I am so excited to finally put together this post! Book raffles have truly inspired readers in my classroom, and I am so thankful for the inspiration from some of my favorite bloggers who encouraged me to add this tradition to my classroom this year. My only regret is not doing it sooner. Before you read this post...PLEASE know that you can add book raffles to your classroom NO MATTER WHAT grade you teach. ALL students can benefit from this exciting reading/learning activity. One of my biggest goals this year was to help create a community of readers-students who wanted to read without me telling them to, who shared what they were reading with others, who got up in front of the class to give their feedback on their book to their classmates, and who would beg me to buy new books over and over again. There have been a lot of ways that I have been working hard to make this goal a reality and book raffles has been one of those ways. What do you do ...
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Halloween Fun
I have a slight confession to make---I DESPISE the holiday Halloween. I don't enjoy being scared, and I really don't like all of the icky costumes that come with the holiday. However, after hearing about how excited my 5th graders were about Halloween this year, I knew that I had to do something at school to bring a little bit of the holiday magic into our classroom. For the entire week, I kept making little comments to my students reminding them that I would not be at school on Friday afternoon. It meant that I would miss their Fall Festival/Party, but I promised them I would make them something yummy and leave it behind for the sub to share with them. Actually, I had NO plans for getting a sub for the afternoon. When I dropped my kiddos off to lunch on Friday, I rushed back to my room, threw up some decorations, projected my video on the smart board, mixed together our Witches' Brew snack, turned on the scary music and turned off the lights, and dressed into ...
Encouraging Students to Take Action of Their Learning
It is not always easy teaching ELA and Social Studies in an hour and thirty minutes. In fact, I have had to get REALLY creative in figuring out how to blend it all together. It is also not always easy to make things that aren't interesting..."interesting" but, that doesn't mean it is impossible! In fact, it CAN be done, and one of the keys to making your classroom learning environment successful and engaging is by encouraging students to take control of their own learning experiences. I started by taking a lot of the weight off of my shoulders and encouraging my students to "take action" of their own learning. I realized that I needed to make sure that I was bringing high energy, rigorous, and relevant tasks to my students every.single.day even when the topics were not always exciting for every student. For example--5th grade students in the state of TN are required to know about Brooks' attack on Sumner. In 1856, when tensions between the North and South were higher than ...
