Five for Friday... 05/17/13

Finally found some time to link up with Doodle Bugs...

Thanks to Instagram I can easily grab my weeks pics now and share with you all.

Kind of sad I will have to take this alphabet down next week. It is so pretty.

Still getting used to the pumpkin color, but I am loving my "Teacher" wall.

Even though I only have 4 days left I am still meeting with my Math RTI group. 

We needed some extra patterns practice so I pulled out some old calendar numbers and "recycled" them for this same group.

I wanted more than just pictures so I went ahead and also created a Vine account for my blog. If you don't know what Vine is, it is just like Insta but for short videos, played loop. If you are on Vine come find me. If you are not... what are you waiting for? :P

Have a fab weekend!

Belated May Currenty

Better late than never...

I am now off to the zoo with Kinder and 1st grade. Wish me luck. :) 

Hoping you have a great day.

Insta, Instagram in the Classroom.

Happy May Day!

I don't know if you remember but way back in Nov 2012 I shared with you that I had fallen in love with my personal Instagram account and I created a Teacher account. I love taking pictures and it is a great way to share daily happenings through images. If you are interested on checking out MY classroom news click on the button below to follow.

So I slacked on my pic posting, but you didn't know that all you had to do to get me to start posting again is to say the word 

Insta Linky Party

FYI, I always call Instagram, Insta. :)

So here are the details...

 

Here were some of my #TeacherTalkTuesday snaps.

My Math small group support basket.

My chevron alphabet & AlphaFriends wall

Some very messy workstations/ centers.

And this week guess who is visiting my classroom?

I am now looking at using Vine & SnapChat with my students as well. If I ever get it to work I will deff be back to share. Until then have a great day!

Smart Apps for Kids

For those of you looking for app's, to use in the classroom. And by look for I mean want inexpensive/ FREE app's...

Recently our Technology Integration Specialist introduced me to this wonderful website...

Smart App's for Kids

This website offers several of those same great apps you love for free or at a discounted price. They change daily, or frequently so you can easily get many great apps for FREE.

Next year our district is adopting the McGraw Hill so today we took advantage and downloaded these series aligned apps.

The catch is that the apps change daily and they don't stay free for long. Most of the time for just a day. However, if you took 5 minutes each day to check the site I have no doubt you will have a TON of free great apps to aid in your classroom instruction.

While poking around I also found a great geo board app to use during math.

Here is a write up of the 3 apps I downloaded.

No iPad, iTouch, or iPhone? No worries, these can be downloaded to your computers too. So stop stalling and go check out...

Map it Out Monday: March 18, 2013

Hi everyone. After a week off of work and much longer from blogging, I am trying to come back from the grave. I am going to start small. Today is a quick one.

Kinder Plan for week of 03/18/13

Theme: St. Patrick's day; Spring/ Plants
Phonemic Awareness skill: Rhyming

Phonics: Letter of the week: Ee (Alphafriend Edna Elephant)

Sight/ HFW word: play, we

Vocab: bloom, sprout, fresh

 Comprehension skill: Making Inferences

1st grade plans for week of 03/18/13

Theme: St. Patrick's day; Spring/ Plants
Phonemic Awareness skill: Delete Phonemes

Phonics: sounds for y (as in my)

Sight/ HFW word: around, else, ever, talk, though

Word families: -y

 Comprehension skill: Making inferences

2nd and 3rd grade Writing for week of 03/18/13
Topics covered: Expository/ How To

Have a great day everyone!

Teacher in need... burned classroom.

As you all may have noticed that I have been absent. I am very sorry. It's been super busy AND I have to confess I have had a bit of writers block. Though I hope to remedy this soon. 

However, when a colleague contacted me the other day about a teacher in need I thought the LEAST I could do was to share with you. So without further ado please meet...

Meet Kayla, aka The High-Tech Teacher from Slick Tricks for Grade Six. Kayla taught her 6th graders in a portable that not only burned but had extensive smoke and water damaged. 

 Take a peek.

Needless to say she lost everything and to make matters worse her school was only able to give her $250.00 to replace everything she lost. :(

The good news is that her school (students as well as fellow teachers) & PTA  rallied around her and were able to help her out some. 

The bad news is that she still needs help rebuilding her classroom library. However, Kayla has not lost hope. She has written a Donors Choose project to help her buy new classroom books for her students. Click on the image below to go to her projects page.

Remember that with Donor's Choose no amount is too small. PLUS if you donate before Monday and use the code INSPIRE, Donors Choose will double your dollars. So let make this count. I am off to go donate myself.

Have a great day and week to come!

Map it Out Monday: February 04, 2013

Hi everyone. Today is a quick one.

Kinder Plan for week of 02/04/13

Theme: Transportation
Phonemic Awareness skill: Onset and rime, syllables and blending phonemes

Phonics: Letter of the week: Dd (Alphafriend Dudley Duck)

Sight/ HFW word: have, am

Vocab: transportation, vehicle

 Comprehension skill: Main Idea/ Detail

BTW, I just love all the books I am reading for my transportation theme. I take 2 to 3 weeks to get them all read. If you have time check out the ones for this week they are fab.

1st grade plans for week of 02/04/13

Theme: Groundhogs Day; Chinese New Year
Phonemic Awareness skill: Segment Phonemes

Phonics: Long o; Vowel patterns: oo (as in book) and compound words

Sight/ HFW word: afraid, any, follow, most, water

Word families: -ook, ood (just noticed a mistake in my plans.) :(

 Comprehension skill: Main Idea/ Details

No 2nd/ 3rd grade plans this week because most of them are off for somt practice state testing. So we are pretty much free writing with the few kids I do have in my group. Time to go teach the rest of the day.

Theme Reading: Transportation

While planning last week, I realized that I would be starting my transportation unit this week. I just LOVE this theme because there are SO many wonderful books avaliable for my kinder ELL kids. 

Naturally I wanted to share them with you all. That gave me the brilliant idea of doing a reoccurring theme post with all the books I just LOVE on the theme we are studying. 

Here goes.

We started this week with non other than

The Wheels on the Bus

There is this fabulous app that I let the kids play with after we read and sing. They just get a kick out of it no matter how many times they have read before. 

And the beloved Pigeon in Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.

I just adore Pigeon, and it gave us to do a direct draw of the Pigeon and a Bus.

Some days I have just a read aloud for our theme (Tuesday/ Thursday) and on those days we read,

I Stink! and I'm Dirty by

The kids just adore these, they are so funny. Just noticed they have a new one I'm Fast about trains I will have to look that one up next time I am in the book store.

So from there I venture into Crew's territory.

Donald Crews that is. This transportation books are just so fabulous.

Freight Train

Trucks

School Bus

Flying

Sail Away

 

With each book we do a Direct Draw and then label. I get them from this FABULOUS book,

Quick Draw: Transportation

Honestly this is my favorite part. :)

Some other books we read are,

Whose Vehicle is This? by Sharon Katz Cooper

 

Airport by Byron Barton

and Duck on a Bike by David Shannons

We also have an assorted number of non fiction books on Ambulances, Fire Trucks, Police Cars and Motorcycles as well as Tractors, Dump Trucks, Helicopters (my fav) and so much more!

Then we dive into Pete the Cat because he uses a mode of transportation in each one of this books too.

Pete the Cat Rocking in my School Shoes has a School bus.

Pete the Cat I love my White Shoes has a red car.

Pete the Cat and his 4 groovy Buttons has his skate board and an ice cream truck.

We also get to talk about how WALKING is also important and is a mode of transportation.

I honestly don't know how I get it all squeezed into 3 weeks, it really isn't enough.

Is there any other Transportation book you LOVE that I don't know about?

Wednesday Thank You...

I want to start with a big

to all the wonderful readers who wished me well today. For those of you that don't know I presented in front of all the ELL teachers in my district. I purposely didn't think about it too much because I didn't want to stress it.

A few of you were a bit curious as to what it was about. This year my districts ELL departments decided to take 3 PLC mornings and meet ALL together to do some professional development and work as ELL teams.

One of our focuses this year was using Descriptive feedback. My group created a kid friendly writing rubric to aid us in giving our kids productive and constructive descriptive feedback.

If you don't know, which I didn't, descriptive feedback is feedback given to students that prompts them to self-reflect in a way that improves their work. It is specific and gives them the steps to take in order to move forward in the writing process.
What it isn't: "You did great in class today." While this kind of feedback is motivational it does not tell the learner what they did properly or what they can do to make their work better.
What it is: "Wow I like the way you added a capital letter to your sentence. Now don't forget the punctuation at the end of the sentence."

I was asked by one of our ELL coaches to present to all the teachers how it went. What we created, how we did it, what worked and what didn't work. Below is an image of the rubric. It was created with Kinder Kids in mind but can be used for any beginning writer. PLUS, the though process behind it was that you could change the objectives out for any grade level.

Click on the image or this link to get your copy.

A freebie from me. ;)

I created a power point, which you can download and/or watch here.

Power Point version

PDF version

BTW, if you download the power point version the font will probably change, but you will get to see a video of me conferencing with a student.

Here is a little peek.

So you know, I think I spoke a little too quickly and my videos didn't play (don't you love technology?) but everyone said it was a great presentation.

I'll leave you with a video that made my day a little bit brighter.

Enjoy and have a great day.