Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

The other day I taught an iPad science lesson with a group of eight graders. After the explanation and practice student were to work independently on their project. Unfortunately these 8th graders could not work independently and quietly at the same time (not a huge surprise). The students worked hard to fill the void of silence with smack talk across the room distracting each other and getting off task. Luckily I had a Kidz Bop 23 CD in my bag and I put it in and immediately the talking stopped (the singing, the foot taping, and head bopping started but hey they were all working). Surprisingly children have difficulty focusing in a completely quiet environment and they seek to fill the void with unproductive noise/chatter. Having some music that can play in the background will help to greatly reduce behavior issues in these situations. I like the Kidz Bop CD's because they feature songs the kids know but they have been filtered so there is no inapprop...

A friend told me about this site www.readworks.org in conjunction with a grad school assignment. I was particularily drawn to the nonfiction reading passages you could download along with text questions. Not only did I find applicability with the new Common Core focus on non-fiction text reading but I also thought it was a great site for supplemental instructional material for notebooks as well as substitute material.

      Tomorrow is Read Across America Day and I have been asked to be a guest reader in two schools.   The first school I will be reading in a second grade class and the second school I will be a reading in an open time slot in their gym.   Because tomorrow is Friday, I can wear jeans and my Dr. Seuss shirt, I thought I would have a little fun. I choose to read Bartholomew and the Oobleck with the second graders. They study weather and the book can be tied to weather as the King in the story becomes sick of the normal things that fall from the sky and asks for something different. Then I asked the teacher if we could make oobleck afterward and tie it into what they had learned about solids and liquids. The teacher was pretty agreeable. I think that is mainly because most of the teachers have given up on tomorrow because, on top of guest readers and various reading events, everyone is wearing their PJ's (note to self - fi...

I made this poster a few year ago from book I got from my mother-in-law (who found it at a garage sale). Here is a link to the book on AMAZON  and better yet (!) a link to the FREE PDF of the book . UPDATE - Apparently the PDF site is down. Luckily I downloaded it before it went down and I have it uploaded HERE . I copied some of the templates from the book and made a "How to Make a Poster" poster (the kids think that is the funniest thing!). I left it up on the wall and earlier finishers were directed to the poster to pick a layout to make a poster for the classroom on whatever topic we were covering at the time. This could also be used as a guide for a right hand poster assignment. It currently resides in a friends classroom and she is using it in a similar fashion.

I saw this in one of the hallways at a school I work in and I really liked the concept. The art teacher tied in learning about people in the American Revolution, jobs/apprenticeships, and art all in one activity. I thought this would make a good "right hand" assignment in a notebook. The left hand side could contain the poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (YouTube has a pretty good dramatic reading of the poem - HERE ). The poem could be introduced in an ELA class in relation to poets, stanzas, and rhyming schemes. The children would then make "silver" teapots for the right hand side of the notebook.

I would like to thank Mrs. Johnson who allowed me to try out the "cell" phone activity in her 5th grade class. It went pretty well. It turned into a two day activity. I was hoping it could be done in one class period but with a "cell" intro and cutting out all the little pieces it ran into a second day (to finish cutting, matching, and gluing). The "cell" phone was a plant cell because of its shape. Mrs. Johnson had another cell cut out activity for an animal cell and had students do it for their left hand assignment. We listened to this cell rap song on YouTube , which the kids LOVED. I was thinking that the lyrics (which are listed in the "about" section of the song) could go on the right hand side with the phone going on the left. Probably the best moment was when we were half way through the activity a 5th grader blurted out that he finally got why it was called a "cell" phone. Ha!

Today I got to spend the day with a 3rd grade science teacher doing a rock cycle activity. She had asked for help a couple of weekends ago to find some engaging rock cycle activities for her students. I quickly did a Pinterest search and came up with a link to a middle school blog where they featured a fun looking rock cycle station activity. That website took me to the originating activity site - Illinois State Museum Geology Online and their Ride the Rock Cycle activity . I read through it and felt it was doable for third graders (although I was a little nervous about the cartooning). I offered my help and we put together the activity. The kids did it WONDERFULLY. It was one of those lesson you wish was observed (but of course never is :) They are on an alternating science schedule so she only had two of the four classes today but it was a good sampling of children. She had one class that had a high portion of struggling learners and the second class had a high...