Learning with Lexie

Last Friday we finished up with March Book Madness 2025 🏀📚🏆

It was a tough battle between The Couch Potato and Mother Bruce, but after some careful analysis, The Couch Potato came out on top as the 2025 winner 🥇

The excitement about books doing this bracket throughout the month truly makes my teacher heart grow 🥰 Watching students run to the board on Monday to see who moved on and talking about which books they think should move on and why is the best.

I’ve had a lot of questions about how I run this month-long activity and I promise to share more soon 💕 for now, I have a highlight on my profile with what I’ve done in the past 🫶🏼✨

Keep doing fun things and getting your kiddos excited to learn 🧡

#2024

Today was 😴 but we made it! We finished our narrative writings and did a inspired portrait to match 👻

Also, swipe to see a cutie carved 🍊 gift I got from a students today 🥰 I love being a teacher 😂

Happy Halloween 🖤🧡

Happy first day of school 💕🫶🏼✨ I have a feeling it will be a great year in fourth grade 🥰

Have I mentioned that I love being a teacher? 😭💕😭 Never underestimate the impact you have on your students ✨🫶🏼

Happy Solar Eclipse Day ☀️🌑🌎

Today we did a few interactive science activities that led to us going outside to catch the solar eclipse with our special glasses 😎 We were in an area with about 75% coverage and it was honestly really cool to see!

So what activities did we do? ⬇️

1️⃣ The first picture was our activity looking at relative side and distance of the Earth, Moon, and Sun. I was the Sun ☀️ with the ball. They held a marble straight in front of them as the Moon 🌑. Their eyeball was Earth 🌎.
They held the marble 🌑 in front of them and I ☀️ slowly walked away until the marble 🌑 covered my ball ☀️ up - like a solar eclipse! 10/10 recommend for a hands on understanding of relative size and distance.

2️⃣ The second picture is the glasses I bought all the students and two reading passages I whipped up this morning 🤪 We read it together and talked about the conditions required for a solar eclipse to occur. Then we talked about why we don’t experience a solar eclipse every month 🤔

3️⃣ The final picture is of them researching why it’s bad to look directly at the Sun. This was a NECESSITY before taking them outside to view the Solar Eclipse 😎 They also were super amazed at the power of the Sun and it’s light energy ☀️

Sorry I didn’t share these ideas sooner… I didn’t have them until this morning 😅 I didn’t do a lick of work during Spring Break last week so I was doing quite a bit of winging it this morning 🫠

☀️🌑🌎 Did you get to see the solar eclipse today?? If so, how much of it??

(Okay last thing.. the song I chose for these pictures had me cracking up 😂)

📚🏀 We have a 2024 March Book Madness Winner!🏆

This is my favorite activity to do every year because all students get excited (even students in classes that aren’t participating 😅). I love seeing them run to check out book bracket every day to see who won the matches 🥰🫶🏼

Today we joined with a 5th grade class for the championship round and it was AWESOME 🙌🏼 Collaboration, laughter, reading skills, and a little competition? Sign👏🏼me👏🏼up👏🏼

For the championship I read both books aloud and we do a deep dive into different elements of the books. 📖 This year I chose theme, author’s purpose, and character traits.
Then we talk about not choosing a winner based on our bias, but choosing which book we think is written the best and that would be good for all elementary school libraries.

⚠️ Warning! ⚠️
This year was an UPSET! My students and the 5th grade class we were with actually chose Wutaryoo to win 😅 But 7 classes decided to participate this year and Norman took the trophy! 🏆

Both are amazing stories by amazing authors 🥰 I definitely recommend them for all libraries 🫶🏼

“If we have a good week of staying on task and only talking when appropriate, I’ll bring in MY Pokémon cards from when I was your age.” 👀

Cheapest, easiest incentive 😅 Now, the comments when they looked through my book of cards from my elementary days:

♦️”1995?! These are vintage cards!”

♦️ “This is a first edition?! How much did you spend?” (My response: “Probably 25 cents at a gas station 🤷🏻‍♀️”)

♦️ “These cards are so old! **looks at me after saying old** I mean… antique?”

Although I got a lot of “cool” points, I definitely felt like I was 100 years old after hearing them talk 😂 The fact I was alive in the 1900s blows their minds 😂

I kept all my cards from my elementary days to share with my child one day, but I loved sharing them with my students too 🥰 It was cool having them look through them and comment on all the things I didn’t know 😅

🧐 Did you collect anything as a kid?

Being unapologetically me 🥰💕🫶🏼✨

If you are struggling, you’re not alone!!! Everyone is fighting battles and social media can make it really hard to see that sometimes 😕 This has always been a safe,honest space for me and I’m going to continue making sure it stays that way 💕 So take a few seconds to share some positivity below ☀️🫶🏼✨

You are loved, you are so important, and you truly matter 💕 Love y’all!!

Getting ready for the Lunar New Year 🧧 My red envelopes are stuffed with lucky coins and the 2024 bookmark 🥳