Get Your Teach On Take Two

October 15, 2017

We had an amazing Monday and Tuesday. We had been waiting for these days since Kim got back from San! Antonio. Because the second and third grade session from the Get Your Teach On conference was so inspiring, we decided to go to the fourth and fifth grade session. Luckily, it was here in Chicago!

We didn't think we could learn any more, but we did! One of our favorite speakers was Hope King. She again explained how to help students determine the main idea and key details through her Get Your Neon Read-On. We have never been this excited to begin teaching this very challenging concept to our third graders. We have our neon glasses, pattern pair eye rings, and multi-colored highlighters ready to go!

If you ever want to know more about Hope King you can visit her website Elementary Shenanigans

She goes into great detail about each of these reads and how to guide students through each one.  

This is one of the end results of reaching Get Your Neon Read On!  The kids will love it.

Elizabeth Raff is a sixth grade ELA teacher from Pennsylvania. Her presentation was one of the best we have ever seen. She shared effective, exciting, and engaging activities that will truly elevate our third grade readers to the next level of competency in their reading. She is someone everyone should follow on Instagram. There, you can watch how she engages her students as she teaches the elements of plot. If she can get her sixth graders this involved and engaged, we know we can hook in our third graders!

Definitely follow her on Instagram.

Get Your Neon Read-On is not the only fun activity we are going to start this week. We are also going to begin Elizabeth Raff's poem of the week idea. We are going to give our students a favorite Halloween poem called, Watchdogs. We are going to read the poem with movements and expression, and then our students will mirror what we do. Throughout the week, our students will practice reading this poem for fluency and also adding their own movements with a partner.  We will also use the poem to annotate the text, answer comprehension questions, and experiment with using different expressions as we read. On Friday, each group will perform their interpretation of this poem for other classmates.

How lucky I found this on the discarded books shelf!  It has amazing poems.

We can hardly wait to get to school tomorrow!
Kim and Anne

Having Fun With Science

October 1, 2017

Did you ever think that highly engaging science activities would help improve students' higher level thinking skills in reading? We have witnessed this all week! To get our students ready for our upcoming STEM activities, we ignited their thinking through the scientific method. This year, we consciously made our kids aware of the connection between their thinking voice in reading with the thinking skills needed to make a hypothesis and draw a conclusion in science. We did this because we are focused on student engagement more than ever before, and this turned out to be an "aha" moment for our kids. 

One of the science activities that engaged our students the most was stacking colored water cubes in test tubes. We asked the students to make a hypothesis about what might happen. We had already completed two prior activities with the water cubes and we encouraged them to make their hypotheses based on what they had learned from those experiments. We connected that with making predictions in reading.  Predictions don't come off the top of your head, you have to use clues that the author gives you in the text. The kids made great and reasonable hypotheses.

Put these in water over night in separate cups.

Notice her hypothesis.

After leaving the cubes over night, the students were able to use the results and their background knowledge of the results to draw conclusions about why the cubes blended together to make a rainbow of colors. We made the connection to drawing conclusions in reading.

These are the test tubes after several days.  They were brighter and the colors were more separated the day after we did the experiment.

As the Grand Finale for this week's science, we made a chemical reaction bag using cabbage juice, baking soda, and driveway salt. Once again, we connected the higher level thinking skills in reading and science.

The baking soda and calcium chloride.  No reaction.

Spilling the cabbage juice.

Color change

Producing a gas.

Feeling hot

Both of these activities were a big hit with the kids. The activities kept them thinking, questioning, and experimenting, well beyond the time in the classroom. But more importantly, they also ignited their thinking voice in reading. Our students came into the classroom wanting to share their thoughts and new ideas about reading. Some wanted to read aloud poems and share their thinking voices with the class. One student even encouraged students to use post-its to record thoughts while reading at home.

We are not sure, but we believe that this new desire to think at a higher level in reading is in part due to their high level of engagement and thinking in science.

This was such a fun week!
Kim and Anne