Thursday Throwdown: Answer Buzzers

 I'm so excited Thursday Throwdown is back!! I've had this post sitting in drafts since April! I'm glad you finally get to read it :)

Just before April vacation, I pulled these out to make our Figurative Language Football game (found on SMART Exchange) a little more fun.

I bought these from Calloway House a few years ago, but they can be found almost anywhere.

The buzzers all make different sounds, and they look so pretty!

They do require a little planning-a tiny screwdriver and 2 AAA batteries each (I read it wrong and brought AA's-but thanks to an aide who lived nearby-she brought me AAA's during lunch!!)

The kids LOVED them!

I had a small period of buzzing time-to get it out of their systems! :)

Then we each got a whiteboard, a marker, a buzzer and our teams and went to work!

Of course, some yardage was taken away in the game for excessive buzzing~some of us got a little too excited!

Definitely a fun way to spice up a game-and highly recommended!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Sea Journeys

Yay Thursday!

Boy am I glad that this week is almost over! It has been a mess, and I am ready for the weekend!

Now, I know I've talked about our really cool sea explorer project before (here) (and mentioned in other places :).

But I just wanted to show you have much the kids love it (and how creative they can be!)

Quick summary: Students are divided into groups. They need to sail from Japan to Australia (which is conveniently located on the other side of the world) dodging storms, ice burgs, whirlpools and sea monsters.

Every day, they write in their ship's logs (and take turns being captain/first mate) to earn moving forward points. But they have to be careful, because the High Empress, Goddess of the Sea (me :), could decided to throw them a curve ball-known as a travel card. Cards can be good or bad (and usually come out when the entries haven't been up to snuff). They must work together to record their journeys to reach their destination.

They love this! They told me the other day that they missed doing it and how much fun it was.

Here are some of my favorite entries:

Now, these next ones are some of my favorite-her partners were absent for a few days, so she wrote  very creative entries about here missing partners.

I loved seeing their entries every day!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: SS Notebooks-Explorers

Happy Thursday! (or, as I like to think about it this week-almost Friday!)

Time for:

This month, I'm sharing something that we are working on (me included!).

We are currently learning about Explorers for our Social Studies topic, an while the students are researching an individual explorer and creating a PowerPoint, I wanted something to give the kids an overview of the major explorers.

To TPT! I thought. I was sure I would find something there.


But...I didn't. :( (that's not to say that there wasn't very good resources there, just not what I was personally looking for)

So I thought about what I wanted to do.

I definitely wanted it to be able to fit into our Social Studies Notebooks.

I wanted a full overview-from Vikings to Lewis and Clark.

So I decided to create my own articles!

I rounded up all my resources.

Plus Enchanted Learning-they have a lot of great info (and the internet in general :)

And I went to work!

I also added maps (thanks, internet!) because I think it is important for the kids to see where they traveled to and from, as well as a foldable that the kids have to fill out, using information from the article. (The foldable changes slightly from article to article-mixing it up!)

 I'll be honest-I'm not done writing all of them yet-as writing them takes quite a bit of time.

 I only have 3 out of the 8 I have planned done-so I'm less than halfway there. But the kids really enjoy them, and they are a fairly quick lesson and check.

I think they give a nice overview-without delving too much into the subject!

Also linking up with:

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Poetry!

Happy Thursday!

Time for Thursday Throwdown with Erin!

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I LOVE teaching poetry to kids!

It's something that most kids enjoy, and they can get so creative and not worry all the pesky things like complex sentences with dependent and independent clauses.

Plus, even your struggling  and LD students can succeed at this!

We've done Cinquians

Haikus

Sensory Poems

and Abstract Noun Poems

Nothing gets my kids writing juices flowing by saying we're going to learn a new type of poetry!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Clock Partners

Happy New Year!

It's time for....

One of my very favorite things for choosing partners is doing Clock Partners.

Clock partners is something I heard about waaaaaaaay back in undergrad as a lowly educamation student. :)

So you take a paper copy of a clock (you can google it and get links (or TPT it!)).

Have the kids walk around and find people to fill it in.  They can trade papers to put their name on their partner's clock in the 'time slot' they agreed on.

They can choose their partner, but they must have the same 'time' available in order to be partners. And I tell my class that they can only have each person once (makes them work with people they normally wouldn't!)

For example, Johnny has 2 o'clock available, but Susie has only 4 o'clock available. Johnny and Susie can't be partners. :(

But if Johnny also has 4 o'clock available, then he and Susie can be partners!

We did have to do this twice in my class (we got a little screwed up the first time!), but the kids are always asking if they can do clock partners!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown

Happy almost weekend!

My kids love using post-its!

We use them for a lot of things.

We use them for our answers/quick checks.

We have organizers that use them.

From Joanne's Reading with Post Its

Self Created!

(Joanne and Sarah have some very fun ones!)
 and we can use them to track our reading, hold our thoughts, and all sorts of other things!

The kids enjoy it and they definitely get excited when I say it is time for post-it organizers! A great hook for them to learn!

Thursday:

Sweater: Old Navy

Pants: NY & Co
Shoes: DSW



Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Kid Rounding

Happy Thursday!

Time for Thursday Throwdown!

We did this activity today-because my kids were just not getting rounding.

So I thought, why not use them to demonstrate?

Every student got a number (from 0-9) with 0 on the back.

I picked six students to come up to the front of the room and be the big number.

One student was lucky enough to be 'leid' which was the place value we were rounding to.

Every student after (to the right of the 'leid' student, turned around and turned their card to 0.

Then we had to decided if we were going to stay with the 'leid' student, or trade up.

I brought up the student who had the next number up, and moved them in front of the 'leid' student.

We talked about how we had to look one student to the right to decide if we were going to stay or trade up.

They had fun with it!

Every student got to be the big number twice, with some students getting more 'turns' if they had a trade number.

Then we went back and worked in our workbooks. Most students went back and corrected previous problems-they seemed to have a much better understanding of it! (and after 3 days, I hope so!)

Today's Outfit

Sweater: Old Navy
Skirt: Target
Shoes: DSW (which were changed after the picture-My toes needed to breathe!)

Tonight was Open House...which I'll talk about tomorrow! Open House night is definitely a looong day at school-especially when you have an early morning PLC!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Picture Books

Happy Thursday Everyone!

I'm linking up today with Erin from I'm Lovin Lit for her Thursday Throwdown.

Now, some of you might be shocked.


I mean, my kids are 4th graders.


9 and 10 year-olds.


They should be reading chapter books.


But no...



I....





....have my kids reading picture books!!

GASP! How dare I encourage my students to read picture books instead of stretching my students to read chapter books!


I know.


It's shameful.


But there is a reason!

We use picture books to practice our comprehension strategies before we use them on grade level texts!

I think it is the best way to get the kids to really focus on the strategy that they are learning, rather than trying to figure out the words and what they mean.

And they love it!

They think they are getting away with something ;)

So.


If your kids are struggling with a comprehension strategy or are just not getting something, pull out those picture books!

They'll feel smarter-and like they are getting away with something (I mean, who reads pictures books in 4th grade!) and they'll be learning too!

For more picture book ideas, check out here, here,  here, here, (oh, especially here - we're doing a modified version today!) and here. Clearly, I have picture book issues! (and most of those have freebie organizers attached!)

How do you interest your kids in learning...go link up!

Wednesday's Outfit:

Sweater: Maurices
Shirt: JCP
Tank:Target
Shorts: LOFT Outlet
Shoes: Zappos

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Mini-Books / Currently

Happy August!

(Where is summer going by the way? The school year doesn't go by this quickly!)

I'm linking up with:

for her Throwdown Thursday.




I've used these mini-books many times this summer and almost blogged about them-before I saw Erin's reminder :)

The kids love these books, and they are really easy to make. I first saw them at a workshop 6 or 7 years ago as a (very) young teacher. I've also seen them recently floating around.

First, start with a piece of paper.

 Fold it in half.

Turn 90 degrees and fold in half again

Turn 90 degrees and fold in half again

(Basically, you're folding it into 8 pieces :)

Open paper up so it is only folded in half (back to step number 2-but now with fold lines!)

You are going to cut that vertical line down to the fold

Open paper up and fold it so the cut line is on top

Now, you're going to push the two sides together so the paper lies flat

Now you just have to fold the pages down into book form!

Success!

Now you can have your kids create anything! It's an 8 page book (including front and back covers). I've had kids create mini-animal encyclopedias, a 'list' of favorite books, summarizing a longer book, etc.

I've most recently used them to have kids pick their favorite animal pairs from a book we read and draw and write about them.

I had them draw a picture and write at least one fact about why or how the animals were friends.

They were seriously into it!  I've never seen them so quiet. :)


August Currently:

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn