Saturday Sayings

 I am so excited to be joining Tammy at Forever in First for Saturday Sayings. I look forward to reading her Saturday sayings every week. They are always insightful and give me plenty of food for for thought. So when she asked for people to join her, I knew I had to get in on this party. So I signed up for the first week. All week long this has been on my mind about what I was going to post. I had plans for reading my book "Making the Most of Small Groups" and finding the perfect quote. But no such luck. So I got out my kindle with the Growing Readers book I've been working on reading since this summer. I was hoping to find a great quote about reading instruction that would just blow everyone's mind. But I found this one instead and felt like it was perfect!

I read this and thought this is what I want to post. I think this describes what blogging has done for me and reading these Saturday Sayings. I love to learn. I'm always trying to read more about reading instruction and other areas of teaching. But I do tend to like to talk to other teachers who feel the same way that I do. But we always learn more from those that think differently than we do. An example of this for me, was when a colleague was talking about how memorizing books wasn't reading. This got me thinking about my reading practices in my room. I'm big on fluency and repeated readings. After my fellow teacher said this to me, I really worked on trying to find evidence to support what I was doing in my classroom. It definitively helped solidify my thinking and practices in my room. On a side note, I recently read an article about the common core and some myths associated with it. This researcher was talking about close readings and how texts needed to be reread to gain better understanding. While this isn't what I'm doing in my room in Kindergarten, I believe it gets them ready for this close reading as they progress with their reading ability. (You can check this article out here)
So I want to challenge you to first, go check out Saturday Sayings at Forever in First and the other bloggers joining the party today. Then to talk to other teachers in your building that might not feel the same as you. Read blogs that you might not agree with and use that to help solidify your own thinking. Thanks Tammy for letting me join the party.
I will be back later today with the magical product swap post. I forgot about that being today and had committed to this project.
I almost forgot. I have an update on Regan that I've been asking you guys to pray for. He went to St. Jude's Monday and they spent most of the week testing and evaluating him. They came to the same conclusions as they had in ATL. He has brain cancer. But they are starting chemo and radiation on Monday. Please continue to pray for him and his family. I have been so amazed by the community I live in. Our whole county has gotten behind this family with fundraising and praying. Thursday was his 12th birthday and Chick-Fil-a donated 100% of their proceeds to the family. It was incredible. So please keep praying!

Confessions and Common Core

So I'm starting with some confessions about myself. I hope that I'm not the only one out there like this. I'm hoping there are some other teachers who feel the same way I do. First confession is I love to learn. I love to  read books about different topic and learn more about them. I absolutely love reading professional literature. I know, I know I'm a weirdo. I also love to plan and use my assessment data to plan for my students. I don't actually enjoy writing lesson plans but I do enjoy coming up with ideas to do in my class and planning good lessons. But once school starts and life gets crazy, sometimes I don't take the time I should to learn new things and to plan out in depth lessons. But I'm getting back to my roots this new year. My one little word is intention. I really want to work on planning with intention for my students. So to start this plan out, I've been digging a little deeper into the common core. I have been looking at the data I have about my class from our Star testing we just did and from a Discovery Education Assessment (Anyone else use this assessment? I'm not sure how accurate it is.) And I have some distinct groups in my class. I have about 4 students that are reading way above grade level and 2 of those challenge me at every turn to give them more. Then I have about 9 students who are basically on level with where they should be. They are reading fairly fluently. Although 5 of these students are ELL students and have some language barriers still. Then the last 3 are not where they need to be at all. I'm good with my on level group and I'm good with my group that needs a little more help and time. But where I'm challenged is with my kids that are reading above grade level and have no trouble with anything I give them. My plan for after Christmas (which would be starting Jan. 8th) is to push all my students no matter where they are. To make them work harder and to challenge them to do the best they can do. I started thinking about what skills I needed to work on for comprehension according to the common core. I looked at Kindergarten, first and second grade, since I'm in first grade. I wanted to look at where my students should be. Ok confession time again. I feel like this is the first time I've really looked deeply at the common core standards. I've read them and I refer to them when doing my planning. But this was the first time I focused on one particular area in all three grade levels. It was helpful to see what the distinctions between the grade levels. I found a lot of the kindergarten standards have the words with prompting and support. Then these words are taken away in first grade. First grade has a lot to do with identifying different information while second grade is describing and applying. It was also interesting to see the same threads of skills in each grade level but the expectation is raised just a bit each year. I looked at the literature and the non fiction. One of the biggest areas of weakness on my part is looking at the author's argument or points in a piece of non fiction. I haven't even started tackling that skill with my students. I'm not even sure how to tackle that with my students. But now that I know about what I need to, I think I'll be more successful which means my students will be more successful. If you haven't checked out the common core app, you should. I have the tool on my blog. Look to the right and check that out. It has a lot more explanation than I have on my file that I keep in my lesson plan book. I took the 3 grade levels and the different skills and made a document to help me in my planning. I've attached the document and you can get it for free if you are interested. Click Here for the link.
So I took what I learned from this research on the common core and created these sheets. I hope that you can use them. I took the characters and settings standards and made a response sheet for each grade level. I hope that this will help me differentiate with my various levels in my room. Let me know what you think and if this looks like something you could use more of. click here for the link The clipart is from Melonheadz and the font from Hello Literacy. Love both of them.
I am linking up for the first freebie Friday at TBA. Be sure to head over there and check out the other freebies.


One last thing before I let you go from this really long post. I got a lot of sweet responses about the student at my school, Regan, and his family. I was wanting to post this prayer card before but I wasn't sure I was allowed to. But I found out that I could and there are trying to get as many people as they can to like the facebook page. His page is Rootin' for Regan. You can search for it on facebook and ask to be a part of it.

Thanks followers for praying for this student and family. It means so much to me. His family is having such a profound impact on our community and school.
I forgot I do have one more thing to mention. Sunday I'll be participating in facebook blog scavenger hunt. You can win all kinds of cool stuff from other bloggers. Be sure to follow my facebook page to find out more.

Currently and a facebook giveaway

I love Farley's Currentlys. They are a fun way to record what is going on at this moment in time. They are also fun to read. I love reading everyone else's currently. I'm actually not that late to the party this month since it's on the second.

I really want to clarify my thinking one and make a plea to my readers. On of our fourth grade teachers has 3 boys. The youngest has been in the hospital since the first of November. They orginally thought it was a virus attacking his brain but this past weekedn we found that it is brain cancer. He has 3 tumors on his brain. This family has been so strong these past few months. The boy is in the 6th grade and he has the most precious smile. His name is Regan and he needs so many prayers. Please pray for healing for Regan and comfort for his family. I have been so amazed at this family going through so much, yet living out the Christian life. His dad has asked me everytime I see him, how I'm doing and how my healing from surgery is. I have faith that God has great plans for Regan and that he can heal him. It has been so cool to see our community and school come together and Root for this boy. The other explanation is for my one little word. I want to be more intentional with my relationships with people and try to reconnect with some old friends. I also want to be intentional with my teaching and my planning and try to find the best ways to meet all my students' needs. I also want to be intentional with my blogging and creating. To blog about real ideas and things going on in my classroom. To also create things that I truly use and not just to create to create. Last thing for today, is I'm having a giveaway over on my facebook page. You should check it out if you haven't Yet.