New Blog Design and Blog URL Address

I have updated my blog, added some new social media buttons, made an Adventures in 4th Grade Facebook page, and made a Grab Button! I feel so accomplished! :)  In addition to all those things I wanted to change my blog URL address from smgibson15.blogspot.com to adventuresin4thgrade15.blogspot. I hope you will follow me on bloglovin and on my new Facebook page! :)

Spring Cleaning Sale

I'm a day late but my whole store will be on sale (20 % off) today through tomorrow. 

Some of my top products are listed below:

Hope you find something you like! I'm off to shop with my favorite sellers! :)

~Susan

A Peek at the Week 3/31/2014

I am linking up this week with Jennifer over at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings!

It has been quite a long time since I've posted in the blog world. Graduate School, my class, and reading tons of children's books have tied up all my time!

To kick off National Poetry Month we will be diving into poetry this week using some ideas from Hello Literacy's blog.

Idea # 1: Poem of the Week Focus Lesson
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2012/10/tracked-in-focused-on-poetry.html

I have had a Poem of the Week since the beginning of the year and I've been using poems and the Take 5 teaching points from the book below.

But after reading what Jen Jones has been doing with her poems I thought I would give it a shot! Click out her blog post and she gives you a sample of her lesson and a planning template. 

Idea # 2: Close Reading of Poems

http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/04/hello-literacy-says-hello-national.html

I took Jen's idea and tweaked it to fit my class. I decided that I would have poetry rotations so that I could meet with my students in small groups. I plan on have four rotations over a two day period. Each poem that we read focuses on a specific type of figurative language.

Rotations:

Teacher Time:

We will be reading the poem three times to practice our fluency. We will answer the following questions after the first read: What is the subject?, Who is speaking?, Who are they speaking to?, and What is the mood of the poem?. After the second, read we will be looking at the specific figurative language we are studying. To end the day, we will why we think the author wrote the poem. 

Get a copy of the materials I am using during this lesson here. 

Poetry Stop and Jot:

Students will use the Stop and Jot sheet in the link above while looking through poetry anthologies independently. Students are looking for verses they find interesting and record their thoughts about the verse. 

Fluency Fact Task Cards:

Another great idea from Jen Jones. Students will read the task card three times with a buddy to work on their fluency.

Writing:

In my last rotation, students will be answering questions from the book below. This will sharpen their opinion writing skills. 

I feel very excited to try out these rotations! Tell me below how you celebrate National Poetry Month.

One last note:

Last night a created a Donors Choose Project to get more high interest nonfiction texts for my classroom library. If you have read "The Book Whisperer" you know that she says the better classroom  library you have the more you can get your students interested in books. 

"Engaging students with reading and encouraging the development of lifelong reading habits begins with providing students with a wide range of interesting reading material and lots of opportunities to examine, read, write and talk about books with their teacher and classmates. Students should have access to lots of books in the classroom and the opportunity to self-select some of their own reading materials (Guthrie, J. T., & Humenick, N. M., 2004).

If you would like to donate or know someone who likes to support teachers check out my project below. If you donate by April 6th and enter INSPIRE at checkout they will match the donation by a $1. 

http://www.donorschoose.org/project/finding-the-inner-reader-in-every-child/1211022/?rf=link_siteshare_2014_03_teacherid_994396&challengeid=170067

Examples of the Books I'm Requesting are:

"Who Was…..?" Series

"What was….?" Series

Graphic History Series and Graphic Science Series

Thanks for stopping by!!

My Steps Towards Becoming a Book Whisperer!

Over the past year I have made some great changes to my classroom and the ways that I teach. One of the biggest things I am working towards is becoming a Book Whisperer just like Donalyn Miller. I have been trying to get more books for my classroom this year plus read them. Another thing I have recently started to do to get my students interested in the books I have bought is to show them book trailers versus giving a book talk. Below are some of my favorite 4th-6th grade books I have read this year plus their book trailers. I can already see an enormous difference in my students' eagerness to read with these quality books. I think when I have read a book and approve of it the students are more  willing to give the book a chance. If you haven't started becoming a book whisperer I suggest you begin because the only way to show students the importance of reading is by having a good role model like a teacher or parent. By fourth grade some students already hate reading so if you can make a difference in just one student by talking to them about books it could change that child's life!

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Tuesdays at the Castle

Amulet

A Long Walk to Water

Flora and Ulysses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6cdkkJvgaA

Among the Hidden

What are some ways you have become a "Book Whisperer" this year?

Any suggestions for me?

Thanks for checking out my blog!

~Susan

A Peek at the Week Linky Party

Well everyone it is finally the first day of FALL! If you have read some of posts you will find that I love fall! Pumpkin Spice sure is in the air at my house. How about yours?

Here's to another Peek at the Week with Mrs. Laffin!

1) I have a celebration from last week that I would like to share before I start with this week's activities. If you read last week's post you know that I tried the first signpost from the book "Notice and Note". Well I have to say that it was a total success in my class. Students were find the contrasts and contradictions in the excerpts I gave them like pros. Then when they asked themselves the anchor question "Why is the character acting this way?" they made wonderful inferences about the character! Go Mrs. Shepherd's Class! :)

2) We will be begin to learn about character traits and how to analyze the character this week. I have chosen to use the book "Black Cowboy, Wild Horses" by Julius Lester. This book is about a man named Bob Lemmons and he is  "famous for his ability to track wild horses. He rides his horse, Warrior, picks up the trail of mustangs, then runs with them day and night until they accept his presence"(Scholastic). It has a great story line, examples of splendid figurative language, excellent sentence structure, and beautiful pictures. We are going to use the text to analyze the character. Students will create a T-Chart in their reader's notebook. On one side they will put the text and on the other they will write the character trait they inferred from the text. In addition to using this for reading, I am also going to use this book during writer's workshop. I plan on taking one of the sentences from the book and using it as a mentor sentence. I am going to model my lesson after the ladies over at Dandelions and Dragonflies. When I read about mentor sentences I knew it was something that I wanted to try.

3)The last plan for the week is to recover from this awful cold I've had all last week and to get all my graduate school readings done!!!!

Thanks for stopping by! I do love comments and new followers! :)

~Susan

A Peek at the Week Linky Party

# 1: I'm finally going to try the first signpost from the book "Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading". The first signpost is called "Contrasts and Contradictions". Students will read and as they read if they notice the character is doing something that is different from how they normally act or different from how they expect them to act, then they will stop and ask themselves the signpost question(every signpost has a question to help the students think) which is "Why is the character doing that?".

I am going to use the sample lesson from the book which uses the book "Thank You Ma'am". As a follow up we will read an excerpt from "The Watson's are Going to Birmingham." I'll blog on how it goes. I think it will be something totally different than what my students are used to but I think it's going to get them critically thinking! Wish me good luck.

I made these anchor charts to go along with the signposts! They are super cute! I can't wait to use them. Click the photo to take you to the product!

# 2: I received a grant last year for Social Studies Weekly. I got them in over the summer and have been dying to use them. Since the 4th grade social studies standards focus on North Carolina we really only have the text book to teach with but I'm not a fan of the text book. So we started the first newspaper last Thursday and the kids really seemed to like them. I think this will make learning about North Carolina more exciting. They have one main story in the middle and lots of little side articles. We are gonna try to get through the rest of week 1 and week 2 this week!

# 3: I plan on continuing my first "Word Nerd" vocabulary cycle this week. We are going to practice our words using a vocabulary rap, a counting dude/bragging dude activity, and we are going to look deep into our crystal ball to predict the meaning of our crystal ball words. Also we will be using our vocabulary lanyards all day, every day to practice our words!!! :) I love being a Word Nerd!! I will add pictures to show you all these activities! 

Hope everyone else has a fantastic week! 

I love comments and new bloggy friends! :)

~Susan

Five for Friday Linky Party

I know it's saturday but that's ok! I still want to share about my week with you. 

# 1

Graduate School is taking over my life and I haven't had time to blog in the last two weeks which is why I'm blogging twice today! But I will say that I have been learning so much and I get so excited every week when I am reading and learning. I also getting super pumped to try new ideas with my students. 

# 2

I officially started my 1st vocabulary cycle with my students this week. I read the book "Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary" this past summer and got my inspiration from it. I absolutely love this book and approach to vocabulary. So far my students seem very engaged in the vocabulary activities. It has taken much longer than I anticipated to introduce the words but I think once the students get used to it things will go quicker. If you want more information on this book, this blogger had a book study on it this summer. 

# 3

I started my own TPT store two weeks ago and just made another product. Come check out my new product and store! I am pumped to use these task cards with my math group. I have been trying out Daily Math this year and plan on using them during my "Math with Someone" time. I love Daily Math as much as I love Daily 5. So if you have been nervous to jump into Daily Math just take a leap of faith and try it. You will get great results. I don't know how I managed to get by before without it!

# 4

We started to work on making observations in writer's workshop on Friday and my students were really getting into it. They were walking around the room smelling, touching, and listening to objects and people all around the room. I loved seeing them working with their partner to describe things around the room. I got this idea from the book "Notebook Know-How" by Aimee Buckner. It's great for setting up writer's notebooks and getting students interested in writing. Another book I'm beginning to pull lessons from is called "Study Driven". I have to read it for grad school and it is changing the way I look at writing. It says you should teach writing from an inquiry stance. And so far I am trying to do that with my students and implement what I'm reading into my classroom. For example: for students to be able to revise a paper they first need a vision. But they can't have a vision without good intentions and passion! Wow that's deep! If only I knew this when I was in school! Maybe I would have liked writing more!

# 5

Lastly, I did this AMAZING activity on the first day of school. But I have just now added the pictures to my computer. We had a "Book Tasting"!!!!!!! It was so much fun! We asked our media coordinator to help us out and she went over and beyond what we expected. She got table cloths, genre signs, cookies, and hot chocolate. The kids spent about 3-4 minutes at each table to "taste" a book. It really exposed them to all the different genres and gave them an idea of what books they want to read this year. I would strongly suggest doing this to introduce the different genres. My students loved it!

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!

Thanks for tuning in this week! I love comments and new followers!!

~Susan