That Kid.

I have a challenging student in my class this year.  My friend provides daily entertainment and challenges. This is the kind of kid that you do not forget.  My friend makes you laugh out loud.  My friend sometimes makes you cranky.  Above everything else, this kid makes you question how to reach the unreachable student.  The truth in education (and maybe life) is that I cannot force a child to do something they do not want to do.  I can encourage, plead, bribe, challenge, inspire, threaten, punish, cajole....  But I cannot make a child do his/her math or listen in class or even remove his/her head from inside of his/her desk (yes that happens, btw) if he/she is really determined otherwise.  My friend has figured this out.  So what do you do?!  MINECRAFT.

It turns out my friend has a major obsession with MINECRAFT and everything that goes with it.  So, instead of trying to change the subject back to fractions, or conjunctions, I'm embracing MINECRAFT.  I spent some time looking for things to engage students with MINECRAFT and educating myself about this game, because my world at home is still basically Disney princesses. I found some awesome FREEBIES from TPT, including these editable bookmarks from a seller called Prime and Pi.

 I splurged on a paper craft item at Walmart, and we are off.  My friend is responding, but I am learning a lot in the process.   I discovered that MINECRAFT is being used in many classrooms to teach a variety of different subjects.  I'm planning a math lesson next week with it and exploring how to use it beyond simple motivation in the future.

It takes some effort to get to know your students, but it really pays off.  I'm sure this won't work forever.  Problem students can't be fixed by MINECRAFT.  However, sometimes they can be motivated by it.

A Glimpse at Martin Luther King Jr. Week

Apparently all the cool teachers are blogging, so.....

Last week in third grade we spent a lot of time reading and writing about Martin Luther King Jr.  We read a great book:  Martin's Big Words and watched a Brainpop Jr. video on the topic. We wrote about our dream and did a craftivity to go with it.  I've been walking by these guys for about a week now and I still can't get over how cute they are!

One of my favorite activities from last week was our guided reading groups.  We used a set of books I ordered from Scholastic to read about MLK and answer text dependent questions.  We are focusing on using evidence-based terms to answer questions from our reading.  There is a great free set of posters on TPT for this.  

Sometimes digging into a text with students can seem monotonous, but with an interesting topic, cute graphic organizers, and a specific purpose we can really do some close reading.   Soon we will need to transition these discussions into our writing.  Students will need to be able to read a text, respond to it in writing, and provide evidence supporting their perspective.  As third graders! It is asking a lot of them, but it is amazing when it all clicks.