Just sharing...

As an instructional specialist on my campus, I have the opportunity to write "creative" lesson plans for our teachers and students.  I don't do this for their classrooms; I do it for our Saturday Academy.  This is a special instructional time, where selected students get to learn skills they are struggling with in a "new" way.  I get to create games, and write unique plans.  Then, I have to gather the materials.  That's the hard part...I have to make foldables or game pieces for 7 classes of 10 students.  Time con-su-ming...and time is not what I have a lot of at the moment!!!

I wanted to share several foldables that our students have done.  Our 5th grade students are working on inferring (yikes!!) and our 4th grade students are working on revising and editing.  All are preparing for the first round of STAAR testing the first week in April.

Let's begin with a foldable and an anchor chart for FANBOYS.  These are the conjunctions students need to expand sentences.  They include For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So.

I did this activity with my small group first.  They looovvveeeddd it!! It's something they go back and tell their homeroom teachers!! Wow!

They have also worked on subject/verb agreement.  Here is a foldable we created:

Finally, here is the foldable we used for my 5th grade group to continue our work on inferring:

I truly believe that using creative ways to reach students, which includes creating fun foldables, reinforces learning and helps students gain ownership over what they need to know.  I love allowing students to use foldables to help them answer questions or create their own questions.

On a personal note, I am working on my Masters Degree in Teacher Leadership.  I am currently working on Student Motivation and Achievement.  Though I'm excellent at time management, I found myself, for the first time since I started in January, struggling to get motivated! HOW IRONIC! (Alanis Morrisette is playing in my head right now!)  However, I completed my assignment 5 hours before it was due.  So, at least I wasn't late. Hmph.

Here is a great quote from my the creator of my favorite cartoon characters, Calvin and Hobbes:


"You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet.  You have to be in the right mood.  What mood is that?  Last-minute panic"--Bill Watterson

My. Point. Exactly.

Always,

A Lazy Sunday Review...

What a beautiful southeast Texas Sunday!  It makes me excited for spring...and Spring Break!!

I wanted to share with you an activity I did with my 5th grade Alternative Learning Time group.  ALT groups, in our district, are used as reteach moments for students who are struggling or enrichment for students who are on the right track.

My lesson for my ALT group students involved reviewing and reteaching how to "infer".  This is just such a difficult concept for students to grasp!  It's also one of the things that we ALL do EVERY DAY...several times a day!!  But when it is put in the context of education, children just don't "get it"!!!

With this group, I'm having to revisit the concrete before we can move on to the abstract, i.e. STAAR test question stems and practice materials.

Of course, I started with an anchor chart...because, well, I love them and it's so totally the way I teach.

Sorry for the "sideways" pic!  I now work out of a small office instead of a regular classroom.  Once I add a table and students, there is no room to maneuver and take a full-frontal anchor chart pic!!  Essentially, we talked about what infer means:  what we already know PLUS what we learn.  In fifth grade, students must infer through generalizing, predicting, and drawing conclusions.  That was our concrete focus.  Oddly enough, my group came up with an acronym for the chart:  Gus Plays Dodgeball! They know I love my funky ways of teaching!!

After much discussion and examples, I had an "on the fly" moment!  Why not have students create a quick foldable with this big stack of extra paper strips I have???  "Why yes", I said to myself, "I think I will!!!"  So, I grabbed an handful of paper strips, and some paper clips, and "Mobiliarbus" (Harry Potter, people!), here is what we created:

The closed strips list how we infer (know+learn), and each type of inference (generalize, predict, draw conclusions).  When students opened each strip, they wrote the definition of the term:

know+learn=infer

 generalize=we talk about the group

 predict=an educated guess; what we think is going to happen

draw conclusions=come up with a new thought

The whole paper clip thing came up because I couldn't find my ball of twine, or any yarn, and I only have 45 minutes to work with these kiddos.  I did, however, have a massive bag of old paper clips from the last 13 years!!!!!!!  Some of them even had rubber bands melted to them! The kids had so many comments about "paper clip boogers" that I couldn't help but crack up!!

"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experiment."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

My classroom life is nothing but one!!!!  Happy Sunday!

Always,

 

Just Gotta Share...

The  word "love" is over-used in the following post.  I did NOT use a thesaurus! Consider yourself warned! Ha Ha!

Ok...I have to admit...I am a staff development/workshop geek. Do they have a support group for that? Blasphemy, you say?  I know, I know...we all dread the development days at the beginning of the school year, especially if we've been in the same district for years.  I agree...things get really repetitive. But, I love the curriculum workshops.  Sorry.  I like getting a new scope and sequence; I like getting new ideas (that I sometimes forget the following day...but hey); and I absolutely love ordering books mentioned during a workshop from Amazon on my phone. Yes, I am indeed a geek. And since I'm blogging this year, I'm passing on some info to you!

As many of you know, my new position involves working with teachers and students in grades 3, 4, and 5.  So, for the first time ever, I went to a workshop to hear 3rd grade ideas. It was a two day event that dealt with bridging the gap some students show when they move from a non-testing grade to a testing grade. (In Texas, students take the state test for the first time in 3rd grade.)

Well...I loved this workshop primarily because we received two FREE professional books.  Yes. Too. Cool.  I love free anything or peppermints on the table! So imagine the JOY of getting an actual BOOK!!! Two of them!!!  My Geekdar was off the charts!  I just have to share the best one!

It is called Independent Reading:  Inside the Box by Lisa Donohue.  Here is a pic of the cover:

I love this book because it combines skills lessons with fiction and non-fiction ideas with higher level thinking with station ideas with the independent reading part of balanced literacy! Get. Out. Of. Town.  Awesomeness!!!!!  Here is just one picture of the many ideas shown in the book:

The really cool thing about this is that I can use the ideas to create my two favorite things...anchor charts and foldables!! (If there was an Olympic medal in those areas I would sooooo win  gold!)  Part of our "activity" during the workshop was to show other teachers our interpretation of different sections of the book.  I created examples of an anchor chart I might create based on visualization ideas from the book.  I created two.

Fiction

Non-fiction

In the first one, I love that students learn visualizing is not just a "picture" in their head...we use all five senses to understand characters and events! Great chart for shared reading! The second one encourages students to draw a picture of what is being studied and label it.  My sticky notes are ideas of different ways I could use this chart!  I would draw a diagram ahead of time and prompt students to help me label as we read!

Students can use these ideas to then respond to text during independent reading! I just love it!  This book can be ordered from www.qepbooks.com.  I don't know if it's available on any other site...this address is on a sticker on the back of the book.  I just know it's perfect for those looking for new ideas for anchor charts and text response.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along! --Arthur C. Clarke

Always,

Can We Persuade You...?

Whew!! Today has been a cray-zay kinda day!  But I feel like my quarters got a lot accomplished!  Let's face it...it is soooooo tempting, with 20 days of school left...to just start packing up and call it a year.  And there are so many housekeeping things that need to be done to wrap up the year "administratively" that I can hardly breathe!  But, I've found out over the years, that if quarters think we are not learning new things anymore, they open up a can of Crazy and everyone takes a sip!!!

I have definitely tried to keep things interesting.  It doesn't always work.  We have made a lot of foldables and they have really enjoyed it.  But I have also had to do DRA testing (MOST of my class!!!).  It is so not fun...for me OR them!!

Today, we continued working on our persuasive essay.  We are completing one as a class first.  (Partly because I need to model and partly because, well, I need to keep them busy for the next few days.  So...yes...I'm dragging it out...)  Earlier this week, we decided to write a class persuasive essay about saving animal habitats.  We then brainstormed, using a circle map, of different animals and their habitats. 

After the brainstorm, we chose a habitat that had many of the animals that we named.  My PM class chose "oceans".  I saw an idea very similar to this on a blog or Pinterest or whatever!! Sorry I can't remember! But I adapted it to the skills that my quarters need to learn.  Anyhoo...the following day, we created a "flow chart" for expository/persuasive writing.  What I love about this is that it is EXACTLY what we used for main idea/details!!! (One of those "why didn't I do this sooner" moments!!)  My quarters immediately connected reading to writing!  I might have them create a table when they do their own essays...need to think it out...

With the above, we are just creating a planning/idea kind of page.  I'm sure it could have been done better, but it was an "on the fly" moment, so I just kinda went with it!  The main idea box is used as our introduction.  The detail boxes are used for our "whys" or "explanations".  Since we are doing this as a class, for now, quarters copied the charts into their writing journals.

They did really well, so I can only hope they carry this idea all the way when they write their own essays next week.  Tomorrow we will begin to compose our sloppy copy.

These last few weeks, I have decided to revert back to something I did with my quarters last year.  I ask them questions from the game/book Would You Rather? by Doug Fields.  (I actually found the card game at Target last year...the questions in the game are much more suited for 4th graders than those in the book.)  Here is an example:

I love these questions because they are thought-provoking and the quarters think they are gross, cool, fun, etc.  They HAVE to choose an option and write a paragraph about why they made the choice they did! (expository...persuasive...so many possibilities!) Then they share with the class, if they wish.

I didn't do this with my current class for most of this year because, quite frankly, I had to focus more on the stages of writing and on grammar than I did last year.  Last year was a "non-ESL" group, so language wasn't necessarily an issue.  My goal was to get my quarters in that group to enjoy writing and to write more.   But my current group is enjoying it so much, that I may have to work it in next year...somehow.  I equate it to journal writing when it comes to time spent.

I'm very excited for next year.  Today, "next year's" 3rd/4th grade LA teams (those currently at my school) met to come up with a common vocabulary plan.  We've focused, mainly, on stem question vocab and TEKS vocab.  It's obvious, to us at least, that many of our students don't hang on to that kind of vocabulary the way they should.  It really hit us this year with the new STAAR test.  So, if we collaborate across grade-levels, maybe we can improve the test taking vocabulary of our students so that they don't get caught up in misunderstanding the questions before they even have a chance to answer!!  (It wasn't suggested last year because no one really knew what to expect with the new test.)

Anyway, we hope it starts a cross-grade level discussion and that the thread that begins with 3rd and 4th can be carried from 3rd to 2nd, from 4th to 5th, etc. until our whole campus is involved.  We just have to be willing to work, listen, and plan with those that aren't part of our own teams.  Once we get a solid set of vocab in place, we should be able to take it to others.  It was a lot of fun talking with 3rd, and hearing the things that they are concerned about, what they teach, and how they teach it, in a relaxed and truly cooperative way.  I  had no idea how much they have to teach in order to get their 3rdies ready for their own test, much less ready for 4th grade!

Well, it's time to watch a little comedy on TV!

These quotes should go on a wall in our teacher's lounge...I'm just sayin'...

"Coming together is a beginning.  Keeping together is progress.  Working together is success."--Henry Ford

"Individually, we are one drop.  Together, we are an ocean."--Ryunosuke Satoro

Always,

Yipee Yoo Hoo!!

What a great day! My quarters were so relaxed today!!  It was our last "fun day" for a couple of weeks.  Monday we go back to our regular schedule (minus the test prep...Yipee Yoo Hoo!!)  But, for the day, I let them have some free time.  Not all of them, mind you...I had a few that still had work to finish!!  ::shrugging shoulders::

One of the things they did was use my normal teaching materials to play school.  I LOVE watching them do this!  I was so surprised!  A couple of them used an old chart tablet to make some anchor charts!!!  (They got it...they really got it!!)  I just HAD to take some pictures!

The little things are soooo cool!  Another one of my students copied poem information from her poetry folder.

One thing I found interesting.  Some of my girls were writing names on the board for talking. (Yes, I know...they have obviously remembered that talking results in a warning by putting your name on the board...)  My girl is an ELL.  I was stunned when I saw what she wrote:

Hmmmm....do you see what I see?  What she meant was "people in trouble" ( I do NOT write that on the board...hahaha!!).  But, what she thought and heard was "people introuble".  Wow.  Just...wow.  I never realized, though I should have, that ELLs sometimes hear things in a much different way!  She's a fourth grader, so seeing this took me by surprise!  It's common with primary kiddos.  This will definitely be on my mind when I reflect and plan for next year!

On another note, we received an email from our district on information that was released by TEA.  We will get raw scores at the end of May.  I don't understand exactly how we will read them...I think we will only find out how many questions there were and how many each student missed.  Now, the good thing is that I will see what I need to work on to be a better teacher.  Here's the kicker...we won't get the final scores until January of 2013!!! Yes, you read that right...2013!!  These kids will be half way through their 5th grade year!!!  Geezy sneezy!!

I do have one concern that I'm not sure how to address.  My homeroom has 13 ELLs.  My partner's homeroom has 14.  Now, she is a former bilingual teacher, so of course her class is listed as ESL.  I teach language arts, I am certified to teach ESL, but on my roster, my class isn't listed as ESL (the individual students are, though).  Make sense?? (nah, not to me either.)  Anyhoo...when those scores come back and, IF they are not too hot, anyone looking at my scores will think I have a standard classroom that didn't do as well as the others.  What should I do about that?  It never bothered me not to have my roster listed as ESL because I knew, my team knew, and admin knew that my kids were ELL.  But, when I think about future job opportunities, I wonder how this will affect me.  Selfish, I know. Not extremely important in the scheme of things...I'm not planning on moving any time soon.  Just curious...

Have a fabulous weekend!! 

"You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it."--Oprah Winfrey

That's ME!!!!

Always,

A Little Persuasion...

I am so glad this week is over!  STAAR Writing is done, my ankle is healing, and my quarters will return ready to work on Monday!  (positive thoughts, positive thoughts...)  I did have a couple of very flattering job opportunities the last couple of days and it really ended my week well.  But I'm still in the prime of my "I love the classroom" attitude and right now, it's the best choice for me, I think.

Yesterday, my quarters started their Persuasion Lapbooks.  They created the foldables, glued them into their lapbooks, and labeled them.  Fridays usually means our weekly assessments.  However, we had too much testing this week and no new material, so our Friday routine changed.

Today, we read a couple of persuasive texts.  One came with our reading series and the other was Click, Clack, Moo:   Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin.  (Experience in primary always comes in handy!!)  We completed several anchor charts and the quarters were really into it!  My partner said that, yesterday, quarters were talking about persuasion during Math! Woohoo!!

Our first anchor chart covered the text purpose and text features.  Quarters copied this information into their lapbooks.

We then talked and charted persuasive text organization.

They also put words that indicate persuasive text into their lapbooks.  As we read Click, Clack, Moo, we listed sentences that indicated where theses words would be appropriate on sticky notes.

Finally, they charted possible STAAR Reading Question Stems and put those into the lapbooks.

 It's nice to tie in things like author's purpose and main idea into stems about a persuasive essay.

I plan to grade their lapbooks this weekend and I will try to post pics of those books.  We sure had fun!  I'll try anything to help them commit new knowledge to memory!

In the spirit of trying new things, and not succeeding a possibility, I end with another Potter quote (you're surprised I'm sure!):

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.” --JK Rowling

So, I gotta try...Rowling said so...

A Day Like Any Other...

 You know, today was a good day.  Nothing special happened.  My quarters didn't do poorly on our STAAR prep activities. (They didn't exactly do well, either.)  But it was a drama-less day and that's saying something...

Yesterday, we reviewed "CUPS" for the editing part of writing.  Today, we reviewed "ARMS"--add, remove, move, or substitute-- for the revising portion of writing.  Here is our anchor chart:

 
Not very "decorative", I know...but I'm way past cute at this point.  I only have  2 more school days to remind my students of all of the things they have learned (but, in some cases, forgot).  All of a sudden, I feel like I haven't done enough to prepare them!! I hate the "testing feeling".

Oh...yeah...our state assessment for writing is next Tuesday, which is technically 3 school days away,  bbuuuutttttt...

I lose one day of review because my ESL quarters from both classes, (26 of them, to be exact) have to take the TELPAS Online Reading tomorrow for four hours.  Geez, Texas...test much???????

...I need to stop the rant before I get started...

As  I've blogged before, I am using some new game ideas to help my quarters review for STAAR writing.  One of the games I taught them is called "Kaboom!"  It is a game created by MiMi at 5th Grade Rocks, 5th Grade Rules .  I downloaded it for free from her TPT store.  I actually downloaded "Kaboom--Oceanography".  I don't teach Science but I thought the game was fantabulous!  So, I changed the questions and changed it to "Kaboom--Writing".  With MiMi's encouragement, I have downloaded my writing version of her "Kaboom" on to my Free Printables page if you are interested!

On Friday, we are going to have "The Writing Games".  I've called them that, in honor of The Hunger Games. Don't worry, they aren't writing to the death.  But I will incorporate things, such as "May the odds be ever in your favor!"  I have not read the book to my quarters, but plan to at the end of the year.  However, I have no doubt that many of them will see the movie this weekend.  I love the book and I wish I had time to read it to them before the movie,  but alas...  I hope to have more info and pics this weekend.

In the spirit of the games, I will stray from Potter...

“Scores only matter if they’re very good, no one pays much attention to the bad or mediocre ones.”
-Portia, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Well, that's not entirely true...


 
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A Little Love and A Spin Class...

 I can't believe it's only Tuesday!  It really seems like a Thursday...in my mind, anyway.

I have been blessed with a "One Lovely Blog Award" by an amazing new blogger, Jillian at Jillian's Just Tinkerin' Around .  (Isn't that a neat blog name??)

 

 I feel extremely honored and I have enjoyed the linky parties that have joined us bloggers together!  I'm approaching one month of blogging and I feel like I've been doing it for months!  It's so much fun!

As a recipient of this award, it is my duty to pass it on to my fellow bloggers.  Here are the rules:

1.  Link back to the blogger who awarded it....(check)
2.  Follow the blogger who sent it to you...(check, check)
3.  Pass the award on to 15 other lovely bloggers...(uhhhhh....here we go!)

I have found and followed so many awesome blogs, but I have several that I check daily.  I know that many of them have already received this award, but I feel like I can't skip over them...they have inspired me in both my teaching and blogging!  So here they are, in no particular order:

1.   Misty at Think, Wonder, Teach  (I absolutely love her book recommendations!)
2.  MiMi at 5th Grade Rocks, 5th Grade Rules!  (Her games are fantastic!)
3.  Lindsay at My Life as a 5th Grade Teacher  (Her blog inspired me to start!)
4.  Kim at Finding JOY in 6th Grade (She went crazy for Pi!)
5.  Elizabeth at Fun in Room 4B (I totally get her "tip-toeing" into Balanced Literacy!)
6.  Heather at Beg, Borrow, and Teach (Her freebies have me hooked!)
7.  Miss Rowley at Peace, Love, and No. 2 Pencils (She's a newbie with promise!)
8.  Jessica at Dandelions and Dragonflies (I'm so waiting for a grading fairy at my house, too!)
9.  Heather at Heather's Heart (She helps me remember my first grade roots!)
10.  Rayann and Tiffany at The Lemonade Stand (Their ideas are inspirational!)
11.  Sally at     The Fearless 5th Grade Teacher  (The "Fearless" Declutterer!)
12.  Amy at The Resource(ful) Room  (Mad respect!)
13.  Kaitlin at Beyond Teaching  (Creativity is key here!)
14.  Terri at The Creative Apple  (Love, love, love the privilege jar!)
15.  Thoughts of a Third Grade Teacher  (Excellent resources!)

So, there it is.  Check out these websites...you won't regret it!!

Ok...the spin class...

All of you "exercise junkies" can go ahead and log out.  It's not that kind of spin class! Ha ha!  Oh, and political experts can log out as well!  I'm talking about the infamous "Spinners" students create every year!

Before spring break, my students taught me how to make them.  I wanted to incorporate them into a game somehow.  I was trying to brainstorm ideas, when my son enlightened me on how spinners are played. (Obviously, at my age, I'm out of the loop...my 19 year old son, however, remembers well!  Guess I know what he did during elementary school...)

Here are the "regular" rules:  Two students spin their homemade spinners.  The one that lasts the longest wins.  It's that simple.  (That's why I have confiscated 8,000 spinners from one quarter. And  I owe my quarters from last year an apology....I always accused them of making ALL of them during class...)

Anywho, today I had all of my quarters make one spinner.  My partner teacher and I combined both classes for 30 minutes so I wouldn't have to waste time doing this!  Shout out to Morvessa!  On Friday, we are going to play "The Writing Games".  Spinners are the prize!  After they compete, the winner of the game at the time gets to challenge another quarter to a spin-off!  The top spinner collector wins a big prize! My quarters took their spinners home to decorate them and make them more "spinable".  If they lose them or get them taken up by another teacher...too bad.  They are out of "The Writing Games".   Here they are practicing:

They seem extremely excited!  I hope that tying in something they love to do with writing games
on Friday, may boost their attention levels and retention!  (Hey, at this point, I'll try just about anything!!)

Before I leave, I want to share our editing review chart we did today.  When the quarters write their expository or narrative essays, one of their jobs is to edit.  We use "CUPS"...capitalization, usage, punctuation, and spelling.  It's extremely important that they use their CUPS on their sloppy copy.

I was really happy to hear them give me instances of what they should look for in their writing!  Good day, my friends, good day indeed...

I leave you with another quote...(yes, yes, there are 7 books...I have lots to quote!)

“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.” --JK Rowling

We just need to show the quarters how to use it!
Always,


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