Favorite Pins Friday

 

Where to start!? Oh.My.Gosh, I LOVE Pinterest, but it has seriously taken over my life. I even have my 9 year old son asking if we can look on Pinterest- gotta love it!

 

 

from An Educator's Life

I love the idea of individual students being able to add a letter for a reward and the whole class working together.

 

from Jo's Photomojo

I am doing this at the beginning of the year and framing it to go on my board. That way I can always refer back to it of "Why" you have to know (how to read... to be a Doctor or Teacher, how to mix colors... artist/ makeup artist).

 



 

From Extra Special Teaching

When you do sight word assessments do you have a rule for how long you give them to read them? Maybe 1,2,or 3 seconds. Putting it into a power point allows for "know it or not."

 

My little one starts Kindergarten and LOVED having notes in her lunchbox in preschool. This is such a cute idea.

 

I NEED this in my classroom!!!! Kiddos wouldn't have to leave to use the drinking fountain.

 

 

by Minds in Bloom

These are cute questions to maybe start off morning meeting or a time when you want kids to start a discussion.

 



 



 

Chapter 6 Talking Drawing Writing & a little personal

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry. So much has been going on these last two weeks that I don't even know where to start. I hope you can relate to my much overdue post. Let me get a little personal first.
We had a our family reunion in Michigan last week (woo, hoo!), which was beyond exciting to see uncles and cousins that I haven't seen in 10 years. My mom comes from a LARGE family of 8 kids and everyone is spread out from Texas to Florida to Michigan, so trying to get everyone together at once is difficult to say the least.


The 8 kids and my grandparents

 

Anyways, the day that we left to make the 12 hour haul back to Tennessee, my mom and aunt found out my grandmother had a heart attack the night before and told nobody (stubborn woman). Long story short, she had to have an angioplasty and stint to her main artery, which has put the breast cancer issue on hold for about a month, but she is doing much better now. :)

My mom's bunch

 

 

Every once in awhile we have to get a little personal. Ok, now onto Chapter 6.....

 

 

ASSESSMENT- That word gives me the chilly willies if you know what I mean. I guess because I am so bad at assessing (or at least I feel like it). I have really tried to focus this summer on how to make my assessments more meaningful, but once school starts I always struggle to find that one-on-one time.

 

I'm going to give you the cliff notes from this chapter- 3 different ways to assess ;)

 

Individual Writing Assessments:

* LOVE how teachers meet together to discuss students work, wish our school had this "workshop" session

*Write WH "with help" at the bottom of page if you gave the student support

*Create mini lessons based on Cumulative Writing Record

 

Individual CWR includes:

1. Date/Topic/Title

2. what child knows about craft- Organization, information, voice...

3. Conventions- spacing, letter formation, spelling, punctuation....

4. needs to learn (choose 1 thing at a time to work on)

5. When to teach (what mini lessons we will create)

 

Love this line..."unless we look at students' work regularly, our teaching wont be effective."

 

Small Group Writing Assessments:

* Start assessing about a month into school to create mini lessons

* Choose 5 students each week to look at

 

SG Writing Record includes:

1. Child/ writing

2. what I noticed before reading

3. What writers are doing craft/ conventions (separate with spaces)

4. what need to learn- can be about writing or picture

5. When to teach- mini lesson, interactive writing, conference, read-aloud, conversation, morning meeting, word study, reading instruction

 

Whole Class Writing Assessments:

* "quick read" whole class of drawing and writing books

* Write down what you see doesn't have to be on a form

* note: craft, conventions, strategies and possible mini lessons

 

I know individual will be hard for me to do, but I definitely want to try small group assessing. I think it will give me more information than the whole class method. What are your thoughts?

 

 

 





Classroom updates

I am soooo proud of myself- I had not been up to the school at all until yesterday. Woo Hoo!!! That's good for me. Once I get in school mode, it's hard to stop. So here is what I have done so far.

 

If you like the new word wall, you can get it for free from Nicole Lanier. When I went to print mine, I printed 9 per page so they would be small for the word wall.

I also wanted the same cards for my Alphabet in the front of the room, that way students that are struggling with letters and sounds may be able to make the connection using both of them.

I don't know about you guys, but I have ALWAYS put my alphabet way high above my whiteboard and the students used it but had trouble because it was so high up. DUH!? So I decided to put magnets to the back and therefore students could take it off the board and take it back to their seat if they needed help writing that letter. Ya, I know it only took me 5 years to figure that out. ;)

I also thought they could use it as a station to put letters in ABC order

Another Project- Have you seen some really cute placemats this summer? I decided to turn them into pillows last year. I hot glued the seams and stuffed with stuffing. So cute!

 

 

Last thing today... my husband found this cute table at Goodwill last year and I chalkboard painted the top. Well long story short, we are redoing our bonus room and now I have new furniture for my classroom. I think this is going to be so cute for my writing station. 

We changed reading series and I kept this box because it is so thick and I used it as my writing station last year. I really didn't like how it looked so I gave it a little coat of paint and cute as ever now.

Glitter and Duct tape - Made it Monday

This is my first time joining in on the fun with Made it Monday...

I have seen so many cute Glitter Clothespins on Pinterest and decided that would be an easy project for me to do with my 5 year old. She loves some glitter!!!

I used the spray Mod Podge over the top to keep the glitter from falling off.

Then I thought my mailboxes needed a little revamp. I started decorating before I remembered "before pictures."

And after picture... However, I was not completely done. I need more binder clips and forgot my paint pen at home to write on the clips. You get the idea though :)

 

Do  you use the number system in your classroom, students names, and/or student pictures?

First "Currently"

So I am going for my first "Currently" with Farley, lets see how this goes...

1. My husband is flipping through channels and happened to stop on GAC Country Music channel. We do live 30 minutes from Nashville and love us some country music.

2. We also live out in the country and I love sitting on our front porch, on cool summer nights, watching the traffic go by. (Ya, I know lame, but very peaceful)

3. So we are headed to Michigan for a family reunion this week and I really should have started working out. I went shopping for shorts and was so disappointed- I need to get on an easy, good leg/butt workout if anyone has suggestions. (remember "easy" is the key word)

4. I found a new wine I like and am ready for another glass. Gotta try Barefoot Refresh sweet wine.

5. I am hooked on romance novels. One of my friends calls them my "juicy" books. I just finished reading the third book from Crossfire Series- OMG!!!

6. A little tip: Don't try and do everything. I have so many things I want to do this summer for school, but I really need to relax and enjoy my summer. It will be over before I know it- July 31st is to soon :(

Talking, Drawing, Writing Chap 4

As your doing a read-aloud, are you really focusing on the details of the picture? This chapter talks about how drawings in books convey a lot of information to us. Even if we cant see everything, we can figure out a lot by the details in the pictures.

Talking about the DETAILS in the pictures is going to be something I expand on this year.- using the  drawings to dig deeper......accountable talk (sorry, off track! I went to a training this week on Common Core Tasks and Accountable Talk... loved it, but that will be another blog).

Back on track... I love how they said to use a transparency to put over an illustration to show how bodies are made of ovals. What a great visual! Then students need to learn how to add clothes so the ovals wont show.

 

 



Are there other ways to draw people that look "real"? Of course, you may have some illustrators in your room. Here is a great opportunity to have students explain how they draw people. (make sure you choose students who you know can draw people)



How many of you draw people only standing? I do, I do... Maybe I shouldn't admit that. After reading this chapter, it seems so easy now to draw people in other positions by using ovals. Model, Model, Model. Have students start thinking about drawing people in action- running, throwing a ball, sitting, etc.



Other things to think about when drawing- people from their backside (as they are walking into something), hairstyle, skin, eyes, clothing.

Have students plan out what they are going to draw first so they don't resort to "Safe Drawings"- house, windows, tree, people facing forward, sun, flowers...

 

I look forward to hearing from you all.... on to the next chapter!

Talking, Drawing, Writing Chap. 3

First off, have you ever been so excited for a teaching conference and then felt completely let down. Yea, that happened last week. I wont elaborate, but I sure hope my PD sessions this week are much better.

With that being said, on to chapter 3: Drawing... My worst talent, well besides singing. I know, two things we do a ton of in Kindergarten ;) Anyways-

How many of you felt like there was A LOT of dialog in this chapter? Yes, helpful but also overwhelming to me. Here are some of the important parts I took from this chapter:

A lot of this chapter was observing and drawing with shapes.

*Sketching- yep you heard that right! I never thought about teaching my kiddos to sketch. First teach students to make light strokes until they like what they see then make the lines darker. (love it!)
  - Students will need "sketchbook" and pencil (no erasers)
  - Model sketching face (shapes, placement of eyes, nose, mouth, ears...)

 

DRAW FIRST- then Write!!!

Yes you heard correctly. I am so guilty of telling my kiddos to write a sentence then draw a picture. I wanted them to get their sentence down before they spend so much time drawing. However I have been WRONG telling them to do so.

 

Often students forget what they wanted to write, but if they have a picture to refer back to they can remember what they wanted to write about and  often they will elaborate on their writing by referring to that picture. I think I will allow my students to draw a picture, write a sentence then go back and color.





One thing I bought last year to help with my poor drawing skills was by Mrs. Miner. My kiddos LOVED it!! Click below to see how to purchase it.