5th Grade Language Arts

The question has been presented – if you could write a book at this moment in time, what would it be?  There are so many issues swimming around in my head – I fear my book may be more like some twisted stream of consciousness rather than any readable topic!!!!  Academically, I’d like to write about The Art of Conversation, teaching kids how to actually converse in such a way that they can convey an opinion and yet not become so self absorbed that they can learn to process and wonder about the other person’s ideas as well.  Maybe this is called maturity and can’t be taught, but I truly believe that this is one of the reasons why teaching  kids to write is so difficult.  Writing is like sharing your side of a conversation on paper.  If they can’t do it when speaking, they surely can’t do it in writing.  I’d also like to write a book on the value of being an optimist – for all ages.  But truly, if I were to write a book today – it would most likely be about someone who has influenced my life.  I’ve been mulling some ideas around for a book based on my grandmother.  The woman salted her beer and didn’t get her driver’s license until she was in her 60′s.  She had an opinion about EVERYTHING and affected my view on life more than she’ll ever know.  And this topic leads back to my first…..Many kids don’t seem to have people or more importantly experiences that have molded their lives.  I truly believe many of our kids lead 2 dimensional (albeit in some cases complicated) lives.  They rarely have opportunities to shape their thinking – they instead think like their parents with no invitation for change.  So, maybe by sharing my life-shaping experiences, it will inspire kids to search for those people or events in their lives.  Books should get them to wonder, explore and ask “Why” or “What if?”

Today in Language Arts we finished up creating biography power points!  This was a new approach to an old topic for me, but I think it was a great success and look forward to doing it again next year!  The first step was for the kids to select a person that they wanted to research!  I had many biography choices in the class (at varied reading levels), and I also encouraged other readers to expand beyond my selection and head to the public library to find other great biographies.  Much to my delight, many kids made unique selections from Madame Curie to Levi Strauss!!  Each student was then given a “note-taking” packet to help focus their research.  I created the notes, so that they were already divided into “slide-like” sections.  Sections ranged from basic details to various inference questions like, “What lessons could a child today learn from this person? or Do you consider this person a hero or celbrity – why?”  Once research was gathered we headed into the lab to create the powerpoint.  The only glitch was that our lab is equipped with Macs and my power point experience was with PCs, so…I had to check out a lap top and “play” with one myself!!  It worked out fine.  Kids typed in required text, added backgrounds, google images, and various animations. The kids will present these to the class tomorrow!  It took us 3 class preioods in the lab and 2 class periods with the portable lab, but we managed to finish!  This is a project that the kids did NOT want to stop working on, and one of which they are extremely proud!!

Hello all,  I hope I am doing this correctly.  I haven’t seem to overcome my fear of technological failure – but I keep trying new things nonetheless!!!!  I just returned from our Middle School Spelling Bee and am proud to say that 2 of our final 4 spellers were 5th GRADERS!!!!  We so enjoyed watching the bee, yet it brings up an interesting question – perhaps for one of my future blogs – and that is the effectiveness of teaching spelling in the classroom.  At what point do we as teachers chalk up spelling as not a valuable use of time – let’s face it, natural spellers can spell, and everyone else memorizes then forgets in a matter of days!  I guess I’ll leave it at that for now!