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! :)

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. :)

Monday Made It: Mr. Spacer

Another week! Happy happy Monday. :)

This week I went with a super simple Monday Made It, but one that will be very useful next year! I introduce to you............. Mr. Spacer!

I first heard about Mr. Spacer from Hadar and he has been pinned for a long while. Mr. Spacer is used to help your students leave appropriate spaces between words! Lots of my students last year could have used this, but I can think of one student in particular who I wish I would have had this for! His handwriting is pretty messy, and a lot of the time I couldn't tell which letters he was making, let alone where one word ended and another began. I will have him again next year so I am excited to see how his work will change with the help of Mr. Spacer! 

To make Mr. Spacers, you'll need popsicle sticks, googly eyes, and Mod Podge. I got my popsicle sticks and googlies from Hobby Lobby. The popsicle sticks are regular sized and the googly eyes are 4 mm. So tiny!

All you have to do is Mod Podge two little eyeballs on top of each stick! I used a Q-tip to apply the Mod Podge and then just tossed it. That worked perfectly.

These can also be used as pointers or trackers to support one-to-one correspondence in reading. I think I'll have these out in baskets on the students' tables so they can use them when they need to. :)

Penguin Cam!!!

So it is super late and I should be going to sleep... but I promised myself that I could blog if I finished submitting all of my projects for my ESL class!! 3 classes down, 3 to go! Next is multicultural children's lit. I literally can not tell you how SUPER EXCITED I am. I will be sure to share any books with all my blogging friends!!

Anyway, back to the subject of this post...

Today I was looking at facebook before school started, and I saw that my boyfriend had written about the live penguin cam from SeaWorld San Diego. Have you seen this??

Amazing. I used it as a reward for my class today after they worked on their persuasive paragraphs. They loved it! I actually find it amazing that 2000 people were watching at noon and still at 12:30 in the morning there are 1300 people watching it! They are adorable.

Speaking of persuasive paragraphs, today when I launched this little genre, I started by reading this fabulous book:

It was PERFECT to introduce opinions and reasons! We are writing our persuasive paragraphs on healthy choices, so each kid picked a specific healthy thing to do and they are persuading someone to do it! I didn't think they'd be super interested in the topic, but they are loving it. Today I learned that we should get more sleep because if you're mad about something and you go to sleep, you "kind of forget about it." Haha! So there are your wise words from a second grader today.

Side note - still watching the penguin cam... so cute!!!

And lastly, I wanted to leave you with this Hey Girl. I have not left you one in a while because none of them have really grabbed me I guess! And I am only posting this one because it has Jude Law and I want to MARRY HIM even though he cheated on his fiance......... Jude, Jude, Jude. Shame on you! I don't know what wraparound services are but I hope if you do, that you love this one.

V-Day Partay!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

We had a lovely day today in first and second grades. Let me give you an idea of how it went down and the bloggers who helped us get there!

We made Valentine's mini-books which I got from Michelle at Fabulous in First. I used these for our morning work and then they worked on them when they were finished with things throughout the day. They loved these!

I loved this boy's answers, especially that he loves "apple gose" because he can "suck on the gose."

Then in Writing, we finished up our paragraph Valentines. I loved the ASL Valentines I saw on Pinterest, so they chose a scrapbook paper piece and I traced their hand onto it! Super cute and easy.

Unrelated to Valentine's Day... I busted out the "library books" that come with my reading program for the second graders. We started with a Mercy Watson book - have any of you read those? My kids LOVED IT. Two of them finished it in one day but a few are still working on it, so I read with them today. Three of my second graders are SUPER readers, way way above grade level. These two friends are right on level so I read with them today and they did great!

This is what I gave the kids for Valentine's Day. Thanks, The Teacher Wife! The kids also were obsessed with these and they were so cheap and easy! Best idea ever.

For Math, we did Cara Carroll's candy heart probability. I'm not really sure that they grasped the concept but it was fun regardless. :)

Then we had our party! My room mom planned this activity, which she found here. Super cute! It went along well with our love monsters!!

We played HEART Bingo, which I made here!

And the kids graphed candy hearts, obvi. I got the sheets for that activity at Teacher Bits and Bobs!

At the end, we got our pouches and ate candy! We totally ran out of time to eat our all-red fruit snack!! So we saved it for tomorrow. We'll be eating watermelon, raspberries, and strawberries for a few days I think. :) Fine with me!!!

I also wanted to share what my BTF next door did! She found this cute bookmark idea on Pinterest. All it took was some paint samples and a little heart punch that I found on clearance at Michael's for $2!

 She also made little lovebugs! It was in a little craft kit, also from Michael's!

It was a great day. No behavior problems, although one boy went into the girl's bathroom. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Looooove Monsters and a Freebie!!

Hola friends!

How was your Monday? Mine was great, considering it was a Monday. My class is really excited about Valentine's Day but they weren't being too overly crazy today so hooray for that!

Today we prepped our Valentine holders for tomorrow. I got this idea (and the templates) from Amber at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher. I just found her through Chrissy's linky party and I was instantly loving the love monsters. My class died of happiness when I showed them my sample.

She spent a lot of time on hers! It had hair and also nail polish, which you can't see in this picture.

Last week, we made hearts for our wire thing! I got the template from Mrs. Bainbridge. They loved these even though no one understood how to weave them and basically one of the second graders and I did everyone's hearts for them. Whatev.

Tomorrow I have a pretty fun day planned, I think. For writing, we have been working on 5-sentence paragraphs, so today we started working on a Valentine which will incorporate paragraph writing! They had to write it to someone in their family about why they were the best sister ever, or brother, or mom, whatever. They needed a topic sentence, three body sentences, and a closing sentence. We wrote our sloppy copies today and I was so very proud of them! A few friends think that "bald and cool" is a sentence, so we're not quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite there yet, but I'd say 80% of them can easily write a 5-sentence paragraph with no prompting from me!

I'll show you the finished product tomorrow, but for now, I want to share a little freebie for ya. For this writing project tomorrow, I needed heart writing paper and I couldn't find anything that I liked. So I made my own. It is nothing special but the lines are big enough that my kids can write on them and can fit their whole paragraph on there!

Just click on the little preview to go there! I'd be super happy if you left me a comment if you're able to use it!

I am excited for Valentine's Day tomorrow! Are you? We get a non-uniform day so that makes the day 100% more awesome.

It's Almost Party Time!

Only half of a day left until break time!!!!!!!!!!!!

These past few days haven't been horrific, so I am grateful for that! All I have left is the Christmas party tomorrow, yeah!

Here are a few other Christmas-y things we have been doing. :)

Inspired by this pin...

[source]

We made some junk mail snowflakes!

Ours look a little more like junk mail with holes in it BUT they loved it and it didn't take a lot of prep!

We also made Christmas gifts for our families! After perusing 154 blogs and looking all over Pinterest, I went with a gift idea that my first grade teacher did when I was in first grade! I would show you the kids' finished ornaments, but their pictures are on them. So I'll just show you mine!

We just painted popsicle sticks with either red or green tempera paint, and then I hot glued the popsicle sticks into this sled shape! There are two sticks hidden in this picture that would support the sled if you were to lay it down on a table. But it is meant to be an ornament. I am super happy with how they turned out! I just have to tie on the ribbons when I get to school in the AM.

I'm not sure if I showed you the sweet tiny Christmas tree that I found in my closet last week.

In their free time, the kids make paper snowflake ornaments for the tree and we just shove them onto the branches, haha!

And lastly, over the weekend, I found First Grade Garden and this CRAZY cute writing activity! Amanda provides the rough draft PDF as a freebie!!

And here's how they look on the bulletin board!

Soooooo cute!!!

Wish me luck for the partay tomorrow! All of the stations are set and ready to go, my presents for the kids are wrapped, and I am pumped!