I'm excited to be linking up again with my buddy Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday! Today I'm featuring/bragging about two ideas I've tried from my sweet friends Jivey and Amanda/Stacia. Last week I used her measurement word sort (freebie!!!) and my kids loved it!
My students worked collaboratively to order the units from least to greatest. It was a fun review and it gave me the opportunity to show them the "Gallon" Trick with the letters inside each other to remember units of capacity.
(you can see it at the bottom of this student's paper).
Download a copy here if you'd like a copy! Great to use as a math resource or interactive notebooks.
I also tried my first mentor sentence (introduced to me by Jivey, Amanda, & Stacia). I've never heard of Mentor Sentences, but these lovely ladies were fortunate to attend a training, and now we're fortunate to have them train us! :O) I have never really taught grammar in isolation because our 4th graders have to be prepared for our big writing test, and from my experience I've never seen it transfer to their everyday writing. I incorporate all my grammar skills in my writing lessons. We keep track of "super sentences" on anchor charts and in their notebooks, but this concept is so wonderful to me. I love the idea of spending a week on one sentence and really dissecting it and "noticing" why it's a "super sentence". I'm excited to start this new idea with my class and learning more from these amazing ladies!
Here is my first mentor sentence lesson (I hope I did it correctly! Jivey? Amanda?)
I gave each student a sentence from an amazing new picture book (not revealing the book-saving it for the mentor text linky!) and they glued this along with their weekly mentor sentence routine into their notebooks. After reading it several times, I asked my students what they "noticed" about the sentence. I think once one person gave a good example and I made a big deal out of it, the lights went on with the other students. They definitely needed a lot of probing in the beginning, but I know with a few exposures they will become experts! I'm a fan already! Check it out! Thanks Holly for hosting this linky, I love trying new ideas!
