December Currently

Happy December! I'm freezing!

One year when I was little, we made "reindeer food" at school - oatmeal oats and glitter in a ziploc bag. That year on Christmas Eve, my older brother took me out onto the lawn to sprinkle reindeer food on the snow. We did that for many years, even when the idea of Santa was long gone. :) I've incorporated reindeer food into my school Christmas parties as a station, but it takes like 2 seconds to make so it isn't an ideal activity! :)

I've been on a blogging hiatus for a while now, which makes me sad. I have a sort of challenging class this year... the biggest in the school at 18 students (NOT complaining, don't get me wrong!), some increeeedibly rowdy boys, a couple of students who have needs that I'm having a hard time meeting all by myself.... I don't know, it's just been a pretty exhausting year so far!

Hopefully I can take some pictures and get back on the train. I haven't even read a blog in months... I can't adjust to a lack of Google Reader in my life... sigh!! Haha!

Publishing Student Writing

In my first/second grade classroom, I have been using the Portland Public Schools writing curriculum for the past two years. I have found it to be really effective! The lessons are thorough and cover writing strategies and grammar concepts in a developmentally appropriate way.

At the end of each unit of writing, we have a celebration where I type up their stories and we share them with partners, Author Groups, or whole-group. This has become a really exciting and important day in my students' writing lives. But it has been a struggle for me!

I have always wanted to type their stories into books, but I never knew an easy way to do it. I would type them on Word, trying to make mini-books and just guessing where the middle of the sheet of paper was. Today, though, I found an easy way - and I want to share it with you in case you do this, too!

{Disclaimer: I have a Mac, but I use Office. I'm guessing that Office has the same features regardless of computer, but I don't know for sure... so if it doesn't work on a Windows computer, I am sorry!!}

First, go to File and Page Setup. You should get to a screen that looks like this.

Choose 5.5x8.5 for your paper size and landscape for your orientation. This will give you a perfect half sheet to type your stories on!

Then type, type, type away. Save your stories as a PDF and open the PDF in Preview. Go to print them.

Where it says "Preview", change it to "Layout" and then choose 2 pages per sheet.

Print the stories and cut them on your school paper cutter at the 5.5" mark. Staple them and make an adorable little book!

We're all looking forward to celebrating our author status tomorrow! Let me know if this is any help to you or if anything is unclear! :)

Fluency Assessments

Hi friends!

Quick question for you, but first a bit of background.

At my school, I'm not required to do any assessments of any kind at the first/second grade level. We have standardized ITBS tests that start in third grade, but that's it. I don't have any expectations to assess my students, and I don't have any resources with which to assess them. I've mentioned before that I use a 100% unleveled reading program... every first grader reads the same story at the same time regardless of ability or interest level. So I have a rough idea of reading levels in my classroom but nothing documented.

However... I want to assess. I want to assess my students on their rates of fluency to start with. I do have one question for you though:

Do you assess rates of fluency at the students' actual instructional reading level? Or at their grade level?

I've heard it both ways. So I'm just wondering!

Back to School Tomorrow!

Well, tomorrow is our first day back from break! As much as I loved the time off, and it does feel like it flew by, I am pretty excited to see my kiddos tomorrow! Here's why:

• We are going to be starting a new unit in writing - how-to books! I am so excited to get them started with nonfiction writing. I think they are going to be amazing.
• We're also relaunching Daily Five. I never got to Word Work or Listen to Reading at the beginning of the year, and I think we need a refresher on everything. :)

While I was on break, I mostly chilled and spent time with family and friends. But just tonight I returned from a super fun weekend in New York visiting a friend!

That was the view from my friend's apartment's sun terrace. So awesome! I love the city.

I know you probably are not super excited about school starting tomorrow... but what is pumping you up for a new semester?

12 in '12

YAY! I loved this linky party last year! Also I just today posted for the first time since November 2, and here I go again. How exciting!

Here we go!

12. Favorite movie you watched.

Hands down, no question, didn't even have to think about it - Bridesmaids!!!!! 

I was lukewarm about seeing it because I didn't really know what it was about or if I'd like it, but my cousins sat me down and I am SO HAPPY they did. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself! So so so so so so so funny

11. Favorite TV series

I was just recently introduced to New Girl, and I looooooooove it!

I've already watched the whole first season and I get so excited every Tuesday for the new episode to come out. Everyone is so funny, but I especially love Schmidt. :)

10. Favorite restaurant

I am a biiiiig sushi fan, and this year I discovered a delicious sushi place!

I haven't been to the steakhouse part of it, but the sushi part is amazing! I recently went there on a date during which I ate tons of crazy sushi (I usually stick with my California rolls... haha). So yum.

9. Favorite new thing you tried

Well, I recently ended my relationship with my boyfriend of almost four years.... so I think I am going to say being single. I have been spending lots of time with friends and going out a lot and having fun!

8. Favorite gift you received

Definitely my interactive whiteboard!

It has made my life a lot easier, really. I don't always use it interactively - I use it a LOT for building background knowledge. For example, we recently had some free time (shockingly) and I grabbed a book out of a basket randomly to read to them. It ended up being When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant.

Towards the end of the book, the author mentions hearing a bobwhite calling in the trees. None of us (me included) even knew what a bobwhite was, so I quick googled a video of one and we got to really understand the story better! I love you, technology.

7. Favorite thing you pinned

Over the summer, I saw Kristen's post on her chair book pockets and pinned it immediately!

I actually got these donated to my classroom - all I had to do was write a letter to Home Depot explaining how I'd use them. My kids LOVE them and the parents love them even more!

6. Favorite blog post

During election season, everyone was talking about the candidates, including my students - which I documented in Wait, Who is Running for President Again? This post had no educational value, but it made my day times 100. And I'm laughing now reading it again.

5. Favorite accomplishment

On Wednesday, I finished my ESL endorsement!!!!!! That is, unless I bombed the final project... haha. That is super exciting for me because I feel like I am a better teacher now, and it opens up job opportunities for me in the future! As much as I love my students, and it would kill me to leave them... I have to think about myself a little bit.

4. Favorite picture

This is a picture of me and my cousins at the Indiana Dunes this summer! They are my besties. :) I love this picture because we all look super happy and it was a REALLY fun day! This picture also makes me laugh because you can see that I am wearing my swimsuit.... but it was WAY too cold to actually swim or wear it without the rest of my clothes on top!! I hope we can return there when it's warm!

3. Favorite memory

Hmmmm....... Election Night. I was pleased with the results. :)

2. Goal for 2013

School goal - Keep working on making my teaching more exciting!

Personal goal - Spend less time in my apartment and more time out in the world!

I feel like I am doing a lot better job of teaching than last year. My students are really getting it this year, and I feel good about that. When I have dynamite lessons though, they all have one thing in common - I strayed from whatever the manual told me to do and did my thing! I need to do that more often. Everyone has more fun and learns more! I think this will help with my classroom management issues as well.......... enough said about that.

As I previously said, I have been spending a lot more time with my friends, going out and having fun! I want to keep that up for sure. I spent a lot of college with my boyfriend at the time, and I don't feel like I had a legit college experience. I want to live it up while I am young!

1. One little word

This is tough!

I'm going to choose "flow." I want to go with the flow. I want to live in the moment and appreciate everything that is coming to me.  I want to sail through this part of my life and not stress. In school, I want to roll with the punches - whether that means that an angry parent is screaming at me during a classroom party (not that that happened this year or anything.....................) or one of my first graders doesn't know any of her numbers. I want to go with it, do my thing, and make it work.

Thanks, Hadar and Kristin, for hosting again!! :)

I Love You, Writer's Workshop

Do you use Writer's Workshop in your classroom? We do not have a schoolwide writing plan. Each teacher does whatever they want. We have a writing program but no one cares if we use it. Last year I used the program we have, but it was very dry and no one enjoyed writing.

Over the summer, I took a class for my ESL endorsement called Reading in a New Language, and for my final project, I had to research something I wanted to improve about my literacy instruction, so I chose writing and did research on Writer's Workshop. Then I decided to do it this year!

I don't have anyone mentoring me, no one in my school has ever done Writer's Workshop, so I am on my own but doing my best. I use the lessons from Portland Public Schools. Thanks, Portland!!

Anyway, that whole backstory was to tell you that writing is really different this year for us. I think we are doing really well (compared to last year at this time) and everyone seems to really enjoy it! I still have some boys who are spending all of their writing time drawing pictures........ but for the most part, we are good.

In our first grade reading curriculum, they occasionally have writing activities for us. Maybe once every 2 units or something. This past unit, the first graders had a prompt: "When I am a princess/knight/giant, I would..." (They got to pick which character.) I was so happy to see what they came up with on their own!

{When I am a knight, I will save the princess. I will marry the princess. I will dance with the princess. I will love her.}

Aw! And this was one of my little ladies who took an unconventional route and did NOT choose to be the princess! Maybe she is trying to send a message to the boys in our class.......... haha!

{When I am a knight, I will help people and save people. It will be fun so much.}

I'm really impressed that he spelled "save" correctly, because we haven't learned silent E yet - that starts tomorrow!

Hope you're having a good weekend and getting excited for this upcoming week. :)

November Currently

Boo yeah!

I don't think I need to explain a whole lot.... except that I LOVE playing the Pandora Easy Listening station! I play it primarily during Writer's Workshop time and the kids basically refuse to write until I put the music on. 

I should also say that I play a lot of Ron Brown's Wacky Workout for brain breaks! My kids seriously can't get enough.

Tomorrow I am going to Sweet Tomatoes and I am SOOOOOOO PUMPED! Do you have one by you?

Adios, October

I wish I could write posts to just my followers. However, I don't think that is possible - so I will just say ADIOS to October. You were not my friend.

Moving on... :)

We've been doing some things in school; let me tell you about them!

We learned about problem and solution in first grade reading and then drew pictures of them!

We are becoming amazing writers thanks to Writer's Workshop!

We plotted ordered pairs on a coordinate grid to make a pumpkin!

Note to all the first and/or second grade teachers out there: this was NOT easy. I got the page from Scholastic (here's the link), and I gave it a shot.

I teach ordered pairs in second grade, we actually covered it a few weeks ago, so my second graders were amazing at this. That made me feel really good because they really learned ordered pairs!! The looks that the first graders were giving me, however, made me think I was speaking in a foreign language. It was pretty frustrating but oh wells!

Alert!!! I just figured out that BrainPop is free ALL WEEK! It's going to be Thursday tomorrow and I am going to try to find a video for everything we do!!! Haha! Go check it out!

Fun With Friction!

Today in school we learned about friction!

We started by talking about riding our bikes and how we'd rather ride on a smooth road than on the grass. This was an easy connection to the idea of friction!

We moved onto an exciting experiment to test out the force of friction. We set up ramps and rolled Hot Wheels cars around!

I tried a LOT of combinations to make a good ramp with the supplies I had on hand in my room and in the building. Three textbooks and a file folder provide a nice, smooth ramp! We tucked the edge of the file folder underneath the stack of books to stabilize it a bit.

Then we tested the friction of three surfaces - the cafeteria floor, our reading rug, and a tumbling mat.

It was a really fun experiment, and everyone totally grasped the idea of friction!

In other news, we are having a legit birthday party tomorrow in my class. One of my parents emailed me today and said she is bringing a cake. If it wasn't a Friday, I might have hesitated....... but I did promise my class we could watch Scholastic's Taylor Swift reading webcast, so it kind of works out perfectly. :)

Hope you have a great Friday!

Spelling Words

Quick question for you, teacher friends!

If you do a weekly spelling test, how do you let the parents know what the words are?

Just wondering. :)

Something Good

I have had a very stressful day - and that should not be happening on a Sunday!! Especially when the stress is school-related!! So when I saw Amber doing this linky party, it was like a sign from the heavens. I NEED to be focusing on something good right about now. :)

Something good at school - I've been trying out some TPR and it has been working wonderfully! As I might have mentioned 5 times, we're working on force and motion, and the vocab is a little abstract! We've been making up motions for the definitions of "force" and "gravity" and the kids looooooove it. Another thing - and this will be a semi-long story. So I will start a new paragraph.

I started Daily Five and never got past Read to Someone (so I still, at some point, need to introduce Word Work and Listen to Reading). Anyway, when I am teaching the first graders, the second graders are supposed to choose Read to Self, Read to Someone, or Work on Writing, and vice versa. This week, I had another teacher in my room during reading time, and I gave her some things to do with the first graders while I worked with the second graders, so I basically took away their independent reading/writing time.

They were NOT happy. One girl almost cried when the other teacher took her independent reading book away. This made my day. Although my class is WAY too chatty during independent reading/writing time, they are actually doing it! And they love it! This makes me so so pleased.

Something good at home - I hung out with my brother this weekend! We both moved out in August and we have only seen each other like twice since then, which  makes me sad. This weekend, we went out to eat a lot, went to a little fair, and just spent time together. Love my broski.

I hope your Sunday has been stress-free and that you are ready for the kids tomorrow!! :) What good things are going on in your life? Go link up!

Gravity!

I'm teaching forces and motion in science right now and I am LOVING IT! I absolutely, one hundred percent adore teaching content. I love it, the students love it, everyone is happy!

Today we covered gravity and watched this super cute video

Then we extended our learning a little by hypothesizing which would fall to the ground faster - a heavy book or a marker. We were SHOCKED to find out that they fell at the same rate. Who knew?

Types of Motion

Yesterday we started a new science unit that I am REALLY pumped about - Forces and Motion!

Today we learned about motion. We made our books and desk contents move all over the place in all different types of ways. The engagement was through the roof!

As a culminating activity, we completed a picture sort. We sorted pictures into three different types of motion - straight, back and forth, and circular. They loved that big word - circular! :)

My students did a great job with this! I think it also really cemented the idea of motion into their little brains. :)

If you're teaching about Forces and Motion and would like to use this sort, feel free to download it (for free)  from my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Creating Graphs Online

At the end of every math class I teach, I give out little quizzes to check for understanding. They're only two questions long and cover only the information taught that day. I started this at the end of last year, and I love doing it because it gives me such a clear idea as to how well I taught and how well they absorbed the information!

Right now in second grade, we're covering graphs, and my little quiz for tomorrow is on reading line graphs. Now, I am for sure NOT going to hand-draw a line graph for their little quizzes. That's just cray cray.

Instead, I remembered this sweet website I found last year - NCES's Create a Graph! If you just input your data, it makes a lovely little graph just for you.

You can print it straight from the website or save it in a variety of formats - PDF, JPEG, PNG... whatever you want!

Your students could use this also instead of hand-drawing graphs. I had my own students use it last year when we studied natural resources. It was a bit on the complicated side for my class (there are a lot of steps to make a graph), but if you modeled it and had them use it on a regular basis, I think it could really come in handy!

Technology in the Classroom Presentation

Hello friends!

Today I presented at the UIUC Professional Development Conference. If you're visiting from the conference, here's a link to my Prezi!

Technology in the Classroom on Prezi

:)

Wait, Who is Running for President Again?

Casual conversations about the upcoming election...

First Grader #1: So if the white guy doesn't win, he doesn't get the job?
Me: Right.
First Grader #1: And if the black guy wins, he does get the job?
Me: Barack Obama is already the president, so he would get to keep his job if he wins.
First Grader #2: But what about Washington?
Me: Yes, Washington is where the President lives!
First Grader #2: No... George Washington...

Apparently someone in my class has not been informed that George Washington is no longer a presidential hopeful...

October Currently

Today I started my Assessment of Language Minority Students class. So far it feels like a good fit! My teacher is really chill and very intelligent. I think I will learn a lot and I am really excited about having the opportunity to effectively assess my ELLs!! Also it's my last class that I need to take to have my ESL endorsement. Yay for me!

Florida in December!!! SoooOOOoooOOOoooOOO excited! Let me tell you why:

1. It is cold in Chicago in December.
2. It is warm in Florida in December (or so I am told).
3. I love the beach.
4. I love vacations!!

So excited.

I chose Duck for President as my favorite fall book because I also love elections. They are fun to teach about and the kids get really into it. I also love Grace for President. What great books!

Link up!

I Voted!

Today we voted for the President of the United States!

Each year, Scholastic hosts a Presidential election a month prior to Election Day. Students around the country, from Kindergarten through twelfth grades, can fill out a ballot. Teachers collect the ballots and submit them to Scholastic, where they count up the votes and declare a winner.

The interesting thing about the Scholastic election is that it has reflected the results of the actual election in every case except for two!

We briefly discussed voting today and then, one-by-one, we went out into the hall to cast our vote. Everyone took the vote VERY seriously and were excited to participate in the political process. After the vote, we all got “I Voted!” stickers, just like adults!

Did your class vote for the next President?

Starboard!!!

A while back, I mentioned that my principal had ordered some interactive whiteboards for our school and one was for me!

I now present my new best friend!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamazing. Before today I didn't even have an overhead in my class. This is a big deal in my life.

Basically we played on it all day in between doing stuff we REALLY HAD to do. Only Scholastic News games though!!! All CCSS aligned. :)

I haven't actually used the software yet that came with it (it's a Starboard) and it seems sort of confusing. I'll figure it out though!

Moving on, in first grade we are learning how to add and today we worked on number stories!

We were only technically supposed to be learning how to write a number sentence based on a word problem, but they really wanted to draw out the problems. Definitely doable!

Do you like our little chalkboards? In Scholastic News this week, we learned that "long ago" kids wrote on slates with chalk. It made me laugh because I have a whole stack of these bad boys in the closet and the kids love them!! Not to mention the erasers I made. :)

And last, today I gave the first graders an emergent reader that I downloaded from Mrs. Wills. They went crazy over it! Our reading program is designed to be very challenging, which is fine for my high students but painful for anyone who doesn't read way above grade level. My kids felt so good and confident to be able to read the emergent readers! On the back page, they had to write something that they like to do, and I felt really happy when saw this:

I like to gow to the porc! Otherwise spelled as "go to the park", haha. Anyway, I feel absolutely PUMPED that my first graders are applying letter sounds to write phrases!!!!!! I think Writer's Workshop is paying off big time!!

What's Your Address?

Hello!

I have been slacking big time on my blogaroo. :( Here are my excuses...

• Everything I'm doing is incredibly boring right now. My reading program is scripted (maybe I've mentioned that 93847239847 times) so everything is workbooks. I'm infusing a touch of Phonics Dance-y business so it's a little less lame. Still doesn't help a lot though. Side note - I am teaching sh/ch/tch right now in first grade. Anyone else?
• I started a classroom blog and the parents are loving it! It's a lot easier to post there because my families are happy with a picture and two sentences, haha.

Umm... that's pretty much it. Haha!

We did learn about addresses today!

I erased some of my kiddos' street names. :)

I like teaching things like this because my students are REALLY engaged since it is all about them, haha!

First we discussed what addresses are. Then I had them turn and talk to a partner about their own address. THEN, I turned the tables on them and said they could only raise their hand to share their PARTNER'S address. 

What a shocker! You mean I actually have to listen when my partner turns and talks to me?!

We had to redo our turn and talk, haha!

Speaking of turn and talks... I have a suuuuuuuuuuuuuper chatty class this year. I did last year too, but my class size went up exponentially so the chatting did as well. I'm on the hunt for strategies that will mesh well with my first and second graders' incessant need to talk allllll day long.

Turning and talking is going well. Anything else you'd care to share?