End of the Year Field Trips

The end of the school year always bring lots of fun activities and events including field trips. The 4th grade team and I planned a few field trips for our students including a trip to- 

Zephyr stadium to see the New Orleans Zephyr baseball team play which ended up being rained out. Although, we ate lots of great ball park food. The nachos are always my favorite!

 A ride on the Creole Queen down the Mississippi river to the Chalmette battlefield.

Finally, just my 4th grade class participated in a BioBlitz hosted by Jean Lafitte National Park and National Geographic.

Here are a few videos I created using Animoto to view our field trips:



Creole Queen/ Chalmette Battlefield




 Jean Lafitte National Park BioBlitz

What field trips do you go on at the End of the Year or throughout the year?

A Technology Enhanced Author Study

The end of the school year is drawing near, 7 days to be exact, and this is our final full week of school.This week's lesson are packed with inquiry based technology lessons with differentiated outcomes with students blogging, commenting, creating slideshows, videos, Wordles, and typing papers and bio poems, and also using apps to create stories, to discovering animals in our habitat and more. Each day I plan to blog about our technology lessons to showcase the awesomeness of my Stars.

Today students conducted an author study on Jacqueline Davies, the author of the Lemonade War. Students worked collaboratively with their partner using the Jacqueline Davies website to develop 5 questions using the information on the site. Then students presented their findings choosing the outcome being either a blog post, slideshow or a video. I was surprised and excited to see most students chose to do the video and some even turned it into a mock talk show. Their personalities really shined.

Here's some students examples of each outcome:

Blog Post

Video

Slideshow

Presentation 40- Author Study Jacqueline Davies from Erica Shepherd

Friday's Wrap-Up

   To wrap up our week, we had a field trip planned. However, this is the second consecutive Friday that it has rained when we had a field trip planned. Today though the rain was so bad that we ended up canceling the field trip to the Creole Queen and Chalmette Battlefield and rescheduling for Wednesday. Wednesday it should be a beautiful day for students to enjoy the ride on the Mississippi river and tour the Battlefield.

So, instead of a field trip students began blogging about their passions. You can check them out here!

We also wrapped up our week with finishing the chapter book The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies. We read this chapter book in three weeks time incorporating lots of pre-reading, during reading and post reading activities as well as lots of group work during reading workshop time.

     If you are looking for a new book to read with your 4th graders, I definitely recommend The Lemonade War. This is a great read to introduce or tie in economic vocabulary, business terms and even math problems,  as well as discuss family relationships. It also has a wealth of captivating figurative language within the text that makes for an engaging chapter book. 

Each chapter begins with a business oriented term which I made as our word of the day. After completing the chapter for the day, students discussed why this term was a good choice or not a good choice as the title of the chapter giving text evidence to support. During reading I supported the text with questions from the Leslie Preddy's site. Students turned and talked as I monitored discussions and scaffolded when needed.

Here's a look at a student's pre-reading work in their notebook. 

Finally, to conclude the reading for the day students worked in collaborative groups choosing from the following tasks on the board such as: ( Each day students are to choose a different task, completing all 4 tasks by Thursday.)
 1. Vocabulary Finder- Choose two words from the chapter to define, locate its part of speech and write a sentence

2. Question Writer- Answer 5 basic recall questions from the chapter.

3. Summarizer- Write a 3-5 sentence summary of the chapter.

4. Connector/Illustrator- Complete the following sentence stem- My favorite part was ....... It reminded me of ......



Here's a student's sample:

Early Finishers: Students completed a Fakebook page on one of the main characters Jessie or Evan.

 

"Pinspiration"

The pin that inspired me

to create a lesson of discovery using the website Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids.

Essential Question: How does each symbol represent our country?

Students will work collaboratively to discover the answer using the website. They will then use the information gathered to create a slideshow using the Keynote app to present to the class.

Have you had Pinspiration?

How Do You Promote Summer Reading?

According to Reading Rockets,  research says that children who don't read during the summer lose up to three months of reading progress and that loss has a cumulative, long term-effect.

So, how do you promote summer reading? 

I started by going to our local library, Jefferson Parish Library, and asking for library applications for my students to get library cards. They librarians were happy to assist me with giving me a stack of applications to bring back to school to hand out to my students. Within a day or so I had about 10 library applications filled out to bring back to the library, and then within another two days the cards were ready. The students were thrilled to receive their library cards today.

Next on my "To Do" is to find a 4th/5th grade level summer reading list to send home before the end of the year, which is soon approaching on May 22.

To all my blogger friends, I'd love for you to share a copy in the comment section of your summer reading list.

Here are a few additional links to promote summer reading:

Scholastic Summer Challenge 

Barnes and Noble is offering a FREE book for 8 books read.

Reading Rockets

Happy Summer Reading !

Teacher Appreciation Challenge

Mr. Hughes over at Educator's Life is hosting his second annual Teacher Appreciation Challenge. The challenge is to focus on a teacher you work with that you would like to acknowledge. Click on the link above to acknowledge someone you would like to show appreciation to during Teacher Appreciation week. 

    I would like to highlight a long time colleague of mine, Carlos Martinez. I have taught with Carlos for close to 11 years. We began as partner teachers teaching 4th/5th grade and then both worked as ELL teachers for three years. Carlos currently teaches 3-5th grade ELL students during the ELA block. He facilitates the English/Writing lessons. We work cohesively in planning lessons and differentiating instruction for our students.  I appreciate all of his support through the past 11 years, and the many strategies and techniques that I have learned from him. Carlos has a great rapport with students and always makes his lessons engaging by giving real life examples. Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and passion for teaching. You make a difference and are appreciated!

BioBlitz Training

After a week of rain in southern Louisiana, today turned out to be a chilly but beautiful day. It was a great day to take a walk and participate in a training event at Jean Lafitte National Park. Friday, May 17th my students will participate in a BioBlitz at the park working alongside scientists to collect various insects. They will perform various methods to locate the insects such as log busting and using aerial nets to sweep trees. Then they will analyze and identify the insects found. The coolest part is they will use the app Project Noah using our iPads to record the specimens found. They will be able to upload pictures, identify the insect and update their location.

So, today I took part in the teacher training for the BioBlitz to accustom myself to the methods of locating and capturing insects. I am no bug lover, but it was really cool!

Here are a few photos from my day:

Here's me holding one of the aerial nets used to catch insects. It's almost bigger than me!

A spider found with another teacher's aerial net. 

This is what Mrs. Wilson and I found in our net and on the ground nearby, some snails and a worm. 

Is it a millipede or a centipede? 

A cricket

Park ranger Stacey sorting through some leaves.

Mrs. Wilson scooping for some macro invertebrates. 

Here's a few things we found. I know it's hard to see but there is a snail, two beetles and two baby crawfish. 

I am looking forward to our class field trip.

Stay tuned for pictures!