It has begun...

The room is ready, the students desks are perfectly positioned, the bell ring and... the roller coaster ride has begun.  Our Fourth Grade Team spent many sessions preparing our literacy block, theme planning, and scheduling needs.  Now it's time to put it into action!

The first week of school was awesome!  As a team, we feel the Daily "3" Literacy Workshop Model established an excellent atmosphere for engaged readers.  Our three main goals this week:

• READ TO SELF- Build stamina for reading.  Students modeled effective ways to fill their book boxes with Good Fit books, found "smart spots" to read about the room, and kept their focus on: reading picture books!
• READ TO SOMEONE ELSE- This part of Daily 3 was a hit! Students learned KKEE (knee knee-elbow elbow), soft voice read alouds to gain fluency, and partner retellings.
• WORD WORK- Brainstorming session on What to Write during the Daily 3.

Our team feels creating this Reader's Workshop Model is essential for setting the foundation for individual growth and acceleration in Literacy.

Our Math Block was also an important time of the day to create a climate of wonder, structure, and set up routines with our Everyday Math series.  We assessed students on their knowledge of math facts, explored a resource called the Student Reference Book, played strategy games like the Countdown Game and NIM, and began with our instruction of geometry concepts.

Community is VERY IMPORTANT early in the school year, not only in our individual classrooms, but also with all of the fourth graders.  We led many community building activities including:

• clumping--characteristic sort by students
• shell sort- find new friends based on seashell attributes
• student hunt
• sharing Spectacular Student Surfboards
• Who Am I glyphs

Theme Time included activities:

• Biopoems--poems about themselves
• Locker Magnet mates
• Personal Letters to teachers

By establishing these routines and community early in the year, we hope to create an atmosphere where students are anxious to share their thoughts, feel secure about books they are reading, comfortable choosing new partners, and truly becoming independent in the classroom.

Here are a few photos of our classrooms...

So what's the big idea?

As our team began the planning session, we first had a discussion regarding the best ways to plan for the school year.  This planning session included the 5 Fourth Grade teachers, Media Specialist, and 2 Intervention Specialists.
Looking through the Fourth Grade Course of Study is well, overwhelming.  The technology standards alone  include pages and pages of expected learning outcomes.  Therefore, we looked for trends, patterns, and BIG IDEAS to integrate many standards across the curriculum.  We kept looking at the big picture: Ways to keep the topic relevant, authentic, and to kill "many birds" with one stone.  Here is our thinking and planning:
WHY OHIO?  Our essential question for many of the conceptual themes comes back to the core question... WHY OHIO?  Our fourth grade social study standards include very specific learning outcomes, as does the science course of study.  To make our planning focused, smart, and effective, the team kept coming back to the essential question: Why Ohio?   Here are examples of  leading questions which come back to our core question, and hit many of the learning objectives listed.

• Why did native peoples come to Ohio?  (landforms, geography, resources, migration)
• What kind of resources come from Ohio and why would businesses be created here? (business, factors of production, supply/demand, farming and technological changes, geography)

As we continued our planning, we looked for many overlapping ideas and ways we can maximize our day to include these themes across the curriculum.

By the end of our planning session, we created 7 Overarching Themes we believed were conceptually large enough to act as an umbrella to all the desired learning outcomes.  They include:

1. Migration and Culture
2. Government
3. Geography and Landforms
4. Weather
5. Matter -physical and chemical change
6. Plant Systems
7. Innovation/Inventors

These overarching themes will always be led back to our essential question: WHY OHIO?  Our hope is employ critical thinking and independent problem solving skills in our students so by year's end, they will tackle a 21st Century Researching Project which will ultimately be a compilation of the year's learning.  Our team will build 21st century skills in our students so they can reach out beyond the classroom walls to LEARN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE, and PUT THEIR STAMP on SOCIETY.

Caribou Collaboration

Today we met with a 4th grade teacher from Dublin Schools.  Mr. K. shared insightful ways he uses technology with his class.  We intend on communicating with his 4th graders throughout the school year.  We loved his take on using web applications to make social studies and science topics more relevant, including Google Maps for an Ohio Geography Project, using wikis to link students together in writer's workshop, and using glogster for student interaction.
Check out Mr. K's class website.

Getting Started

It is August 1st and by waking up this morning, we realized it's time to get in the zone! Bracing ourselves for August to zip on by and have our classes ready to embark on their Fourth Grade adventure, made us have extra cups of coffee this morning. In this post, our team will share Summer Team Meeting Notes which include:
1) Planning our literacy blocks-incorporating the CAFE workshop model.
 2) Ways to design our day to be most conducive to a workshop model geared toward creating independent thinkers and doers in the classroom.--using the resource: That Workshop Book.
3) Using Thematic Umbrella Questions to have the students connect Big Ideas under our cross-curricular needs.