OA Fourth Grade Test Prep Game -- Jeporady!

If you like my other Jeporady games for fourth grade math... here is the one for OA! I am so excited to have this one done! Please leave a review if you love it! If you would like one for a different standard band/grade level please let me know! I can have it done within a couple days. If you teach fourth, enjoy! TPT

Theme - Characters Can Teach Us

Another fabulous mini-lesson from Jennifer Serravallo in Reading Strategies. We are still focused on theme and have just finished Three Times Lucky. Oh my goodness... I have never done a read aloud that my students loved as much as that book! It had an excellent ending and kept us page-turning the whole time.

This mini lesson was another addition to our Theme strategies chart (my students will refer to this chart for their theme activities during their book clubs... when they read they will have to choose one of the strategies to practice before their next meeting and bring evidence) In this mini lesson the students chose one character from the book. They, of course, chose the main character, Mo. Then, I had them list her main traits and evidence for each. After that, I added the sentence stem "In life....I think this because....." This way, they are taking the characters actions and traits to develop their understanding of the theme. My students loved this strategy and seem to have latched on to it with great understanding. Having a list of strategies has been great for my students as some like some strategies more than others. Thanks again Kate Roberts for "A Novel Approach". Changed my reading block completely!

Advice For A Character, Theme

Theme is one of my favorite units! As the year comes to a close we are focusing on theme across our literacy block. We are using Kate Robert's "A Novel Approach" for most of our literacy block but, we also have the iReady curriculum so, we tie it all together. Currently, my class is working on comparing themes across texts in iReady and also doing a theme skills focus in A Novel Approach. As we work through the curriculum, my kiddos are also participating in a three week novel study of "Three Times Lucky". This book is AWESOME! (heads up, there are some inappropriate words) It is a murder mystery which is a genre that does not get much attention. My kiddos are eating this up!! As we read this we are incorporating theme skills from Jennifer Savallo's "Reading Strategies" book. I mapped out my theme unit with the curriculum, mini lessons for our novel study, read aloud days, independent reading, as well as silent reading. If this sounds like a lot.... read "A Novel Approach". That book changed the way I run my reading block and it is AMAZING. Today, we talked about giving advice to a character in "Three Times Lucky". Then, we discussed what we could learn from the advice they gave. The conversation coming out of my classroom was great! I was so impressed! This mini lesson is from "Reading Strategies" which if you don't have it, get on Amazon NOW!

Here is our anchor chart from today:






Happy Thursday! Thanks for visiting!

Growth Mindset - Resiliance

This is an activity that I did awhile ago and just haven't gotten around to sharing. This year a big focus has been growth mindset. I have chosen to focus my health class time on Tuesdays to this growth mindset concept. So, every-ish Tuesday ;) we do some growth mindset activities. We started with the theme of optimism and with that came the topic of bouncing back from our problems. I started the lesson with having the kids name problems that the face. They could be big, small, daily, once, etc. After we shared our problems we then talked about rating our problems on a scale of 0-10. A "1" problem would be your pencil braking and a "10" problem would be the death of a family member, for example. After that they shared their rating of their problems and ideas for bouncing back from their problems. We shared our ideas and made a class anchor chart. Last, I gave them a paper plate to write a problem and how they bounce back. The decorated them to look like bouncy balls. Here is our hall display:

Doodle Newsletter Template for ALL GRADES! Editable!

Here is another newsletter template for you! I have it for all grades on my TPT store. I also have fourth grade as a freebie here!