One Teacher's Adventures

Teaching the 5 W's - Who, What, Where, When, and Why - has never been my favourite subject.  And because I am not too excited about it, my students don't get too excited about it, either.  For me, it's just tedious. Last year, I was teaching a Grade 4/5 class, and when we looked at informational writing, the 5 W's came up again.  I tried to find a fun and creative way to liven up this topic, and I remembered something I had seen on Pinterest , coming from a blog called Sarcasm 101 - story sticks! Ruby, the original poster, used coloured popsicle sticks as elements of a story.  One colour for character, another for conflict, etc. I decided to adapt the idea, and make each colour stick into one of the 5 W's.   I spent an hour or so coming up with a class set of sticks.  The red sticks show "WHEN," green sticks show "WHERE," yellow sticks show "WHO," and the blue sticks "WHAT."   I told my students to pretend they w

My Grade 9's are in the midst of a poetry unit in English.  We've looked at many forms of poetry, and last week, we were studying sonnets.   I collected samples from Shakespeare, of course, and his contemporaries, as well as selections from some more recent poets.  We looked at parodies of traditional sonnets ( Check out Tony Baldwin's Sonnet 18 Parody - "Shall I compare thee to a bale of hay."  It's wonderful! ).   My students read and analyzed these poems, and then it was time for them to write their own. We had discussed the traditional rhyme scheme and meter of an English sonnet, and I asked my students to follow the rhyme scheme, stay as close to iambic pentameter as they could, include at least one simile, and include one other poetic device (from metaphor, personification, and hyperbole).  Although my more keen students jumped at this assignment, it was like pulling teeth to get some of my more reluctant poets to try. They were struggling on conte

It's been another wet and rainy Saturday in Victoria, so I spent the morning with brainteasers!  (I know, I'm a total nerd!)  When I was in school, I used to love rebus puzzles.   What are rebus puzzles?  They are word puzzles that illustrate a familiar phrase or saying.  I didn't know until today that they were called Rebus, but now that I know, I want to use the name as much as possible!   I found a couple online, then I decided to make some handouts for my English classes to use as a warm up.  While I was making them, I thought to myself, "Self, this would make a great TpT item!"  I created 36 pages of these brainteasing puzzles, one for each week of a school year, and bundled them up.  They are for sale at my TpT store, One Teacher's Adventures. If you are as nerdy as I am on a rainy Saturday, perhaps you'd like to try some out? See if you can solve these puzzles! For the answers, click here . To buy the package, click on the image b

My Grade 8's have been studying the Medieval Period in Social Studies.  As we were looking at the Magna Carta, several students asked about the Coats of Arms around the outside of the document.  They were quite interested in them, so we ended up researching the Coat of Arms of our school's namesake.  That's when I decided to have my students create one of their own. Several students researched their own family crest and used symbols and images they found from their ancestors.  Others included pictures of things that were important to them. For the assignment, I asked them to include at least 4 symbols that represent themselves in some way.  In addition to the Coat of Arms, they needed to include a write-up explaining the significance of each image. I think next year I will use this activity as a beginning of the year "get to know you" activity.  It can easily be adapted to fit any grade.  Even Kindergarten students could draw pictures and talk about why t

Last year, I taught grade 4/5 in a small school.  Over 1/4 of all the students in the school were in my class (30 out of 110)!  Because we were a small school, there was only one class per grade, so for most of my students, they had been with the same friends in the same classes since Kindergarten.  By the time they came to me, they were a little sick of each other. I had a lot of fighting within friend groups in the class, several meetings with parents, desk switches almost every week, and regular visits with the counselor.  When those strategies didn't work, I decided to try something new.  I wanted my students to come up with kind things to say about one another.  We started playing team building games in gym and I was trying to recognize when students did nice things for each other. I also wanted each student to know how special they were to the class.  I gave every student a copy of the class list and asked them to write down one nice thing about everyone.  When they finis

Some nights I have trouble sleeping.  I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.  A few months ago, I experienced one of these nights.  I couldn't sleep, so I decided to tidy and organize my craft supplies.  I found an old box of overhead transparencies.  My school has transferred over to document cameras, rendering the transparency paper pretty useless, so I thought about what I could do with stacks of clear paper.  I used a bunch a few weeks before to make protractors and other math manipulatives for my class, but I still had several dozen.  Then I remembered an art project I had seen years before while I was student teaching: Collage Portraits. I had nothing else to do at 1:30 in the morning, so I decided to create.  This is what I came up with: Here's how I did it: Step 1: Find a picture to use a template.   I don't have any artistic talent for drawing faces.  I can muster a pretty good cartoon stick man, but that's about it.  I found a magazine ad and

My Grade 9's are in the middle of a poetry unit in English.  When I introduced the unit, I received more than a few disgruntled sighs.  I heard a lot of "I hate poetry," "Poetry is so boring," and "I'm so bad at poetry."  However, I have made some conversions through Found Poetry. To create their found poems, my students were given a random piece of text (I photocopied various pages of whatever books were in the copy room), and they were asked to find words and phrases to put together to create a new poem.  Their new poem had to have a cohesive thought and a consistent theme or message. When they had chosen their words, they were asked to illustrate their new poems to highlight the theme, mood, or tone of the poem. I was really impressed with what they created, so I thought I'd share with you. When they had finished illustrating their poems, they wrote reflections on why they stylized the poems the way they did and l

Hello! I have been thinking about blogging for quite some time, and since it is a rainy Saturday afternoon here in Victoria, why not start now? My plan for this blog is to share what I am doing in my classroom.  Now is an exciting time for education because so much change is coming our way.  I am trying to bring in new methods of teaching and learning to allow my students to really understand and think about the world around them.  I am constantly inspired by things that other teachers are doing, both in my school and around the world.  I love reading teacher blogs to see activities that worked (and activities that didn't work) and I hope that this blog will give ideas to other teachers to try in their classrooms. A little about me: I live just outside Victoria, BC in Canada.  I love it here on the island.  Most of Canada is experiencing second (or third) winter - and we had temperatures of 16 degrees yesterday! I have wanted to be a teacher from as far back as I can rem