PEAK Questioning Strategies Day 3

Well, I totally forgot to require the kids to answer in complete sentences today. We took a practice reading test which took up most of the day. The kids worked so hard! I'm so proud of them! Anyway, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the TRQ (Total Response Questioning). I need to inquire one of my teacher mates to explain it to me in a little more detail. The gist I get from it is that all students say the correct answer in a complete sentence. Well, I set up a Solution Station (independent aid for students in need of a hint or help) with hints to figure out the correct answer on our Math practice test that we just took. That way TOMORROW when I have time to check it all together, all of the students can agree, say, and learn the correct answer for each question. We will see how it goes.

 For my Solution Station, students are not allowed to take their paper with them, or hang around too long. If I see it being overused, it's a sign that I need to meet with that student and reteach. The students moved silently up to the station and back to their desks without distracting the other students. I'm also proud of them for being patient while another friend is looking at the Solution Station. Here are some pics!

Classroom Clean-up!

I FINALLY bought Debbie Diller's Spaces & Places and have been moved to TAKE DOWN MY CRAZINESS on my walls! A parent from another class walked in and said, "Woa! This classroom is busy!" (and she wasn't commenting about the kids per say) So I started taking stuff down. At the beginning of the year when I was informed I would no longer be teaching 4th grade, I had less than 24 hours to move and set up a whole new classroom so I LITERALLY THREW things up and stuffed things in different nooks and crannies. SO, it's safe to say that I needed to give my classroom a serious cleaning and take the time to PLAN it out for effective student learning. All year I've wanted a wordwall that didn't look cluttered and was interactive. So, I moved it to an old chalkboard in the classroom, bought all new sight words, painfully cut every single word, and put magnet tape on the back! And now.....

IT's AWESOME! The kids were SO excited to be able to take the words down and use them during journal time!

Next book: The Daily 5 by The Sisters...which I've already started implementing during FYP!

More pics!

More Ideas from Classrooms!

Alright, other great ideas from wonderful teachers in our little school! I LOVE Ms. Cone's Bee Hive Reading Area! So cute! The Question Words Question Mark is a simple and cute idea that a teacher's student teacher made her.

My Classroom and Others

I want to remember and share some good ideas from my classroom and other rooms from around the school! The pictures of the peacock and little guy with the umbrella are some ideas that I took from the ilearntechnology blog. They have all levels of Blooms questions with verbs as well! Just a friendly reminder to ask the kids different varieties of questions! Also, I took a picture of some pointers that my fellow teacher from Kinder made. She bought dowels from Michael's and used toys from kids meals to put on top. Such a cute idea! I have my dowels, but haven't finished the rest of the project yet! There are pictures of the "Safe Zone"/Reading Area in my room and what is posted on the walls outside my classroom.

We made our own penguins and used a graphic organizer to write a fiction story about our penguin.

We are learning about Bossy -R this week.

We wrote our own Dark, Dark Tale. (We were inspired by the book A Dark, Dark Tale)