My Fourth Grade Homework Routine

One of the most frequent comments/questions I get from my readers is about my homework routine.  

My thoughts and feelings on homework have evolved over the years. During the course of my career, I have done weekly homework, packets, and nightly homework.  There are many sides to the homework debate.  Many agree it isn't effective or beneficial, and some argue that does have merit. 

I fall somewhere in the middle. I believe that homework can promote responsibility and study habits.  I also believe that what if I'm asking my students to work hard at home, what I send home should have merit and should be beneficial. The text that you read below is an update (8/7/19) with my current homework routine. 

My students main responsibility for their homework is studying and preparing for our weekly spelling test.  To promote my students learning study skills/habits, I have my students take a pretest to know which words they will need to spend extra time with.  Our list is a district mandated list from our reading curriculum. 

For the first few weeks of school, I give the pretest in class.  The students then choose spelling activities from our monthly spelling contract to help them study.  You can find the monthly spelling contracts file {here}. 

Below is our classroom guideline for our spelling contract.

• 1-2 words missed- Earn five points 
• 3-5 words missed- Earn fifteen points 
• 6+ words missed- Complete a five point activity nightly/daily.

We also teach the students to use cover, copy, compare to give their own pretest, in case they aren't able to have someone at home to give him/her a pretest. I also utilize high school helpers for pretests as well. 

You can even implement this pretest idea in your classroom for word work! The number of words missed determines how many points your students will need to earn throughout the week.  The directions are editable, so can come up with a routine that best meets your classroom needs. 

Some weeks, but not all weeks, I may include a reading sheet. Typically these reading sheets practice our weekly skill.  Below is an example of a week that studied theme.  Most students received the "Amusement Park" passage, and my enrichment/gifted students received the "Getting Away With It" passage. 

I mainly include a passage here and there for for students to independently practice written responses, going back into the text for the answer, and to give parents a peek at what we are learning in class. 

Typically, homework goes home on Friday and is due the following Friday.  I also encourage my students to read at home, but do not require a reading log. The title of any books that they have read go on their 40 Book Challenge Log. 

This sums up my CURRENT homework routine, however, I have left the original post from 1/24/14 below, as many pins direct to this post... 

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My kiddos are expected to read 60 minutes a week.  Packets originally went home on Monday and were due Friday, so this was twenty minutes a night.  A lot of families wanted the spelling homework/words available so they could start studying over the weekend.  Packets now go home on Friday and are due the following Friday.  Some of my kids also work towards their reading minutes on the weekend too. Most of my kids LOVE reading so it's not uncommon to see reading log minutes in excess of one hundred or two hundred minutes. :) 

The next two pages have to do with their spelling homework.  I'm not in love with our spelling program but it comes with our basal and we are required to use it.  The kiddos earn ten points from my monthly spelling contracts each week and also complete a word sort page with their spelling words. 

The last two pages are response questions for their at home reading that week. 

My students choose four questions each week, they can't repeat questions, to answer on the recording page each week.   It's a great way to get even more practice responding to the texts they read! Currently, I use this file as a reading response activity in class.

I look over the homework on Friday afternoons before I head home.  It's worked out great because we don't loose any additional class checking homework together each day and the additional practice at home with our spelling words and reading have really benefited my students.  

If you are interested in the reading response sheet that I use with my students, I have added it to my Reading Response Questions for Practically any book freebie. 

I just gave the entire file a facelift! I originally blogged about how I use this resource {here}.  To download, just click on the image above or {here}. 


Happy weekend, friends! I'm off to cuddle with my puppies. It's so cold here in Ohio! 

Earth Changes Freebies

My class just wrapped up our Earth changes unit and they had a blast and learned a lot too! 

We watched the fast and slow changes Brainpop videos and took notes on fast and slow changes to begin our unit.  My kiddos love Brainpop and it was a great introduction!  

We took notes in this flipbook.  Which doubled as a study guide! Win, win. :)

Click on the picture or {here} to access this freebie on Google Drive.  Thanks to Hello Literacy and Fancy Dog Studio for the fonts and frames.

We also watched this hilarious You Tube video from MIT about fast Earth changes.  My kids LOVED this and requested it daily. 

 

We also spent A LOT of time hitting home the difference between weathering and erosion.  Thank goodness for Study Jams! :)  Have you used Study Jams? If not, you should.  It is FULL of FREE and engaging videos for math and science for upper elementary!

Study Jams referred to weathering and erosion as Superheroes Breaker and Whoosh.  Breaker swoops in and break things apart and represents weathering.  While, Whoosh represents erosion because he moves or "whooshes away" weathered rocks.  These superhero references totally helped this concept stick! 

We also did lots of experiments and hands on activities with weathering and erosion and used this H- Map, read more about H-Maps here on my friend Denise's blog, to organize our thinking and findings about weathering and erosion.

Click on the picture of {here} to access the file from Google Drive.  

Confused on how to download from Google Drive? Please check out this post by my friend Hadar.   I have already shared this file with you, all you have to do is download. :)

If you download and use these freebies, I'd love to hear what you think! :) 

 

Parent Communication Freebies

I'm going to take a tangent here for a minute before I get to your freebies.  I hope ya'll don't mind. ;) Building a house is really stressful.  People warned me, "Building a house is one of the most stressful things you'll ever do." The whole process of picking the fixtures, the financial paperwork, and drafting of the contract was pretty painless.  The actual construction, tests my patience every day.  I'll drive by and see crews working on every house on our street but ours, or multiple contractors working on other houses, while only one contractor works on ours.  Then you see houses that started after you get ahead, and well you feel frustrated.   It's hands down the most stressful thing I've done other than job searching for my first teaching job six years ago, and I'm more than ready for it to be over.  Originally, we were given a projected closing date that was before my school year started.  Now, we are looking at closing after school starts.  :( Taking time off, for closing and a final walk through, is just not something I'm really looking forward to right now, even if that does mean I get the keys to my very own house at the end.

Okay, rant over, I just had to vent for a second to people other than my husband...  :) You want to know another thing that stresses me out? Parent communication. I'm talking about the parent communication outside of newsletters and conferences, you know the difficult phone calls, the small talk while they volunteer, classroom parties, etc...  Maybe it's because I'm not a parent and I can't connect with them on the parenting level, or maybe it's just my personality, I'm very much an introvert. 

Parent communication got easier as time went by at my old school, because I had a rapport with many of my parents from either having one of their other children previously and because I had been in the building for a while.  Even though now and again I had to make some really difficult phone calls and deal with some uncomfortable situations, most of the parents I dealt with were very kind and respectful, and I felt overall I had a really good relationship with the parents of the kiddos in my class. 

Moving to a new school this past year was hard, because I didn't have that rapport.  Many parents thought it was my first year of teaching ever, even though it obviously wasn't. I even had one parent this year pretty much bully me with very mean notes almost daily. Thankfully, I have a great principal who is very supportive of his teachers and who basically told her "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it all." 

Since parent communication can be a source of stress for me, I try to keep it as organized as possible.  I have a binder with tabs for all my students, numbered so I don't have to change them each year, with the forms pictured below for each of my kiddos. 

 

I run these two forms 1-2 sided on the copier and have them on my students desk at Meet the Teacher Night.   These forms are super helpful, because I know exactly how the parents want to be contacted when I need to communicate with them and I have a place to record notes of our communication, this is especially helpful for phone calls and little school chats about various issues.  If a parent sends in a note/email, I place a copy of the note/email, as well as my response, in their child's spot in my binder as well.  

I give my parents this form at Meet the Teacher, but encourage them to take it home, and really think about their answers.  I tell them to write as little, or as much as they would like, but this form really does help me get to know my students so well from the people that love them the most, their families.  I also refer to the goals they have for their child/any concerns they have for the school year during our first conference as well.  

I have upload these forms to Google Drive for you, so strange to not say Google Docs.  Just click on the pictures to download.  The parent contact information sheet and the parent survey are in one PDF, and the log is a separate PDF file. 

What tips do you have for organizing parent communication? Do you have any tips to share for dealing with difficult parents? Share in the comments below, so we can all learn from each other! :) Oh, and don't forget you can like Fourth and Ten on Facebook, my page has been feeling a little bit lonely. ;)

 

End of the Year Behavior Blues {Freebies}

The good thing about having so, so, so many teaching blogs in my Google Reader is knowing that I'm not alone singing the End of the Year Behavior Blues.

Since before spring break, my sweet kiddos have been bouncing off the walls, not listening to directions, treating each other badly, and the list could go on and on.  It's disappointing and frustrating as a teacher, because we have twenty days of school left and still have LOTS of things to do! All classes are different, and this year's class is no exception. Usually, by this time of the year, my darlings pull themselves together and we have lots of fun together the last few weeks of school.  Even my most difficult classes, like the ones who bickered constantly and forgot the rules daily, seemed to pull it together the last few weeks of school.  Of course, I'm sure holding an overnight trip to the zoo over their heads helped matter too. ;)

This class, however,  is different.  My tried and true Behavior Bingo class incentive isn't working.

What has worked with this class is individual behavior rewards, those above and beyond our behavior our clip chart.  So I'm taking that and running with it the last few days of school.

At Christmas time, each of my kiddos cut out a Christmas tree shape, put their name on it, and hung them in the hallway.  When I noticed stellar behavior, I let them put a sticker on their tree.  I got this idea from a blog and forgot to pin it, so if this is you, let me know! Whoever had the most stickers the day break started, won a prize,  which were some cool craft items from Michaels Dollar Spot.  My friends LOVED this and I'm starting it again tomorrow! I'm having each of my friends decorate a surfboard and whoever has the most stickers on their surfboard on the last day of school will receive a cool prize.  I'll also be doing a second and third place prize as well.  

I also did Rachel's Pumpkin Present earlier in the year and LOVED it.  So did my kids, so it's coming back but in a much more thrifty version.  Hey, building a house is expensive! :) I have a stuffed Brutus, Ohio State's mascot, in my room and my kiddos love him.  So Brutus will be moving around the room to kiddos desks who are being leaders with their behavior.  Whoever has Brutus on their desk at the end of the day gets to pick one of the following rewards:

Nothing fancy, but hopefully they will still be motivated by these free but fun incentives. :)  If you're interested, you can download these rewards {here}.


I am changing up a few whole class incentives because I feel it's important that my students recognize the importance of teamwork. I am mainly incorporating the smiley/frown point system from Whole Brain Teaching.  Basically my students will get tallies on the smile side for things they do well as a class as a team, and tallies on the frown side for things they need to work on.  If the class gets more smiles than frowns at the end of the day, they get a small reward like choice time or minutes towards our extra recess bank.  If you're interested, you can download your own copy {here}. I'm putting mine in a sleeve protector so I can use my expo markers to do the tallies and reuse the board each day. 

I'm all about consistency and routine in my classroom, especially with behavior, but we are s-t-r-u-g-g-l-i-n-g, so something has to be done.  I'm hoping that these changes are positive and well received by my students.  


Google Docs was not working for me tonight, so the links will take you directly to Scrib to download the links.  Please let me know if they don't work for you!

If you found any of these resources helpful, I'd love if you left me a comment. :)  Also, I still have one copy of my Surfs Up Subtraction spinners to give away, check it out {here}.

Safari Subtraction {Freebie}

Hello Classroom Freebies readers, thanks for stopping by my blog!




It's hard to believe that my students and I only have 23 days left of school.  Before ya'll start throwing tomatoes at me and booing, we went back to school on August 22nd.  We've also had super short Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks and no other random days off other than federal holidays.  So our early summer break is deserved in my humble, little opinion. ;)

Since our school year is quickly coming to an end, we will be taking our end of the year benchmark testing soon, which in second grade means fluency tests in addition and subtraction facts.  We practice our facts daily in class, it's a part of their homework routine too, but still many of my friends struggle with quick recall of their subtraction facts.  My kiddos are expected to be fluent in their subtraction fact recall from 18, so I whipped up a quick little game for my friends to use during math centers this week to practice our subtraction facts from 18.  All you need are some math counters, a paper clip, and pencil and your students are ready to play this subtraction spinner game!

 

If you'd like a copy, you can download it below!

Stories From Second Safari Subtraction 

Thanks for stopping by! If you're interested in potentially winning ALL of my second grade math materials, check out this post.  I'm throwing a "Grade Level Change Giveaway" until Wednesday evening. 

TpT: Dig Wait Listen Leveled Readers & Treasure's Freebies

I am so pumped to have finally finished my latest small group packet for TpT.  Usually these packets take about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to create but for some reason, this one took all day.  Not even kidding! Click on the picture to check it out at my Teacher's Pay Teachers store. 

We are starting Unit 5 tomorrow and I am EXCITED.  Mostly because my district doesn't use Unit 6.  That's when we get to do various chapter book/book club activities and I just LOVE doing those.  I'm actually a little sad because my BTF (best teacher friend) is doing the chapter book study we created together over the The Gadget War together right now.  

Well anyways, I do have a couple other Treasure's goodies to share with you.  Non Treasure's friends, if you think you can use the blank templates of these, let me know and I'll upload them as their original PPT files so you can change them to fit the needs of your classroom.
 

 Click {here} for your copy. 

Click {here} for your copy.

I try to make my graphic organizers for each story with lots of little prompts and reminders to make sure the group/independent practice is meaningful for my friends and they're not just sitting there starting at blank graphic organizer.  It's something I've brought to second from my third grade days and it's made a big difference.

I also have some Nutik leveled reader goodies, no small group pack I had some family matters to attend to over the past few weeks, but they are on my computer at school.  I'll post them for you tomorrow!

It's Finally, Winter and a Freebie!

This winter has been strange!  At this point last year, we had several snow days.  It was great.  I loved those snow days. I had a very difficult class last year and it was great to recharge my batteries.  However, this year we've had NO snow days.  We really haven't had any snow at all.  Last night we got an ice storm and I'm loving the fact I have nowhere to go today and I get to be BFFs with my laptop and pjs.  However, next week we're supposed to be in the upper 40s and 50s.  So this winter weather is short lived.

In the spirit of my excitement, I created a freebie for you. :)

One of my favorite strategies for my students to use for addition and subtraction is an open number line.  Which you can see on this strategy chart.

Open number lines, or even counting up, requires my students to quickly recall what is ten more or ten less than a number.  We've been doing some type of ten more, ten less, one more, one less activity for our centers since school began and it's allowed my second graders to really visualize the 100s chart and be very successful with open number lines and counting up strategies.

My kids LOVE math center time, I mean love it.  They love if they're the few chosen to work with me or if they are playing a game/reinforcing a math concept with a partner.  So I created "Swinging Around the 100s Chart" for our next rotation of centers.

Since we are quickly approaching the 100th day of school, and I created some numbers to go along with the 200s chart, so students could practice ten more, ten less, one more, one less with numbers bigger than 100.

If you'd like your own free copy, then click {here} to head over to my Teacher's Pay Teachers store to pick up your own copy for free! I just ask if you download a copy that you follow my Teacher's Pay Teacher's Store or leave some feedback about Swinging Around the 100s Chart on its product page. ;)

Enjoy your Saturday, stay warm friends!  I'd also love for you to check out my post about homework and let me know your routine.  I currently switched up my routine, but I'd love to hear what other do to keep ideas in mind for next year!

Grinch Day Recap with Freebies

I know, I know, tonight is New Year's Eve but my class and I had so much fun during our Grinch Day that I just couldn't wait another 300+ days to share all the fun we had with you.

Our holiday party this year was the day before we got out for break, meaning I had to come up with something to hold my Christmas crazed darlings attention for the whole day when all they we could think about was: Santa, Santa and more Santa.  The other teachers on my team gave me a Night Before Christmas coloring book and assured me that it would keep my darlings busy.  While I love me some Night Before Christmas, especially that one holiday special with the mice, I wanted to keep things fun but still educational.  Luckily, I was able to find so many wonderful ideas out in Blogland to save the day.

We began the day by reading the book and completing a graphic organizer from Deanna Jump's Grinch Mini Unit.  We discussed how characters can change and discussed how the Grinch changed throughout the story.  My personal favorite was in the beginning he was a bucket dipper and in the end he was a bucket filler.   Precious.

Then we created the Grinch similes that I saw on The First Grade Parade.  We brainstormed words that described how green the Grinch was, as well as words that described how small his heart was on the Smartboard together and then my students created their own similes. They loved this activity!

Click on the picture below to get your own copy of the prompt that I gave my students.  Don't worry, my typo is fixed. :)  I realized I accident had The Grinch's on my original while I was in the copy room and decided to just roll with it.  Their similes are still adorable anyways. 

The we created the Grinch's from Deanna's mini unit.  They came out so cute, even though some of my darlings had to tape their Grinch's together because they didn't listen hear the directions about folding the green paper before tracing and cutting out his face.

If you liked the paper my students wrote on in the pictures above, click on the picture of it below to download your own copy.

I love how unique and different their Grinch's were.  I especially loved the long eyelashes and lipgloss in the picture on the right.  

After lunch and recess, we continued our day of fun by doing Grinch story problems!

Source

I loved the concept of Made for First Grade's Grinch Problem Solving book, but since we just spent weeks doing double digit addition and subtraction, I needed to modify the problems a bit.  I created double digit addition and subtraction problems and it worked out perfectly!  Email me at storiesfromsecond@gmail.com if you would like a copy of the story problems I created for this great activity.   

I used a paper cutter to cut the problem solving squares to solve time.  I just put them in the back of the room and my students grab more as they finished the problems.  I also had the manipulatives included in Deanna's unit available for my early finishers to create growing, shrinking and repeating patterns. 

Obviously the last pattern is repeating, my friend just forgot to label it. :)

We finished the day by watching the cartoon version and passing out their Grinch dust. 

I wanted to give my students the Grinch licked candy canes I saw floating around Blogland but I could never find any candy canes packages that were all green and I had a hard time justifying shelling out $2.99 for a twelve pack of candy canes that had only 6 green candy canes.  Of course, today at Meijer I found some. 

Go figure.  The one grocery store I typically never go to had them.  Go figure.  

Here's a helpful tip, if you give your students Grinch dust (a.k.a. green glitter) make sure the bag doesn't have any holes.  My sweet grandma assembled them for me and kept wondering why glitter ended up all over the table she used.  Turns on the cute little bags we used didn't seal tightly at the bottom of the bag.  I got the idea for the poem from The First Grade Parade, click on the picture below to save your own copy for next year. 

I hope you enjoyed my recap of our Grinch Day as much my class did. My kiddos kept saying how much fun they were having and one little darling wished that "everyday could be Grinch Day."  It was great day of fun and learning and one I fully expect do with my class every year.

What was your favorite thing you do/did with your class during the holiday season?

Money, Money, Money

Before break, I did a week long money focus with my students.  We focused mainly on identifying coins and their values and counting coins up to $1.  Later in the year, we will focus on making change and incorporating dollars into their counting of money.

My district uses Investigations math and we played the game Collect 25¢ about a million times.  We also played Collect 50¢ and for my higher kiddos, they played Collect a Dollar. 

We also utilized Erica Bohrer's WONDERFUL Touch Money posters.

source

What a wonderful resource! The concept of touch money really helped my struggling students and helped most of class counting amounts of coins over 70¢.  Whenever I heard, "I don't get it!" I would reply, "Go use the touch money posters, and the "I don't get its" turned into "I got its."  I love when that happens.  I also hung up large pictures of the coins that showed the front and backs of the coins with the Touch Money dots on them in the front of the room, and my students really benefited from seeing the touch dots on the front and back of the coins.  

We also used several sheets from the following resource book.

 

Amazon Link 

I am often indifferent with resource books that you can buy at the teacher store but I loved this book.  I especially loved how the book builds with difficulty, making it easy to differentiate.   During choice time, I would have the students work on some of these pages and hung up a key for them in the back of the room.  I love doing this because students get to self check their work and you don't spend a lot of time going over work as a class, which can be beneficial but can also be spent doing other things. 

We also played several games from Lory Evans.  One was a freebie from her blog.

Source: loryevanspage.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

The other was from her Scholastic Book.  

I ordered my copy of her book from Scholastic with my bonus points and use it almost weekly.  My students LOVED the game "Make a Dollar" from her book.  

I also used this Pinch and Total activity from What the Teacher Wants.  I loved this activity because my students were able to move through the activity at their own pace and it made a great formative assessment as well. Win, win. 

Source: whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com via Lisa on Pinterest

One of our focus indicators for money is representing an amount of money multiple ways.  I made the following flip books for my students to practice this skill.  I had my students show three different ways to show the amounts on their flip books and then they switched with a partner.  Their partner checked their coins and made sure their partner's coin drawings were accurate.  If there were any disputes, I quickly jumped in to referee.  My students loved these activities and I heard lots of good math discussions while they were reviewing each others work. Click on the preview below to download your own copy to use with your class.  I did one flip book a day during the week we studied money. 

My students have really mastered the art of collaboration and partner work lately, so I wiped up this partner activity for them to use at the end of our unit.  It was also a hit.  Click on the preview below to get your own copy. 

Overall, I was so happy with our study of money and level of mastery my students achieved! When I taught third grade, most of my students struggled to even identify coins and their values, making teaching making change and making money amounts using the least amount of coins possible, VERY difficult.  So I wanted to make sure I gave my second graders a solid foundation on identifying and counting coins, as well as making sure they were able to show multiple ways to make a certain amount of money.

Enjoy your weekend! :) Happy New Years!