Teachers Pay Teachers

Hey Everyone,

If you are interested in any ideas on my blog, you can access detailed lesson plans, handouts, assessment tools, and games at my store on Teachers Pay Teachers. I am slowly uploading everything I have created in the last few years so stay posted! Check it out here:

Ms. Smiljanic's Classroom

Grade 4 Piet Mondrian Cartoon Art

I wanted to share some of the art that my Grade 4 students created last week. They did an incredible job, I am always blown away by what they can create. Especially when you give them the freedom to do so!

Here is the Success Criteria for this project:

Practice with VOWELS

It is important to create a variety of different ways to learn! I am currently working with a Grade 1 student who needs help recognizing long and short vowel sounds to improve her ability to decode words. She is a kinesthetic learner who loves to move around. She really enjoys making hand motions that are associated with each vowel. Here is what we have been doing:

Together we looked at different sounds that vowels make. For example, the letter A can make a short sound (ant) and a long sound (way). I have a list of words. I read one word out loud for her. I give her time to think about the word. She will make the hand motion that is associated with the vowel sound she hears. Then she writes the word under the correct vowel on this sheet. I ask her to circle the vowel in the word. Choose your list of words carefully. Use words that only have one vowel in them. For example, sand, tent, fun, hot, bat. 

Cootie Catcher: Study Tool

How can we make studying for a quiz fun and interactive! This is what we made in Grade 4 to study for our Science Check-in on Sound. We made cootie catchers. Each students made their own cootie catcher. Then they paired up and took turns asking each other questions. The Grade 4's really enjoyed this, and they even took them home with them to study. you can either create the template, like I did. Or you can have students make their own. This gets them thinking about what topics were most important in the unit!

Geoboard App: Transformational Geometry

Here is a great online Geoboard App that you can use with your Grade 4 students to practice creating and reproducing reflections and transformations. My students loved this App. Students worked in pairs, each pair with a Chromebook. When they created their reflection, they needed to draw it on paper as well. They handed in their work at the end of the period. This was an opportunity for me to see how much they understood reflections and what we needed to work on next. Using the real geoboards and elastics in a great way to practice making reflections, however in today's digital world, online geoboards are a great way to draw in the attention of young minds!

http://www.mathlearningcenter.org/web-apps/geoboard/

Fantastic Art Idea Integrating Grade 4 Math: Transofrmational Geomtery, Grids and Coordinates

Hello Everyone,

If you are looking for a cool way to integrate Art and Math, here is a project that can be done with your entire class. The grade 4's and I created a replica of Noval Morrisseau's 1980, "Warrior Pass Into Direction." He is a Canadian Ojibway artist painting myths and legends of the native peoples. Colour was very important to him. Each colour has a different meaning.

Each student gets a square of the painting. Each square has coordinates that will help us piece together all of the squares when we are finished. Students enlarged their the square onto their paper using pencil. When they completed their drawing, they used pastels to colour in and match the colours of his painting. Remember! Use light colours fist, followed by dark colours to avoid smudging.

When we put everything together, the final product was huge! We posted it in the school hallway for everyone to see. It really brightened up the hallway! Even though pastels can be messy, it was well worth it in the end! This took four 30 minute sessions to complete and students were truly engaged and WOWed by the final product.

Vocabulary Used: 
Elements of Design: line, shape, form, space, colour, texture, value.
Principles of Design: contrast, repetition, rhythm.
variety, proportion, balance, unity, harmony, movement, pattern, emphasis.