Inferencing With iFake Texts

This is a picture of my completed example for the children and for you all.

Need a way to connect with your children and practice inferencing?  I highly recommend  www.ifaketext.com.  We read our weekly basal story and then the children picked two characters from the story to create a text message conversation.  Students had to infer what the characters would text about if they had iphones in the story.  Their text conversations had to be relevant to the story itself.  After entering the text conversation they printed it out.  Colored pencils were used to color the conversation bubbles to save printer ink; crayons were too dark.  Next, they took the printed out conversation and used black construction paper to trace an iphone inspired shape on the construction paper so they could glue the conversation down.    Then, they used a white colored pencil to add the iphone details.  After that, they wrote a few sentences explaining why the characters were texting what they were.  We glued the phone and explanation sentences to a piece of construction paper.  Voila!  The children were able to infer about characters without realizing it.  They had so much fun and we will definitely do this again!  Click the bolded words for the printable links to the sentence starters and iphone tracer.  FYI, there's also an ifakesuri web site.  I'm not quite sure how I will use it, but hope to.  How would you use ifakesuri in your classroom?

Vocabulary Assessment Idea

Yep, I'm back. I think I'm on a roll....FINALLY! So I wanted to share an idea I thought of at the beginning of the year. I do the same thing every week! What is it you ask?! Well, let me tell you. It is...a crossword puzzle spelling and vocabulary assessment!!! This idea came to me with the help and inspiration of my students. Basically, I have 10 spelling words each week that I expect my students to learn how to spell AND what the word means. I put the words on quizlet.com for the students to study. On Fridays I give them the crossword puzzle, call out the words like a regular spelling test, and the students apply the words to the definition clues. A good and free crossword puzzle maker site is: http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/CrissCrossSetupForm.asp
I hope you can use this idea as well! The pictures are below. Happy Tuesday Night!

~Amanda

Place Value

I'm back!  Yep, that's right!  I'm actually posting a few times this week.  It's my personal goal to get this blog out there in the teaching world and watch it grow! Thank you to all of my followers and people that have stopped by to check out this page. :-)  Now, on to place value....

A few posts ago I mentioned having things to share and this place value tree is one that was very successful for me in the fall.  In 5th grade there is a big focus on place value including word and expanded form.  I decided once again to get inspired from my K-2 crafts and apply what I've done before to the new content of 5th grade and VOILA!  The place value tree was born!!!  Basically, at the end of our place value study I had the children choose any number they wanted...the bigger the better!  On one leaf they wrote the number in standard form and underlined any one digit they wanted.  On the next leaf they wrote out the place value of the underlined digit.  A third leaf had the number in expanded notation.  Finally the fourth leaf had the number written in word form.  I did the tree and colored leaves because it was fall.  If you wanted to do this in the spring I recommend doing a flower and putting the information from the leaves on each petal of the flower.  I have tracers for both.  If you would like either one please leave a comment with your contact information.  I hope this helps!  

I would love to know what crafty things do you like to do in the upper grades?

Cheers!  
~Amanda

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!  I hope each of you have had a fantastic start to the new year.  If you are still looking for a way to celebrate the new year or to have students set goals for the remainder of the school year, this post is for you!  As a new 5th grade teacher I've really struggled to put the crafting into the content of 5th grade.  I will say that's what I miss most about the K-2 world. :-)  On Friday of this past week during planning, I figured out a way to satisfy my crafting need.  We created happy new year self portraits.  The students then listed at least one learning goal they wanted to achieve before the end of the year.  Some even took it a step further and listed how they would achieve the goal.  I posted some pictures below.  If you would like the tracers just leave me a comment with your contact information and I will be more than happy to send it your way.  Thanks again for following my blog or at least checking it out.  Please come back and visit! ~Cheers :)))