Delectably, Delicious Writing

Hello friends!

This week's post is about some descriptive writing that I did with my fifth graders. They wrote some awesome pieces after brainstorming on Popplet, writing their rough drafts in Notabilty, having their writing edited within Notability, making corrections, and then submitting them to our Posterous page for final grading.

Here are the apps we used:

                          

Once the kids had finished their work, I used this writing to make a new hallway display. I made the Hershey Kisses for their writing from poster board wrapped in tin foil. The Kisses tags are made from tissue paper and blue markers. It made for such a cute display! 

 

I am also including my grading rubric that I used for this assignment, in case you were to "borrow" it. Keep on sharing!

Hope you have enjoyed this new addition to my blog!  I will be posting soon!

Body Organs App

We have been doing a body systems unit in Science and I was very limited in my classroom resources. I was extremely grateful for the Body Organs App for the iPad. I had the students play around on this app for about 30 minutes to explore the different systems and organs. It reads the information to them and has detailed descriptions and fun facts of all of the organs and systems. They used their headphones to listen to the app, so the room was very quiet. Overall, they really enjoyed it and were very engaged by the different cool facts. I would recommend this to someone working with fifth grade for sure! ;)

The icon looks like this.             Here is a screenshot of one of the pages.

Polygon Alphabet Follow Up

Hey everyone!

I realize I am posting a ton right now, but that is because I haven't done it in two weeks. I am playing crazy amounts of catch up. Remember how I mentioned our Polygon Alphabet project? I said that I would post pictures of some completed work when they were done, too, right? Well, they are complete! They have done a great job! Look for yourself! :)

Teaching About Public vs. Private Posting

My students all received One-to-One iPads this week and are getting to do so many cool things. I wanted to share some of these iPad ideas with all of you.

You can see some of their work on our class Posterous site, Mrs J's Class. I'm trying to teach my students about private vs. public domain spaces and show them that the things they post can be viewed by people all over the world. They would really appreciate if some of my followers left comments on their pages to prove that people do see their work. We are using Posterous as a place to put our completed work, so check back often to see what we are doing.

They are also using Edmodo.com as a classroom social learning site. I love this resource! I can post homework assignments for the kids to do on their iPads and they can complete and turn in the work online. I could not be happier with this site. Since this one is strictly for our class, I have made this one private, so unfortunately, you can't see it... Sorry, folks!

That's it for now! :)

Pep Talk from Kid President!

This is the cutest motivational video I have seen in a very long time! Take a peek!

 

Aren't we all on the same team? I want to be on the road that leads to Awesome! What will be your Space Jam? We all need a little encouragement! Let's get out there and dance! :)

Grammar Check-Ups

Hello,

I know it hasn't been a week, but a fellow fifth grade blogger posted this and I think this will be great to show my students! They are getting iPads in a few weeks and it would be a good poster to have around! Check it out!

It will be such a great reminder as to how important grammar is. It will also make me more accountable for my writing seeing as I wouldn't expect them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself! 

Starting Fresh in 2013!

Well, Hello Again!

It has been such a long time since I have posted and I apologize for that. Since 2013 is starting, I thought it might be a good idea to make my blog one of my new resolutions. I will be posting once a week for the new year to keep everyone posted on my first year of teaching.

So far, this class has been terrific! They are a joy to have in class and I feel blessed to have each and every one of them! We have done some very interesting projects throughout the year, but I wanted to touch on two recent ones that could be implemented in any fifth grade class for all of my fifth grade blogger friends!

First and foremost, we are working on polygons in math right now. We did a quick review of polygons and charted the different sided shapes. Then, I had them put their thinking caps on and figure out a way to make their name with each of the polygons. They had to use at least one triangle, one quadrilateral, one pentagon, one hexagon, and one octagon. The students could repeat shapes but they had to use each of the polygons once. I had them each do their first name, make it neat, and color it! I am grading them this week and then I will post pictures of their work. For right now, I will post my scoring rubric.

My second creative project that my students are working on is called a Civil War WebQuest. I worked on this during my Masters classes at Truman State University with a few friends. The link to this site is Civil War WebQuest. On the site, it includes the introduction to get the students focused on the time period. Then, it lists the tasks the students will complete. The details for those tasks and resources are included on the process page. The website we created also included the evaluation procedures and how students are to be graded. We have been doing this activity in class and the kids are really in to it. I let them choose which type of person they wanted to be from the Civil War and do their research for about a week. After they had found fifteen relevant facts, they started to work on their journals. In these journals, they had to use those facts to create five journals from the perspective of their person. It was so interesting to see how they linked their facts. This week they will be working on the Dinner Party script, in which students from four different perpectives will have a conversation about what and how they think the Civil War is going and how they think the war will end from each of their sides. I can't wait to see how this goes! :) 

Next week, look for some organization tips that I have created! Until next time, farewell!