↧
Writing Good Conclusions: And now you know all about dogs. I hope you liked my story.
↧
Getting ready for Read Across America: making my own truffula trees!
Don't you LOVE it?! Its my own truffula tree! AAAAAA!
And they were so easy to make, that I decided I had to share them for Monday Made It!
This is what I needed to make two pots with two truffula trees in each.
- Two pots (I used plastic, but you could use whatever you have. I got mine from Wal-Mart for $.97)
- Four sticks. Curvy sticks from your actual trees make GREAT truffula trees.
- Spanish moss. You could also use Easter grass or paper shred.
- Ribbon, thin enough to wrap around the tree trunk.
- Four styrofoam balls.
- Styrofoam or floral foam, to put in the pots to keep the trees from falling over. I guess you could also "plant" it, but I don't know how that would work.
- A feather boa from the craft section - you can find them at Wal-Mart.
- White paint (and paintbrush)
-Glue gun & glue sticks.
Ok, so that seems like a lot of stuff, but it was actually really easy.
First, I painted the sticks white and I let them dry.
Once they were dry, I hot-glued ribbon (I only had blue, but you could use black) to one end and then wrapped it in a spiral all the way up to the other end. Then I hot glued the end down.
I shoved the stick into the styrofoam in the pot, and then I shoved the styrofoam ball on the end of the stick. So cute.
Then I took Spanish moss and glued it around the base of the trunk, to cover the styrofoam.
↧
↧
Read Across America Week: Celebrating Dr. Seussiness with Treats and Snacks!
We dipped them into melted white chocolate (we used the Wilton brand chips) and let the excess chocolate drip off (this part took the longest!)
We decorated the table with the book The Lorax, our little signes that we printed, th epots of marshmallow pops, and this cute Dr. Seuss sign my librarian buddy had. We added the truffula trees I made this weekend (find the directions here, if you want to make your own!).
Our principal asked the cafeteria to make the red Jell-o for us, and the librarian and I supplied the cups, spoons, and Cool Whip.
![]()
We scooped a little jello, and then a little cool whip, and then a little jello and then a little cool whip, until we had a cat-in-the-hat-ish sort of treat!
![]()
We sprayed the top with whipped cream and added a spoon for a fun treat.
We scooped a little jello, and then a little cool whip, and then a little jello and then a little cool whip, until we had a cat-in-the-hat-ish sort of treat!
We sprayed the top with whipped cream and added a spoon for a fun treat.
↧
Read Across America Week: Celebrating Some Dr. Seusiness with...duh... Reading!
One great way to collect cheap-ish books to give away to students is FirstBook.org. First Book is a great program designed to give kids a chance by providing books at the cost of shipping only to schools who qualify by having Title I, etc. We've placed several orders with First Book this year with great results.
One of our second grade teachers, Diciembre, dressed up as Fancy Nancy! She remained in character with a Fancy Nancy attitude as she went to the other second grade classrooms. What a great way to celebrate books with kids!
A great guest reader from Border Patrol!
A therapist who came to read to our kids!
We decorated with the truffula trees I made last weekend! Read about that here!
I'd love to hear about how you celebrate Dr. Seuss! What do you do at your school?
↧
Read Across America Week: Celebrating Dr. Seuss with Style!
This past week, my school celebrated Read Across America with special dress-up opportunities each day.
So I had to really hunt in my closet for something with stripes - I tend to avoid horizontal stripes because I don't want to look like a watermelon. It's a fine line.
↧
↧
Igniting a Passion for Reading: Chapters three and four of our book study!
This is the second posting about our professional book study: Igniting a Passion for Reading!
"If we can't make kids read (and we can't), then shouldn't we be concerned about monitoring how often we're providing experiences with text that are enjoyable so they might consider reading on their own?"(Layne, 2009)
This book has provided my teachers and I with so much quotable inspiration that I have to share some of it with you!
Chapter Three
Igniting a Passion Through Book Chats
In this chapter, Layne shares his number one surefire strategy to be able to pair books with readers:
"Read books written for the age group you teach and then tell the kids about the books."
I love to read books written for adults (like me), and I read a smattering of children's books, but it's really not enough to keep up with all of the new stuff! If we become voracious readers of children's books and have a large collection of books we can recommend and pair up with readers, our reading instruction becomes far better.
The way Stephen Layne actually "tells" kids about the books is Book Chats. Book Chats are 5-7 minutes long (I could see you getting away with 3-4 minutes in elementary school) and are basically carefully planned commercials that include a few of the following pieces:
1. A Hook - just like we teach in writing, a good hook creates excitement and interest in the book. Some ways Layne shares to create a great hook are to
- Ask a thought-provoking question related to the theme/topic of the book.
- Dress up/use a simple prop
- Possibly read an excerpt (choose carefully!)
- Use an accent related to the book
2. Share a few reasons this book is a great read, or share your reaction to the book
One of our teachers dresses up to share Fancy Nancy!
My favorite quote from this section:
"If I walk into an elementary school classroom wearing a plastic tiara and announce that my name is Nancy (to introduce Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy), believe me, I have everyone's attention."
Keep in mind, the author speaking is Stephen Layne lol.
Chapter Four
Igniting a Passion Through Effectively Reading Aloud
As my teachers and I were discussing this chapter, we talked a lot about where our love of reading came from. Many of us had positive reading experiences in the home, with a parent or older sibling. Unfortunately, many of our students don't have those experiences. By effectively reading aloud (and yes, I have seen this done INeffectively), we can create a positive reading experience for our kids!
To quote Stephen Layne, "To reach these kids, we're going to have to impact the way they think about books and the way they feel about books."
Throughout the chapter, Layne gives several reasons to read aloud to kids. I've never had a principal who didn't believe in the value of reading aloud to children, but in case you do, this chapter provides some good reasons and quotable moments to share with them!
Reason Number One: It's fun! "A good book read well will do more for the woes of the disenfranchised readers than all the leveled books our publishers can crank out."
Reason Number Two: It exposes them to a variety of genres. "The conscious choice of reading aloud from a wide range of genres is certain to broaden the interests of our students because many of them have failed to explore multiple genres."
Reason Number Three: It can improve children's listening skills. "In the elementary and middle grades, it is important for us to capitalize on the difference between a child's listening level and the silent reading level of the same child because, in most cases, there is about a two-year difference in these levels."
Reason Number Four: Reading aloud provides an opportunity to authentically model and practice targeted reading skills. "To underestimate the value of the teachable moment... could be a serious mistake; through the read-aloud I may be reaching kids who need the most skill reinforcement."
In closing, this line that Stephen Layne quoted from Mary Lee Hahn resonated with me and my teachers, and I wanted to share it with you:
"Read-aloud may look like an ordinary event in a typical classroom, but it feels extraordinary when the teacher who is reading is aware of the power of the book and the importance of his/her role..."
Beautifully put! Thanks for joining our second round of our book study! In a week or so, I'll publish what we noticed when we read chapters five and six!
If you want to go back and learn about chapters one and two, check out my previous post!
↧
Bright Ideas Blog Hop: Personal Editing Checklists
I only made personal editing checklists for my students who needed them, i.e., those students who have significant issues with conventions of writing. So I thought of those individual kids and decided what each student had to do in order for their writing to make sense. I wanted each step to be a specific direction, or action (not a question or single word like "capitals", because I wanted kids to be able to use them independently).
↧
New Digs!
↧
Making Inferences: Scaffolding the Strategy Whole-Class and Small Group
Whole-Class Scaffolding
There is a lot of evidence about Camilla Cream's character in A Bad Case of Stripes. We wanted our kids to learn how to focus on searching for evidence to support their inferences.
First, we started with introducing the strategy and what our purpose for reading was. The questions were charted on the left side of the chart before the teacher began reading the book. The teacher read the first question before starting the book to help focus the kids' thinking.
As the teacher read the book aloud, the kids listened for evidence that would help them specifically respond to the question. As they found evidence to respond to the question, it was charted on the right side. They used the specific details to make an inference and respond to the question. The answer was charted under the question on the left.
Once the first question was answered, the teacher charted the second question to set a purpose for reading the next piece of text. The process continued throughout the book to help kids think about Camilla's character at different points in the story.
Small Group Scaffolding
Sometimes what we do for the whole group doesn't "click" with some kids. They try to understand, but the learning is elusive. Small groups are a great time to differentiate your instruction and provide some scaffolding for students to learn a concept in a more structured way.
This is a tool I've used with small groups to help scaffold their inference-making skills. I chose a text very carefully that had several opportunities for students to make inferences. This can be challenging when you're working with a group of struggling readers. It's tough to find a text they can navigate at an instructional level and still have opportunities to "read between the lines" because the text is often so straightforward. Maybe this is easier for others than it is for me, but to ensure that my lesson is as accurate as possible, I really have to do some thinking!
As students read the text, we hunted for the text evidence. Once they found it in the text, we read around it and thought about what we could "tell" from the evidence. Then we looked at the answer choices - the four inference statements that I typed up on the cards - and decided which one accurately matched the evidence. I had students circle a few words that helped them understand the inference was supported by the evidence.
These are the questions I asked to guide their thinking:
What does the evidence mean?
From the evidence, which inference can we say is true?
Which inference is supported by the piece of evidence?
Do the inference and evidence have similar meanings?
These questions helped focus the kids' thinking and made sure they were being logical in their evidence-inference connection.
Supporting inferences with evidence
I did a similar activity to work on the reverse of the evidence-inference process. I provided the inferences on the table, and the kids had to match the text evidence to explain which sentence from the text best supported the evidence. We read the article first and discussed important ideas. Then we read the evidence on the cards and sequenced them to locate the context of the evidence in the text.
Then we read our inferences on the right side of the column and tried to logically connect the evidence to the inferences on the chart, making decisions about which piece of evidence helped us prove the inference true.
It was more challenging than moving from evidence to inferences, and required more time the first time I taught the lesson. But these scaffolding strategies helped our kids become more deliberate in their inference-making and inference-justifying. I used them with kids in grades three and four; special education students and general education students, too!
What do you do to support kids' inference-making?
↧
↧
Using context clues effectively: not as easy as it sounds!
Students were placed in partners or threes to use the task cards.
After they read the paragraph on the card, they used a recording sheet with the questions on it to help them determine the meaning of the unknown word.
The hardest part was identifying the part of speech - this is unfortunately a difficult skill for our students. Relating it to the job the word does in the sentence was especially helpful.
While other students were working in teams or three, or partners, the teacher pulled over a small group of students who struggled with this skill and coached them through using the cards to practice their context clues.
↧
Dr. Seuss Display
I love using cute fonts to create displays -it adds so much texture!
I printed out the letters "Read Across America" in one of my favorite Kimberly Geswein fonts and cut them out. Then I taped them onto some colorful yarn and draped them across the top.
We printed out pictures of our kids celebrating Dr. Seuss and stuck them to the front of the display. We had pictures from our guest readers (read about that here). The kids LOVE to see themselves on display!
To tie up the ends, I made big yarn bows and taped them to the corners.
↧
Summarizing Informational Texts: Using Main Ideas!
I used a blank thinking guide from Fisher Reyna Education to help us focus on the topic, main idea of the article, and the main ideas of each paragraph.
First we previewed the text including the title, subtitle, and any images or nonfiction features. We made a prediction based on this evidence, and we read through the article once to confirm or adjust our predictions.
After we read through once, we discussed the topic of the article and recorded it on our sheets. We then read through one paragraph at a time to identify the main idea of each paragraph. To help students do this, I ask them to notice repeated ideas and to identify what idea is supported in all the sentences of a paragraph, or what the sentences have in common.
Once we had identified each main idea, we decided to bundle them. We read through paragraphs one and two and identified the common idea in both of them. Then we left paragraph three by itself, combined four and five into one main idea, and combined six and seven into another. We wrote a few words to identify what bundles we had made.
Students had been practicing writing open-ended summaries for weeks, so I thought I'd try a scaffolded response by providing some choices. I wrote four different versions of a summary for the article. One was complete and accurately represented all of the main ideas we identified. The others were either missing an important piece and overly represented a small detail, or misrepresented some information in the article.
↧
Our latest book of the month: One Tiny Turtle!
To share the story of the turtle's life, I included sea turtle facts all over the board.
I was especially happy with the 3-D elements of the board, including the seaweed and the border. To make the ruffled border, I cut strips of butcher paper. I staple the end down onto the board, made a ruffle and stapled above it. Then I made another and stapled, and so on. It added some wavy-oceany-texture to the board!
These turtles feature life cycles on their shells!
Tissue paper turtles must have been so much fun to make!
The spirals include little cards where the students sequenced the events of the story, and below are 3-d dioramas of the sea turtle's nest.
The kids retold the maine events of the story in an accordion fold.
How cute are these 3-D shells? The teacher did a beautiful job of creating a realistic environment!
These turtles are hanging on strips of box tape back-to-back to make them look like they're swimming through the space!
That's a lot of display case!
↧
↧
About Me Updates!
↧
Bright Idea: Behavioral Goal-Setting
On the first day I worked with them, I shared a set of classroom expectations. Yes, I know we usually ask students to contribute to the expectations, but there were very specific areas of difficulty this group of students had and I needed to replace some behaviors with positive ones. So the statements on the chart below were our three expectations that we consistently referred to.
Each morning, as we began our work together, we reviewed the expectations in one way or another. I had students act out examples or non-examples, or brainstorm words to describe what the expectations looked like.
↧
Igniting a Passion for Reading: Book Study chapters five and six
↧
Five for Friday Link-Up
These are the best weeks to link up to Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday Link Up!
This week was full of family. On Sunday, we had a cookout at my husband's parents' house for his dad's birthday. The hunny was the chef and his dad tied his apron :)
This was a clever strategy for review that we used during the inservice I attended on Monday and Tuesday. After every major concept we learned, we went to a chart on the wall and wrote as many words as we could think of under each letter. The next concept we learned, we changed markers. Great and easy strategy for review!
On Wednesday, we went to a baseball game at our local minor league stadium. I had two margaritas.
We had a great time!
And on Wednesday morning, my youngest brother graduated from high school! Proud of him for moving to the next big thing in his life: college.
↧
↧
Summer Reading List Link-Up
In my professional stack, I have four books. I just finished posting about the last professional book I read, Igniting a Passion for Reading. You can read about that here!
↧
summer summer summer: and a mini giveaway!
This is what my cat looks like when I am watching TV.
↧
Adventures in Vegas
Cheryl from Crayons and Curls, Farrah from Mrs. Shipley's Whole Brain Teaching, Katie from Keep Teaching & Planning (KTP on TPT), and Natalie from Teachery Tidbits. Oh, and me :)
These are our swag bags full o'teacher stuff. By the end of the conference, I had collected this variety of freebies:
The happy hours and meet-ups were some of my favorite things. In the midst of this talking- picture 600 teachers smushed into one space and EVERYone uses their teacher voice - the noise was deafening - I managed to squeeze through and around and meet some bloggers and sellers who I really admire.
Amy, who is an absolutely adorable individual. If I used the word "adorbs", I would use it to describe Amy. But I don't use the word "adorbs" because it's pretty ridiculous.
I met these charming ladies, too, and so many others.
Confession: when I met Jennifer Runde of Runde's Room, I'd already downed both the free drink coupons TPT had given me. Kind of fast, actually, because big groups aren't exactly my favorite. (I'm not the go-up-and-talk-to-you type.) So when I walked up to Jennifer, full of liquid courage, I said, "Hi Jennifer! I'm Chrissy from Buzzing with Ms. B, and I love your blog. It's so specific and full of thorough teaching practices!"
I was doing well so far.
"Thank you!" she said sweetly, gesturing with the international sign for thank you.
"I'm so impressed with your consistency in posting, too."
"That really makes my day," or something kind along those lines. "I'm blushing!" she said.
To this point, I appeared to be a normal individual. I should've stopped while I was ahead.
It was at now that the wheels came off the cart.
"Well," I stumbled here, not sure what was to come after that grand opening. "You should constantly....be....flattered.... of yourself?" What? What does that mean? Is that English?
"Thank you," she said, as I silently prayed that the teacher talk in the room was so loud it drowned out my ridiculous words. "I appreciate that!"
Lovely woman. Thanks for not calling me out on my absurdity.
See the glass? My downfall.
At one point in the weekend, some of my roomies and I decided that we wanted to take advantage of the fun photo booth in the corner of the meet-up room. We made our way over to stand in the line and giggle. While I was there, I met Ari, the Science Penguin. Anyway, all of a sudden, Paul (yes, that Paul), Deanna (yes, that Deanna), and John Yoo (yes, that John Yoo. I know, I didn't know who he was either, but he's a muy importante individual.) headed over to the booth where we were standing. They nicely asked (I guess they didn't actually HAVE to ask, because they were the ones paying for the photo booth in the first place) if they could cut. John graciously announced he would trade selfies for a cut in the line. So I did! I snapped a picture of Deanna and Paul,
and then John snapped a picture with me!
Considering I was about four drinks deep in my five-free-drinks evening (we met up with some preggos and they gave us their tickets :) I think I'm maintaining pretty well!
Later that night, we hit Fremont street and had some fun adventures there. I'll spare you the details, but our first picture pretty much sums it up. See the photobomber? Yeah? We didn't.
Natalie, Haley from My Silly Firsties, me, and Cheryl
So there was all the fun stuff from Vegas. I intend (I really do) to share some of the bullet points of my learning from the trip too, as soon as I can muster the energy. Vegas kind of wore me out.
I linked up this post with A Burst in First! Click over to read all of the other fun Vegas posts!
↧
