Catching up and Persuasive Strategies {freebie}

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last post. I’m sure you are all feeling the February frenzies. My principal just reminded us that it a research based fact that February is the most stressful month of the school year. I can definitely feel the pressure. With ISAT’s (sigh) less than a month away, and all the crazy going-on’s in and out of my classroom, I am literally counting down the days until my Spring Break ( 41). Although, Spring Break will bring on a new stress— the leaving of my closest teammate. She’s leaving me to have a child. How rude! TOTALLY KIDDING! I’m way excited for her because hopefully I can talk her into having her baby girl call me Auntie B, and of course I can’t wait visit and see the baby as much as she’ll let me. I do love me some baby toes!!! Plus, bows… Lots and LOTS of bows! I can’t wait!!!

But, back to my reality. My team and I took our students to the Museum of Science and Industry this past Friday. SOOO much fun! It’s sad to say that it was truly my first *real* field trip of my teaching career. My former administration didn’t really like us taking trips. Especially into the city. BUT, my new administration is in full support and I couldn’t be happier! It was a little sad to me that some of my students had never been to a museum before OR had even been to Chicago. My school is only about 45 minutes from the city, so it was a little surprising. However, I was just excited that I could be with them the first time they saw Lake Michigan! It was a great day and I was very proud of how well behaved my kids were. And, I have to add the sweet comment one of my Goobers (Remember, term of endearment ) made. I had said I wish we could stay longer and he replied, “It’s okay Ms. F, I’m just excited we got to come here at all.” Love.

Now, back to my classroom. I have been busy working on measurement in math and am planning on rolling out some new math games in the next few weeks, but, I decided that I’d do some place value review because if we don’t use it, they’ll lose it. So. on a spur of the moment decision, I decided to break out my Place Value Game. I added the extra fun factor of letting them use their desks to show their work (they still struggle with mental math–something I’m constantly working with them on). It was a fun review game and best of all, I had a solid formative assessment (big buzz word at my school this year) of who is STILL struggling with identifying place value. Here are some action shots:

Have you downloaded my “Let’s Practice Place Value” game? I checked my TpT stats and holy cow! I have over 4.486 downloads. It’s very humbling to think that my work has reached that many classrooms. Definitely a confidence boost! If you haven’t snagged a copy yet, head {here} and download a copy for your own classroom. If you use it, I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear how your students liked it!

In Reading news, I’m a few weeks behind on activities I’ve used in class, but I thought I’d share my Persuasive Strategies lesson ideas I used when teaching the Time For Kids story, The Power of Oil. The skill for the story was Persuasion so I searched the Internet for some ideas on how to explain different persuasive techniques. I found a PowerPoint {here} and decided to pretty it up and use it in my own classroom.

I created my own posters based on most of the information I found from the original ppt. Here is a glance at all the pages.

We discussed each strategy and brainstormed commercials that we felt fit into each category. Here is a few of our lists.

P.S. When we were listing slogans, I explained that they had to sing the slogan the way it is sung in the commercial, and O.M.G. I about died laughing. They can be so endearing when they let their tough guy/girl 4th grade persona down and just act silly. Too fun!

I had this anchor chart that I referred to every day during the completion of these activities:

After we discussed and listed examples for all the strategies, I broke the class up into 6 groups, assigned them a prop (hula hoop, a picture of Lillie, a photo of my adopted orangutan, the American flag, an extra large pixie stick, and something else. lol, I CANNOT remember the 6th item—this was a few weeks ago). After they were given a prop, they had to create a commercial using one or more of these strategies. Then, they performed them for their classmates. After each commercial, students went back to their groups and filled out this form:

It was a fun and more interactive way to teach this strategy. I can’t wait to tweak it some more for the next time, and hopefully incorporate some actual commercials for them to evaluate. That’s my goal–

If you would like a copy of the strategies and the evaluation sheet, click on the photo below and download the packet from Google Docs.

Happy Sunday and GO Patriots if you are a Patriots fan or GO Giants if you are Giants fan. If you are like me, and you don’t really have a preference, then, just have a great week!!!