I have been creating a series of vocabulary pages for morning work to use in my fifth grade challenge classroom. The form you see above is the first one. I list two words each morning during the week. Students use tools--electronic and hard copy-- to look up the definition, a synonym and antonym for each word. We discuss our findings after I have taken attendance and lunch count. I have them turn in the entire sheet on Friday. Right now I am using a SAT vocabulary list to choose my words. Any word list will work for this activity. To download the Synonym/Antonym page from my Google Drive, please click here.
Catch You Later, Traitor by Avi is the first book I am reading aloud to my fifth graders this year. Set in the early 50s, Pete's teacher accuses Pete's father of being a Communist and begins mistreating Pete. Pete's classmates leave him out of recess games and his best friend becomes distant.
I have given my students some background information about the Cold War and how innocent people lost jobs and freedom just because someone accused them of being a Communist. We are relating this to other times in history where people were mistreated based on their beliefs or culture.
I was shopping for birthday gifts for my students last weekend and decided to give them these coupons instead. In previous years, I found these rulers with stencils at the party store and they were a hit. This year I went with the gift of time. Students can take a night off of homework or work on a choice activity during the day. They love it. Here is the link to the coupons. I cut them out and pasted them on colored index cards. What do you do to celebrate birthdays?
Callum Hunt does not want to enter the Magisterium and learn about magic. His father has warned him to stay away from magic, but Callum doesn't learn the full reason until after he enters the school and begins to pass the Iron Trial. Book Three in the Magisterium series has just been released. I can't wait to find out what happens next.
One of the key math concepts in fourth grade is placing fractions and decimals on a number line. It helps to have a strong visual model the students can manipulate. I realized that I already had a class set of number lines I could use for the activity: meter sticks.
Meter sticks are a way of representing tenths, hundredths and thousandths. One meter stick is the whole. Each decimeter is a tenth, each centimeter is a hundredth, and each millimeter is a thousandth. (You can purchase 12 meter sticks by clicking the affiliate link below.) I started with modeling half. Students could visually see that I had marked half way across the stick. Fourth graders know that 50 is half of 100 so the clothespin marked the 50 cm point.
Next, I marked the tenths. On one side of the clothespins I have tenths in fraction form. On the other side I marked the equivalent decimal.
I made additional clothespins with fifths, fourths, and eighths. On the other side of each I marked the equivalent fractions. I am using this tool as an independent station for some students and an intervention for others.
