Summer is Almost Here!

You may remember last week when I mentioned that one of the grade 6 classes at my school were doing music and poetry to learn about figurative language.

Well today I'm partnering with Education.com to offer a lovely summer themed crossword puzzle that will also have your students learning about figurative language.

For more figurative language worksheets like this visit education.com

Music and Poetry

One of the grade 6 classes that I help out in has been doing a figurative language project for the last couple of weeks and they are loving it.

For the project they have to look up songs (current ones, old ones, rap music, country music... it really doesn't matter what kind... as long as they are appropriate) and find different forms of figurative language in them.

They are looking for 

-  Similies

-  Metaphors

-  Personification

-  Onomotapia

-  Hyperbole

There might be one other that I'm forgetting but if you decide to do this you can really do whatever ones you want!

I can't really get into much specifics of the assignment other than that because they are doing it on iPads with certain programs that I'm not well versed in at all (their teacher has been teaching them how to use these programs during class times when I'm not in the room).  But basically they are creating different slides explaining why the different lyrics are these different types of figurative language and then they are inserting short clips of the music videos into the project.

Why do I think they are loving it?

1)  They get to use the iPads

2)  They get to listen to music

3)  They get to create something 

They really are having quite a bit of fun with it.  Let me tell you, it's going over much better than my grade 8 poetry unit.

Tie Dye Snowflakes

A couple of weeks ago I was left subbing without a sub plan and I knew from previous experience of this happening that an art lesson could easily occupy a lot of time (especially if you pair it with a poetry lesson too). 

Luckily, I had already been in for the teacher without a sub plan the previous week and quickly came up with a plan for this Monday prior to leaving on the Friday... so I had already made sure we had all the supplies and were good to go for Monday.

This was a pretty simple art lesson (assuming your students know how to cut snowflakes out of paper) that I found on A Faithful Attempt. She goes over the lesson and what you'll need and the steps you take so I'll just post our finished results...

You may notice that each of my students have a short little haiku poem at the bottom of their pages... that's not a coincidence. After making the snowflakes and putting them to the side to dry I taught them how to do a haiku poem... If you want my opinion (and I'd like to think you do) haiku's are kind of tricky for students to get because you have to count syllables. The previous week I had students make couplet poems about hot chocolate and they were far better at rhyming than counting syllables. 

I've actually talked about this many times before... but when I taught in my grade 5/6 classroom I had my students write a piece of poetry for every single art piece we did. I also never gave my students back their art during the year and instead filed it all away (along with all their poems) and at the end of the year I gave them a book full of their artwork and poetry from the year... sort of like an art portfolio. In my opinion it was a pretty great idea. Plus, as a bonus I didn't actually ever do a "poetry unit" because we just did it throughout the year (and I never heard a single groan about it when we did poetry in connection with art.

Hot Chocolate Activities

The first week back from winter break this year I was in for a grade 4 teacher the entire week. I had already assumed that there likely wasn't going to be a plan left for me so I took it upon myself to do a little planning over Christmas break... it started with an art project about hot chocolate and went from there...

So first, I found a hot chocolate art lesson on A Faithful Attempt

To go along with the theme of "hot chocolate" for the week I also read them a poem about hot chocolate called "The Perfect Cup of Hot Chocolate"

I had told them that when I taught in my grade 5 and 6 classroom that for every piece of art work that they did in that class I had them write a poem to go along with it. So the following day I taught the class hot to write a Couplet poem and they wrote some couplets about hot chocolate.

Then I wanted them to write about their own perfect cup of hot chocolate... but figured we could have a bit of fun making our own hot chocolate before that. So, I had them write out the steps to making hot chocolate (using the supplies that I had to make the hot chocolate which were cups, spoons, hot chocolate powder in a container, and a kettle). I told them that I was going to follow their steps exactly and had them face away from me as they read their directions. Needless to say, the first few hot chocolates that we made didn't exactly turn out. We had a bunch where the container of hot chocolate was "inside" the cup (we couldn't actually fit the container inside the cup so it just sat on top), some hot chocolates that had cold water in them, and one where we put 4 teaspoons inside a cup and that was it. I gave them a chance to edit their work to make it more detailed so that I might actually make a cup and after they edited their work we were making a steady stream of regular hot chocolates. 

This wasn't the first time I did this... when I was teaching grade 8 ELA I had the students tell me how to make a sandwich

Lots of them complained that the hot chocolate wasn't chocolaty enough and that they make theirs with milk and why didn't I have any marshmallows. So, for the second part of their descriptive writing project I had them write about their own perfect cup of hot chocolate.

They were supposed to try to use up the entire page but some complained that their perfect cup of hot chocolate was nothing special and one said his perfect cup was the one he got at McDonalds. So I also had them describe the perfect cup to put it in.

Then, the following day I did a hot chocolate science experiment. The purpose of the experiment was that we wanted to know what the perfect temperature was for drinking hot chocolate AND how many degrees hot chocolate temperature would drop every 2 minutes.

I went through the scientific method with them for this and we filled out most of the page together. Here is our scientific results (the numbers on the far right show the number of students that thought their hot chocolate was at the perfect temperature for drinking then)

As you can see our results are a little inconclusive.

My best guess is that some students wanted for their hypothesis to be right that they just decided that temperature was right for them. A few also were out to lunch during this process and realized a little too late that we were doing more than just writing on a paper and enjoying hot chocolate and just voted for what their friend did.

For the record, the students that voted for the 90 degree temperature it was likely already closer to 75 degrees by the time they got it. Likely still a little too hot to be drinking but they forced it down I guess.

And there you have it folks, how to spend a week talking about hot chocolate

This Week At School

- first off it was only a 3 day week for my students... Monday was a holiday here and Tuesday was meetings for teachers and meet the teacher in the evening when students dropped off their supplies.

-  We did our first entry in our math journals!  I bought an interactive math journal document from TPT that is fantastic (plus I got it on sale which makes it even more fantastic).  It took us ALL morning but we did it (this also included decorating our books, setting up a table of contents, and picking out a ribbon that will be used as our bookmark. We still have to make some success criteria but I thought we would do that after we did a few entries together so that they know what I expect.  Naturally I forgot to snap a picture of my page of my math journal but I'll hopefully remember to do that tomorrow and I'll update this.

- We made these name spheres for our lockers as an art project.  We ended up cutting them out into circles so that they would fit on their lockers and then I laminated them so they would last (I'll take a better picture of mine tomorrow as well).

- I plan to save all their art projects this year and we will make a book out of them at the end of the year.  To go with every art piece we will do some poetry.  So we were doing a really simple poem about us for this piece of art.  Remember our writing folders?  Well we used them to go through the writing process for the poems.

-  I gave them homework for the weekend... I gave them each a piece of paper with a heart on it and they are to fill it with pictures and words of things that they like.  We are going to put that heart in the prewriting section of their writing folders so that they will have a whole heart full of things that they like... hopefully that will translate into things they like to write about as well.

-  We did "Where Did the Water Go?" in science class to learn about the scientific process.  I couldn't find sodium polyacrylate anywhere so I went the diaper route and took the powder stuff out of it. I tested it once at home and assumed it work in the classroom.  To be honest I was REALLY scared I was going to pour water all over someone's head (it was a super sweet girl too that guessed the cup with all the water) but it worked!... I must admit I added A LOT of the powder to ensure it would though.  One student had seen the experiment before but no one really listened to her and the thing went over like gangbusters!

Afterwards they wanted to see what would happen to the "water" if we left it overnight in the cup... so it turned into a further science lesson the next day.

-  I photocopied pages for my students from an "I'm Through, What Can I Do?" book and we put them into duotangs.  So far they are working great!

-  We got everyone into the computer lab to change their passwords.  HOPEFULLY they all changed their passwords to what they told me they would.

-  In my school we do opening religious exercises in the morning that I help to lead.  We started those up on Friday and I'm doing devotions from the Adventures in Odyssey Series that my 4-6's seem to be into.

-  I have an interpreter in my room for the first time ever!  She is pretty fantastic... I hope all my jokes are being translated well!

-  Everyone was excited to play "Ruleopoly" (one of my students even decided to make her password ruleopoly).  I was nice and let everyone roll this first week.  I told them that if I have to talk to them more than a couple of times in a short period of time I would tell them to turn their names over and they wouldn't get to roll the next week.  Boy does that work!  I also told them that anyone who wasn't signed out of their computers when the bell went was having their name turned over and everyone was in line within seconds.  I may have stumbled upon something really great here.

I got my Ruleopoly board from perhaps the more commonly known Homeworkopoly but I wanted to use it for more than just them getting their homework done (why have multiple behaviour things going on at once?) so I just changed the name!


Stay tuned for a post on our Ruleopoly

We did a group work project where they had to stack 6 cups using only an elastic band and 4 pieces of string (no hands could touch the cups).  I had to give them a hint that they needed to use everything and each of them had to have a part in stacking each individual cup.  They all eventually got it.

We are off to a swell start to the year in 5/6CP!

Art Portfolios

A while ago I admitted that I needed an idea to help my students want to keep their artwork.  I thought some kind of art portfolio would be the answer to the problem of them tossing the art as soon as I give it back to them.... but wasn't sure how to go about this art portfolio.

The problem?  I don't have space to store a lot of stuff so I would prefer my students to be in charge of their own art portfolios so that they have to store it somewhere... that somewhere being in the classroom so basically I was back at square one.

But have no fear because I have a new favourite blog Runde's Room (it's mostly my favourite because she is teaching the exact grades I am AND is in Canada... a rare find!)

The exact post that inspired me is here

So.. my new plan is to only do art that is on paper and one-dimensional (so long messy paper mache projects!).  On the backs of their artwork I will have them do some kind of reflection (maybe not all of the time but definitely some of the time)... was it easy?  did they like the process?  Could they improve somehow?  Favourite part?... a simple sentence or two for a reflection will suffice.

I'm also going to try to incorporate poetry (and also math sometimes) to their art.  I'll store all their artwork with corresponding poems in a filing cabinet (I don't have cute little crates and don't plan on making any... this year) and put together their art and poetry books at the end of the year (that's assuming I'm there at the end of the year... let's all keep our fingers crossed on this one).  Hopefully it will be a great gift at the end of the year for them.

One of the first projects I'm going to have them do is a name sphere... I think they will put them on their lockers in the hall... I'm hopeful that these will last until June and we can use them as part of the cover to their art and poetry books.  We'll see.