Mrs. Cooper's Bio

This is my 20th year of teaching in the Chicago Public Schools and my 16th year at Decatur. In my 20 years of teaching, I have taught everything from 1st grade to 8th grade! Literacy & Social Studies are passions of mine and I am very excited to be teaching 4th grade English Literacy and Social Studies this year.

I received my undergraduate degree from DePauw University in elementary education and history. Later I attended DePaul University and received my master’s degree as a reading specialist with a focus on learning disabilities. I'm excited to be utilizing my background in history & literacy in my classroom on a daily basis. I'm lucky to be able to teach two of my favorite subjects this year!

When I'm not teaching, I enjoy spending time with my family, traveling, figure skating, and doing needlepoint.

Posts

Justification Anchor Charts

This week we focused on writing our justifications for our body paragarphs of our essays. Students in grades 5th-7th made their own anchor charts to help remember the important elements of their justifications.

TAG & Summary Practice

This week students began working on their introductory paragraph of their short story essays. We focused on writing and combining TAGs (title/author/genre) and summaries. Students were asked to share on Padlet with their classmates a TAG + Summary of a book that they've read recently.

This week in ELA, we read Roanoke The Lost Colony: An Unsolved Mystery in History and, students formed their own theories as to what happened to the lost colony. We then participated in our first-ever virtual gallery walk where students were able to comment on their classmates' theories.

Food Truck "Tweets"

Food Trucks...YUMMM! JMS Integrated Unit

JMS Advertisement Project

First Chapter Fridays with 5th Grade

Students listened to me read two chapters aloud from Amal Unbound while they doodled images that came to their mind. This allowed students to process and analyze the text in a different way than our usual annotations.

6th Graders Learn About the Holocaust Through Small Group Learning Centers

5th Grade Point of View Creative Writing

Students in 5th grade chose a scene from Amal Unbound to rewrite from a different point of view to help understand how the point of view of a story can greatly impact that the plot. After students rewrote their scene, students were able to walk around, read each other's writing and then leave feedback.

Supporting Resilient Students: An Educator's Perspective on Setbacks and Success

Around the Room Note-Taking in 4th Grade

Students get out of their seats and walk around the room to complete doodle notes to learn about nonfiction text structures.

5th Grade Nonfiction Articles Gallery Walk

In preparation for our next novel, Amal Unbound, 5th grade students read various nonfiction articles about Pakistan history & culture. Students then worked in partners to create informational posters for our class gallery walk to teach each other about what they learned. Students then were able to write down questions or comments that they had based on the posters.

6th Grade Group Theme Posters

6th graders worked in groups to develop four major themes from our novel, Flipped.

5th Grade- FTM Escape Room

Students started the week out by participating in a Freak the Mighty Escape room. They were then given the challenge to create their own FTM escape room and have their classmates try and escape!

NWEA Testing

Reading NWEA testing will begin next week during regular reading class time.

6th Grade

107: Wed 1/15 & Fri 1/17

109: Tue 1/14 & Thur 1/16

4th & 5th Grade

Thur 1/16 & Fri 1/17

Katherine Cooper

4th Grade Literacy & Social Studies Teacher