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.

Map it out Monday: Jan 28, 2013

Hi everyone. Today is a quick one, just my plans for the week. Tomorrow morning I'll be presenting in front of all the ELL teachers in my district. Yikes! So I will be working all night! Not really, I have it all done. I'll just be fretting all night about what I will actually say. LOL Hope your Monday night is much calmer than mine. :)

Kinder Plan for week of 01/28/13

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

Phonics: Letter of the week: Qq (Alphafriend Queenie Queen)

Sight/ HFW word: for, look

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 01/28/13

Theme: Groundhogs Day; Poetry
Phonemic Awareness skill: Segment Phonemes

Phonics: Long o; Vowel patterns: oa (as in goat) and ow (as in snow)

Sight/ HFW word: again, both, gone, or, want

Word families: -ow

 Comprehension skill: Main Idea/ Details

2nd and 3rd grade Writing for week of 01/22/13
Topics covered: Nonfiction Research: Biographies and Countries

Off to go food shopping. Might take my mind off of tomorrow morning. :)

5 for Fri? 01/25/13

So I missed the 5 for Friday, but maybe 6 on Saturday? LOL, ah well I think I can still link up with Doodlebugs Teacher so here I go.

on Saturday.

1. Finally got around to playing with the panorama option on my iPhone today. Check out these shots of my room.

2. I am loving these new poetry books I found in my school library. My 1st graders are now studying poetry during writing and these are the perfect addition to our lessons.

3. I am excited about my new Read, write and stamp the room center. The kids will use the stashes, lips and 3D glasses to read the room. The mini clipboards are for writing the words they find. Then they will stamp the words on sheets found in the folder. It will make it's debut next week.

4. Finally got all my blends and digraphs up!

Finally...

5. I am so proud of my students MLK drawings. They are sooo cute.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the party over at Doodlebugs Teacher linky party.

Non Fiction Research Reports updated.

Almost 2 years ago, wow has it really been that long? Ok let me get back on track. Almost 2 years ago I posted about my 1st grade students animal research reports. I have not changed much, and it works really well for my kids. 

However, I am now also teaching writing to a group of 2nd and 3rd grade students and I can't bring myself to do another round of animal research reports. Especially since these kids have done them for the past 2 to 3 years already. 

Soooooooo I made an executive decision. I decided to give my kids the option to do either research on a country or a biography. I am so glad I did because I have learned so much about how I want to do this next year. LOL

I was so excited when I saw that Pebble Go has a Biographies section. Only wish they had a section about countries too.

Like my students animal research reports I had to create a graphic organizer for my kids. However I didn't want it to look so little kid-ish. This meant something new...

I had half the work done for me because Kristen from Ladybug's Teacher Files, created a biography notes graphic organizer. It is fabulous, super cute and free! So check her out.

That left me with creating a graphic organizer for my students who had chosen countries to research. After some drama from myself I came up with this and I am giving it to you for free. :)

I didn't create writing paper for my older kids because we will type up our reports. I will also have them print pictures instead. We will use the same pages as the 1st graders to cite references, and list our table of contents.

  

Before I go I wanted to share that because I had lots of comments about others not being able to download the 1st grade documents from Scribd I uploaded them to Google Docs. Click on the links below to download them from here.

1st grade graphic organizer

1st grade writing paper 

I'll make sure to come back and post a picture of the completed reports. How you can find some of this useful.

Enjoy!

Lesson Plans Galore

Hi everyone,

Are you enjoying your MLKjr day? I was enjoying the inauguration and my day off, BUT then it started to snow. :( That means I have to shovel. Yuck.

Sorry about my LONG absence. The holidays snuck up on me and then it was very hard to get back into the grove. I am back though and I have so much I want to share in my head that I feel like I will lose it if I don't get it all out here. However, today I want to share my weeks lesson plans and reveal two new templets up for sale on my sister blog, A Teacher's Plan.

But first, I have a question. Do you want me to continue to post my weekly lesson plans in PDF format for you to download?

Kinder Plan for week of 01/22/13

Theme: MLK jr and 100 day of school
Phonemic Awareness skill: Onset and rime, syllables and blending phonemes

Phonics: Letter of the week: Kk (Alphafriend Keely Kangaroo)

Sight/ HFW word: by, here

Vocab: dream, together, diversity, racism

 Comprehension skill: Main Idea/ Detail

1st grade plans for week of 01/22/13

Theme: Penguins; MLK jr. and 100th day of school
Phonemic Awareness skill: Segment Phonemes

Phonics: Long a CVCe; Vowel patterns: ai and ay

Sight/ HFW word: long, more, other, right, these, much and small

Word families: -ay, -ail and -ain

 Comprehension skill: Main Idea/ Details

2nd and 3rd grade Writing for week of 01/22/13
Topics covered: Nonfiction Research: Biographies and Countries

Now for the new goods. Over on A Teacher's Plan I posted two new lesson plans for purchase. The first was created for and named after my friend Greg from The Kindergarten Smorgasbord...

 The Greg

This template is a "week at a glance" 2 page template, made to sit side by side, for all subjects. Made specifically for a Kindergarten class, but with a few edits you can make it work for other grades. Days are listed across the top of the template. Subjects listed are Reading, Writing, Math, Science/Social Studies, and even an Arts/Crafty section, are listed going down the page. You will also get sections for your Objectives, Standards/CCS, Material and Assessments. A lot packed into 2 pages of organizations. The font used in this template is one of my new favorites, called LD Elementary.

I have to say that this template looks better in use than it does posted here. Greg has his lessons posted and when I took a peek I was wowed at how fabulous it looked. You have to go see, but not before you take a look at my next template. This template is my own, for my Kindergarten class. It is the sister template to my First grade plans posted here.

M's Kinder Plans

This template is a one page, week at a glace format. It includes areas for whole group instruction and independent practice, ie guided reading. It covers whole group and guided reading, writing and language arts. On the left hand side you will find a box for the weekly objectives, evaluations, ELL/ ESL strategies and a spot to jot down your small groups. The font used in this template is a clean and simple template called LD Elementary.

What do you think? 

To check out more templates and prices just click on the button below.