My creative girls

I am loving my creative and independent girls this year in my 6th grade class. There are only 4 girls among 14 boys! 🙂

3 of the 4 are very shy and quiet. They are all so creative!

Last week I was out for 1 1/2 days for a conference. One of the things they had to do was create some type if graphic organizer on labor unions for history.

They decided to use popplet, which the whole class had used a couple of weeks ago. Popplet will only allow you to make 5, and then you have to pay.

SO….my girls created their own account, made their graphic organizers, and write notes to me giving me their usernames and passwords so I could grade them!

I was so proud of them for being innovative!

Here’s the envelope that was on my table when I returned to school. It contained their cute little notes!

THIS IS WHY WE TEACH! To be able to watch them become independent learners and thinkers!

Life Sized Graphic Organizer

This was not pre-planned. 🙂 This is how it came about. On Thursdays one of my 6th grade classes goes to the library for 30 minutes out of our 1 hour class period which gives us extra time in the 2nd 6th grade class. It was warm outside today and felt soooo good, so I took this class outside for our lesson. Sunshine was my best friend today. 🙂

Our lesson was rather short-the US entering WWI and why. We read with a purpose, did “turn and talk”, shared aloud, repeat. Easy peasy. I LOVE hearing how the kids talk with each other about what they have read!

We finished with about 25-30 minutes left so we borrowed a bucket of sidewalk chalk and mad a HUGE graphic organizer of all the things that led to WWI (that WE are learning about-you high school teachers can add to it later :)).

I broke the kids into groups of 3 and assigned them a cause. They had to figure out how to visually represent that cause within their circle of the graphic organizer. I walked around and observed.

When they all finished I had them grab their notebook and pencil and take a walking tour of the graphic organizer. They had to recreate the organizer in their notebook and fill in the information.

SUPER COOL! Will do this again and again and again…..

 

 

Kids working on the graphic organizer.

 

 

Example of one of the causes.

Kids doing the walking tour and recording in their notebooks.

This is one of the BEST things I’ve ever come up with on the spot!!!! I am so NOT creative. I’m always borrowing ideas from others. 🙂

What’s your BEST on the spot lesson you’ve done?

 

Main Idea-Graphic Organizer

I teach my kids the “hand” to find the main idea in a passage/story/etc. (got this idea from somewhere on the internet). They have to answer the following questions to figure out the main idea: WHO-DID WHAT-WHEN-WHERE-WHY

We use a “hand” graphic organizer to help us complete this information. I have made a big “hand” for them to use as a visual (I’ll post a picture soon), and I found this “hand” graphic organizer on edhelper.com.

http://www.edhelperclipart.com/clipart/teachers/org-hand.pdf

Graphic Organizers

I ran across this teacher’s website, and she has a multitude of graphic organizers that can be used for reading comprehension. She made them available in PDF or word format. Hope you can use them!

http://www.sanchezclass.com/reading-graphic-organizers.htm