This Week in 202

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I'm linking up with Kelly at Teaching Fourth and Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics to show some things we've done in class this week. I have to admit right now is not the most exciting unit. We are doing a map packet. I'm new to the team and I was told this is what has always been done the first 6wks. I could think of about 50 other ways to teach it but ehhh why rock the boat. I prefer just going with the flow.

Anywho, the packet covered the basic features of a map this week. We talked about the symbols on a map and how to read them. I've tried to throw a little note booking in with the packet when I could. On this first activity below they had to read the map to find certain cities. Once they found the cities on the map they had to use the legend to read the towns symbol. The symbol told the population of the town. Now, as a disclosure this data is not current. I'm not exactly sure how old it is. I've been told that in the textbook George W. is still governor of this great state of Texas. I explained to them the numbers weren't accurate but they still got the idea of how to read the symbols and legends. In their journal they had to record the city name, draw the symbol next to it, and record the population according to the legend. We are using giant dry erase desk maps. You can see it a little under the notebook.

Today we did a little vocab review. They chose a vocab word we used this week. In the journal they had to design the word, draw a picture, use it in a sentence, write the definition in their own words.

This one below was my favorite and it made me chuckle. He did the word population. His picture shows the welcome sign when you enter a town. "entering middle of nowhere population 100 graves" Ha! I'm so loving fourth grade and their humor :)

 



 

Interactive Notebooking TEXAS style

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This past week was the first week of school for our kiddos. I am in a new grade, in a new school, and a new style of teaching. I'm teaching 4th grade for the first time. My school rotates the kiddos just like junior high. I am in charge of Social Studies. In Texas 4th grade Social Studies is Texas history. The first two days we kept our own homeroom. Once the kiddos started rotating we spent 2 days setting up our notebooks. It didn't cross my mind to grab pictures of the set up. I planned to spend the week on procedures and routines. We did one lesson on listening and practiced using our journal. Then I decided that this group did not need any more behavior lessons.

Overall, they are all pretty good. My first block is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G I wish I could keep them all day. So quiet and such hard thoughtful workers. I have 5 blocks total and really only 1 makes me work extra. I'll take that! Since they were so well behaved I knew I wanted to do something fun on Friday. But it wasn't in my plans so and I was drawing a blank. I went to bed thinking and thinking. Then BAM in the middle of the night in my sleep I dreamt of what to do in class. I got to work a little early and printed out what I needed. I had some super sweet girls (love them already) in my homeroom help me cut before the tardy bell rang.

We did a lesson on our Texas BK(background knowledge). We had a discussion on what we already knew about Texas. I listed the topics as they named them. I left them up just in case they needed a reminder while they were working. They had to write four things they had in their Texas BK and then draw pictures of things that had to do with Texas and label them. I took a picture of my example and then I started to notice the kiddos notebooks. They did such a great job. Their artwork was so cute! I totally didn't need mine. So then I took pictures of some examples from block 1 and block 2. I asked their permission to blog them and the agreed. :) I just printed out 10 copies of the state outline and they traced and passed and began to work. The kids had so much fun with this! One of my sweet girls even asked me if this idea came from pinterest. HA! I told her nope but I will definitely pin it. This would work with any state! I hope this helps someone out there in blog land. Happy Teaching. :)

 

I'm going to link the post with Tara at 4th grade Frolics and Kelly at Teaching Fourth to share with lots of teacher friends.