A Glimpse Into Our Classroom

We start our day with a check of our planners.  A student has the "responsi-BUG-ity" of checking to see that planners are signed.  That student uses the iPad to give Dojo points to students who have a parent signature on his/her planner!

After planners are checked and put away, students are ready to put their listening, spelling, handwriting and grammar skills to practice each day.  A sentence is read (and repeated) and the students record the sentence correctly on paper.  After we all have time to make sure our sentence is as perfect as possible, we go over the sentence on the board, correcting any errors we made.  This is a student-led process during which Mrs. Koehn is taking attendance/lunch count and checking for completed homework and responding to any parent notes from planners.

We spend time in a whole group going over an essential question in reading each week.  We record our question (and answers!) in our reading notebooks.  We also take time to go over new vocabulary terms that we will focus on this week.

We ALWAYS take time to read!!  Sometimes we read as a whole class, sometimes in smaller groups, sometimes in pairs and of course, sometimes we get to read on our own.  

Reading in a group helps us to hear unfamiliar words, to practice pacing, intonation and fluency while we read.

It also helps us build our teamwork skills and cooperative attitudes.  Life skills!!

In Room 24, we ALL want to get better at our reading, so we have a class rule that says, "Everybody reads, every single word, every.single.time." This makes sure that each student is getting the maximum exposure to new vocabulary, fourth grade word choices and academic text every day.

We have a reading station that is SSR.  This is a time for students to get comfortable with a book and just enjoy reading for pleasure!

We hope eventually to add some beanbags, big pillows or small chairs of some sort to our reading corner to make it even more inviting for reading!

Students have lots of books in the classroom to choose from!

Of course, some students are hooked on a book that they don't want to put down at school or at home!  I welcome students to bring a book back and forth as well!

Of course, we need to think about what we read, so we complete "Reading Response" work alongside the books we read.  We have choices for our response work, which helps tailor the task to our reading level, genre of text and of course, for those who really don't want to write as much as others but still want to share what they have learned!

These responses really help us to have daily practice with our core standards in reading.  We identify key components of a book (title, author, genre) as well as the main characters and setting.

We also do work on the structure of the text, whether it is nonfiction with a main idea and supporting details or a fiction text with a beginning, middle and end that introduces a problem with a solution at the conclusion.

Students also reflect on any new words they learned in the text they chose and make connections to other texts, events or characters. 

While we have all "learned" printing and cursive writing, some of us still need some practice to get really good at legible writing (another life skill!!) For those that need the practice, we have time in our station rotation for handwriting work.  We simply use our SSR books to copy from, focusing only on our neatness!!  With the spelling, capitalization and punctuation provided for us in the text we choose, we can really devote this station time to working on our penmanship!

Whether  a student wants to work on printing or cursive (or sometimes both!) this daily practice helps give them devoted time to focus on the task.

We spent time in math working through fluency practice and a daily application problem where we can model and practice problem solving skills.  We record a LOT of our thinking in our math notebooks so we can show others our preferred method for solving and refer back when we get stuck on a similar problem.

We do several problems each day together, learning and practicing new math strategies and concepts. These "Problem Set" problems also provide us with great help when it comes to our homework!

We do a few problems along with Mrs. Koehn, a few problems working together with a partner and then one or two on our own as well.  

We spend lots of time talking about our thinking!! 
Being able to articulate what we think, and WHY is HUGE!! 

We also work on our writing skills!!  Already in the first week of school, many of us who thought writing was our least favorite subject have had quite a bit of fun being an author!

After we have written our story and made many, MANY changes and improvements, we use a rubric and checklist to guide our editing. 

We also use our friends!!  We have learned (already!) how much better our work can be when we enlist the help of another brain! 

Friends help us catch spelling mistakes, gaps in our plot or missing details.  

These suggestions help take our writing from good to GREAT!!!

We were amazed this week at how much our friends helped our work!

After two friends have provided input and ideas, we can then take our "hot mess" of a draft and make it neat enough to share with the world!

At the end of the day we have Social Studies! (After six weeks, we will switch to Ms. Neidlinger's class for Science!)

We are currently learning about geography and maps. 
We made lapbooks to help organize our learning.

We worked with a partner to make sure we knew all the important information!

We also checked our lapbooks for any missing information.  

Again, friends really helped us to solidify our thinking and to master the materials!

At the end of the day, we record our homework in our planner, put any work to be done in our folder and get ready for home!

We spend a lot of time in all subject areas reading and working with our peers!!
What a wonderful way to learn!