Having To Teach On The Fly...

So...today I actually had to live up to my blog subtitle!  Yes...one of my lessons went a teeny bit wrong!  I had grand ideas; I had a plan!  But ::bites nails::  I didn't actually practice it first!

C'mon...stop snickering!! We've all been there!

Here's the deal:  We need to catch up on our Texas history vocabulary.  I decided to do a foldable (I love foldables, by the way!).  Well, I had the quarters fold and cut their construction paper (oh...they're following me while I model on the ELMO).  I had them draw lines, etc., etc.  Then I realized...this is SO not what we should be doing!!

I had to think on the fly!! What to do...what to do???????  Actually, after much paper manipulation, this was our final product:

See?? Sometimes, teaching on the fly doesn't turn out too bad!! It makes no "foldable" sense but, hey, they learned and understood about the Spanish explorers, and vocabulary words foreign, expedition, colonization, and settlers.  Actually...it was pretty fun!  I felt like a gunslinger in a shoot out...so now I'm flipping my gun around (real fancy like), blowing on the barrel, and putting in the holster.

On another note, we reviewed (again) summary, plot, and main idea/details.  And, get this, I had ANOTHER on the fly moment!  We were reading a chapter from our novel, so I made another anchor chart of the the plot mountain.  Each night, students have to write a summary of what we read that day.  I've asked them to use Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then.  But I wasn't getting the answers that I was looking for.  Many of them were giving me vague information or details/events.  So I had the bright idea of adding SWBST to my plot mountain. And all I heard was "OOOHHHHH...NOW I get it!!" WHAT?!?!?!  We've talked about this so many times!  And, ONE WEEK after the STAAR reading test, they GET IT??!?!?!?!?!?!  ::banging head on desk::  Why am I not surprised?? I can't help but laugh!

We took the plot mountain even further and added main idea above the mountain and details below the mountain.  Now they correlate main idea to summary and details to events!! YES!  At least they will know this going into 5th grade. 

I guarantee that I will use this kind of anchor chart from the beginning next year!

Well...I'm off to blog stalk!

“If you just go with the flow, no matter what weird things happen along the way, you always end up exactly where you belong.”--Tom Upton, Just Plain Weird

Always,