5th grade | Jackie Reeve

I’m still recovering from the weekend, but this week is off to a really great start. I put together a short list of books for the 5th grade teachers at school, who are getting new class sets of 3 novels next year and asked for my help picking them. The short list I gave them included When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead,Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson. A couple of those are long shots, but they were looking mainly for Newbery books (I threw in TLT because, well, I love it). There are tons of books out there, and tons that I haven’t read, but this was a list of recent books I’ve read and enjoyed, and I think our students would, too. I made up a packet with blurbs and reviews for each book, so that was productive and pretty fun.

I haven’t touched the Rainbow Quilt in at least a week, but that hasn’t stopped me from drooling over the new Riley Blake collection Rainy Days and Mondays by Melinda and Beccabury. I may possibly have ordered some half yards today…in several colorways.

Happy (Early) Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

jackie March 1, 2010 Children's Books, Children's Programs, Crafts, Teaching 1st grade, 5th grade, Children's Programs, Crafts, dr. seuss, kindergarten, library, pre-k, Teaching

Today was our Read Across America program (Dr. Seuss Day to the kids) at school. It’s the biggest program I organize each year, and this year I teamed up with our reading teacher to get the whole school involved.

Winter Concert

jackie December 17, 2009 Events and Celebrations, Teaching, Thoughts 1st grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, christmas, Entertainment, holidays, music, school

This week was my school’s winter concert. The first graders (blurry to protect them) performed a song called “The 12 Days in the Rainforest” that one of the first grade teachers wrote. It was awesome, they sang about all the animals in the rainforest. So fun, and they did a fabulous job. Our computer teacher put together a great animated presentation to go along with the song, it was wonderful. The 4th and 5th grade chorus also performed some carols and other songs to get the holiday spirit going.

This Month With 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade: Using the Catalog and Dewey Decimal System

jackie November 29, 2009 Teaching, Thoughts 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, lesson plans, library class

Okay, actually the 4th and 5th graders just got a refresher on this in October before moving on to learn Google Earth (which I’ll talk about next month). They’re old hands at it now.

Hip Hop Speaks to Children with 4th/5th Grade

jackie May 1, 2009 Art, Children's Books, Teaching, Thoughts 4th grade, 5th grade, books, Children's Books, lesson plans, music, national poetry month, Teaching

Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how much fun I had in April talking about hip hop for National Poetry Month.

I spent the month using this book to talk to some of my 4th and 5th graders about rhythm, beats, and structure. We looked at poems side-by-side with some lyrics, and we talked about how both poems and hip hop lyrics have a structure. We talked about how the number of syllables in each line needs to make sense with the whole verse or the way it flows will be broken…that sort of thing. We talked about how hard it can be to write a good poem or a good song, and I read them Nikki Giovanni’s introduction in the book. The intro talks about the roots of hip hop, compares it to opera, warns kids not to be fooled by all the embarassing rap songs out there. True hip hop is like poetry. And on and on and on.

Happy Belated Birthday, Dr. Seuss

jackie March 10, 2009 Children's Programs, Crafts, Teaching 5th grade, Crafts, dr. seuss, lesson plans, library class, programs, read across america

Last Monday, March 2nd, was Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Schools across the country participate in the Read Across America program to celebrate this. I’d been working with an elite corp of 5th graders who would be visiting the pre-k, kindergarten, and 1st grade classrooms to read them a Dr. Seuss story and help them make a craft. It had been in the works since January (and believe me, next year I’m starting earlier!). I’d vetted the 5th graders, worked with the reading teacher, talked to the classroom teachers, practiced and trained the selected 5th graders. I’ve been eating, breathing, and sleeping this program for weeks now.

Google Earth Rules

jackie February 12, 2009 Teaching 5th grade, google earth, lesson plans, library class

I am having so much fun with my 5th graders this week, I may let them play with Google Earth from now until June.

I’m doing reference units with my 4th and 5th graders. The 4th graders started back before the holidays with an introduction to atlases, almanacs, and encyclopedias. It took a while because of assemblies, weather, etc., but I basically gave them a week to play with each of those 3 reference sources. They worked in teams of 4 and just flipped through the World Almanac for Kids 2008 and whatever atlases we have (I really need to buy new atlases next year). They had to write down 10 cool things they learned from those 2 sources that they didn’t know before. Then when we got to encyclopedias, I had them compare and contrast our print World Book to World Book online. They had to write pros and cons for each source, and we talked about why it’s important to know what kind of resources have the best stuff when doing research. At the end of my unit for those 3, we had a reference scavenger hunt. They worked in teams and had to answer a series of questions by picking the right reference source and then finding the right answer. That was crazy fun, and they did a great job with it. I had stations set up all over the library, so they had to move around and think about which book would have the right answers (and they all learned where Chad is, which I thought was kind of fun).

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