It CAN Rain in Death Valley

Scrolling through my blog roll, I came across a great TED talk. It really got me thinking, so I thought I would share it with you.

Enjoy! Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you would like.

Sunday Pass-Along Oct. 12 (Reading and Writing and Math Freebie Thrown In!)

Happy Sunday, y'all!

I am so excited to finally have a lazy Sunday morning and catch up on some blog reading. The beginning of the year has busy and it's taken me awhile to get my feet back underneath me after starting in a new district and school. Today, as I read through my blog feed and find ideas I'm thinking about implementing, I'll pass them on to you! You may or may not follow the same people I do, so hopefully you'll find something that will help you and your students!


F.O.D.

First up... an excellent strategy from the amazing Michael over at The Thinker Builder. This is an excellent idea-gathering strategy for kids to use for personal narratives. FOD stands for First, Only, and Different. I love this idea because it gives the students a clear direction when thinking about ideas. Head over to his page to read more about this great strategy. We are in the opening weeks of our personal narrative unit and I'm going to use this little baby pronto!

Writing Clubs!

Tamara Lynn at Live, Love, Literacy had a great idea to create a writing club with her students, complete with a name and logo- The Mighty Writers Society! Her kids worked together to come up with guidelines for their writing club and deadlines to create their first product. I love this idea! My students already love forming impromptu reading clubs and I'm excited at presenting them with the idea of creating a writing club! We could even create a club that meets during lunch! Ah, the possibilities are endless! Thanks, Tamara for sharing this idea! Head over to her blog to read more about it and see some great pictures!


I also picked up some new things on TpT that I can't wait to use:

This Stop, Collaborate and Listen pack from Amanda @ One Extra Degree will a perfect way to provide for more accountable talk and give my students some interesting things to talk about!

I always love a good graphic organizer and this pack from Erin @ I'm Lovin Lit is perfect to add some rigor and variety. Even though the pack is for upper elementary students, there are some great resources for my third graders. 

Last spring, I stumbled upon these Super Text Detectives reading passages from Jenny @ Luckey Frog's Lilypad and fell in love with them. Not only are the texts about content relative to the time of year, they also require students to use crayons to color-code their evidence when answering the comprehension questions. Who doesn't love to use crayons?! These passages were engaging for my students and were great for locating details. I'm super excited to have the fall edition to use this year! 

Lastly, I realized that I never shared some math stuff I made last year for October. Even though I no longer teach math I still want to share anyway! Click on the link below each picture to download them.

Roll It Place Value 

(You'll need digit cards and dice)

Spooky Multiplication Word Problems

Hope you're having a great weekend! 

Short Texts for Prefixes (mid- and re-)

I'm just popping in to share some things with you! 

I love for my students to be able to read vocabulary words in context and infer the meanings, especially when it comes to prefixes and suffixes. In the past I've had some decodable readers that came with our textbook series, so this year I had to improvise and write my own! I was hesitant to share because these short stories aren't the greatest, but they serve their purpose. 

So far I have only written two- one for the prefix mid- and one for the prefix re-. Feel free to grab them for yourself if you think they would be useful for your students! Just click on the link below each passage. 

Nightmare at Midnight

Time for a Redo

If you know of any resources available that would be similar to this that would save me from having to make my own, please let me know! I am no author!! :)

Happy Thursday!

Dear 2015 Me

Browsing through my blog feed I came across a linky from Crystal over at  Kreative in Kinder I just had to participate in- writing a letter to myself for the beginning of next school year.
Some of the letters are pretty hilarious.

Here's mine:

I'm going to put this in my back to school binder and hopefully give myself a bit of perspective in the midst of all the craziness that is the beginning of the school year!  Thanks, Crystal, for such a wonderful idea!

What would yours say? Link up us share!

Happy Thursday!

My Homemade Easel

My goodness, I can’t believe how crazy the last several weeks have been. I always seem to forget just how frazzled I feel during the first weeks of school until things settle down a bit. I crave routine, so I’m feeling much better now that I am slowly getting into a regular schedule. 

When I first moved into my new classroom, the one thing I missed the most was an easel. I knew that I couldn’t teach without an one, so I took matters into my own hands and made my own! I wanted to share this just in case there is anyone else out there who doesn’t have an easel but may want one!

Here is my homemade easel!

I started with a piece of MDF from Lowe’s and had it cut down to the size I wanted. I then bought a sheet of shower board and had it cut to the same size. The shower board can be used as a dry erase surface, so it was the perfect choice to cover the MDF.  I used a tub of vinyl floor adhesive to adhere the shower board to the MDF and painted the other side white. I made a giant mess on the driveway and had a mini panic attack when I couldn't get the adhesive off of my fingers, but I managed to get it on!! 

 

When it dried, I stuck two large Command hooks on the top to hold my chart paper and two smaller hooks to hold my pocket chart.

  

The MDF is pretty heavy, so it’s very stable. I was able to simply lean the board against the wall and it created an instant easel! The shower board creates a dry erase surface and the hooks hold the paper and pocket chart which makes it multi-functional.

 

I also stuck two smaller hooks at the bottom to hang a basket so I had a place to store my markers and other materials.

  

I am in love with my easel! It doesn’t take up much space at all and it’s versatile. The shower board is not magnetic, so I do miss having that ability, but other than that it has worked beautifully!

This was a relatively cheap project. I spent about $100 on all of the materials including the Command hooks (and those babies aren't cheap). It was worth it!! 

I have had a truly amazing first few weeks of school and I love my new group of students! I hope you are having a great beginning of the year! 

I’ll be back soon!

Time on the Bike: An Analogy for Teaching and Learning

This summer has just been amazing. I attended several professional development trainings and had time to read several books. I’ve done a LOT of processing and thinking and re-thinking, but one analogy described at a particular training has stuck with me.

Nancy Motley, an amazing presenter and also the author of Talk Read Talk Write, came to speak to us about acquiring academic language and to describe the techniques provided in the book 38 Great Academic Language Builders. Although her entire presentation was fabulous and filled with great information and strategies, her introduction made my wheels turn. It all had to do with riding a bike.

To give you the most authentic experience with this analogy, because I’m obviously not her, I’m going to speak to you directly just as she spoke to us that day. I am also not a mommy, so this will obviously not be my voice. 

So here we go.

When it’s time for us to teach our child how to ride a bike, we do not sit the child down on the sidewalk, get on the bike ourselves, ride around for a bit and say, “Ok, watch mommy. Do you see how I’m moving my feet to pedal? Are you watching me? Do you see how I’m holding the handlebars and using them to steer? Watch me. Do you see how I have to keep myself balanced on the seat? Are you watching? Ok, now here. You try it!”

(end Nancy voice) :) 

  

Of course, that is not how we teach a child to ride a bike. Riding a bike requires practice. We put the child on a bike with training wheels first so they get the feel of being on a bike and learn to pedal and steer. Then we take off the training wheels but we hold on to the seat as they ride to guide them if they start to sway. Then, eventually, we run beside them as they ride, not holding on anymore, but still right there ready to intervene in case they start to fall. To learn to ride a bike, the child must spend lots of time actually ON THE BIKE.

This is a direct analogy to teaching and learning.

So, thinking about this analogy, I thought: How much time do I give my students to actually “ride the bike?”

Nancy did an activity with us that really brought this idea home. Would you play along with me for a minute?

Ok, grab something to write on- anything- and something to write with. On the left hand side of the paper, list the four language domains: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It doesn’t matter what order. 

Ok, now imagine a student in your classroom. Not just any student, but the student who struggled the most. That one student that no matter what they did, they just didn't seem to get it. Get a picture of that student in your head. Got it? Great. Now, thinking about THAT student only, beside each of the language domains write the percentage of time during a typical class period that THAT child would spend writing, listening, reading, and speaking. Be honest. Also be sure that your percentages all add up to 100. To get the most out of this, really put yourself in that student’s shoes.

I’ll wait. :)

How did it go? How do you feel? Any aha’s!? Which domains had the highest percentage? The lowest? 

Let me tell you, when I did this activity my heart completely sank. It was embarrassing how little time that child had opportunities to write and speak- the two expressive domains.

Here’s the takeaway for me. Acquiring new language, just as learning to ride a bike, requires lots of practice. I’m great at providing opportunities for students to listen to me talk about the new language or read about it, but I need to provide more time for students to speak and write and really interact with the new language. They need more time ON THE BIKE.

The two trainings I attended this summer that Nancy presented on were fabulous and provided lots of strategies for giving students more time “on the bike.” 38 Great Academic Language Builders is great for any grade level. Her book that she wrote called Talk Read Talk Write is a lesson structure designed for secondary students but is also applicable to elementary students as well. I highly recommend both of these books if you are looking for ways to increase the amount of time students spend “on the bike.”

This sign is going to hang on my cabinet in my classroom as a constant reminder to myself when I'm planning:

Have a great Sunday!

Why I Don't do Classroom Themes

The beginning of a new school year is an exciting time for me. I love re-organizing my classroom and preparing for a new set of students that I get to learn about and love. But there is one thing that I do not do each school year. I do not have a classroom theme.

Before I get too much farther, let me start with a little disclaimer:

            I have no problem with classroom themes and I’m quite impressed by the creativity of many teachers. This is simply an explanation of why I choose not to have one. If you are an adamant classroom “themer,” please do not take offense! This is simply my lowly opinion.

When I read Debbie Miller's Teaching with Intention this summer, I was thankful that my philosophy lines up with hers. She says:

I couldn’t agree more.

I feel the pressure every year of making my room “cute.” I feel the pressure of coming up with a theme for my classroom and making everything match. These are things that I just simply do not want to spend my time doing. I just don’t. I use the same bulletin board border year after year because it’s functional and I like the color. Simple as that. My walls are mostly bare and will stay that way until my students and I share an experience that is worth documenting and taking up wall space.

I also don’t want to spend the money it takes to have a theme. Classroom décor is not cheap and definitely not something I want to have to keep shelling out dollars on year after year. Not to mention the time it takes to print, laminate, cut, or put up all of those decorations. If it comes to choosing between Mr. Sketch markers or a new welcome sign, markers will win every time. No question.

Does this make me a bad teacher? I don’t think so. If the overall goal of having a classroom theme is to establish a classroom culture or a feeling of comfort, then I take solace in the fact that those things will come through the procedures I put in place the first few weeks of school. We become a unit together, with all of our personalities intertwining and our classroom becomes a reflection of us, not me.

I hope that when my students leave my classroom they love learning, they love reading and writing, and that they have an insatiable curiosity about the world. I hope they remember our classroom not because of how cute it was, but because they have been a part of a learning community and are forever connected to people who will support them for the rest of their lives.

So, as the beginning of the year inches closer, I will enjoy these next two weeks and actually relax. My room may look bare and my room may seem “unfinished,” but I know my purpose and my kids will too. I’ll spend my time (and money if necessary) focusing on the things that will impact them the most this year—my expectations, procedures, and most importantly, the learning experiences I will create for them.

When they come to our room for the first time, they will see this note on the board-

Although our walls may now be bare,

soon they will be full

of all the things we’ll learn and share

together here at school!

I can’t wait to start!