STEM Challenge

I am so glad that I purchased Smart Chick's STEM Engineering Challenge Bundle!

This bundle is full of great activities to incorporate into science. All of the challenges tell you exactly what you need for the challenge, and most of the time it's stuff you have laying around the house. 

This week we completed the Bird Nest challenge. I had students bring in materials from their yards at home and then they worked with a partner to create the bird nest. When the students finished the challenge, they filled out the lab report that went along with it. The best part is seeing the students working together and it forces them to be creative!

Check out some of the photos of the finished products!

What are some of your favorite science activities?

Stitch Fix Review #??

I'm at the point where I've lost track of how many Stitch Fix boxes I've actually received. For my latest box I requested some flannel. Check out what I got!

I ended up only keeping the lace top and I love it! I think it's a top that I will wear all the time. I thought the shoes were cute, but just too big. I had a pair of green corduroy pants in 3rd grade, so I just wasn't feeling those. I asked for flannel and I loved the shirt, but I already have one that's identical in color. All in all, I was still very pleased with my box!

What did you get in your fall Stitch Fix box??

If you are thinking about checking out Stitch Fix for the first time, I would love for you to use my referral link below :)

Stitch Fix 

Halloween Class Door Poster

Looking for a fun Halloween collaboration poster for your class to complete? Art with Jenny K has an awesome Halloween door poster posted on TpT. 

How cool is that? My students worked on this over the week and our poster turned out great! Check out a picture of it below. 

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Happy Columbus Day! I hope you are all enjoying your day off of school as much as I am!

I always start the year out with the novel Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. This is a quick and easy novel that always gets the students interested in reading. 

Renee Smalley has an awesome novel unit to go with this book. The unit has activities and questions for each chapter that focus on multiple comprehension strategies. There is also an awesome end of the book project included that my students love creating each year. 

Check out the pictures below of the some of our completed projects!

Story of My Name Writing

I found the perfect writing activity to start out the school year. For the past few years now, I have used Fourth and Ten's Story of My Name Writing as our first writing activity. 

This writing activity is paired with a read aloud and has students asking their parents how they decided on their name. The activity comes with a guided step by step process on how to write their paragraph. Once the paragraph is written, students can complete a craft to present with the final paragraph. 

My students were so excited about this activity and couldn't wait to share with the class the story of their name. 

When they were all finished with their projects, they proudly displayed them on their lockers. 

Below are some pictures of the final projects. 

RTI Block

My school is trying something new this year with RTI and I am loving it! This year we have broken down our students into math and reading groups based on strengths and weaknesses. Each day we have a 30 minute RTI block with the whole 4th grade. 

I am working with the high reading group and have been using Alyssha Swanson's Close Reading passages. 

The bundle includes literature and informational text. Right now we have been using the high interest informational texts. The students have really enjoyed the topics of the articles and we have also had fun using the Chromebooks to investigate the topics even further.  

If you are looking for something to challenge your higher readers, I highly recommend this product. Not only are the passages challenging and engaging, but they include higher level questions that go along with each passage. 

Back to School Fun!

It has been a rough transition going from waking up at 9:00 to waking up at 5:00 and actually having to work everyday, but I'm slowly getting used to it again!

We just finished our second full week of school and I want to share a couple of the fun back to school activities that we did with you!

The Thinker Builder's Back to School pack was a huge hit with my students. It was filled with a lot of great activities. Below are some pictures of the Who Am I? activity that was a part of this pack. 

My students also enjoyed working on Art with Jenny K's Back to School Math pages. This was a fun review of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to start the school year. 

What are some of your favorite back to school activities?

We Have A Winner!!

Thank you to everyone that entered the giveaway for a TpT gift certificate! Random number generator chose number three, which was:

Chelsea!

Chelsea, look for an email from me with your gift certificate! Everyone else enjoy the sale!

Bonus Sale and Giveaway!

I survived my first week of school, and I'm hopeful it's going to be a great year!

Have you heard about the TpT bonus sale?? My store will be 20% off for the sale and I'm offering a chance to win a $10 TpT gift certificate. The giveaway will end tonight at midnight so don't forget to enter! 

$10 TpT Gift Certificate

Pen Pals Anyone?

I had Meet the Teacher Night tonight and everyone showed up! Woohoo! And to top that off I only have 20 students this year! I think it's going to be a good year!

I would love for my students to have pen pals this year. Is anyone interested? Let me know if you would want to be pen pals with my class from Illinois!

Back to School Night Packet

Tomorrow I get to meet my new group of 4th graders at Back to School Night! 

Yesterday I was out shopping at Kohls and I hear a "Look, Alia, there is your teacher!" I turned around to see one of my new students. She seemed so tiny! I forget how little they look to me when they start the year!

Today I want to share with you the back to school packet that I have made the last few years. I have been using Miss Johnston's Journey's back to school flipbook. 

Here is the completed flipbook that will be out on the students' desks when they arrive tomorrow night!

A New Idea!

I'm sure you all, like me, start the school year with new ideas that you can't wait to try out. Some of those ideas work out and others don't. Here is one of my ideas that I'm planning on trying this year: 

My idea started with begging my dad to cut my extra spiral notebooks in half. Luckily he agreed and they turned out perfectly! 

This year we have Chromebooks for every student and I am very excited about it! I plan on using these notebooks as a response log to NewsELA. Each day the students will have to read and respond to one NewsELA article. 

The students will respond to the articles by filling out a reader's notebook response page created by Michael Friermood. 

The completed response log will be glued into the spiral notebook. I plan on having a share time every Friday where students can talk about the articles they read throughout the week. I am thinking I will collect and grade these notebooks each Friday. 

Look What I Got!

Now that I finally have my room back together, I am ready to start planning and making copies! Today I wanted to share some of the awesome products that I purchased during the TpT back to school sale! 

I can't wait to start using these products! What products did you buy during the sale that you are excited to use?

Excuse me while I vent.......

Please don't feel like you actually have to read this post...I really just want to complain for a minute.

I went into school for the first time yesterday. Even though school starts Friday, yesterday was the first day I was able to be in my classroom due to construction. I got into my classroom to see that all of the furniture had been stacked up and moved into a corner of the room! This is what my room looked like after I had moved furniture for an hour.....as you can see it's still nowhere close to being finished!

Clearly I have been spoiled in the past because having to move heavy bookcases and filing cabinets in a room that did not have AC running was horrible!!! I did finally manage to get all of the desks down only to realize they had not been cleaned and were filthy! Needless to say I spent most of the day cleaning.  After an almost full 8 hour day at school, the room is almost put together. 

I feel like I should mention that I may have spent the first couple hours going around and catching up with coworkers :) Does anyone else find that their first day back to the classroom is usually spent catching up with coworkers and just looking around your classroom at all that needs to be done and then you don't actually get much done? Hopefully this isn't just me! 

I'm headed back to school today and I'm hoping to be able to share more progress tomorrow! How are your rooms looking?

Monday Made It!

Hello! Remember me? I've been missing for a while, but that's because I got married this summer! My focus for the summer has been all about the wedding and honeymoon. Now that summer is almost over, I'm realizing I really got nothing else done. So this week I've been busy working on my to do list! Today I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It linky to share one of the house projects I finished.

A few months ago I bought this old dresser at a garage sale and I finally got around to refinishing it. I used a gray chalk paint, and I love how it turned out! What do you think?

Before

After

What projects are you trying to get finished before school starts back up?

The Magician's Elephant

My students just finished our latest novel, The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. 

Here is the description that is found on the back of the book:

"When a fortuneteller’s tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her?

The fortuneteller’s mysterious answer (An elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that Peter can hardly dare to believe it.

But it is―all of it―true."

I was excited to see that Renee Smalley had a novel study to go along with The Magician's Elephant. She creates the best novel studies!

The end of the book project that goes along with this novel is a story cube. My students had a lot of fun creating these. Below are some pictures of the final products. 

And now to pick out our next novel!