Fantastic Friday:Friday Flashback & Five for Friday

What a great week!  My kids did great in all activities and lessons this week.  This week has rejuvenated my {heart} of teaching. <3 There were some bumps in the road but overall the kids did a fabulous job academically and behaviorally.

1. February 6th was our 100th day of school!  Yay! Only 80 days left :)  I loved Collaboration Cuties 100 day owl, "Whoo's 100 Days Smarter?", and decided to make them for my kids.  I used scrapbook paper and googly eyes.  My students then wrote what they have learned in 100 days.  This class is the first class I have had that actually enjoys writing...strangely odd since they don't like to indent or write paragraphs...but they {heart} telling a good story!

Notice my new watermark, thanks to Vampire Craftin <3

Each student used at least two sheets, very proud of them.

2.  Success in Reading. We read "Why Don't You Ride a Horse, Sam Adams?" last week and focused on the historical and historical fiction of the Revolutionary War this week (we will continue this next week as well).  We focused on the Boston Tea Party by reading four different accounts of the Boston Tea Party.  We worked on RI.4.6 (Compare and Contrast a firsthand and second account of the same event or topic).  I wanted my students to understand how several people at the same event could have different accounts or perspectives before beginning our activity.  I have three other teachers help during Reading so I had one of them slam a book on the floor, one scream, and one pretend to trip, all as I read about the Boston Tea Party in the front of the room.  I then had the students describe what just happened in the classroom in their notebooks, next they shared them with their teammates.  We discussed how some students for got details, or to describe an event, or even tell about the events out of sequential order.  I feel like they really understood this concept after our skit :)

We then applied our understanding of perspective by reading different accounts of the Boston Tea Party, I found the passages/accounts here.  In their small reading groups the kids read one account and picked out the main details, facts, and important words or phrases related to the Boston Tea Party.  The vocabulary in these passages were very difficult but a great challenge at the same time.  I glued the passages to bulletin board paper and had students write the details and facts they felt were most important around the passages. I found this idea here. (I cannot find the original poster this link is to my Pinterest board, if you know the original poster to this idea please let me know so I can credit them)

This group used the paper to create a large bubble map.

This group's passages was three pages long, but provided some pretty cool facts and details.

Students then used their notes to write a summary about the Boston Tea Party based on their passage/account.  They shared their summaries with the class while the rest of the students copied it onto a graphic organizer I created.  Once all four summaries/details/facts were shared the students independently wrote about similarities and differences from two of the passages using their summaries.
This lesson took four days to complete, and well worth it!

All four groups passages hanging up.

3.  I {Heart} Youtube!  Children today are very visual and need to be entertained to learn, at least in my class, so I try to utilize videos as much as possible.  I couldn't find enough copies of books on the Boston Tea Party that were historical fiction, so I turned to Youtube.  My students read an informational passage about the Boston Tea Party, and we discussed the key events and main idea.  Next, the students watched this video from Liberty Kids on Youtube.  While watching the video they filled in a T-chart with Historical elements from the movie and Fictional elements from the movie. They {hearted} it :)  We watched "The Shot Heard Around the World" video for S.S. as well.

4.  Fraction Museum by Colorful Teaching.  We started fractions this week and I found a cute idea from Pinterest for teaching Fractions of a Set.  For extra credit students brought in sets of objects for classmates to write fractions for.  We had a variety of items ranging from Legos, feathers, jewels, Monster High dolls, and cinnamon sticks.  I placed the sets of items on the Elmo while students wrote fractions on their white boards.  Here are a few snapshots of our Fraction Museum.

This set lent itself to a variety of fractions.

This was our most popular set.
(Having three boys I was a bit surprised by these dolls)

Some teachers would of made this student change his labels, I however found them quite interesting and went along with our perspective lesson in Reading for the week.  He later wrote "8/8 Really Really Scary".  He has fractions of a set mastered. :)

Here are the Monster High dolls on the Elmo.  I love how you can see my student counting the total number of dolls.

5. Supportive Teachers, Administration, and Parents.  Every time I needed support from my coworkers, administration, or parents this week they were there for me.  They made the lows for this week minute so we could all focus on the student's achievements.


I am linky up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching and Teaching Maddeness Friday Flashback.  Hope your week was just as good if not better!