When I Grow Up! {Giveaway}

When I was little the only thing I ever wanted to be was a teacher.  I'm sure many of you can relate.  You might have "taught" your dolls and stuffed animals… perhaps your younger siblings too.  I'm know my sister appreciated it (I'm being totally sarcastic). 

I knew about the teaching profession because my mom was a teacher… and my aunt… and my uncle… I understood what it would take to become a teacher, and the hard work involved after I got my first job.  Was I prepared?  To a certain extent, Yes!  Was it still a challenge, especially that first year?  Of course!  

This year my school implemented College Mondays.  Every Monday we wear our college spirit shirts - allowing students the opportunity to see all the different schools that are out there.  The point is for the kids to see different options, and to let them dream about their futures.  I wanted to take that idea and go further with my students.  I wanted to give them opportunities to dream about their future professions, but give them a realistic view of how it takes hard work to reach those professions.  

I have asked my different student parents to come in and talk about their jobs.  Over the years the students have learned about what it takes to be a fireman, work in an office setting, work at NASA, be a nurse, an EMT, a lab tech, etc.  I always ask the same questions to the parents - What do you do everyday?  How long did your training take?  What skills did you need to have?  Where did you go to school to learn your career? Why do you think this is a good career?  The kids get a good grasp of the hard work, but also why it's a fulfilling profession.  

So I upgraded the binder paper my students usually use and created this journal for students to fill in as they learn about different careers.  

 This journal contains 11 different careers.

 It also contains a student cover.

 Students will research the information (I do it together in class), and record their information into the journal.  A blank journal sheet is included for additional careers.  

I want kids to dream about their futures - just like we did.  I hope this Student Created Career Journal helps you in your classroom too!

Want to win it?  Just leave a comment below with your email address and I will send it to a lucky winner on December 26th.

Have a great day!     

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Motivation: 10 Minute Filler

I have this time during the day that I have a lot of kids gone from the classroom.  Some of them are still in pull out music, some of them are still in ELL pull out, some are still shopping in the Holiday Shop, then there are the random children that are at "emergency status" for the bathroom/nurse/office…  

This year I am all about having them make up words during that time.  It's a competition, a challenge, and they love working together in groups.  

I write up random words or a phrase onto the whiteboard… such as "Winter Wonderland" or "Sneaky Tiny Elf", "Silly Snowman", etc. and then announce it's Word Time!  They rush to grab binder paper (easier to count their words), and start making up words with the letters.  

Somedays it's only 10 minutes, somedays I can give them a full 20 minutes.  They love it though!   

These were a brainstorm for Winter Wonderland.

Just sharing in case you need a little filler during these crazy busy hectic days!  Linking up with Joanne and her Saturday Spark Student Motivation linky.

   

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Gift Card Giveaway and Writing Workshop

A bunch of bloggers have joined up to say THANK YOU.  Thank you for following us.  Thank you for your support, encouragement, and friendship.  We have learned so much from you.  

So we wanted to say thank you with a Gift Card Giveaway.  

Simply fill in the rafflecopter below and you have a chance to win one of 3 prizes. 

(You can fill in the rafflecopter on any of our blogs, it's all the same one.) 

3 lucky winners will win a $25 gift card to TPT.  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now onto the OTHER important thing I want to share today.  I'm linking up with Jivey to share about my students learning to love to write.  Not everything we write is going to be fun - I tell them that.  I also tell them that it's something they have to do to get better.  There are 3 main things that are constant in my classroom during writing time.  I know I've mentioned them before, but I think it ties into motivating students since they are fun.

My VOICES board is a constant reminder of everything we have covered throughout the year.  All the reminders, all the things to remember.  At the beginning of the year we fill it out together - they are writing the same information in their binders as we go over it.  I think this brings in the kids that aren't extra motivated since we do fun activities to demonstrate the different areas - like those french fry cups for synonyms, or their heart maps, or their Author's Purpose Pies.

Rainbow Edit keeps my students accountable for checking their work.  Each paragraph should be a rainbow of colors when they are done checking.  I've been looking at this anchor chart for months - since last year - and I just realized that I wrote "word" in the cloud instead of "work".  Guess what I will be doing today at school?  Changing it of course!  I have a set of charts and student papers in my store if you are interested.

Every week there is something that the students have to write for me.  It's usually one big project that they work on all week, then the normal story summary, response, etc...  but when they are all done, they get options.  They love options!!  These Whole Class Writing Journals are still a big hit in my classroom.  I have 2 big baskets full of all 40 of my notebooks (Starter Set has 15, Set 2 has 25).  They choose one and share their experiences.  Something that I have added to them is adding a class list inside the front cover.  When they write in them they then highlight their name so it's easy for me to see who has tackled which prompt.  For silent reading, there are always a couple of kids that ask to read them.  I love that they are learning about their classmates.  

Hope you all have a great day!  Make sure to enter the rafflecopter and good luck!

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Time for Another Peek

To be honest, when I left school on Friday afternoon I didn't really know exactly what I would be doing on Monday morning.  I mean, it is the same routine - finally a normal routine this coming week.  But I was exhausted - the day after Halloween... I spent the entire day yawning, and then fell asleep on the couch when I got home.

Thankfully I always bring home my plan book (which was blank), and had my yearly pacing guide (which was full) - so at least I could figure out what comes next.  I am so excited about a "normal" week this coming week!  :)

Just being honest.  

Okay - time to link up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for another installment of A Peek at My Week.  

This next week we actually have a fiction story to read.  :)  I know!!!  I'm so excited.  Not that I don't love reading nonfiction stories, but it's just not the same as tearing a part a fiction one.

The story is about a visually impaired boy that decides to start a business making greeting cards.  At this moment in time I don't have a fun connection in mind - just going to focus on the basics - defining vocabulary, making vocabulary cards, adding to our interactive notebook, making connections to self/text/world, creating a story map, rereading out loud with a partner, and writing a summary.  

In math we will be starting to multiply double digits.  I mentioned it yesterday, but I made up a new task card set for my kiddos.  

I'm having a pin it to win it until later on tonight in case you are interested.  

Read Alouds this week will be continuing on with Lemonade War - so far we're up to chapter 4, and the kids are so into it.

Our Mentor Sentence book is The Wretched Stone.  

We will begin learning about the California Missions this next week.  It will take us forever, but we get to start our mission a day booklets.

Basically each day we learn facts about a specific mission.  There are 21 of them, so we will be doing this for weeks to come, ending up right before Christmas break when they choose their own mission to learn more about and to begin their research report.

November means we will also be working on our Traditions books.  These books are so special (at least to my class) because they turn into their Christmas presents for their parents.  This is another project that takes weeks to complete, since we tackle all the different holidays and write descriptive informational paragraphs for each tradition. 

A couple of years ago I tried to do this in a matter of days by having the kids publish them through Student Treasures.  It was a wonderful idea to give it as a hardbound gift, but it caused a lot of stress.  Instead, I now just use card stock and bind it in our own school library.

Well - that's it.  5 days until we have a 3 day weekend.  :)  

Hope you are having a great day!  

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Apostrophes, Quotations, and Commas - Oh MY!

We've been having fun in my classroom.  :)  A lot of wet glue has been used - so messy, so worth it!  

This week in our mentor sentences we have been focusing on apostrophes, quotations, and commas.  I use Jivey's Mentor Sentence unit... this week our story has been Stellaluna.  Such a good story!  

Anyhow, after we read it, picked it apart - I wanted them to have more practice working with the different punctuation before we created our own sentences.  So I used Where the Wild Things Learn's task card pack.

I ended up just printing the entire thing off and with the 24 of each type of card, I formed 6 groups.  

Imagine this - 6 groups, 12 cards total (no groups had matching cards).  The kids cut the cards a part, glued it onto large construction paper (they fit on two 12x18 sheets stapled). 

They first glued down the task cards to the paper, to make sure they all fit, then they moved onto the macaroni part - adding commas, quotation marks, and apostrophes.  

That was yesterday...  so today we took it to a new level.  Instead of groups, they had to find a sentence in our read aloud - Charlotte's Web that showed all 3 types of punctuation and had to write it in their mentor sentence notebook as a good example.  Then they showed me for approval, chose a colored sentence strip, and wrote it in marker - adding macaroni over the punctuation as they went. 

These are now hanging up on the wall as a display of great sentences - of course I forgot to take a picture of that.  

I hope you had a great day! Linking up with Holly's Tuesday Tried It!  

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Peek at my Week

Linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings again to share a peek of my week.  

We are moving into our business unit.  For an introduction to the unit, I have students brainstorm a business that they are familiar with, and then they have to come up with a product list.  Our story this week is a short one, so it allows us time to really talk about what makes up a business.

We are still tackling doing everything in multiplication (switching from addition and subtraction), so this week is working on patterns and function tables..  I've been adding task cards into my morning math meeting to make it an easy switch out at the end of the day and to give some variety.  

I made up this freebie to help my kids review - there are 14 function tables with

 different operations to get my kids thinking of finding the rules.

The past couple of weeks we have been so focused on science that social studies took a back seat. This week is all about learning about the CA Explorers - Cabrillo, Drake, and Vizcaino.  

I'm using my pack to have the kids compare/contrast the men, writing informational paragraphs, and drawing portraits.  

We have one more chapter about Ecosystems - so this week my students are bringing in an empty Kleenex box to paint their own ecosystem - that's the plan for Friday.  I'll talk more about that in a different post - basically it's this idea - picture is from last year.  

Our Mentor Sentences this week focus on commas, apostrophes, and quotation marks.  I'll be using Where the Wild Things Learn's Task Cards to help kids focus.  

Then I picked up a box of elbow macaroni, and the students will be creating their own examples on sentence strips - gluing on the macaroni.  I'm so excited about this project!  

Have a great week!  

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Tried it Tuesday: Native Californian Reports

What a day!

This week my class started working on our Native California Reports.  I love having the kids learn about the first people that lived in our state.  :)

For this unit I check out all the Native Californian books from the school library (we have about 20 of them).  After we do the initial lesson in our Social Studies book, I have the students choose what tribe they want to learn about and then they work in groups using the books.  While the informational books are great, they also take their research questions to the computer lab and practice looking up the information as well. (Yes, I do plan this lesson during the week it's my class' turn to head to the lab.)  

After the research questions are complete, they get to move onto the next step.  In past years I had my students create file folder projects using different things I found online.... this year is different though.  I'm having them use these Native American graphic organizers from Cutesy Clickables (Collaboration Cuties) to condense the top facts onto one page.  :)  These pages will go inside their interactive folders.

The research questions come from my California Native American Research And Writing Pack.  So after they have researched, written their graphic organizers, then it's time to start writing informational paragraphs about their tribe.  There are 10 prompts that I have them focus on, these come from the same  focus areas as the research information.  

The last written thing we tackle this week is plotting the area that the tribe lived on our maps of California.  Then it's just a matter of sharing it during presentations on Friday.  A very busy writing week.

What else do I do for this unit?  In our textbook it's only one lesson - I KNOW - ONE LESSON!!  It's a jam packed lesson, but I love having my students research and make connections...  remember 2 years ago when I tried weaving using yarn?  It worked but I had major headaches and nightmares...  last year the unit came and I said no way, never again...

Then I went to Michael's last Friday night for a couple of bottles of blue paint... and ended up leaving with a bunch of stuff... I picked up 4 kid's loom kits, and 4 extra bags of craft loops - making 32 pot holders (all using the teacher discount).  We are weaving like the pros in class.  It's one center that the kids are rotating through this week during research time/silent reading/workshop/morning work...  Monitoring 4 kids at a time is so much easier than 32 with weaving...   

Linking up with Holly and Tried it Tuesday.

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