfect behavior chart for him. After 30 minutes of searching, nothing was just right for what I needed. Voila! That's when I decided to create my own daily behavior chart. I created a couple different versions because I have different behavior charts for certain students needs. Many of my students behave fine in my class, but when they go to another room or go to specialties than their behavior goes down. So I created some behavior charts for the class, and for specialties. Then I also have some students who need SPECIFIC items they look for daily, or even hourly. I just kept creating behavior charts for each of my students needs and can I just say....the behavior from my students in my classroom is so much BETTER! This time of year especially seems hard for students to keep up good behavior, sometimes you just need to have these charts for the last week of school.

Click here for the link to download these Daily Behavior Charts. I hope they help your students as much as they did mine!!!

Civil War Simulations- with FREE google slides to accompany

My coworker told me about this amazing activity she did with her students and I just HAD to try it (I always am looking for engaging, hands-on activities for my students). Anyways I tried it last year and absolutely LOVED it! I couldn't wait to use it this year and my students couldn't get enough. They would whine when we would have to end social studies for the day! So what is this amazing activity??? 

It is Civil War Easy Simulations by Scholastic. It is only $6 for the PDF version which I would recommend getting so you can just print off the worksheets, instead of copying them from a book.

It allows the students to experience what it might have been like to be a soldier in the Civil War time period. First, students are put into groups and get into Infantry's for either the Union or Confederate side. Then, it has the students pick a character (former slave, farmer, aristocrat, etc) and each of these characters have certain traits they are better than others. Such as a farmer might have a high strength number, but low medical expertise. Next they have to decide what types of items they want to bring with them to war. They can only carry so much so they have to calculate the weight they can carry. Some of the items will help them through the journey. Then the teacher reads them scenarios and the students have to make choices of what they want to do. Are they going to send a scout to see what's going on, run, shoot, etc? I love to see the students working together and finding reasons of why they should or should not make certain decisions. Then throughout this simulation, they have to make spins on the spinner to determine if they got hit, made a proper defense, get an infection, etc. 

The thing I love most about this simulation is how they describe what camp life was like, battles that actually happened during the Civil War, they hear speeches from both the Union and Confederate sides, etc. They even have journal entries from actual soldiers of the Civil War which is where they get the ideas for the scenarios that happen. This is a 5-day simulation (start on Monday, end on Friday), and at the end of each day, the students write in their journal as if they were a soldier in that time. I have never seen such beautiful, and meaningful writing from my students then during this simulation. They learn to write from their point of view and use emotions and details of how they were feeling during this experience. I would highly recommend doing this with your class! I will warn you, though, the kids get VERY excited, which means it can be difficult to keep them quiet while you are trying to read directions and so on. Just be very clear with your expectations up front. To make this easier, I actually made a google slides to follow along. This way as you give instructions (such as make a spin), you don't have to repeat yourself and the students can just look at the slides to see what they need to do (this helped soooooo much!!!) I have attached the link so you can use it!

Click Here for Civil War Simulations FREE Google Slides.

I hope you and your students enjoy this as much as I did! Please leave a comment and tell me how your experience was!

Also, there are many other simulations by Scholastic that might interest you more, if you try the simulation leave a comment and let me know how they were!

Enjoy experience soldier life in 1862!

                    

  

Survival in Environment Science and Art Integration!

     In 5th grade we get to teach traits and heredity! Super fun! One of the standards we teach is about how animals or plants have to adapt in order to survive in their environment. My brilliant co-worker came up this an art integration activity that I absolutely loved and wanted to share!

     She gave each student a small magazine clipping (just cut it out at random). Then she asked them to glue it onto the page and make it adapt to the environment by using elements of color and line. The students got very creative! I am always so shocked to see what students come up with! Here are some examples from her class! Can you find the magazine clippings?!

Dr. Seuss Day!

     I just love Dr. Seuss day! Mainly, because I have an excuse to wear jeans to school as part of my "costume"! 

    (teacher 1 and teacher 2)!!!

     We always do a whole 5th grade Dr. Seuss day where we rotate between each teacher to do activities. In my room this year I had to do the cliche' Oobleck! Although the students LOVE this lesson, and I mean LOVE! I had every student asking me at the end, how to make Oobleck at home to show their family! Success!
  
   So here is what I do. I start off by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. Then I tell the students that they are going to get to touch this Oobleck. I have Oobleck already prepared with lots of butcher paper on the floor and tables, since it get's messy. I break my class into 2 groups. One group gets to go touch and explore the Oobleck, while the other gets to have fun at our Dr. Seuss Photo Booth! Then they switch! Luckily this year I had a parent volunteer come help so I had someone who could take pictures of my students. Although last year I just set up my computer to be on a timer and let the students self-run the photo booth. This is a great Science Integration because while they are touching the Oobleck we discuss whether this is a solid, or liquid and what types of properties this substance has. Super fun! I love seeing some students get into it and some others who will poke it with their finger, decide it is gross, and just watch everyone else play with goop.

     The next rotation was a STEM activity that involves making The Lorax Truffula trees! I shared this idea with my co-worker after finding it on Pinterest. Here is the link! Since we were short on time he gave the students colored marshmallows instead of food coloring them! Brilliant!

                                       

 The last rotation was a graphing activity! This worked out great because that the unit we just finished in math, so it was a great review. My co-worker read the story Green Eggs and Ham. Every time they heard a word that rhymed with ham on that page they would mark it on the graph. Then after the book was over, they added up all of the words on the page and found the average (they divided that number by how many pages were in the book). This was a great review for finding the average by using a graph!
   
    I love any excuse to integrate other subjects into fun activities! I am lucky I love my job and have great students and co-workers!

Compare and Contrast activity!

     This is my first post and I have to give all the credit to Teaching with a Mountain View! She did a great job at creating an engaging activity to introduce students to compare and contrast. I had been contemplating how to start teaching this concept to my students when I came across this activity. It has a picture book, involves food, and is funny! A perfect lesson!

     This lesson uses the book Apples and Oranges by Sara Pinto. I have my students sit on the carpet as I introduce the words compare and contrast. Then we go through the book together as they fill out the worksheet that goes along with it. For each page there are two items the students need to compare and contrast (such as an apple and an orange). Then it asks them to guess what they both don't have. I decided to have the students fill out the "They both don't have..." column on their own. Then I would turn the page. If the students got it right (they rarely do, because the book comes up with some crazy things such as apples and oranges both don't have glasses) then they got a little reward. This keeps the students very engaged and kept them on task. They could only participate in the fun challenge when they could come up with three ways that they compared and contrasted.

    I had students giggling and laughing throughout this whole lesson because they couldn't believe what this author had come up with. 

    If you are interested in the activity and getting the worksheet here is a a link to the blog Teaching with a Mountain View.