Thankful for 30

Sorry I’ve been MIA all week…. You see, it’s Christmas and my mom’s here visiting all the way from America, so that’s my excuse. Anyway, I wanted to share this little thing that I did in class over the past month.

I got the idea from some facebook friends of mine in November. Basically, it’s a daily post about something that you’re thankful for and why. What better time for reflection than the holiday season, right? I thought this was the perfect morning task for my students in the month leading up to Christmas, so I printed out some blank ornament templates and made a “Thankful for 30” board on my door.

Check some of these out:

 

Hope you had a great Christmas with your loved ones!

Online Book Reviews

Well, we made it through our final assessments, survived our last service learning fundraiser, and wowed parents at our Christmas concert… now it’s time for a break. Trust me, there were several times over the last couple of weeks where I didn’t think we’d get here, but I’m so happy to be on the other side of it.

Back when I was mentally preparing for how to keep my students busy over the break, I put together a reading competition through Google Drive and linked it to our class edmodo page to keep track of their progress and keep them motivated to read. I got a couple of prizes for the winner(s) and got the students pumped up before school let out. Winners will be announced when we return from break… Stay tuned.

If you’ve never used Google Drive, you should try it out. Google Drive is such a great tool for digitizing your classroom, AND it free! From creating surveys, sharing presentations and documents, to keeping your students accountable for their assignments, this allows you to do it all- and with ease. Here’s the online book review form that I made for my class.  

Here’s what I did:

1.      Log in to your Google account and select the Drive tab at the top of the menu bar.  

 

2.      Go to Create and you will see a drop-down menu with a few selections.

 

3.      Click on Form and this will take you to a form where you can add questions to fit your form.

 

4.      Upload the link to your form as an assignment on your edmodo page and it will automatically tally the forms for you as the students fill them in.

 

 

And there you have it, folks. Have a great vacation!

Service Learning Slideshow

The semester is just about over, but there’s still a TON of work to be done. I have no idea how this seems to happen every year, but it does. No matter how prepared I try to be or how much I plan, Christmas seems to hit me like a Mack Truck. It doesn’t help that I’ve picked up one of the kids’ bugs and have been sick all week. BUT… we’re almost there, that’s the good news.

To finish the semester strong, we decided to create a slideshow to showcase all of the work that we’ve done this semester for service learning. It was a great way to look back on all of our hard work, and feel good about how much we’ve helped the community. AND, we got to learn how to use some new technology in the computer lab. We used imovie to create this one, but you could also use MS Movie Maker to make something similar.

The teachers haven’t decided if we’d like to continue with the service learning program in the spring, but I have a feeling the kids won’t give us a choice. They really enjoyed it and learned a lot ( I think) from it. Here’s our finished slideshow:

 

Happy Christmas, everyone!
 

Teaching Imperatives

Don’t you just love it when you get to teach an easy grammar lesson? I was thanking my lucky stars for this week’s super simple grammar chapter because I needed a little reprieve from the chaos of the week before break.

So here’s how I “do” imperatives-

We reviewed our procedural writing from last week, paying close attention to the verb forms we used. Then we determined that all of the steps of our writing piece began with the infinitive form of the verb without the “to”. After that, we put some examples on the board of common orders we hear either at school or at home… it wasn’t hard for them to come up with a handful of nags that they get every day from me and their parentsJ Once they understood what I was after, we did this fun activity where each student (could be group of students though) got a character and they had to write what imperatives that person would use. They LOVED it! Feel free to use them with your classes here.

Here are the notes we came up with for IMPERATIVES in English:

Purpose- Imperatives are used to give commands/orders, advice/suggestions, or directions.

Structure- Use the infinitive form of the verb without “to”

Examples- “Clean your room”, “Raise your hand to speak”, “Do your work”, etc

Deck the hallways

Even though it’s not beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Vietnam, we are doing our best to get into the holiday spirit around school. In my class, we’ve been practicing our performances for the Christmas concert, delivering donated gifts to a local hospital, and even writing letters to Santa. Aside from trying to wrap up the academic side of things for the semester, there are also a lot of things to physically prepare around school like hanging hallway decorations, making props for the concert, and, of course, transforming your door into something Christmas-y themed. I have to admit that I’m not excited about all of the extra work that has to be done this time of the year, but it is really neat for the kiddos.  

This year, I don’t have an assistant so when they announced that we had to start putting up decorations, I panicked. Over the next two days, everyone’s doors were decked out in snowmen, reindeer, and every other imaginable holiday icon. I was officially the last one to tackle the door project, leaving me with limited options. That meant 2 things; 1- that I’d better hurry up and get something on the door, and 2- that mine had to be better than the others. Challenge accepted! I grabbed my kids on Friday afternoon and we came up with a few ideas about what we could do to win the unspoken door decoration competition that I’d created in my head. Luckily, I had an hour and a half block for art on Friday and was able to get my students to do the brunt of the work during that time. They were just like elves, working away all day to help make our class door the best in school. Here’s a picture of the (nearly) completed masterpiece…

Book Report Timelines

Every month I require my students to read a free choice book in addition to our normal course book. Thankfully, my kids all enjoy reading for fun so it’s not the fight that it was last year. Anyway, every month I have them do some sort of book project to present to the class about what they read. Since standard book reports are so boring, I usually like to try something more fun. I’ve tried everything from making an animated video to story sandwiches to movie posters. I just love how creative my students are when I give them a project like this. So, in true Ms. Reyna fashion, I was perusing Pinterest in search of a new book report idea and found this little number on creating a timeline of the major events in the story. The idea was so simple, but I hadn’t ever thought of it. It’s so nice to still be learning new things every day!

I adapted the idea so that it worked better for my students, but that was easy. Then I created the guidelines and rubric for my students to access on edmodo. Finally, I made an example of what I was looking for so that they had a better idea of where to start. Here are a few pictures of their work and the guidelines and rubric if you want to try it. Have a great day!    

Timeline Book Report Guidelines

Timeline Book Report Rubric

 

 

 

 



Procedural Writing

Concert performances, assessments, exams, oh my! We’ve been so busy wrapping up the last couple of weeks before break that I haven’t had a chance to post any updates. My apologiesL

Anyway, this week we’ve been doing procedural writing in Language Arts. I love teaching procedural writing (especially right after information reports) because there’s so much fun stuff you can do with it. Last week one of my students had a birthday so I thought this would be the perfect introduction to procedural writing- how to make a birthday cake!

We started with a quick brainstorming session as a group to review what we knew about procedural writing including purpose, examples, and organization. Here’s the list we came up with:

 

Then we watched a short cooking video about making a cake and took notes on what steps to take. We compared notes as a class and then edited and simplified our directions. Finally, we baked a cake of our own to celebrate a classmate’s birthday! It was a lot of fun, and the students were completely engaged- always a plus. Here are a couple of pictures from our cake baking session. Stay tuned for a couple more extension lessons with procedural writing.  

 

Salt Dough Ornaments

Hard to believe it’s Christmas time again already, but it’s true. To get the kiddos in the Christmas spirit, we’ve been practicing our carols, decking the hallways, and (my favorite) making those cheesy ornaments for mom. I’m pretty sure my mom’s still got the ones I made when I was in elementary school hanging on her tree. I’ll have to remember to ask. Anywho, they’ve assigned me to the afterschool Art Attack club and we’ve been working away like elves trying to get these holiday decorations ready to go before the big concert in 2 weeks. What I love about these is that they appeal to all ages. I mean really, who doesn’t love baking and painting?

If you’ve never made salt dough ornaments, you haven’t been living should try it! Here’s the recipe and a few pictures from art club. Enjoy!

Food Web Poster Project

One of my very favorite units to teach in life science is on food chains and food webs. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by how perfectly nature seems to work; organisms giving and receiving life- no detail overlooked, everything serving a purpose. The interconnectedness of nature and life is truly mind-blowing, isn’t it? Ok, I’m done with the deep, philosophical thoughts for nowJ

We’ve been studying the symbiotic relationships that exist in different biomes around the world and learning all about how species are dependent on one another for survival. For our final life science project, each of the students was assigned a different ecosystem to research and present in the form of a food web. Naturally, I wanted them to go beyond the basic rabbit-eats-grass, snake-eats-rabbit connection and start using the vocabulary that we’ve learned so I required that they label producers, consumers, and decomposers. As with most of my projects, I gave them the option of creating the poster by hand or using a word processor program. Once again, they rose to the challenge and impressed me with their ability to simplify their findings. Their oral presentation skills are improving so much.

Here's a fun video that breaks down the different types of symbiotic relationships that we find in nature.

 

Feel free to steal the guidelines and rubric here. Here are a few photos of their work.

 

Happy Friday!

Biome Research Project

One of my science standards this unit was to address biomes and habitats. Because I'm trying to move my classroom into the 21st century, I wanted to get away from teaching straight out of the book and go digital. I absolutely love having this kind of creative freedom as a teacher.

Anyway, I made these nifty NatGeo research journals (attached below) for my students to study different biomes around the world during our ecology unit. I wanted to cater to the different types of learners in class and this was the perfect tool. I sent them on a little digital adventure as modern-day researchers to collect data and present their findings to their team at headquarters. I wanted them to look for key characteristics such as plant and animal life, climate, and human impacts while documenting their findings. It’s great because these research journals are going to make the perfect study guides for the test coming up in 2 weeks.

 

After completing their research journals, they each chose their favorite terrestrial or aquatic biome and created a digital presentation that they delivered to the class the following week. My students hit this one out of the park. Here are a few examples of their work:

 

 

Desert biome Prezi

 

marine biome presentation

rainforest biome presentation

Savannas biome presentation

Research Journal Pages:
-Cover
-Aquatic Biome
-Terrestrial Biome    

Life Science- Information Reports

What a busy couple of weeks it has been! I tell you what, it’s going to be a miracle if I survive until Christmas break. This semester is kicking my bootyJ

I’m going to make this one short and sweet, but I just wanted to share a prezi that I made for one of our life science projects. I got the idea from a webquest that I saw on zunal.com a few weeks back, and what’s great about webquests, is that they are a creative accessible and way to engage your students in projects. Since I’ve never made a webquest and I’m a complete geek for prezi right now, so I created this little number and posted it on edmodo for my students to have access to at any time. It includes my detailed expectations, some video clips, and even my rubric. Check it out:

 

The final reports are due tomorrow, so we’ll see how they do! Happy Wednesday.

Field Tripping

Field trips are something that every student looks forward to each year. In fact, when I did a questionnaire at the beginning of the school year, field trips was the number one answer for the question “What are you most excited about for 6^th grade?” I remember feeling the same excitement about field trips when I was growing up. Actually, it’s probably still one of my favorite school days of the year.

Picking a location for a field trip here is a bit more challenging than it would be in America because certain things simply aren’t an option. There are no science museums, no aquariums, no nature centers. There is a very sad zoo, a few big parks, and a variety of war-related museums, but all leave a lot to be desired, especially for kids. Last year, we did a Master-Chef-meets-Amazing-Race at the biggest market in town during our Health and Nutrition unit, but this year, I had a better idea; visit the charities we chose for Service Learning.

One of the organizations that we’ve been fundraising for is Wildlife At Risk. This amazing non-profit organization is helping threatened and endangered species and their habitats throughout Vietnam with conservation and education/community outreach. One of the representatives of W.A.R. came out to give a presentation to our students about biodiversity and what is happening to the rainforests here. The students were so excited to help that we decided we’d visit the wildlife rescue center just north of the city in Cu Chi.

Visiting the rescue center was the perfect idea for a field trip because our theme right now is Life Science. We’ve been studying biomes, habitats, and food webs and the impacts that humans have had on them. Plus, it was an opportunity for the service learning group to see where their fundraising donations are going.

So Friday was the big day. It was quite a long haul on the bus with 50 first and second graders, but it was well worth the visit. Here’s a little slideshow I made of our trip.

 

What unique field trips have you taken?

Broken Sentences

Let’s face it, grammar stinks! There, I said it. It stinks to teach, it stinks to learn, it just plain stinks. Whenever I even say the word, my students cringe. But there’s no denying its importance in English. It is vital to the development of writing and oral skills and it’s something that needs to be practiced daily in a mostly-ESL environment. I tell my students that practicing good grammar is like flossing or working out; you don’t have to do it, but it’s always a good idea (although that doesn’t seem to sell them).

I wanted to try something a little more, well, fun for this week’s grammar lesson so I introduced them to the broken sentence. I’m sure this is not an original idea, but basically it’s a sentence that has been scrambled and the students have to “fix” it. The way that I did it requires a few minutes of extra prep time, but trust me, it was totally worth it. The kids were INTO IT! Here’s what I did today:

I printed a few questions and sentences on a piece of paper (large font/bold works best) then cut them into strips.

Cut each sentence up into individual words and mix them so they’re out of order.

Set up numbered stations around the room and had them copy the sentences into their grammar notebooks.

For an added bonus, I offered 10 cool points (our sticker system) if they could correctly answer or ask questions to match the broken sentence. For example, we’ve been studying second and third conditional and one of the broken sentences was:

·         If you met Justin Bieber, what would you say?

They would have to answer:

·         If I met Justin Bieber, I would …

This is a really great activity to trick engage students in grammar. J If you have any fun grammar activities, please share them. Thanks, and have a great night!

Service learning update

As you may remember, our grade 5 & 6 students have started a service learning program this year and boy, oh boy have we made some progress. Once we completed a needs assessment of our community, chose our charities and set our semester goals, we hit the ground running with recess fundraisers and a school-wide book drive (more on that later). I was a little worried if they’d be able to pull it off, but they threw any doubts I had right out the window. They ROCKED IT! (I'm so proud)

The great thing about service learning is that it has all kinds of great curriculum tie-ins. The kids sent out surveys in google drive to learn what kind of fundraiser to do, created flyers to advertise, wrote and delivered announcements to every class, and that all happened before the actual fundraisers!

In preparation for the actual events, we learned some basic principles of economics and weighed the costs and profits that we could expect from each fundraising idea that was proposed. Finally, the date had been set and each group had decided on their snack. One group was insistent on making smoothies and could not be dissuaded by logic. I tried to warn them at the amount of work that would be involved, but they were too excited and I figured that letting them make the decisions (good or bad) would ultimately benefit them. So- smoothies it wasJ. The other group chose popcorn which was much more manageable and logistically sound.

Our first fundraiser was scheduled during a Friday recess and each group was given only 45 minutes to prepare their booth and product. Once recess let out, it was non-stop action. I loved how well they all worked together to make it happen. They assigned each person on their team a job; line control, cashier, packaging, order taker. I mean to tell you, it was amazing.

By the end of recess, we were sweaty and exhausted, but EVERYONE had a smile on their face. We counted the money we made and came out ahead by more than $150! Not too bad for our first-ever fundraiser, huh? Here are a few shots from the big day:

Announcing the fundraiser

Slingin' popcorn

Check out this line!!!

That's what teamwork looks like:)

If teaching doesn't pan out, I can always work at Jamba Juice... hehehe

 

 

 

Leaf Art

Sorry for the delay, folks. We have been incredibly busy this week trying to get the kids back into school mode after their week off. Not an easy task, I assure you. Anyway, we’ve kicked off our life science unit with some really exciting stuff. Here’s some art we did earlier today.

We’ve been talking all week about ecosystems, biomes, food webs, and habitats around the world and right here in Vietnam. Because it’s the end of the rainy season, the plants are insanely green and lush so I thought it would be a great day to do our art class in the elementsJ We headed downstairs to find a place to plop down and start our sketches. Here’s a few of those:

 

Later, we collected some samples (to use for our lesson on classification in the afternoon), headed back upstairs and broke out the watercolors. I don’t know why, but every time that I try to do a watercolor lesson, my students insist on using too much paint and not nearly enough water. I must remember to stress this more in the future. Anyway, they had fun and the art turned out ok too. I’d say that’s a win for everyone. Here are a few more shots from the second part of our lesson:

 

Happy Friday y’all!

Halloween Fun

This week we have what we call non-pupil week. Basically, it’s a full week without students designated to staff development, training, and time to get caught up on some things and prepare for what’s left of our first semester. This week couldn’t have come soon enough because I am worn out from all of the International Day and Halloween festivities!

All last week, we did Halloween themed activities including reading and writing scary stories, spooky word problems in math, and even an ICT lesson where the students created a flyer advertising the Halloween carnival on Friday. It was a ton of fun, but I’m glad it’s over.

Halloween Word Problems-

We did a review of dividing decimals with a Halloween twist. You can steal the worksheet here.

Trick or Treat Bags-

Keeping with the holiday tradition, our school sets up a route around campus for all the students to go trick or treating. Each class has to make their own little baskets or bags for collecting candy. Here’s what we did:

1.      Start with a standard A4 thick paper. We used white because we wanted to decorate them for Halloween, but you can use any color you want.

2.      Turn the paper horizontally and fold each side toward the middle making sure there’s a little overlap. Glue or tape your seam.

3.      Turn it vertically and fold the bottom up about 5cm.

4.      Open the bottom section and fold down to make 2 triangles.

5.      Fold in the tops and bottoms of the triangle making sure to overlap a little for gluing or taping.

 

6.      Punch two holes in the top for your ribbon handles.

7.      Choose your ribbon and decorations.

8.      Viola! You have one super cute trick or treat bag. Or small, personalized gift bag.

DIY Ring Toss-

 Part of my job every year is to come up with a carnival game for Halloween and International Day. Last year, I remember the games being a little too easy for my students because they’re the oldest, so this year I wanted to try something a bit more challenging. I used to love going to the carnival or state fair when it was in town and all those fun games that were nearly impossible to win, but still fun as hell to play. That was my inspiration for this year’s booth- The Wicked Ring Toss.

All you need are some empty beer bottles and small plastic rings and you’re in business. Here’s a picture of mine all finished:

 

·         WARNING: This game is A LOT harder than it looks. Not recommended for kindergartenJ

Paper Pumpkin Mosaics-

Every Thursday, I run an after-school Art Club with students from Grade 2-4 and every Thursday I get headaches. I haven’t figured out if these two things are related, but I think it’s a safe assumption. Anyway, the club is only 45 minutes so I wanted a project that they could actually finish. Behold, paper pumpkin mosaics. It’s not my best art lesson, but they seemed to enjoy themselves and hey, we finished.

 

Scary Short Stories-

As promised, here are a couple of the finished narrative pieces from last week.

Scary Story 1

Scary Story 2

FIS Halloween Pics-

Here's a few pictures from Friday's festivities... Hope you all have a great Halloween!