Summer Learning

Every year I love getting questions from parents about what I recommend for student learning over the summer! Below is the list of subjects and links to various resources and websites that I think would be beneficial for my students after 5th grade.


Bible
The Bible Project is a great resource for free, fascinating videos about themes or books of the Bible. I have shown several of these videos in class throughout the year. I am passionate about these videos not only because I love watching them and learning more for myself, but also because my friend, Jon Collins, is one of the co-creators of this Portland-based project!
  Click for more: About The Bible Project | Videos on YouTube | The Bible Project's Website

Math
We have been using Khan Academy all year, and almost all of the students have told me they prefer online learning rather than worksheets. Parents are encouraged to add themselves as their child's coach in the student profile settings to better keep track of their progress, much like I did throughout the school year. Additionally, if you want to mix it up a bit with multiplication practice online or drill worksheets, peruse the following links.
  Click for more: Khan Academy | Mr. Riedl's Arithmetic Practice | Mrs. Larson's Multiplication Practice Links | Math Drills: Worksheets

Science
There are hundreds of science videos that I have listed on Riedlteach.com which I was unable to show my classes this past year! Students can continue learning on their own by watching videos of particular interest to them! I have organized the videos by topic/category, and I am constantly updating it.
  Click for more: Mr. Riedl's List of Educational Video Clips

Social Studies
Hands-on activities and crafts are great ways to learn about cultural traditions and appreciate different peoples and places. There are many creative ideas at Education.com, and you are sure to find a few that pique your child's curiosity about the world around them.
  Click for more: Social Studies Activities - Education.com

Reading
Depending on the size of the book and the student's reading speed, I generally expect my students to finish reading an entire book every 2-3 weeks. If your child needs ideas of books to read, have them browse the list of bookshelfies the other students posted throughout the year. Also, if your child wants to participate in the Summer Reading Challenge, please select "West Hills Christian School" when you sign up on Scholastic's website.
  Click for more: Mr. Riedl's Archived BookShelfies | Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

Read Aloud
Parents, read to your kids! They loved it when I read to them each day for only 15 minutes! Other ideas include getting audiobooks from your public library to use on your mobile device and/or use Audible.com to purchase some great audiobooks to listen to. I regularly listen to audiobooks from both, so let me know if you have questions about them!
  Click for more: Multnomah County Library Audiobooks | Audible.com

Writing
A great activity to practice each day is to make a Daily Summer Writing Journal. Use the following link to creative writing prompts for hundreds of great ideas for what your child can write about. Sharing the writing during a regular meal time or rest time each day is a great way to spark conversation and get their creative juices flowing!
  Click for more: 365 Creative Writing Prompts - ThinkWritten

Spelling
I recently discovered a fun game that Google created, which is called Spell Up. It is an interactive spelling game that has many options to help support spellers at many different levels. It gets quite challenging too, as I have become quite addicted to it when I play it in my spare time!
  Click for more: Spell Up by Google

Grammar
Khan Academy has added Grammar lessons and exercises! There are videos to watch too! Be sure not to commit any "Word Crimes" over the summer! ;-)
  Click for more: Grammar on Khan Academy | Word Crimes - "Weird Al" Yankovic

Typing
Mrs. Larson has been working with our students throughout the school year at Typing.com and they are encouraged to continue practicing at home. For other resources, check out Mrs. Larson's additional links to typing games and activities on her website.
  Click for more: Typing.com | Typing Club | Mrs. Larson's Other Typing Practice Links

Fun in the Sun
It is extremely important to be safe when playing around in the sun's electromagnetic radiation over the summer! We learned in class this year that the Ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun is what can burn you if too much time is spent outside unprotected. I discovered a wonderful website by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which shows the UV Index forecast by Zip Code! All you need to do is type in your Zip Code, city, and state, and you'll have hourly forecast in your area. It explains what time of day is most harmful, how to best protect yourself, and other helpful tips to stay safe while having fun! I use this often for my own family at home.
  Click for more: UVAwareness.org | EPA UV Index Hourly for 97219

Other?
Have you found great resources that you would like to share with me so I can spread the love? Let me know what has worked well for you and your family!


Make it a great summer, everyone!
--Mr. Riedl

How to Write an Email to a Teacher

Writing an email to a teacher is different than writing one to a friend. Since a teacher is an authority figure and is one who expects you treat them with respect in person, they also expect their students and family members to send an email written with respect as well. So, this is a guide to help you know how to write an email to your teacher.


STEP 1: For the Subject, make it short and use keywords.
For example, if your email is about your Science grade, then write "Science Grade" for the subject. Don't write "Hi" or "Sup."

STEP 2: Use a proper greeting.
Write "Hi Mr. Riedl," or "Good morning, Mr. Riedl," as if you were speaking to them in person.

STEP 3: The body of the message should contain complete sentences.
Use spellcheck with words that are misspelled (usually identified with a squiggly red underline), do your best with correct punctuation, and avoid texting language (i.e., lol, thx).

STEP 4: Use a proper closing.
Pick an appropriate ending to your email, such as "Sincerely," "Your student," or something similar.


EXAMPLE EMAIL:

   To: aaron.riedl@whcs.org
   From: 5th.student@whcs.org
   Subject: My Science Grade

   Hi Mr. Riedl,

   How are you? I have a question about my Unit Research Assignment 
   from the Space unit. Why did I lose points on the source for Topic #1? 
   Thanks very much!

   Sincerely,
   5th Grade Student






GREAT EXAMPLE OF AN EMAIL I ACTUALLY RECEIVED FROM A STUDENT:

Brand New #studentweet by @MrRiedl

I have discovered the beauty of Twitter over the summer! Over the past few months, I have been exploring what Twitter chats are, and why #edchat is such a big deal. Educators have a very large presence on Twitter. They use it for professional development, support, sharing ideas, networking, and more. From what I understand, it all started with a few teachers chatting back and forth on Twitter with the #edchat hash tag, discussing education. It grew an audience from there, and now there are hundreds of different hash tags for unique weekly chats that educators can participate in. I have received many ideas from other teachers over the summer as I have developed a professional learning network (PLN) which includes teachers, administrators, and parents.

One idea I plan to implement is to integrate Twitter into student writing this school year. At the end of each day, I will review with the students what they learned that day in the form of a tweet. On certain days, I will give the students specific writing challenges to use in their tweets, such as identifying an adverb in their sentence, including prepositional phrases, using spelling words, and more. The purpose is to challenge them with their learning, writing, and communicating in a fun way. I plan to post one student tweet each day to my @MrRiedl Twitter account, with the hash tag #studentweet to identify these as 100% student written, along with the student author's initials as well. For those parents without Twitter accounts, I will compile the previous week's #studentweet entries onto the weekly newsletter for parents to read!

I am most excited about Open House on Tuesday. My plan is to compile one word from each student that describes how they feel about starting school on Wednesday. I will put all of them together into one tweet that night, and hopefully it'll be an interesting look into 5th grade anticipation! We'll see how the year goes, one day and one tweet at a time.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter: @MrRiedl will have all #studentweet updates as well as classroom newsletters, photos, videos, and other educational resources relevant to our classroom!




2014-08-31

Because of Mr. Terupt

Because of Mr. Terupt, by Rob Buyea, is a book written from the perspectives of several students in the class of their brand new fifth grade teacher, Mr. Terupt. Each student is uniquely different from the other students at the beginning of the school year. As the school year progresses, the drama and conflict between the students increases. Throughout this entire time, due to the actions and words of Mr. Terupt, he earns their respect and admiration. In the winter, the students earn a free day, resulting in a serious accident which puts Mr. Terupt into the hospital. This results in the students coming together, accepting one another, and rallying around their beloved teacher.

Being a fifth grade teacher myself, I found myself laughing, tearing up, and unable to stop turning the pages as I connected with every single one of the students in this book. Connecting with the students is one of the biggest reasons I became a teacher, and I can tell that's why Mr. Terupt also became one as well. I admire Mr. Terupt's decisions to do certain classroom projects, like having his students spend time in the Collaborative Classroom with students with special needs. He also did some great projects in class, which I might even implement in my own classroom because I liked them so much.

Most importantly, this book is about the students. It is wonderful to see how the fifth graders grow closer together throughout the story. Fifth grade is a tough time for children this age because of the differences in families, growing maturity, and changes developmentally. This book was a great example of how all of those differences can work together to bond them together. Mr. Terupt is the centerpiece of that, but throughout the story, the students hint at a larger purpose of the reasons for why bad things happen in life. Sometimes God can work out bad situations for good!

Great book! I'm looking forward to reading the sequel.


--Mr. Riedl
2014-06-26

Classroom Discussion: Sports Science, Super Bowl, and Richard Sherman

Due to the upcoming Super Bowl game this weekend, the central topic of today's writing assignment was football, of course. However, bringing up current events and issues surrounding this year's "big game" can turn into more than just an assignment about sports. Today we had a great classroom discussion about the depths of Christ's love, how we can use that in every day life (such as sports), and what we see from professional athletes.

My lesson plans included showing three videos to the students. The first two videos, NBC's science of NFL football, integrated math and science into the sport. For the third video, I showed Richard Sherman's infamous interview after his amazing play at the end of the Seahawks-49ers game, which secured Seattle's spot in this year's Super Bowl game. The students have been already talking about this interview on and off over the past two weeks anyway, so I thought I might as well make a writing assignment out of the controversy and hopefully challenge the students to think differently. After the videos, I had them answer several questions in their journals:

• What are your thoughts about American football?
• What did you learn about using science and math with the sport?
• Are you going to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday? Are you a fan?
• Have you heard of any traditions people do for the Super Bowl?
• After watching Richard Sherman's interview, how do you think Jesus would have responded if He was interviewing him?
• Do you think Sherman has a right to talk that way?

Certain boys in my class have a hard time writing in general, and not surprisingly, they wrote more words and more quickly than I have ever seen so far this year! We had a great discussion after the writing portion. The topics ranged from sportsmanship, to thinking before speaking, to how Jesus would play sports, to trash talking, to standing up for our friends, to loving others, and so much more. I am amazed at how the minds of my students are buzzing with all that they are learning and seeing around them. It was great to be able to discuss such a controversial event in a place where we can connect it with Jesus and what He would be pleased with when it comes to competition.

My hope is that watching videos and having discussions like these will inspire these students to do what they know to be right as they grow up. Their character is something that we often neglect as teachers and thankfully at a Christian school we can use this environment to have a safe discussion of what we see around us.

Go Seahawks!!!

Friday Reading Buddies

We have had so much fun reading with our buddies this year! We love the 1st graders in Mrs. Brown's class! Below is a photo slideshow of yesterday's afternoon with them.

https://picasaweb.google.com/102454439242306386310/ReadingBuddies20130517

Writing Process Using Google Drive

Ever since I first introduced Google Drive into my writing curriculum, I have been tinkering here and there with the process of how I was going to go back and forth between the computer lab, our classroom, and working online at home. Below is a whiteboard drawing I created today, hopefully to help those students (and parents) who need a visual showing the entire writing process using Google Drive.

This process is definitely a work in progress, but so far it has been a good mix of screen time and pencil time. The students should know the process below fairly well. We have been excited to utilize this amazing resource that Google has created, and many of the students are beginning to appreciate the advantages of cloud computing.

Hoy es lunes. ¡Español!

We love Mondays because Senora Clay comes into our room to teach us beginning Spanish!

My Google Dream Came True!

This week marked the first time in my teaching career that I was able to integrate Google Drive into a classroom assignment! And not just one assignment, but two!

The first was writing a short paragraph about the Liberty Bell, which they had to "dress up" with stronger verbs, quality adjectives, adverbs, and a variety of clauses. Second, they began writing their very own fables, telling moral stories of simple life lessons.

After initially writing them by hand in their writing notebooks, we journeyed to the computer lab. Here, they typed them into new documents on Google Drive using their brand new Google Apps accounts. I realized how little my students knew It was a great opportunity to review the basics of formatting a word processor, and we ended up having a few impromptu lessons about double-spacing, alignment, italicizing, font type, size, and more.

Then, once they were finished typing their assignments, I taught them the wonders of Google Drive. The magic of sharing to each other, writing comments, permissions, and many other joys that I have come to adore over the years of cloud computing. The classroom came to life! They were sharing their writing with one another, giving suggestions, editing grammar, and using technology in collaborative ways. I just about cried. Well, not really. It was certainly one of the most rewarding, joyful, and nerdy experiences in my life, though. And we are not even done yet!

I was able to print out their documents with my comments and suggestions for improvement. Today they edited by hand and interacted verbally with their peers to gain better insight into writing strategies. Collaborating in these two ways, both online and face-to-face, will allow them the variety to best create a piece of writing that they can be proud of.

My excitement was difficult to contain when I wrote for the first time on my homework board, "...final drafts due 3/1 on Google Drive." The true techie nerd within Mr. Riedl is coming out!

Learning From Kids

Wow! Behind her extensive vocabulary and witty humor, Adora Svitak makes wonderful points about education and learning. Check out this video:

Spring Poem

New Growth by Aaron Riedl

Hello, little tulip leaf!

You grow from a bulb beneath.

I almost trampled you with my boot.

Be free, grow strong, you are so cute!

Image from here