Under Your Spell

Delta Dragons List
Scorpion Spellers List

Policy of Truth?

It's always a bit scary to ask your students what is it that you love about your teacher. You never know what kind of responses you will get. This is one of my favorite questions to ask because kids don't know that you're supposed to be nice and find something to say. Sometimes kids are very blunt and I'll get the classic - NOTHING, and other times amazing responses make me tear up a little - I love Mrs. Prophet because she is blunt and tells us like it is in the real world because we need to hear it.

Today was a tough day. Students have been struggling with self-management and justice fighting. Justice fighting is my way of describing what happens when kids try to explain what they were doing when it all went wrong in class (some people call it talking back). I talk to kids all the time about using their powerful voices productively, but this year it is been a struggle. I'm struggling to help kids understand that not all adults are like Mrs. Prophet and there are many adults in this world that will try to silence them.

Today was one of those days! I got a little choked up while trying to talk to the kids in my class because I always want everyone to love them the way I do. The kids will tell you that I cry sometimes when we talk about this stuff. It's an unfortunate side effect of getting close to a class and trying to help them become better humans.


Most adults grew up in the era when kids were taught that authority is to be respected and never questioned, but is that really what we want our kids to think? We are living in a world where it's essential for us to learn how to evaluate sources and perspectives and see if they square with a world that we want to live in. I believe that kids are just people that haven't learned how to navigate this world effectively yet.


When they are taught to sit down and shut up, we all lose. When we teach kids that their opinions don't matter, they stop listening to us. When we teach kids content and never build a relationship with them, nothing will happen but resistance. I want my students to learn how to question authority but maintain respect in the method that they do it.

Do I think that teachers deserve student respect? Sure do.

Do I think that teachers are unfairly blamed for many things? Yep!

Do I think that all students regardless of how they treat teacher deserve respect? Of course!

Do I think that teachers do a lot of things that cause students to lose respect for them? Yes!

We are all humans and we need to remember that how we talk to people matters. If we disregard the people element of education, we ALL lose.

So as my kiddo said today: Mrs. Prophet is blunt, she tells us what it's like in the real world because we need to hear it. The truth is we all need to hear it. We need to step up and take care of each other. Maybe flip our thinking a bit. If we start to believe that someone who is giving us a hard time is actually a person having a hard time, maybe we can open our hearts and minds to the needs of others.

Magic Spells

Here are the lists for the 2 spelling groups:
Animals: Spelling List - Prefixes
Dragons: Spelling List - Alliteration Consonants

You Spin Me Round!

Happy Saturday!

October is a challenging month. For much of the first 8 weeks of school, we learn about each other and our preferences/challenges. However, while it is an important time of community building, October is the month when our kids develop social challenges and communication breakdowns as our relationships change and grow.

Many times I've found that in October kids start to bicker like brothers and sisters! I welcome this challenge because it means a couple of things for me. First, it gives me a chance to see how effective I have been at building a community. Kids that are engaged in our community are more likely to have these types of issues than kids who aren't. I always remember back to when I was kid fighting with my siblings. We argue and fight, but after a few hours (or days) we would come back together stronger than before.

Secondly, October challenges present an opportunity for me to continue working on our social and emotional learning (SEL). Often teachers stop this work because the academic learning must take priority over building relationships with kids. I feel that it is my job as a teacher to help prepare kids to be socially and emotionally ready to learn the academic material.

As the year progresses, our SEL will evolve and change because the needs of the kids expand. Rather than working to create agreements about how we will work together, we shift to ways we can follow the agreements. We also have to amend our understanding of each other as we change and mature as 5th graders.

This week I have jumped into talking about self-management and how important it is for kids to control the things that are within their circle of control. We also discussed what to do when presented with a challenge and how to ask for help. Next week, our SEL will shift again as we begin to practice how to speak up and advocate for our emotional, social, and academic needs. 

Here are some great pictures from the work we did this week!

 

Do I Have to Spell it Out?

Here are the spelling sorts - just in case your student 'forgot' to bring their words home. Happy Wednesday!

Sticky Like Glue

Welcome back to Mod. 10! We had a great Monday today. Students kicked off our new UOI - How the World Works. We also wrote another narrative today. Students were given glue to put on their hands and wrote about their experience. We will compare and contrast those narratives with informational pieces regarding the same activity on Wednesday. We also started working on identifying and analyzing informational text structures in reading.

It is also Banned Books Week. If you want to read some great books with your children some of these are great for this week. Frequently Challenged Books

We also talked today about how important it is for students to read all the time. We are working to understanding the connections between reading and success. Here are the charts I shared with the kids about how reading impacts their achievement on tests.

Check out some pictures of what we did today. Hope everyone had a great MONDAY!

(Pop) Rock Candy

Today was a fun day! I love it when we get to break the rules in order to create experiences for our narrative writing. The rule we broke today was eating candy for breakfast! The kids had a great time and produced some great writing pieces. We still have some work to do with our writing conventions, but we have already come a long way with our ability to tell a story!

Here are a few samples:

Friday, I'm in Love

This was another great week in Mod 10. We ended it with an author visit and our first birthday celebration. I'm glad we survived the sugar this afternoon. The kids enjoyed the cupcakes and so did I! Thank you August birthday families for the sweet treats.

I hope all of you have a great long weekend. I'm heading to the beach for some much-needed rest, sand, and sun.

I will be out of the classroom on Tuesday for UOI planning. The students will continue to work on their inquiries and I will be working to ensure that term 2 is as inspiring as term 1. Please remind your kiddos that the Classroom Agreements still apply regardless of who is teaching in the classroom.

Have a wonderful long weekend! Enjoy football, the Decatur Book Festival, DragonCon, or maybe all three. I love your kiddos and I hope that you can make some great memories this weekend. If you happen to go see Jason Reynolds and want to get something signed for me, I would love you forever :)

Friday Finale

what a great week! We finally finished MAP testing and all the kids breathed a sigh of relief! Next week we will be back to our regular schedule for the most part 😁.  I will post in more detail about our Morning Merting today, but your kids are awesome and have a lot of opinions about really important things! Please listen to what they have to say and know that they are truly impacted by things that happen in our world more than we all realize.

I also wanted to remind you that I often add new items to my Amazon wishlist. Be sure to check it out: https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/4S390URD0YIR

Blue Monday

So everyone seemed to be a little bit off today. Lots of students were tired and not feeling their best, but we pushed through. We were also very chatty today and that made for a CRAZY teacher! :) This gave us a great opportunity to go back to our classroom agreements and redefine what each one means. It's always nice to be able to review our agreements and make sure that we know what they mean.

We began working on the Amendment Process, the writing process, and grammar mentor sentences. Here are some pictures of the charts we created today.

What's in Your Warrant?

Great lessons today on due process and powers of 10. Students were asked to draw images that represented the due process protections in the Constitution. We also introduced the flexible seating. Here are some pictures.

Seashell and Stone

We inquired into methods scientists use to classify living things today. Students worked together to develop a model that could effectively be used to sort shells by their physical characteristics. They learned a lot about classifying. Some students were frustrated that they couldn't agree as a group how to sort the shells. This was a great lesson for our scientists to learn. Here are some pictures.

Good Friday!

We had quite a busy Friday today! We continued to work to develop our procedures for math workshop and we had our First Friday celebration where students had to work as a team to complete a variety of activities. Check out the pictures below.

The Operation

Today students were introduced to our workshop structure for math. We talked about the expectations for the whole time and we are ready to start our workshop on Monday! I was also super excited about the students that are using their understanding of organizing groups to create a book club and a classroom newpaper!

Every Day I Write the Book

Students were introduced today to the first element of Writer's Workshop - Free Writing. For many students, this is the first time that they were allowed to write anything they like, including comic books! They were so excited and it was great to see some students that have in the past not liked writing become successful writers during this time. Here are some pictures!