The Start of Something Sweet

I'm just SO SO SOOOOO excited to announce a brand new weekly linky party. Hosted by ME! It is called.....

You know when you are planning for the week ahead, or two weeks ahead and then BAM! Lesson plan block! You then frantically search for ideas. Well, look no further. This is the place to come to get FABULOUS lesson plan ideas. 

I will be hosting a weekly linky party. The linky will be live every Saturday. 

 My goal to is help fellow teachers inspire other fellow teachers. We ALL have great lesson ideas. This is the time and place to share them. Be an inspiration for other teachers. 

So what do you have to do to link up? Copy the above and below pictures. Think about your top two or three lessons from the previous week or the week coming up. It could be any of the categories below. Write about your lessons. What did you do? Where did you get the materials for your lesson (a TPT product, school resources, website)? What worked? What didn't work?  

Here is my example.

 

 This was a crazy week. Filled with me getting sick in front of my kiddos. It was also filled with lots of teachable moments. I took those precious moments and threw my "lesson plans" to the side and quickly create new plans. 

We had a little visitor come to our class. 

This cutie belongs to a student. She asked if she could bring her in. I didn't mind at all. I seriously never thought she would actually bring her in. Bahaha, I was so wrong. 

Anyways, the kiddos adored her. I mean, who wouldn't?! Look at that face! This sweetie even got my bottled up student to crack a smile. Everyone was asking so many questions about hamsters. The kiddos wanted to soak in as much information about them as they could. 

This is where a teachable moment happens. How could I say, "Well, I have creating bar graphs in my lesson plans right now. We have to stick to the lesson plans." ? Insert a mini research lesson. 

Each of the students were able to hold the hamster. I was so surprised of how gentle my kiddos were. Even the toughest boys were so gentle. As they held the hamster, I told them to use their senses to make observations. 

We were lucky enough to have the iPads that day. I had the students each take a photo. Then I went around I took a photo with their iPad of them holding the hamster. 

I just learned about Popplet. It is a great App to create thinking maps. I had just finished showing them this App the week before. I decided this was a great time to see what they could do with it. I explained to them that I wanted them to make a thinking map of their choice. The map had to explain what they observed as they held the hamster. The kiddos did wonderful! The above example is one that my low ESOL student made. I would never be able to get this type of work out of her if was paper and pencil. I had the students send me their Popplet project through Edmodo. 

I found a kid friendly article online. I uploaded the link through Edmodo. The kiddos were able to click the link and start reading.

They were so quiet as they were reading

I had the kiddos pair up and reread the article to each other. I use sticks to form partners. Then I say something like, "The person with the shortest hair will read the first paragraph". I usually switch up choosing who reads first. For example, the person with the smallest hand, or biggest shoe, etc. 

After the kiddos were done reading, I had them discuss three interesting facts they learned about hamsters. 

The next task was to create a thinking map and pull interesting facts from the article. I gave them an example of how to do that. Since they needed to use their iPads to read the article, they had to create their thinking map (tree map in this case) on paper.

Now it was time to form a summary paragraph on hamsters. I printed out a rubric from the amazing rubric creating website, Rubistar. We've done summaries for a while now, so they knew what to do. I was blown away by their writing. They've come so far since the beginning of the year.

The computer lab was open on Friday. We've never been in there. I really wanted to make their hamster writing special. I decided we would type them! They've never typed anything before. Yet, when I showed them where to go and some quick tools for Microsoft Word, they started typing away. All you could hear was the sound of the keyboard. I was a very proud teacher. I wanted their writing to be uploaded to Edmodo, but of course, the internet was not working. Good thing I had a flash drive. I saved all of their work one by one. I asked for feedback on this assignment. Everyone agreed that it was fun and that they couldn't wait to do something like that again. Success!!!

 

Next week in math, we will use the App Doceri and the website Kids' Zone to create a math data project. Stay tuned!

 I can't wait to see what you have to post! Thanks for participating!

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