This Week

This has been a really crazy week for me.  I was out at conferences/meetings for 2 1/2 days.  One day I had to sub in another class.  Friday was the only day I got to teach my class.  I was glad I got to be there to end the week - especially since a 4th grade teacher made a really cute video for teacher appreciation week.  The students were very adorable in it!

The conference I went to was interesting, although it moved too slow for me.  There were tons of great ideas though.  One idea I tried Friday.  It was called Picture Notes.  First, I modeled the strategy with a read aloud.  Then I drew pictures of the most important ideas of that story.  The only rule was that I could not use any words in my picture (apart from the title).  Then, I had students use their reading stories to create their own Picture Notes in small groups.  This may not be totally new.  I, however, have never really done an activity like this.

I always like to get feedback from my students, especially on new activities.  They loved working on it.  The conversations they had were very interesting too.  There was a whole lot of students asking each other which things were important enough to draw (and how should they represent the drawing).  I then had my students take their reading tests on the story.  While I haven't graded them yet, my students felt more confident with their tests!  I will definitely have to try this one again.

Students' Example of Picture Notes