Scoreboard Turnover

So the scoreboard turnover to students continued this week.  As the interest grew, I started to have the class vote on who they thought were excellent leaders and teachers.  I chose one for the scoreboard and two for other leadership jobs (calling students to the carpet, etc.).  I LOVED giving the scoreboard job out to a student as I was not forever searching for a pen.  I would just say, "I think the class deserves a smilie for that!" and my student leader would say, "Wait for it!" to which the class responded, "Oh yeah!"

During Library, we read a book about the digestive system and students initiated a discussion comparing and contrasting plant stems and blood vessels.  Students stood up and taught the class their higher level thinking connections!!

I taught a lesson on expanded form after watching Farrah Shipley's amazing video on compound words. To help I had a slide on the SmartBoard for each section of the lesson: the rules, the power pict, examples, non-examples, Yes/No Way!, Cutie, Critical Thinking, written work questions to be completed in a notebook or on a recipe card.  I added a target bullseye to discuss and provide class and teacher objectives near the beginning.  It worked really well and the lesson had better flow.  Next time I want to have a clipboard so that I can assess and record student learning during Cutie.

In other news, I started saying, "Quiet on set!" when Sharing time was about to begin ~ I borrowed this from another post on the forum.  The class responds, "It's show time!"  Way fun!

Also, we did an animal unit this week.  Each student wrote a report about their chosen animal after reading a book and writing down four fact words and an opinion word about their animal.  I demonstrated how to gesture through the title and each of the sentences created from the collected words.  Then, I had the students return to their desks to silently make up and gesture through their own sentences using uppercase letters and periods at the end.  Next, using the Teach/OK, they practiced saying and gesturing their sentences with their partner.  Finally, they wrote down their prepared sentences.  In the end, they produced fantastic reports with beautiful complete sentences!!  OH YEAH!!!

The week ended with a field trip a golf course to learn about our community  The Class/Yes! and the rules were well utilized (although silently with hand gestures by me due to golf course rules:).  The parents and golf course staff were extremely impressed with my students' manners.

Phew!  I think it's time for a vacation!