I was excited to see this linky.  Since this is my first I hope I do it right.  Thanks to Ms. M I can share 4 new things I will try for the first time this year.  With Common Core coming along it seems like a season for something new in all aspects of teaching.

Ms.M's Blog

What will I try that is new to me and my class this year?  Well, lets see!

1. Anchor Charts!!  

Though I have used these once or twice through a year with my 4th graders I had not used Anchor Charts as much as I did when I was teaching a younger grade.  I really plan to put major emphasis on anchor charts this year.  I really feel that this will help my students continue to see and refer back to past lessons, skills, and give them a visual reminder of the content they have learned.  I have came across some really great teachers that use anchor charts and, thanks to Pinterest, I have found some wonderful anchor charts I hope to use this year.  My favorite blog on anchor charts belong to Tabitha and Chloe from Math Workshop Adventures . They have a huge assortment of anchor charts along with activities they use in their classrooms to go along with their anchor charts.

2. Mimio Capture

I wrote a grant and have had the Mimio for about a year and a half in my classroom, but I haven't had time to sit down and hook up the Mimio Capture part if this interactive board.  When teaching summer school this summer I decided I was going to pull it out and use it and WOW!! What an awesome tool I have now to go along with my new anchor chart craze.  Not only can the students and I create an anchor chart on the white board as I am teaching a skill to them, but when we finish the anchor chart, I can print it out for them to have a copy of it in their binders.  I was so excited about this new piece of technology that I just could not contain my excitement!!

3. B.U.I.L.D.

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs Adventures in Teaching, Cassie has given me permission to share her B.U.I.L.D. idea that is being used in her classroom.  It is a way of using the Daily 5 in a math class.  Though I have blogged about this before, I am still finding ways to incorporate this in a 4th grade classroom.  I have come up with a few things that I have shared in a previous post, but still would love to hear more ideas and suggestions on the topic.

4. STORIA

Oh, how I love this new app from Scholastic!  What a great way to bring content area reading into a Math/Science/Social Studies classroom.  This can be downloaded onto a computer, iPad, and "Coming Soon" to Android devices.  What I love about this more than any other reading app is that not only can the students read from their computer or iPad, but they can also choose to have Storia read to them.  Some books are also "Enriched Ebooks" which allows students to play games and answer questions while reading the story.  I downloaded the book Count to a Million which is an enriched ebook and my Summer School students absolutely loved using it, answering the questions about place value, and playing games while reading the book.  I can not wait to use this app in my classroom for the upcoming school year.

Well, there you have it. My 4 on the fourth that is 2 days late. I Hope I have shared something that can help other teachers and I look forward to seeing how other teacher bloggers will inspire me on this great little linky party!!  Thanks Ms.M!!

Great Lesson Plans from the NSA?  Who knew?

I am always looking for knew ways to present skills and concepts.  So a few years ago I was searching for a new and interesting way to teach measurement. To my surprise I came across the NSA website (National Security Agency) . Who would have thought to look here for a lesson plan?  (Or maybe I am the only one.) What a great unit I found on measurment.  It really incorporated so many things into the unit and IT WAS FREE!!  I would have never gone to this website to search for a math lesson plan, but what a great job the author of this measurement unit did.  There are great manipulative activities that go with the unit.  I did find a few things that once you printed out the activities the measurement that the teacher key had was a little different than the actual measurement.  I went back and measured the items myself and wrote the correct measurement based on what my students would measure.  The unit I used was actually found under the Geometry strand and it was called:  "Measurement:  Using a Ruler to Measure Sea Creatures to the nearest Eighth Inch".  My students really enjoyed the unit which made it that much better.  I will definitely check this site out in the future for more interesting units.