The Misc. Section

Student quotes of the day:

Student: Smell my eraser!  It smells like strawberry.
Me: I'm not going to smell that eraser after your nose has been on it!
Student: Here, smell the other side then...

A group of my 5th graders were playing outside in the grass without their shoes on, and I witnessed this conversation - I had to giggle to myself a little (hehehe):

Student 1: Why are you running around in the grass without your shoes?
Student 2: To get more contraction!

My SPL (Support for Personalized Learning - also known as RTI) groups wrapped up last week :(  My year is slowly coming to an end...and I miss it already.  But, I wanted to share a few  activities that I wrapped the year up with.

Silent e is sooo much fun to teach (although frustrating at times..)  I borrowed a great resource from Heather's Heart blog, and added a little twist on it.  Her blog provides (freebie!) a set of "Vowel Muncher" cards that have long/short vowel words on them, accompanied by a monster of course.  I posted these around my room, and made my students "Monster Detectives."  They had to search the room, high and low, for all the vowel munchers; then, sort them by long/short vowels on their graphic organizer.  Of course, all of our long vowel words had silent e (for this activity at least).  We checked our answers by allowing each student show us a vowel muncher they found & where they placed it in their chart!  They had a ton of fun!  Click here to download the "Vowel Munchers" resource from Heather's Heart blog.  Look below to see the detectives in action!!

When one found a new monster, they all rushed over to read/write it!

Being a Title I teacher, I get the pleasure of working with all different age groups.  So, 1 minute, I'm teaching silent e to first graders; then the next, I'm working with fifth graders to interpret Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken."  Our days are crazy, but I love it.  The past two weeks have been devoted to understanding figurative language and interpreting poems in 5th grade.  I chose the poems, "The Poison Tree" by William Blake, and "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.  These were such great poems to work through!  We worked through interpreting each stanza together while taking notes (with cool colored Sharpie pens, of course).  It was really amazing to see how they would relate the poem to their own lives/situations (almost too much at times lol).  Then, they wrote the "story" in their own words.  It was quite interesting to see their takes.  So, here they are:

Keep on truckin'!  The year is almost at an end!

Meredith