2nd and 3rd Graders Go on a Punctuation Hunt

Miss Apostrophe

It was the day before National Punctuation Day, and as the actual holiday occurred during home study days, Miss N decided to celebrate with her class early. The first act of the day (after pledges and Bible) was to have her students paint their very own cardboard punctuation marks. The 3rd grade wanted to do a repeat of last year's end punctuation: period, exclamation point, question mark. But no, said their teacher. Those are reserved for the 2nd graders. And so the older students found themselves with the more daunting colon, hyphen, and quotation marks. The morning continued with listening to a couple picture books about punctuation and being mesmerized with musical videos about Don Period, Ma and Pa Rentheses, and The Commas and the Stoppers ("Punctuation People" via YouTube). There were also some monotonous worksheets thrown in. But the crowning success of the holiday was the punctuation hunt. Each child had his or her assigned punctuation mark, soon to be pinned on their chests once the paint dried. Now it was time to search though the classroom library books to find their given punctuation. How the colon or hyphen were to manage was a lingering fear in the teacher's mind, but with a hold on her pad of shiny stickers, she let her students loose. "I found an exclamation point!" cried one. "I found a question mark," squealed another, and they came hurrying to show their teacher so she could smack a sticker on their desk. But what of the colon and the hyphen? To Miss N's shock and pleasure, her students were thoroughly up to the challenge and were constantly calling for her to look at the next mark they found. The hunt was a success, and Miss N was left with a more bare-looking sheet of stickers. So rounded out yet another year of celebrating Punctuation Day, reminding us that punctuation is not only important, but fun!

And it all begins Monday

School starts Monday, and I'm not anxious and I'm not regretful (about summer ending), I'm just excited and can't wait!

Which makes me a bit nervous. Maybe I'm underestimating the start of a new year?

My students are the same ones I had last year, and this time, so far, fingers crossed, not getting my hopes up, lots of prayer that it stays this way, I'm only teaching ONE GRADE!!!!!

That's pretty epic.

Which might be a huge reason why I haven't been stressing.

Our beloved kinder/1st teacher is taking a year off, but, in answer to prayer, we now have a great new replacement teacher who will fit in perfectly! I've already got to spend lots of time with her, and I really could not have asked for a better addition to our elementary team!

And so the school year begins shortly! I didn't take a picture of my classroom Thursday afternoon, after it was finally ready for that evening's Back to School Night. But I did take a pic of how it looked for the last two weeks before then!

Stay tuned for pics of how it looks now!

of duct tape and helpful boyfriends

Can I just brag on my guy for a minute?

He used his weekend to help me paint my entire classroom (neither of us are expert painters), and then prodded me to go back the next day and let him help me move all my furniture into their general areas so that tomorrow, when the teachers go back, I'll at least have a cleared desk and chair to sit in!

I meant to do some lesson planning this weekend, but as it was my last weekend of summer that didn't happen! But I did finish my 6 Traits of Writing poster and visited 4 stores before tracking down the black with white polka dots Duck Tape I wanted to continue decorating my room. Oh, the lengths one will go for some cute Duck Tape. :P

Usually I approach the end of summer with dread. This year I'm excited! I know the next two weeks before the students come back will be stressful and exhausting. After all, I'm not used to WORKING all day. What? I have to be out the door by 8:30 tomorrow?

But I am excited to try new things, like CAFE, this year and look forward to having mostly the same students I did last year, only a grade higher. Hopefully that will mean I won't have to focus too long on procedures at the beginning of the year.

data tracking and getting ready to start!

I'm sitting here at Starbucks, drinking a grande Cinnamon Chai Latte, only $2.50 because a frequent Starbucks sitter gave my friend (also a frequent Starbucks sitter--both are novel writers) a coupon that cut the price of a normal grande almost in half!

It's still summer for 4 more days, but what does that mean for a teacher? Tuesday I went in to school in the afternoon, moved all my furniture to one side, and shampooed the carpet. Yesterday I went in at 10:30am for a committee meeting about benchmark assessments, and what with the meeting, socializing, typing out a 5 act play from the 2nd grade reader to perhaps use for this year's elementary show, and moving all my furniture to the other side and shampooing the rest of my carpet, I didn't leave there til 8pm.

8pm, people!

And we don't go back til Monday.

Now I'm at Starbucks, happily beaming over some student test data tracking sheets I just created after seeing an uber cute, but not practical-for-my-purposes, file on TpT.

While I was in my classroom yesterday, I decided to pull out my new Duck Tape and at least start on the decorating fun.

yellow Duck Tape and black with white polka dots Duck Tape

Tomorrow I head back to campus with my boyfriend to repaint my classroom. And then, THEN, I should be done heading that way until Monday, when the craziness starts.

My summer vacation to the beach!

Color themes and a quote about teachable moments

Last year I discovered the joys of having a color theme. I wouldn't have thought yellow and teal could create a welcoming feel, but they did!

This year I'm going out on a limb and trying yellow and black, with a little red, with polka dots.

I couldn't find the titles in the size I needed so I made my own, using Teaching in High Heels Digital Backgrounds and Hello fonts "Engineer" and "Be My Pen Pal"

At our school's annual rummage sale, I picked up this cute trio of wooden mirrors. I had a blast transforming them to fit this year's color scheme! Now the kids don't have to borrow my mirror when they want to see themselves--I'll have these hanging from the wall.

Well, in 8 days I'll be back at school for two weeks prep before the students arrive! Here is a quote I came across today that I thought was good for me to remember:

"When the timing is right, the ability to learn a particular task will be possible. This is referred to as a 'teachable moment.' It is important to keep in mind that unless the time is right, learning will not occur. Hence, it is important to repeat important points whenever possible so that when a student's teachable moment occurs, s/he can benefit from the knowledge." (Robert Havighurst, Human Development and Education, 1952)

TpT purchases and math--what I'm trying to figure out

Well, yesterday ended the two day TpT Back to School sale! After wading through my long wish list (as my boyfriend patiently waited for me to finish so we could watch Twister together), I limited myself to four purchases: Interactive Math Vocabulary, Vocabulary Yearlong Bundle, a CAFE-based Create a Comprehension Notebook, and Apples and Banana's California Standards rephrased as "I Can" statements (I still have a Wish List of 31 items...).

I feel like a have a solid base for Language Arts (always my passion anyway), but I have been searching for ways to bolster my math instruction. Thus why I purchased the Interactive Math Vocabulary--it will help us learn definitions for key 3rd grade terms.

For word problems, I'm hoping to finally use my Math Word Problem Key Words purchase from who knows when and more frequently use my word problem flashcards pack that I got from a teacher store. (I was very tempted to buy this Word Problem Detective set last night!).

And for rote memory, I'm hoping to bring back Bubble Gum Math (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). The kids loved it last year, but I had a hard time staying on top of printing the sheets individual students needed in different colors, and so I let it fall (even though they kept reminding me they wanted to do it) (thankfully I have the same students this year so I think they'll be excited to do it again).

How I felt in highschool

6 Traits/VOICES and CAFE/FACE

Summer is nearing an end!

A couple days ago I went to school to help set up the annual Rummage Sale. Wow! SO MUCH STUFF! I ended up buying a few books, including an extra copy of one of my favorite kids books, The Fat Cat.

One of my fellow elementary teachers was helping too, and we had the chance to meet up with the temporary administrator to get an update on what we might be teaching next month. As of right now, if nothing extraordinary happens, I'm teaching...

*drumroll*

3rd grade!

I am so excited!

I'm already starting to hone in on ideas for what I want to do with this grade level. I mentioned before that I would like to incorporate some of CAFE for reading because it seems like a great way to let children know expectations, encourage self-monitoring, and provide strategies to improve.

But now I just discovered (amazing the things you can discover through teacher blogs!) the 6+1 writing traits! It's like CAFE but for writing, and not by the 2 Sisters.

Oooh, oooh, and the fun thing is CAFE can be rewritten into the acronym FACE and the 6 traits can make the acronym VOICES. (Or maybe I'll just stick with "CAFE" and the "6 Traits".)

So what FACE and VOICES does is create categories for what students should achieve in reading and writing.

READING
F - fluency
A - accuracy
C - comprehension
E - expand vocabulary

WRITING
V - voice
O - organization
I - ideas
C - conventions
E - excellent word choice
S - sentence fluency

The Plattsbugh City School District has provided a very helpful, free pdf overview of the 6+1 Traits of Writing that I'm going to use, though Amazon has a comprehensive book by Ruth Culham, as well as one by her on how to use picture books to teach the 6 traits.

I also really like this pinned idea of displaying the 6 Traits/VOICES:

My hope is that displaying these categories will give us focus and help us more clearly work towards improvement. And it will give me categories in which to insert my teaching! Today we're talking about synonyms and antonyms. Knowing synonyms and antonyms will help you with your WORD CHOICE when writing and may help you EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY in reading.

See? Oh, this is going to be so wonderful! *glee*

I'm just a little optimistic, can you tell?

Meanwhile, yesterday I stopped by the local library and visited their used book store. I came home with several books, but am especially excited about these two:

And that's that for now!

Feedback - figuring it out

I have a horrible memory. So I'm going to process some of what I'm learning here so that I don't forget it, okay? Thanks!

In Coursera's "Foundations for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment" the instructor discusses Hattie & Timperley's model of feedback (2007). The purpose of feedback is to reduce the discrepancy between where students are and where we want them to be.

The instructor notes 3 questions a teacher must address: 1) Where are we going? (clarify the goal), 2) Where are we now? (in reference to the goal), and 3) What next?

Those three questions tie in with what I've been reading in CAFE about reading conferences! So let me process this...

Where going: If my subject is reading, I have 4 levels of reading that we are trying to achieve - comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary. The goal? To enjoy reading and understand what we are reading.  

Where now: Following CAFE, I teach and model reading strategies to the whole group. Then, as I meet with individual students, I discuss with them where they need to improve. 

What next: Together we choose a strategy for them to try out on their own (after further modeling). I allow them to have a day or so to practice the strategy on their own time before meeting with them again to see if it's helping them reach the immediate goal (e.g. better fluency).

The Coursera instructor also notes from Hattie & Timperley 4 levels of feedback.

Task: feedback about how to do it 

Process: feedback about if they are using the right and best process skill (still haven't quite figured out exactly the difference between process and strategy) 

Self-Regulation: feedback that helps them think about which strategy they are using and which strategy would be the best one for this situation (thinking about your thinking) 

Self: feedback that lets the students know where they are in reference to the goal (not just generic praise or condemnation, but feedback that truly helps a student head towards the goal)

I really want to improve in teaching self-regulation/reflection/assessment.

"Great Books" - what has worked

Inspired by Andrew Pudewa (Institute for Excellence in Writing), I began "Great Books" in our classroom two years ago ("Great Books" = me reading books out loud to my students). Pudewa advises reading to children "reliably correct and sophisticated language." Whether I've actually followed that prescription is debatable, but this is what I have done thus far that has worked for me.

Great Books: Method #1

I love this book! (I left out some words
when reading aloud to the kids.)

Read books that have been turned into movies.

The first year of Great Books we read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As we read through the chapters, w
e'd take breaks to watch clips of the movies. I annoyed the kids with my endless pausing and asking questions, but the comparing and contrasting between book and movie not only completely engaged their interest but also helped develop higher level thinking skills. The kids loved it, I loved it, it exposed them to the literature behind the movies, and hopefully taught them that they can view entertainment with a discerning eye.

We also read Winnie-the-Pooh and most of Wind in the Willows (elevated language, yes; easy to follow, no) and did author studies at the end of all these books.

Great Books: Method #2
Read a book and draw pictures at the end of each chapter.

November is considered novel-writing month, so last year I used that as a springboard for Great Books. Because my students overlapped from the year before, I wanted to do something different (even though one of my new students really wanted to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory like his older brother had). I chose Patty Reed's Doll since it corresponded with our history curriculum. It ended up being a huge success, and I loved how the book immersed them in a period of history. At the end of each chapter, we would discuss some of the events in the chapter, and then I would have them draw a relevant picture. At the end of the book, every student had their own Patty Reed's Doll booklet to take home!

The one thing I would change here is to use the daily draw-n-write pages to teach and practice writing main ideas with supporting details. I didn't emphasize writing enough.

Through Patty Reed's Doll and with the help of the Internet we learned about prairie dogs and buffalo chips!

In March (while more organized people were doing March Book Madness) we picked up Great Books again with the first couple books of the Boxcar Children and Alexi's Secret Mission (by Anita Deyneka, put out by A.C.E.)

I'm still working on my plans for next year. I have aspirations of reading Pollyanna and The Tale of Despereaux and maybe mixing both Great Books methods! I also have been collecting copies of Sarah, Plain and Tall so we could do a unit study together, but I'm not sure if I'll tackle that this year (even though I already bought supplementary material for it last year!).

I blog to remember what I've done, because otherwise, I'll forget.

intro/summer reading

This is the place where I'll record my wanderings through the Wonderful World of Teaching. What I'm learning, what is working, what I cannot figure out for the life of me. Something like that.

The last couple weeks of summer I've been teacher-book motivated!I finally got out and read The Daily Five, began The Cafe Book, switched over to Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling, and hopped back into The Book Whisperer (which greatly influenced how much independent reading went on in my class last year).

You know what's been cool? This summer I took a satellite AACS class called "Diagnosing and Treating Reading Difficulties in Your Class" by Dana Davis of Maranatha Baptist University (excellent class, btw). And then I've been slowly working my way through Coursera's "Foundations for Learning 6: Introduction to Student Assessment." And I've been looking at teacher blogs (teacher blogs rock!). But what has been so amazing is how I'll read about comprehension in one book that hearkens back to the satellite class I took. Then I'll read a blog post I was procrastinating reading that confirms exactly what I read in The Book Whisperer the night before. So many connections! I'm thankful to the Lord for connecting everything for me as I hop from one thing to another.

Right now I'm excited about Teaching Maddeness' Great Poetry Race idea for homework. The last couple years I've wanted to start doing monthly poems, but I've never been able to get the idea off the ground. I love how her Great Poetry Race idea not only exposes children to poetry every week but also helps build fluency!

Hopefully by next week I'll know what grades I'll be teaching so I can start planning for next year more concretely.

Until then, happy summer!