The Rookery

It's been too long since I shared about our theme work.  It is a multi-faceted theme and our work has taken many different forms.  As you know, we began the theme with a look at the geology, geography and ecosystems of the Straight, Cannon, and Mississippi.  We learned about how…

After several weeks of writing circles, students last week were asked to pick one of their pieces to publish.  Each piece they had written had been read to their writing circle audience who had shared specific places where things were confusing, needed a description, needed more of the character's motivations,…

This amazingly beautiful fall has given us the opportunity to get outside a lot for PE.  I try to do a single activity for a week so that students get a chance to set progressive goals for themselves.  Recently, we had a series of tree climbing lessons.  We are so…

Math had just started when a student noticed that there was a rectangle of light that was on the board.  "Where's that coming from?"  she asked.  I had a choice to make:  should I re-direct us back to the partial products multiplication lesson or should I foray out a little and see…

Our first math theme on geometry ended on Friday.  Cathy taught students about polygons, Gabe taught quadrilaterals and I taught angles and triangles.  We each did a three day series of lessons and our classes rotated through each series. One of the key things we worked on was measuring and…

Today Mary and Matt came in to the 4/5s to give us some beautiful morning music on the violin and mandolin.  Students could choose to read or they could just listen.  It was a wonderful, magical way to start the day — sharing music together.  

As part of our river theme, students made topographical maps by creating land masses out of play dough in a plastic bin.  They then add water one centimeter at a time, each time tracing the "shoreline" on the land mass by using a transparency across the top of the bin.…

I love getting out of the building early in the year and having a time for us to just be the Herons together.  Going to River Bend Nature Center for our annual campout gave us a chance to learn a lot about rivers and a lot about each other.  I…

Today our Blue Books (finally) arrived and the students were able to number their pages and organize their books.  It's a big day.  One of my favorite parts is hearing the advice the 5th graders have for their 4th grade peers:  "don't write too big…I ran out of room."  "If…

Sometimes folks ask how we can teach math when we have two different grades in the classroom.  They assume that I would have to teach one fourth grade lesson and then a fifth grade lesson.  "How can you find time to do math and everything else?" The answer is we design…