Somehow or another I survived Halloween. It was almost like it wasn't Halloween at Monday. This was the first year I didn't have a party. We weren't allowed to have one and in the past we've had big parties where the kids wore their costumes and we paraded around town. We read Stellaluna and completed a chart about what bats have, are, and can. They are doing so well with these charts. Then they made bats and wrote a sentence using our chart. I was really proud of how well they did.
The rest of the week we attempted to have a regular week. I wasn't completely successful with that. But we did an author study of Mo Willems. It was a lot of fun. I love his books. We read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, Elephants cannot Dance, and Knufflebunny. They loved them. They were perfect for working on some writing. I got the idea from Herding Kats in Kindergarten. We watched a video of Mo Willems talking about his writing process and then the kids drew their own pigoen. The directions were really easy to follow and they later added a speech bubble. We're going to continue working on some writing associated with these books next week in the writing center. I'm made some sheets where they can choose something else for the Pigeon to either drive or find. If you check back next week, I should have the sheets posted. They are on my computer at school.
This week we tried out our 2 rotations of centers and I worked with 2 groups. It worked out much better than I thought. I think because we've practiced so much with just one center they were more prepared for 2. They transtioned well and even seem to be able to find their next center on their own. I added a write the room center. The kids were so excited to walk around the room and find the words we have all around. it was pretty cute.
So that was my week. I mean to snap some pictures before I left school this afternoon but we were celebrating the upcoming marriage of a fellow teacher and I got too excited and forgot.
Check out what other people did in their class this week by going to the weekly linky party at Clutter Free Classroom.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
What I love about Blogging Wednesday!
This is my own take on what I love Wednesdays. I was thinking this morning about how much I love blogging and how much it is improving my teaching. So I decided to make a list and a linky party to see what others love about it as well.
1. I am a lot more creative in my teaching. I see wonderful ideas out in blog land and I'm inspired to try them and to come up with some of my own. Also, I've been inspired to start my own teacher's notebook store. While I don't have a ton going yet, I have lots of ideas in the works and cooking.
2. It helps me remember why I'm a teacher. I love to teach kids, adults anyone. It's nice to be sharing my resources and ideas with others who appreciate it.
3. I've made lots of new teaching friends. I have a whole new support system when I have issues and problems to get information from.
4. I'm growing a ton professionally and my students are really gaining from it. In trying some new things, I'm stretching my students more than I have in the past and they are meeting the challenge.
5. You can win things. :)
6. I'm learning more about my abilities artistically. I think my drawing has improved because I've been stretched to do more drawing with my students. I also am making new things on the computer and learning a lot more about technology.
7. I'm a nerd and I love to learn new things. Blogging feeds into that.
8. I have found a lot of new books to read for myself and for the kids. Remember #7 I'm a nerd.
9. It gives me an outlet for writing.
10. I'm a better more excited teacher because of blogging.
What has blogging done for you? Link up with your list of what you love about blogging.
1. I am a lot more creative in my teaching. I see wonderful ideas out in blog land and I'm inspired to try them and to come up with some of my own. Also, I've been inspired to start my own teacher's notebook store. While I don't have a ton going yet, I have lots of ideas in the works and cooking.
2. It helps me remember why I'm a teacher. I love to teach kids, adults anyone. It's nice to be sharing my resources and ideas with others who appreciate it.
3. I've made lots of new teaching friends. I have a whole new support system when I have issues and problems to get information from.
4. I'm growing a ton professionally and my students are really gaining from it. In trying some new things, I'm stretching my students more than I have in the past and they are meeting the challenge.
5. You can win things. :)
6. I'm learning more about my abilities artistically. I think my drawing has improved because I've been stretched to do more drawing with my students. I also am making new things on the computer and learning a lot more about technology.
7. I'm a nerd and I love to learn new things. Blogging feeds into that.
8. I have found a lot of new books to read for myself and for the kids. Remember #7 I'm a nerd.
9. It gives me an outlet for writing.
10. I'm a better more excited teacher because of blogging.
What has blogging done for you? Link up with your list of what you love about blogging.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Blog on Fire Award
So the rules of the award is to tell 7 things about yourself and then award 7 more bloggers.
1. I tried out for Jeopardy my last year in college. I didn't make it on or even past the first round but it was fun anyway.
2. I have the sweetest niece in the world. She's 14 months old and I love her sooo much. I love teaching her new things.
3. I love to watch crime shows like Criminal Minds, NCIS, The Closer and I also like kind of trashy shows like the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Jerseylicious.
4. My favorite show of all time is Friends and I have all 10 seasons on DVD.
5. I love to read and read just about anything. I read so much that I sometimes don't know if I've read the book until about half way through it.
6. I love food and cooking.
7. I want to write a book one day. I have lots of ideas about what it would be on so who knows.
Now to award the other blogs:
This is one of my favorite blogs. She has the best ideas and is so generous with all she has.
Mrs. Wills has so many wonderful resources. I have been using her math journals. My kids love them and they are learning so much from them. I also love her weekly posts about her math stations and centers. They inspire me so much.
I love Mrs. Miner's directed drawing activities and her sight word packet keeps me going. She's also super generous with her wonderful resources as well.
I just love Pam. She always has great ideas and resources. Plus she leaves me great comments.
Jennifer is full of wonderful ideas and has been so helpful as I've been trying out new things in this blogging world.
The Very Busy Kindergarten
Sue was one of the first blogs I discovered and she has inspired me so much.
I love Leslie at Kindergarten Works. She is so inspiring and organized and I've gained a lot from reading her blog.
I'm super excited to get this award and it was so hard to just pick 7 blogs to award it to. I love so many blogs. My google reader has like 140 blogs I follow.
Hope you survived your day after Halloween.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The End of Molasses Classes Part 3
I'm a little late with linking up to this part of the book but I've been busy.
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I love the books so much (the movies not as much.) So I absolutely loved principle #50 Set an electric tone on day 1. I love the fact that they have houses at their school and they go through a sorting hat like ceremony. It got me thinking about doing something like this with my class. I have groups but they are usually pretty fluid and I don't tie everything in with them. But after reading this section it made me want to develop some kind of point system for my students. I have my kids for 2 years and the more they can bond and learn to work together the better. I only wish I had started reading this book this summer rather than a month or two ago. But there is always next year.
The next principle that really caught my attention was #65 Encourage children to cheer for one another. I love teaching kindergarten and first grade for this very reason. They are proud of each other when they accomplish things. I have one student in my class who is always encouraging other students when they move their clip up. They are also good about encouraging the ELL students when they answer questions or talk more. I love the idea of encouraging this more instead of just allowing it to happen naturally.
I really struggled with the principle about dressing the part. I believe that we as teachers we need to take ourselves seriously so that others will. That if we want to be treated as professionals we need to act professional. But I also think I teach Kindergarten and dressing in a suit everyday just doesn't work. My first three years teaching, I taught in a school where we could only wear jeans on Fridays. I had to dress more professionally but I also taught 3rd grade. It bothered me when other teachers would wear velour track suits and that was ok. But where I'm at now, we don't have much of a dress code. We can wear jeans whenever. I try not to dress sloppy and for only comfort. But to be honest, I spend a lot of time on the floor with my kids and for some reason they tend to get me dirty with paint, mayonnaise (true story. One little girl got mayo in my hair my first year in kindergarten.), snot, fruit roll up. I can't afford the dry cleaning bill that it would take to clean my suits. But I think if I taught an older grade, I would be more likely to wear more professional clothes.
I'm linking up with the TBA book club. Come check out others' thoughts on this awesome book.
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I love the books so much (the movies not as much.) So I absolutely loved principle #50 Set an electric tone on day 1. I love the fact that they have houses at their school and they go through a sorting hat like ceremony. It got me thinking about doing something like this with my class. I have groups but they are usually pretty fluid and I don't tie everything in with them. But after reading this section it made me want to develop some kind of point system for my students. I have my kids for 2 years and the more they can bond and learn to work together the better. I only wish I had started reading this book this summer rather than a month or two ago. But there is always next year.
The next principle that really caught my attention was #65 Encourage children to cheer for one another. I love teaching kindergarten and first grade for this very reason. They are proud of each other when they accomplish things. I have one student in my class who is always encouraging other students when they move their clip up. They are also good about encouraging the ELL students when they answer questions or talk more. I love the idea of encouraging this more instead of just allowing it to happen naturally.
I really struggled with the principle about dressing the part. I believe that we as teachers we need to take ourselves seriously so that others will. That if we want to be treated as professionals we need to act professional. But I also think I teach Kindergarten and dressing in a suit everyday just doesn't work. My first three years teaching, I taught in a school where we could only wear jeans on Fridays. I had to dress more professionally but I also taught 3rd grade. It bothered me when other teachers would wear velour track suits and that was ok. But where I'm at now, we don't have much of a dress code. We can wear jeans whenever. I try not to dress sloppy and for only comfort. But to be honest, I spend a lot of time on the floor with my kids and for some reason they tend to get me dirty with paint, mayonnaise (true story. One little girl got mayo in my hair my first year in kindergarten.), snot, fruit roll up. I can't afford the dry cleaning bill that it would take to clean my suits. But I think if I taught an older grade, I would be more likely to wear more professional clothes.
I'm linking up with the TBA book club. Come check out others' thoughts on this awesome book.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
It's been too long!
I haven't posted anything all week and it feels so weird. I spent Sunday and Monday night camping in the Great Smoky Mountains with my wonderful boyfriend. But I had no phone or internet for a few days and then spent the rest of the week trying to catch up from being out. I had big plans of getting caught up on my blogging yesterday but got sucked into pinterest instead. I just keeping pinning and pinning. It's crazy.
I can't really tell you anything we did last week. It was a whirlwind of just trying to get through with the insanity of Halloween looming over our heads. I did a terrible job with transportation and trucks. We just hit the high points.
Monday we're not allowed to have a Halloween party for the first time ever. We're a K-8 school and it is so distracting to the other grade levels to have the whole Halloween hoopla. But I don't anticipate getting too much done on Monday. We're going to read Stellaluna and do some activities about bats. We're also going to work on the -at word family a little bit. I'm working on a word family activity. By the afternoon, I don't expect to be able to do anything so I'm hoping that my teaching friend will have The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown for us to watch. I think I have some Scooby Doo and maybe Garfield Halloween to watch.
The rest of the week we're going to be working on the letter i and doing an author study on Mo Willems. I'm really excited about this author study. I've seen so many good ideas on pinterest and other blogs. If you haven't checked out his website you should.
http://www.pigeonpresents.com/index.aspx
There is a great pigeon teaching guide that has a lot of good ideas for using the pigeon books. I was a little frustrated though because I was trying to find the guide to drawing pigeon on the Hyperion Children's book website and instead kept being taken to the Disney books website. So if anyone knows how to get to that I would appreciate it greatly. We're going to be doing some writing using the pigeon character. You'll have to check back later this week to see how it turns out.
So while camping, we went bike riding. I'm really not a great bike rider. I didn't really ride much when I was a kid on a real bike. So I'm learning as an adult. I really enjoy riding my bike though. There were some places where I had to walk my bike up hills and we were on a road with a lot of traffic (It's Cades Cove. If you are familiar with this area, you'll understand). It was making Chris really nervous so he finally just sat me down on a pull off and biked on to get the car. I had to wait for about an hour for him to come back to my rescue. So I got a little bored. First I worked on singing the 50 states song. I use to know it really well but it turns out I was leaving like 15 states out. I finally got all 50 states in while waiting. I'm sure I looked like a nut sitting on the side of the road singing to myself. After I tackled that song, I started thinking of other songs I could sing using the sight words of the week. Our sight word for the week, was see which made me think of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? So while sitting on the side of the road, I came up with the Smoky Mountain version of Brown Bear with animals found in the park. I am working on a power point of the story that I hope to have ready to share this week. So check back. Meanwhile, I've got a few other things to share.
Letter book for t and i
t flipchart (You must have activeinspire software to open)
sight word stamping sheet
If you find something you can use, please leave me a little comment love. I love getting comments. Here a couple of pictures from the beautiful mountains I live in. It has been a gorgeous fall.
I can't really tell you anything we did last week. It was a whirlwind of just trying to get through with the insanity of Halloween looming over our heads. I did a terrible job with transportation and trucks. We just hit the high points.
Monday we're not allowed to have a Halloween party for the first time ever. We're a K-8 school and it is so distracting to the other grade levels to have the whole Halloween hoopla. But I don't anticipate getting too much done on Monday. We're going to read Stellaluna and do some activities about bats. We're also going to work on the -at word family a little bit. I'm working on a word family activity. By the afternoon, I don't expect to be able to do anything so I'm hoping that my teaching friend will have The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown for us to watch. I think I have some Scooby Doo and maybe Garfield Halloween to watch.
The rest of the week we're going to be working on the letter i and doing an author study on Mo Willems. I'm really excited about this author study. I've seen so many good ideas on pinterest and other blogs. If you haven't checked out his website you should.
http://www.pigeonpresents.com/index.aspx
There is a great pigeon teaching guide that has a lot of good ideas for using the pigeon books. I was a little frustrated though because I was trying to find the guide to drawing pigeon on the Hyperion Children's book website and instead kept being taken to the Disney books website. So if anyone knows how to get to that I would appreciate it greatly. We're going to be doing some writing using the pigeon character. You'll have to check back later this week to see how it turns out.
So while camping, we went bike riding. I'm really not a great bike rider. I didn't really ride much when I was a kid on a real bike. So I'm learning as an adult. I really enjoy riding my bike though. There were some places where I had to walk my bike up hills and we were on a road with a lot of traffic (It's Cades Cove. If you are familiar with this area, you'll understand). It was making Chris really nervous so he finally just sat me down on a pull off and biked on to get the car. I had to wait for about an hour for him to come back to my rescue. So I got a little bored. First I worked on singing the 50 states song. I use to know it really well but it turns out I was leaving like 15 states out. I finally got all 50 states in while waiting. I'm sure I looked like a nut sitting on the side of the road singing to myself. After I tackled that song, I started thinking of other songs I could sing using the sight words of the week. Our sight word for the week, was see which made me think of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? So while sitting on the side of the road, I came up with the Smoky Mountain version of Brown Bear with animals found in the park. I am working on a power point of the story that I hope to have ready to share this week. So check back. Meanwhile, I've got a few other things to share.
Letter book for t and i
t flipchart (You must have activeinspire software to open)
sight word stamping sheet
If you find something you can use, please leave me a little comment love. I love getting comments. Here a couple of pictures from the beautiful mountains I live in. It has been a gorgeous fall.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Long Term Planning
Does anyone else get caught up in reading all the wonderful blogs out there and want to do it all in their classroom? I get so many ideas and it's so hard to include it all in. I sat down today to looked at what I was suppose to do for the next nine weeks until Christmas break. I think I figured out ways to fit in what I want to do. Here's a rough outline of my plan:
Oct. 24-28 - The Letter t and transportation - I'm going to work on tractors and trucks and hopefully the at and am word families.
Oct. 31-Nov. 4 - The letter i and more transportation is what I'm suppose to do. I want to fit in Mo Williams and his pigeon books to work on writing. And also the it word family
Nov. 7 - 11 - Review week for letter i and t and still more transportation. We're suppose to read the David Shannon book - Duck on a bike so I'm thinking a David Shannon author study.
Nov. 14-18 - the letter N and food. I have been dying to do a farm unit after seeing all the cute stuff online. My boyfriend is a vet and he's been through a lot of agriculture classes and is a big advocate for agriculture education for students. an and in word families
Nov. 21-23 - Thanksgiving Unit
Nov. 28-Dec. 2 the letter c and food. I'm thinking a cupcake unit that would lead into healthy eating habits
Dec. 5-9 - Review of n and c, food - nutrition and noodles
Dec. 12-16 - The letter o and animals - A living organism unit
Dec. 19-21 - Christmas/Gingerbread Man
I recognize these are super ambitious plans. But it seems a little more manageable to see it written out with a plan. I think some of it flows well into each other. The David Shannon book Duck on Bike takes place on a farm so it will lead into a farm unit well. Food and Thanksgiving seem to go hand in hand. The hardest thing I've had to try to fit in was a Mo Williams author study. I have really been wanting to include this somewhere in my plans. I thought about the letter p but then I got caught up in pumpkins and Pete the cat. But I think buses go with transportation and we really need to be working on our writing skills.
I also have been working on literacy stations and small groups. I'm hoping to start having the kids rotate to two different stations a day and meet with 3 reading groups a day. This week will be an interesting trial in it. I'm going to be out Monday and Tuesday. I'm really excited because I'm going camping with my boyfriend. No school or thinking about school for a couple of days. Well at least I can't be on the computer working on school stuff. I wish I could get it out of my mind sometimes.
How do you cope with all the fantastic ideas out there in blog land? Do you do long range plans? This is my first go at it in this kind of detail. Hopefully I'll be able to carry it out. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.
Oct. 24-28 - The Letter t and transportation - I'm going to work on tractors and trucks and hopefully the at and am word families.
Oct. 31-Nov. 4 - The letter i and more transportation is what I'm suppose to do. I want to fit in Mo Williams and his pigeon books to work on writing. And also the it word family
Nov. 7 - 11 - Review week for letter i and t and still more transportation. We're suppose to read the David Shannon book - Duck on a bike so I'm thinking a David Shannon author study.
Nov. 14-18 - the letter N and food. I have been dying to do a farm unit after seeing all the cute stuff online. My boyfriend is a vet and he's been through a lot of agriculture classes and is a big advocate for agriculture education for students. an and in word families
Nov. 21-23 - Thanksgiving Unit
Nov. 28-Dec. 2 the letter c and food. I'm thinking a cupcake unit that would lead into healthy eating habits
Dec. 5-9 - Review of n and c, food - nutrition and noodles
Dec. 12-16 - The letter o and animals - A living organism unit
Dec. 19-21 - Christmas/Gingerbread Man
I recognize these are super ambitious plans. But it seems a little more manageable to see it written out with a plan. I think some of it flows well into each other. The David Shannon book Duck on Bike takes place on a farm so it will lead into a farm unit well. Food and Thanksgiving seem to go hand in hand. The hardest thing I've had to try to fit in was a Mo Williams author study. I have really been wanting to include this somewhere in my plans. I thought about the letter p but then I got caught up in pumpkins and Pete the cat. But I think buses go with transportation and we really need to be working on our writing skills.
I also have been working on literacy stations and small groups. I'm hoping to start having the kids rotate to two different stations a day and meet with 3 reading groups a day. This week will be an interesting trial in it. I'm going to be out Monday and Tuesday. I'm really excited because I'm going camping with my boyfriend. No school or thinking about school for a couple of days. Well at least I can't be on the computer working on school stuff. I wish I could get it out of my mind sometimes.
How do you cope with all the fantastic ideas out there in blog land? Do you do long range plans? This is my first go at it in this kind of detail. Hopefully I'll be able to carry it out. If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
No More Molasses Classes Book Study
So I read the second part of the book last weekend and I've been turning it all over in my head since then. I think Ron Clark has a lot of great things to say and if all parents and teachers read this book we'd have fewer problems. I think the biggest thing I got from this is to make it a partnership between the family and the school. I try to offer parents opportunities to be involved in their child's education but it doesn't always work out well. I have had a few issues with a mom who I think it wouldn't matter what I do it would be wrong. I really don't want that to be the relationship we have. I have my kids and their families for two years. I had the goal of making an effort to make postitive interactions with her this week. But I didn't follow through like I meant to. The week got away from me and her child wasn't exactly praise worthy this week. But there's always next week.
I think sometimes we get caught up in all we have to do and think that when parents don't do what we expect that they don't care. But I had some of that thrown in my face this week. I have one family that comes in at least once or twice a week or calls me to tell me something or ask something. I find myself getting frustrated because I don't want to be bothered. But they are wanting what is best for their child. They want her to be successful in school and they don't always understand what I'm expecting. So I have to remind myself to be patient and help the child and parents accomplish what is expected.
The second incident was with a hispanic family. This year we have a larger ELL population in kindergarten than we've had in the past. I taught ELL when I first started teaching and loved it. My experience was those families wanting their child to succeed and they do whatever it takes to do it. I had a meeting with one family because their child is having behavior issues in their pull out ELL. His behavior has improved leaps and bounds in my class and he is making some progress academically. We discussed what we needed to and I asked if they had any questions. They wanted to know when they were suppose to bring snack. They had wanted to send snack home but didn't know when. I took out the calendar and explained it to them. It reminded me that I need to be more clear in my expectations before assuming the family didn't want to be a part of their child's education. They brought in more than enough snack today now that they understood the expectation. I guess I needed the reminder between Ron Clark and my own class to make my expectations more clear and partner with the parents in their child's education.
I think sometimes we get caught up in all we have to do and think that when parents don't do what we expect that they don't care. But I had some of that thrown in my face this week. I have one family that comes in at least once or twice a week or calls me to tell me something or ask something. I find myself getting frustrated because I don't want to be bothered. But they are wanting what is best for their child. They want her to be successful in school and they don't always understand what I'm expecting. So I have to remind myself to be patient and help the child and parents accomplish what is expected.
The second incident was with a hispanic family. This year we have a larger ELL population in kindergarten than we've had in the past. I taught ELL when I first started teaching and loved it. My experience was those families wanting their child to succeed and they do whatever it takes to do it. I had a meeting with one family because their child is having behavior issues in their pull out ELL. His behavior has improved leaps and bounds in my class and he is making some progress academically. We discussed what we needed to and I asked if they had any questions. They wanted to know when they were suppose to bring snack. They had wanted to send snack home but didn't know when. I took out the calendar and explained it to them. It reminded me that I need to be more clear in my expectations before assuming the family didn't want to be a part of their child's education. They brought in more than enough snack today now that they understood the expectation. I guess I needed the reminder between Ron Clark and my own class to make my expectations more clear and partner with the parents in their child's education.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)