Mr. Bradford's Classroom

Each quarter, the fifth grade teachers decide on the criteria for earning the incentive at the end of the quarter. Our requirements for the second - half of the third quarter included no more than 4 behavior checks, no more than 5 missing/late homework assignments, and no missing anchor projects. All of the students that met the requirements and returned their small fee and permission slip were invited to go to COSI. As you can see in the pictures, the students in my group had a great time! In the submarine Ocean exhibit! Posing for their group picture! Putting on a newscast for the people in the Progress exhibit.  They really enjoyed seeing how things used to be in the Progress exhibit. 

One of the programs we use at Baldwin to pinpoint students needs is iReady. This program is a differentiated reading program that supports students and monitors their progress throughout the school year. According to the research, if a student uses iReady, they have a "significantly higher chance of achieving proficiency" on the state test. Our expectation here at Baldwin is for students to complete 45 minutes and pass one lesson on their reading iReady per week. They are given some class time throughout the week, but the majority of this 45 minutes is expected to be completed as homework. In order to make this more enjoyable for my students, and to create some competition, I decided to create an iReady March Madness Tournament! For this tournament, students were grouped into teams of five and played four weeks of season games. The winner was declared by adding up all of the team members' minutes. Then, students were seeded into a tournament bracket, just like the rea...

So, I have to admit that I have been a terrible blogger this school year, but I promise that is going to change the rest of the school year! My new quarter resolution is to post once a week. Being new to teaching English, I had not actually ran literature circles in a classroom until this school year. First quarter, I was not prepared enough and neither were the students to have literature circle discussion. Second quarter, I led small group discussions with the students about the books, but they were not in charge of the conversation. Finally in third quarter, I was able to run literature circles with the students leading their own discussions! The students were able to choose between two books, and they met once a week with their specific reading groups. Some days, the students met with people reading the same book and other days they met with students reading the other book. This allowed the students to compare the literary elements of their dystopian novel with the other dystop...

Originally, my plan was to update my blog once a week with the amazing things happening in my classroom. Unfortunately, I have been realizing how much work a teacher actually does behind the scenes when nobody is looking. Luckily, I am beginning to find my routine and I am hoping that I will be able to stick to my original plan and update once a week.  While students were working on an assignment this afternoon, I had a moment to look around the classroom and really take in what I had accomplished. One of my goals going into this school year was to create an environment that uses as little paper as possible and allows students to feel comfortable in my classroom. As I was taking a moment to look around, not a single student was using paper, every student was completing their assignment by using Google Classroom. Students were not seated in rows, or at tables, like a traditional classroom setting. Instead, students were spread all throughout the classroom collaborating with a partne...

Like most classrooms in schools throughout the world, my classroom had 4 plain white walls. Personally, I believe those 4 white walls set too much of a boring tone whenever students enter a classroom. Luckily, I have a great principal that allows, and encourages, teachers to be as creative as possible when setting up their rooms. So, I decided to add some color to my room by painting one of my walls bright blue!  I also added a reading, "chill zone" to the one corner of my classroom. This portion of my room is still in progress. I will be adding a rug, and in the future I hope to add a couch and other book shelves. 

So I am not able to take all of the credit for this idea, but I like it so much that I thought I would share it! Whenever I was first allowed in my classroom, I noticed the tables had colored paint around the outsides. Since each one was peeling and looked awful, I decided I would scrape off all of the paint and just come up with different ways to group my students whenever necessary. After a couple hours of scraping (much harder than I though it was going to be) I decided to instead give the tables a new coat of paint. Having the colors on the table is perfect for whenever I want my students to work in groups of more than 4, or if I want a select group of students to share. Plus, I like how it adds a touch of color to the classroom! The finished product is below!