Lima Beans!

The kids loved learning about life cycles.  One very simple activity we did involved watching lima bean seeds germinate in the window. All that was required were lima beans from the grocery store, plastic bags, and wet paper towels. After soaking the paper towel and placing it in a plastic bag, we used staples to create a ledge for the beans to rest on.  Within a matter of two weeks, several of our lima beans were growing shoots and roots. 

Guided Reading

Recognizing our lack of materials and structure for Language Arts, my school recently purchased an amazing guided reading program through Scholastic that I am very excited to implement. The Scholastic Guided Reading (See here!) program uses the Fountas & Pinnell leveling system and includes real literature at all levels. I was pleased that we purchased the Nonfiction Focus because it covers many interesting topics while still including an abundance of classic and contemporary fiction.

The beginning of a long Sunday afternoon opening 26+ boxes of leveled books...by myself!

Each level comes with about ten titles and each title has six copies to use for groups. The teaching guide for each book offers great ideas for comprehension activities and phonics focuses.

LOTS of books!

Our school isn't able to house these books in a central location, but our third grade teacher graciously offered shelf space!

Math Rotations and Partner Work

My school uses Math in Focus for our Math curriculum. The program uses the Singapore approach and is aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Math.  So far we have covered topics ranging from three-digit addition and subtraction, simple multiplication/division, money, fractions, and measurement. After covering a chapter/topic, I have continued to spiral in additional practice to make sure that the majority of the kids master the material. At the beginning of the year, a large portion of my Math block was direct instruction with a lot of teacher direction. Starting this semester, I've began to introduce more partner work through rotations and I am seeing great results!  I ranked students by assessment scores and created pairs of students of different ability levels. I paired the #1 student with #15, #2 with #16, #3 with #17, and so forth and so on until all students were paired.  I created a bunch of simple "games" to review money, fractions, measurement, etc... and rotated students through stations every 5-7 minutes.  It was amazing to see how independent they were! Below are some pictures of our stations.

Room Arrangement

New room arrangement! Post-Winter Break.

Life Cycles: Butterflies

I took a long hiatus from posting, but I want to get back in a routine finally! We just completed a unit on life cycles in Science. I've posted some pictures below of our class project, butterflies, and the release! It as so much fun and the information has really stuck with the kids.