Grammar – Life of the Rookie Teacher

Happy Friday!!

This year I am currently teaching grammar to my class along with 2 other classes. When I was growing up I HATED grammar so as the sole teacher teaching grammar to 75 students this year, I wanted to make it as exciting as I possibly could.

This week started the second round of grammar with my class. We are started this round by focusing on adjectives. Now these kids should have been working with adjectives since they were in kindergarten BUT for some reason adjectives, adverbs, even verbs and nouns are hard for them all to remember.

Yesterday we started by reviewing what nouns are followed by practicing describing nouns, AKA using adjectives. I then went on Youtube and played the School House Rock “Unpack your Adjectives” song. I shared with them how I listened to that song and watched that music video when I was their age and sang along with them.

Once we finished reviewing nouns and adjectives I handed out an adjective challenge worksheet I found for free on A Classroom for All Seasons‘ TPT store. They had to fill out all the adjectives they could think of that fit certain categories.

Today we did a quick review on what we talked about yesterday and then I handed out a fun activity I found on Pinterest when I searched “adjective activities.” They got to create their own “Adjective Alien.” They each got a sheet that had them fill in different adjectives to describe how many body parts their alien would have and what certain body parts would look like on their alien.

Once they finished filling out their sheet, they got to draw their own alien based on their information sheet. It was so fun and they were so cute! It was a nice easy way to end our Friday.

It was a long week and I’m so happy it’s the weekend. A fun cold has been going around the classroom and I finally caught it. I am ready to lay on my couch all weekend!

Sidenote: My Smile Direct Club nighttime aligners have officially come in the mail and I’m 10 months closer to my teeth being straight again!

For more day to day lessons and activities, go follow my school/teacher instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!!

Happy Friday! It’s been a fun and crazy filled week! This week was Homecoming, so that added an extra crazy twist on the week.

Monday I started a “review” of multidigit subtraction with regrouping. This is something that I taught last year to them when they were in 3rd grade. Of course I assumed that this would be an easy review math lesson and that they would be bored out of their minds because they would remember everything they learned last year. Ha. I’m laughing at my naiveté just thinking about it.

I went through correcting their assignment and wow…..they BOMBED. During my “review” lesson, they acted just how I thought they would. They were looking at me like they could fall asleep any second. I honestly thought they were so bored that they would go home and tell their parents about how math is too easy and they aren’t being challenged. I felt comfortable doing only a few practice problems together before setting them off to work alone.

When I saw how poorly they did, and how overly confident they were acting, I figured I needed to do some major and serious review. Monday after school I bought a set of multidigit subtraction with regrouping task cards on TPT (from Little Achiever‘s account) and had them spend the entire math time Tuesday going through every card.

There were 24 total cards so, for some of my students, this took them the entire math time. I had the answer key posted (backwards on a magnet) on my board, so students who were finished ahead of time, could check their own work, followed by doing some more challenging problems on IXL (BTW if you don’t know what IXL is GO CHECK IT OUT!!! This is a teacher’s dream for math and language arts review!!)

This worked wonders!!! They thought it was super fun to spend their math time moving around the room doing problems on their mini whiteboards. It was amazing! After this small (but fun) activity, they seemed to have better memories on how to regroup when subtracting.

I was able to see how well this worked today when I had them take an adding and subtracting quiz. All but one student passed!!! That is insane when you think about a class of 25 students. If your students are struggling with anything in math as a class, go and take an extra couple days of review, it WILL pay off!! It’s okay if you fall behind your teammates or your scope and sequence. If your kiddos need more practice, give it to them!

The rest of the week was pretty relaxed, apart from our crazy dress up days. This week we also started some switching for subjects with different teachers. My students have been with me for the past few weeks learning about some basic grammar topics, like nouns, verbs, and types of sentences. Thursday, my students finished their first grammar round with me and got to begin a few weeks of science with another teacher. Because of that, I got a new group of kiddos to teach grammar to for 40 minutes. This new class made me love my own class even more. The class that I’ll be teaching grammar to for the next few weeks, has a lot of energy. 6 of my students from last year are in that class, so I knew that having them for 40 minutes a day would be interesting….I remembered quick how exhausting my year ended up being last year with some of those kiddos. Those 40 minutes yesterday and today were the most exhausting my year has been thus far. Because of that, I realized how AMAZING my students this year are. I seriously love them. They are so sweet and so calm. I am so lucky to have such a great class this year.

One month ago I found out that I’d be moving from 3rd grade to 4th grade (only a week before school started) and I was not thrilled. I was nervous, anxious, angry, and stressed. After this month, I can honestly believe that everything happens for a reason. If I didn’t have this chance to move up a grade level, I would not have had this opportunity to have the most amazing class in the world. A class I may never have the opportunity to have again. I am honestly so blessed and lucky to get the chance to be their 4th grade teacher.

For more day to day posts and class activities, go follow my teacher instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!