Annual Instructional Theme

NaNoWriMo

In the middle school writing rotation, fiction writing came up on my unit map this year. While I have a curriculum that I regularly use to teach writing, I had a crazy idea- what if my students participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? NaNoWriMo is traditionally an adult-led tradition where people worldwide commit…

Creating Worlds

In my classroom, we are well and truly launched on creating our own worlds! As a culmination of our Earth science unit, our literature studies, and our social studies emphasis this year on government circles of influence, responsibility and authority, each student in our class is designing a world of their own.  There are four…

The Earth Moves (And we take note!)

3rd-5th grade science right now is focusing on the concept of plate tectonics and the structure of our planet. We had two very different science lessons last week: On Tuesday, the 3rd and 4th graders took part in a very simple experiment. I had collected some small rocks and wood chips during recess, and I…

One Solar System, Many kinds of Learning

This year, our whole school instructional theme is circles, and this month all class levels have been studying the circles of Solar System in science.   Each class is doing some research, making a model of some form, and learning facts about the solar system’s objects and their movement, each in a developmentally appropriate way. In…