Superhero Squads

After a visit, two years ago, to the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, our school decided to try something similar to his House system. This year we began using Superhero Squads!  We have Super Powers! They are as follows:

Our response chant is: Superheroes (teacher)...have POWERS(students)! Each power is a squad: Respectful, focused, trustworthy, brave, creative, and selfless. All students are placed on one of the 6 squads and given a cape of the squad color reflected in the picture above. When students are "caught" exhibiting one of the 6 powers they are given a ball. The ball is then placed in squad labeled tubes. Students also receive a pin to go on the back of their cape. Our goal is when students leave our school they can take the cape that's covered in pins with them to the intermediate school.

 When one of the tubes is filled to the top, we have a school wide celebration parade. The winning squad parades around our school and the remaining students clap and celebrate them! Then we start over and students try to fill the tubes again!

This has been an extraordinary year for our school. Our students have LOVED having super POWERS...but who wouldn't?

Here are some of the pins our superheroes earned this year:

Check us out in the Daily Times article!

Novel Studies

Here's the list of novels we will be reading with our amazing second graders this fall! This list is ever growing! We are blessed to have received a grant from our FANTASTIC MCS Foundation this past year, which enabled us to purchase tons of novels for our kiddos! We read these during our ELA Block, using the 30-30 model we "created." It started as an inside joke, but it works! What's the 30-30 model? We're so glad you asked!

Each day we spend at least 30 minutes reading from literature while the students follow along in their OWN copy! This gets high quality, fun literature into their little hands and they just LOVE it! It's just a regular ol' read aloud, but something about holding their own copy transformed some of our most reluctant readers. Students would BEG to read another chapter, we sometimes even had two different novels going.  We found the key is to check for comprehension along the way with guided questions and turn and talk opportunities.  Most importantly, we always spend at least 30 minutes responding to our text! We write in journals, we type in Seesaw, we create Chatterpix, and we always give the students some choice in how they respond.

So , let's be honest...sometimes 30-30 is 45-45 or even 60-60, but we made it work this year! Novels lend themselves to across the curriculum opportunities. We found easy, and sometimes creative, ways to connect our novels to math, science, and social studies. During the 2016-17 school year we will work on sharing our activities with each of our novels below. Stay tuned!

Freckle Juice

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

 Bunnicula

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Charlotte's Web

Little House in the Big Woods

Sarah Plain and Tall

Stone Fox

Tornado

The Magic Finger

The Enormous Crocodile

The Fantastic Mr.Fox

James and the Giant Peach

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Cricket in Times Square

Tucker's Countryside

Beezus and Ramona

Runaway Ralph

Chocolate Fever

Chocolate Touch

Flexible Seating

We are so excited that we are piloting flexible seating in 2016-2017. We just know student motivation, engagement, and productivity will increase. Here are the summer BEFORE photos...

Alyson's lockers

Alyson's current student furniture

Alyson's whole group instruction

Alyson's iPad storage

Another view of Alyson's room

Courtney's current furniture

Courtney's whole group instruction area

Courtney's iPad storage

Courtney's student chairs and storage

Another view of Courtney's room

Stay Tuned...

So this happened on July 1...

 Look at all those boxes! It's Christmas time!

 Tall stools and wobble stools

 Look at this adorable kiddo modeling proper use of the stability ball!

 Teacher chair, no problem! I can assemble that. 

Moments later, defeat. I'll try again tomorrow :) #failfoward, right? 

I can't wait to get our bean bags, high top tables, and start setting up our new makerspaces! 

iReachU

Our first day teaching at iReachU! iReach U is one form of professional development provided in our district.  It provides opportunities for teachers to become leaders.  We have been participants and professors and both roles are rewarding. Who doesn't love learning and working with peers?

When our AWESOME participants arrived (aka our district teachers) they were given only these instructions. Pebble Go is phenomenal for lower elementary students. PG provides so many topics of research for science and social studies.  If your school hasn't purchased it, start begging for it, YESTERDAY.  Our students LOVE it! 

We were asked to present a lesson as we would to our 2nd grade students. Here you go self-directed learners, the directions are on the board! This is a sample of what our students would do during our novel studies time. To learn about our novel studies, click here!