Sparkles and Sweet Tea: Sweet Synonyms and Olympic Dreams

Hello! It's a Tuesday and I can't believe we've had two normal days of the week so far! No schedule changes, no weather delays... it seems like 4th grade is finally experiencing some normalcy! However, we are scheduled to have some freezing rain tonight and my cheerleaders' game for tonight was postponed until tomorrow due to the threat so I guess things aren't completely back to normal. Anywho, I'm linking up with another fellow fourth grader teacher: Fourth Grade Flipper for today's Tried it Tuesday linky!

I love the Olympics- specifically the Summer Olympics but I love any excuse to veg out in front of the TV and feel some America pride. The Olympics are also great motivation for me to get off the couch and get my butt in shape! I knew I wanted to do something with the Winter Olympics with my kiddos but didn't know what or how. I feel a bit swamped with covering what's left of our state curriculum since we've had so many snow days and whatnot. So, after some brainstorming in the car on my way to cheer practice and after bouncing some ideas off a fellow teacher, I came up with a way to try to incorporate the Olympics with my math class and reading class. We ability group our kids but I wanted them all to feel connected with what was going on out in my hall. Say hello to my last minute, right before the start of the school day, medal graph!

Not too shabby for being last minute without a bulletin board in the hall! ;) My idea to try was simple: look up popular and favorable countries to win medals and have those names on the bottom of the graph. Looking at it now, I should have organized them in ABC order or something... anyway, each of my math kids drew a country's name to track. Before math class, in replace of our word problem wake-up, we will look up the current medal tolls. If any student's country has earned a new medal, they will fill a paper medal out (gold, silver, or bronze, of course) with the event's name and add it our graph. Throughout the Olympics I'll use this graph for all sorts of graphing type questions. (My brain is already reeling with ideas!)

My reading class will have a different project to complete. I have 15 kiddos in my reading group and there just so happen to be 15 sports competing this year- and many of them sound so BIZARRE! I found a great news article from ABC that gave a quick rundown on each of the 15 sports, a few fun facts, and information as to who is predicted to win. (Making predictions, news sources, inferring... SOL skills, check!) Each of my kids drew a different sport to report on. I gave them each a copy of ABC's report about their sport and two pages to complete as part of their "report." One has comprehension questions about their article and the other is an illustration page with a few more things to fill out. I'm also excited to test out our grade's new set of iPad minis tomorrow! My kids will use these during small groups to find additional information and images to add to their reports. You can check out this whole unit, ready to go, in my TPT store. At the end of the week, my kids will share their sport with the class, or maybe on the morning news, and then I'll add display them in our hall for others to learn from.

As part of my school's new Writing Committee, we have a goal of increasing writing participation throughout the school. We take turns creating a monthly interactive bulletin board in the cafeteria for all students to participate with. This was my month to create a new board so of course, I choose to try to incorporate some Valentine's fun! My fourth grades really struggle with using "sparkly" words (other known as adjectives) in their writing and are always using the same. old. boring. words. I titled the board "Sweet Synonyms" and cut out giant hearts with some pretty scrapbook paper. The words I chose were pretty, little, big, funny, nice, said, awesome, like, walked, and happy. I typed up a quick blurb about the board with directions and added some markers and ta-da! We have an interactive, themed board for the school to fill in. After the month is over, I plan on typing up all of the brainstormed words onto a master list to share with the school. This way, everyone can have a copy of the students' brainstormed ideas!