Liebster Blog Award

Thank you Sabra from Teaching with a Touch of Twang for presenting me with the Leibster Blog Award.  It made my day!  

The award goes to blogs with less than 200 followers and here are the rules for the award:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Thank the blogger who gave it to you and link back to them.
3. Reveal your top 5 picks for the Liebster Blog Award and pass it on to them by leaving a comment on their blog.  

My nominations for this award are:

        

      

   

A Time to Share and Create

Simply Second Grade

Please go and check them out.  They have so much to share!

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On the Fourth and What I'm Pinning Wednesday!

Hi again!  Are you getting ready for the fireworks?  I hope you had a fabulous time today.  We had a blast at my cousin's house.  My boys played with her girls and even had the chance to go swimming.  I really hope they never outgrow their friendship.  Now we are home and relaxing.  Of course relaxing for me means wandering around Pinterest and blog reading.  I came across 2 linky parties that are right up my alley - and since they are both rather appropriate for TODAY I decided to go for it and share what I'm pinning and planning on doing in my classroom next year.

I'm linking up with Mrs. M's Blog to share 4 things that I'm planning on doing next year that I've never tried before, and I'm also linking up with Laura from Kinder Kraziness to share some of the things that I've pinned lately.  See, they go together - at least in my eyes. =)

Okay, first thing I'm planning on doing next year is use this book to add to my "bag of tricks" to help kids understand their Reading.  I love Graphic Organizers and when Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6 mentioned it, I had to put it in my Amazon shopping cart.  It's on it's way to me as I type (well, it might be sitting in a warehouse because it is a holiday - but I'm hoping that it is on it's way.)

I've also heard many good things about this book and I'm interested in implementing the 40 day challenge.  Once again, it's on it's way to me.  

I pinned this from Fabulous Fourth Grade and I would like to work on better ways to partner up students this next year for more meaningful learning.  

I would also like to work on more meaningful reflection from students about their day and the different lessons.  I'm thinking about creating something like this (even though I'm not really on Twitter - I'm one of those people that have an account but never use it.)  Maybe a Facebook status update thing instead at the end of the day.  This I pinned from Mrs. White's 5th Grade Class.

 

 I'm also very interested in starting up Calendar Math using Teaching in Room 6's design.  I've done Math 4 Today with my class in the past, and I really enjoyed the spiral type review.  Since leaving primary though, I have missed calendar time with my class.  I want to start it back up.  

Okay, so that's what I want to implement.  Here's what I found that was interesting on Pinterest and the original websites they linked back to.      

http://thefrugalgirls.com/teacher-discounts

Discounts are always good and some of these I'd never heard of before.  

http://orgteachingaddict.blogspot.com/2012/07/absent-students.html?showComment=1341348965768

I've always had so many kids that are absent.  I think this is an excellent plan to keep everything organized as to what they need to do to catch up.  

http://theinsandouts.co.nz/?attachment_id=2402

I thought this was a great way for students to remember what they think the most important rule of the classroom is.  

http://classroomcollective.tumblr.com/tagged/Around+the+class/page/3

Last year I put pictures from the year on a pocket chart, but I love the idea of making a timeline in the classroom to remember our year.  I just have to figure out where to put this...

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope these inspire you as well!

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Happy 4th and Student Helpers

Happy 4th of July everyone!


In a bit I'm heading with the family to visit more extended family.  We are going to bring white chocolate filled strawberries with a little blue sugar on the top.  I haven't made them yet, so I should get going on that soon...  Tonight we will be setting off our own little firework display for the boys.  It's the first time that we have bought fireworks and I'm a little nervous about how loud it will be.  We have an almost 8 month puppy who has already been going nuts with the booms from the early partiers.  I love the 4th of July!      


Anyhow...  
The real reason that I'm posting today is I've been thinking a lot about the beginning of school.  It is July you know and after a month of vacation I have started to be restless wanting to get back into the classroom to start setting it up for next year.  I know, I know - I need to relax during the summer and actually take time to smell the flowers, read a book, take a nap... I am doing that too, but I just LOVE to think about my classroom and my future class.  


These pictures have been on one of my pages and I was thinking that maybe I should share what I do with my Student Helpers.  Over the years I have tried different things, and this is what I've found works best for me. 

I use a small skinny pocket chart to hold our weekly helpers.  Every Monday morning, rain or shine, we choose helpers.  Each student gets to choose their job for the week.  I don't go in number order to ask the students, it's a random 2 person draw.  The only person that can't choose is the STAR of the week (and for that I go by birthday order).  Some jobs have more responsibility than others, but it's all okay.  All students have a job they are responsible for - I tell them that it is their classroom and we all have to work together to have it function.  They believe me and do their jobs.  I really believe that if a student can be responsible for a job in the classroom, then they should do it.  Not only does it alleviate my own to do list, but they love to help out.  On Friday afternoons a helper takes down all the dicuts and puts them in a random pile for me to be ready for the next week.  


I used to write the student names on the dicuts, but with all the fluidity in my classroom I think numbers work better.  I have a class list with their numbers directly next to the chart - I hope that helps any substitutes that have to come into my classroom.  It also helps me the first couple of weeks of school when I'm still learning the alphabetical order of my class.    

Above you can see my jobs close up.  Here's what they do. 

STAR - it's a special honor to be the star.  I tell them that Monday morning who it is for the week.  I used to send home the poster the Friday before, but then I realized that I am so much more relaxed if I just do it that same day.  It's a big announcement and I don't have to worry about forgetting to send it home Friday afternoon with everything else that Friday entails.  The duties of the STAR are to share their All About Me poster (which can be anytime during the week), sit in the rocking chair during silent reading, turn the lights on and off, be the line leader, and answer the phone if it rings "Student speaking..."  It's a big job but someone has to do it!

Helpers and Papers - I have 4 of each.  Helpers usually help with all the odd jobs, being a messenger, taking people to the office. Papers pass out all the worksheets and the workbooks.

Librarian - Usually I have 2 kids that keep the library nice and neat but I'm not opposed to more wanting to help out.

Clean Up - So many kids want this job because they get to use the mini vac that is in my classroom.  What did I do before my dust buster?  I don't know, but am thankful for Scholastic's Bonus Points!  I also have a bunch of little brooms and dust pans that these students get to use.  The rest of the class still has to clean up, but these kids get the special tools.

Lunch Count - I used to do lunch sticks that the kids moved every morning.  I got tired of all the time it took for the kids to go through the line to move their sticks/clothespin/magnet.  Instead we come straight in, get out our homework, and I tell them it's time for the most important question of the day.  "Who's buying lunch?"  They always giggle and raise their hands... those Lunch Count kids do a quick count and tell me the number.  They make sure that all their numbers match each other.  It makes it go fast. 

Doors - Pretty simple, it's doors.  These kids keep the classroom open when we walk on through, and they also keep the cafeteria door open when we go through it. 

Basket Holders - My school has a lunch basket that the kids put their lunch boxes in in the morning.  It's just a laundry basket.  As we line up for lunch the kids grab out their lunch boxes, and the basket holders carry the empty basket up to the cafeteria.  After lunch the kids go directly to the blacktop, and drop their now empty lunch boxes into our room laundry basket.  The basket holders bring the tub back to place in front of the classroom.  

Thanks for stopping by to learn about what I do for my Student Helpers.  I would love to hear about how you tackle this in your classroom.  Have a great 4th! 

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Mystery Hero

I know this picture has been floating around on Pinterest for a while now, and it's been on my Classroom Management page too... but I wanted to give it the importance that it deserved - front and center.  This activity was simple, but it really helped my students to feel cared about.  They grew in responsibility from it.  I would watch them linger in front of their name, and show it to their friends who might have been absent the day they had been chosen.

How it works in my classroom:
Basically I have all the student numbers on ball pit balls in a big reusable grocery bag.  I chose to use student numbers so I can reuse them from year to year.  In the morning I grab out a ball, look at the number, and watch that person throughout the day.  I don't share who the person is with the kids.  I don't tell them boy or girl, odd number or even.  It's a secret all day long.  I tell the class if the Mystery Hero is doing a great job, or if the person needs to step it up a notch.  They have no clue who I'm talking about, so they all usually try their best.  

At the end of the day if the Mystery Hero did a great job overall I share the person's name, and the entire class gets a prize of some type.  Either a piece of candy, a class ticket, or a sticker.  Something small that still makes an impact.  The entire class is thankful for that person, and that person literally is beaming for being the hero of the day.  I put up their name on the cabinet door, to remind themselves and the class that they did a great job.  If the person did not do a good job, then I don't tell the class who the person is, though I do talk with that one individual and let them know they could have done better.  If a student is chosen more than once, of course their name is already on the wall, but they still have the opportunity of winning the class a prize.  

Sometimes it's the simplest things that make the biggest impact.

Sincerely,

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I'm So Honored!!

Wow!  2 awards in a day!  I'm feeling rather special.  =)

Mrs. Lynes at Simply Second Grade nominated me for The Versatile Blogger and the One Lovely Blog Award! Head over to her link and check her out!

Here are the rules....

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you.

2. Include a link to their site.

3. Include the award image in your post.

4. Give 7 random facts about yourself

5. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award.

6. When nominating, include a link to their site.

7. Let other bloggers know they've been nominated.

And the rules....

1. Follow the person that gave you the award.

2. Link back to the person that gave you the award.

3. Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers.

7 random facts about me....

1. I love the beach but not sand.

2. I have to have roasted vegetables every day lately.

3. I love to read, and usually just download books onto my Kindle.

4. I have a thing for Nothing Bundt Cakes - 

White Chocolate Raspberry is my favorite.

5. I haven't colored my hair since college (15 years ago).

6. I had my oldest son 3 years to the day after my first date with my husband.

7. I don't like coffee.

I'm nominating:

(click the links to check them out)

Turtley Loving Teaching

An Uncommon to the Core Teacher

Ins and Outs of 4th & 5th

Fancy Free in Fourth

Life As A Teacher

Polka Dots and Teaching Tots

Tales of a Fourth Grade Teacher

Just Julie Teaching Third Graders

Fantastically Fresh and Fun Fourth Grade Ideas

Teacher on the Loose!

Teaching with Moxie

A Chocoholic Teacher

From Blood to Books

Room 4 Imagination

T is for Teaching

Please go check out their blogs... They are already inspiring me!

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Monday Made It - Hall Pass and Writing Journals

I am linking up once again with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics with my newest creation.  I was inspired to make a "Hall Pass/Where are you going?" thing-a-mi-gig from a pin that I saw.  I don't know if that's a word, but I use it all the time, and spell check didn't catch it.  Here's how it turned out...  

Basically I used the Dollar Store Pizza Pan and added ribbon and wood letters to define the different places my students travel during the day when they aren't with me.  
C= Classroom
B= Bathroom
O= Office (hurt and in trouble kids)
M= Music (That section is larger since I've had up to 11 kids go at a time.)


I created magnets using glass pebbles.  The glass pebbles are just attached to the button type magnets by hot glue.  I loved my glue gun with this project.  To write on the magnets I used a white out fine tip correction pen.  My wonderful husband sprayed the magnets with sealant when it was all dry.  I have ribbon to hang it, though I'm not exactly sure if I will hang it or use a cook book holder to have it propped up when it gets into the classroom.  


Last year after my hall pass disappeared (again) I started using the clothespins for students to take with them to the bathroom.  They didn't come back grimy and gross, which I thought was a winner in itself.  If one of them got lost it wasn't a big deal to just get out another clothespin.  We did have to have a talk as to where to place the clothespin when they were heading out of the classroom (not on the front hem of their shirts), but overall it worked and I'm doing it again.      


Here's another project that I tackled.

My students last year loved having whole class journals to write in.  They had a chance to write in them during Work on Writing, and a chance to read them during Read to Self.  I made up a new set of 8.  At the moment they are pretty plain covers, but once a student writes in it they have the option of choosing a sticker from my collection to place on the front cover.  The stickers show me how many kids have tackled each topic.  


*Updated to add the document in case you are interested in using it.  The font is just Comic Sans and it's only one page - all I did was just change out the topic each time when I went to print.  Topics are: Family Vacation, Dream You Had, Hobby, Favorite Memory, Your Weekend, Wish, Favorite Sport, and Pets.  I also heard that people wanted to see a close up of them, so here you go.

Last thing... 

Have you seen these before?  Michael's (local craft store) had these adhesive wood letters for sale for $1.99.  I bought 5 sets of them since they were so cheap.  I used them on the above project (though I did attach them with hot glue since the adhesive didn't work great on metal).  As I open up the packages, I'm popping the extras into one of the pencil boxes that I picked up the other day.  Instant letters for spelling practice.   

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Daily 5 - Book Study, My Class, and Currently

The entire month of June I have been anxiously awaiting the beginnings of the book study about Daily 5 and CAFE.  Today, the day finally arrived.  Last year I started Daily 5 in November in my classroom.  I had never heard about it before that point, and I rushed to download the Kindle version.  I stayed up super late that same night reading (it was the weekend, I believe I finished at 3am), and realized that I really should have gone out to buy the "real" paperback book since I wanted to make notes and highlight.  It was exactly what I needed in my classroom, as my dream was to be able to work more directly with individual students that really needed help, in addition to those students that need the extra challenges.  I hurried to digest it all and put it into practice that next week of school.

What I had to learn (so I didn't go crazy):

*I had to realize that it is a structure that I could alter.  

*I had to know that my curriculum did work in this new structure.

*I had to be able to trust my students.

After I realized all that stuff about myself and my classroom, I got working to create an environment that had room for a carpet area and a CAFE board (which turned into both a CAFE board and a VOICES board).  Now, I've never really had my 4th graders sit on the floor before for whole class lessons.  Turns out they loved it (as long as they had enough leg room). This coming year my reading library and carpet area will be on the far side of the classroom, as far from the door as possible.  I'm excited about the new arrangement.

For my CAFE board, I turned it around a bit to create a FACE board instead.  Same letters, but I changed it to being "The FACE of a Reader".  I used student pictures as a border around the board.  Since I started in November, and they aren't completely new readers (like primary), I started with all the different strategies that were accessible to them.  Something I'm changing for this coming year is reviewing each strategy at a time and sticking them up as I introduce them.  (Basically I cut the dicuts off my posters and they are in a stack ready to go when school starts up again.)  As you can see in the picture, I used the pink post it notes to highlight the different strategies that our OCR focused on in the text.  These changed on a weekly basis.  

Creating a schedule was probably the most frustrating of it all.  I learned that it was okay to split up the time of Daily 5 to be both before lunch and after.  I learned it was okay to keep doing some of the lessons together whole class, and that I didn't have to try to fit in 5 different times in a day.  I tried doing small groups with our extra long stories and it just didn't work - there was no time for me to meet with everyone in a single day unless we were working together.  Now I use the choice time to meet with small groups and work on intervention.  I think that was how it was meant to be.

Basically how it ended up in my classroom was 4 sections of time, 2 of which I was telling them what they needed to do, and 2 of their choice.  Things changed by the day - Mondays we have a short day, so we didn't have time to do as much as the other days.

Here's a breakdown of what we basically did with our time schedule:

ELA starts at 11:00 (Math was before, S.S. and Science were after)

11:00-11:10 Focus Lesson #1 - Spelling/Vocabulary/Comprehension strategy (sometimes using their OCR workbooks)

11:10-11:40 Whole Class story lesson

Mondays - Preview and Vocabulary

Tuesday - Read and Discuss

Wednesdays - Read to Someone and Listen to Reading (mp3 players)

Thursday - Review story

Fridays - Test time

11:40-11:50 Focus Lesson #2 - Writing skill/another comprehension - I started my VOICES writing board since it went in the same type of format as Daily 5.

11:50-12:15 Choice #1 

12:15-12:55 Lunch

12:55-1:05 Class Read Aloud - this was instead of Focus Lesson #3

1:05-1:30 Read to Self - Whole Class

1:30-1:40 Focus Lesson #4 - an area the class was struggling with, and a quick debrief about what they learned

1:40-2:00/2:10 - Choice #2

So basically their choices were:

*Work on Writing (We started their writing in class assignment on Mondays, and had to be done with it by Friday.)  After they were done with it they had options of other things they wanted to work on.

*Word Work - Scrabble, Code Words, adding Boggle this next year, Mad Libs - I pulled out different choices for the week.

*Finishing up Story maps, Reading logs, AR tests

*Read to Self (they could do more)

*Read to Someone - I saved that for Wednesday's story and Friday's Read to Self time

*Listen to Reading/Computer Time (mp3 players, Internet4Classrooms)

What I worked with them on:

*Reading one on one

*Comprehension questions

*Specific standards/focus intervention

*Now!board with a small group

*Checking in with their books

*Assessment

I started this post because I don't know if anyone else is interested in starting Daily 5 in their classroom next year.  There are many resources online as well to help us all out.  If you do a search for it on Pinterest, so many options come up too.  If you want to hop on over to the blog (www.wereadweblogweteach.com) to join in on the discussion, I hope you also will get something out of it.  

   

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Farley is doing a linky party for Currently July, so here's mine:

1.  I love Karen Kingsbury - I really love ALL HER BOOKS!  I couldn't pick just one.  She is an inspirational author, and loves the Lord.  I wish I could meet her one day.
2.  Lately, because it's summer and I really wanted a refresher before school starts up I chose the Daily 5/CAFE books.  Even though I tweak it for my own classroom, I still enjoy rereading them.  

There are rules to follow if you choose to do this link up.  Last time was my first, and I shouldn't have done it so late at night holding my snoring toddler.  No excuses though, I didn't follow the rules.  =/  I hope you all forgive me, and I'm trying to do better this time around.  

Happy Reading!

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