I am also in a new grade level and have 26 students (4th grade)! We are pretty crowded but all is going well. They are the sweetest group and very well behaved. I love my new principal she is funny and very no nonsense with the students. She does announcements each morning and the last thing she says is, "Remember boys and girls- If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all!" I love it! Last week we had a behavior expectations assembly with third, fourth and fifth grade students and she made her expectations for the year very clear.
My grade level is doing Daily 5 this year for the first time and we are loving it! I teach 4 rounds of mini-lessons and meet with small groups 4 times. Our Daily 5 is about 2 hours and 15 minutes long. I know it will get shorter but we are still working out the procedures and timing of things.
Last week the students worked on a descriptive paragraph. We created a bubble map with words that described our classroom. I was expecting them to focus on the appearance of the classroom but they described the atmosphere of the room. Thanks to my friend Meghan at Fifth Grade Swag I decided to create a Wordle of their description of our classroom. I think it looks great and made me feel wonderful!
