Homework Tardiness

As a teacher, I am sure you all have those students who do not like to hand in homework and get every excuse imaginable as to why it is not handed in. You may also get tired of hearing those excuses and asking the same question, "Why is your homework not done?"
I came up with a form the students fill out. It has become part of our homework turn in routine. Those students who hand in homework put it in the Turn In Bin. The ones that do not have their homework grab one of my forms and fill it out and also put it in the Turn In Bin. This way you are still getting something from each student and it is so easy to keep track of who has done what!

Hope it works for you as it has for me!

Blogging with Students

I have started blogging with my grade 4s. There is such a huge push for increasing our students' use of technology that I thought I would give it a try.

The site that I am using is http://kidblog.org/home.php It is set up for teachers to use with their students and is VERY user friendly. The major thing that I like about it is that you can change the settings so that you can approve every post and every comment. This ensures that no inappropriate content will go on it or posts that have no depth.

The biggest struggle I have had with blogging is that students at first used it as a chat room. It drove me crazy! This is why now I have my settings so that I have to approve comments and not just posts. It can also get time consuming if students are really into posting.

What do we blog about?
Usually I will give them a journal topic that is fairly open ended and then they can create a unique post title (which is also great practice for news articles or short story titles). Then I try and have them end their post with a question so that other students will want to comment.

This is definitely still a work in progress but I think the more we use it the more disciplined their posts and comments become :)

Great k-9 website!

Whether you are a teacher in Alberta or not, the public school district in Leduc has a great website for meeting your ict outcomes in every subject!

Just visit http://engagingstudents.blackgold.ca/ and then click on which division you are on the top tool bar. Then pick your grade and subject!

The advantages and disadvantages of being an APPLE school

In Alberta there are I believe around 40 APPLE schools. This is a government funded program that comes to your school for three years and then it is up to the school to continue it on their own.
Obesity is a huge problem across the world and the APPLE program teaches schools ways to be healthier and more active.
Once a month our staff meetings are only on how we have done being an APPLE school. This past Thursday we met in the gym and learned new DPA (daily physical activities) we can do in the gym or classroom with our kids. Part of the learning was doing them ourselves! In this one game you had to throw a rubber die across in your circle and whatever number your thumb was on when the music stopped, you had to do the exercise that was correlated with that number. Well my group kept landing on jump squats and oh my lord I was sore the next morning! It still hurts to move!
If you want anymore info. on APPLE schools or DPA ideas let me know!

My classroom guinea pigs

I decided last year to get a class pet...well it turned into two pets actually. I had got a guinea pig and then I was told they thrive better when there was two of them. So lo and behold we have Pancake and Acorn.

I cannot believe the benefits to having a classroom pet. It teaches them kindness and responsibility. Every month I have 4 new zoo keepers and they are in charge of cleaning the cage, feeding, watering, and brushing. It is amazing how the behavior students tend to "smarten up" when I take out Pancake and Acorn and start placing them on desks.

I also actually applied for a grant through PetSmart and I receive a $30 gift card each month for guinea pig essentials. This is a grant they offer for teachers with classroom pets.

For my students' writing journal today they wrote about which guinea pig they would rather be: Pancake or Acorn and then had to write why. They then had to write about what they would see from the cage and what they would want to change in the classroom as a guinea pig. Some of the responses were incredibly cute!

Literacy Centers

I love love love literacy centers!

I use this site to change up things monthly. Even though it is for grade 2 I easily adapt it for my grade 4s.

http://mswinston.com/Monthly%20Ideas.html

I use the task cards for my "Jump Into Writing" station and I have them complete 2 per week. Then the poems with prompts I use for the station, "Poetry Pals."