Must Have Picture Books - My First Linky

And it freaks me out! Gads I hope I don't mess up!
*update* clearly I don't know my etiquette, and should have put in here that this here linky is hosted by Lindsey at The Teacher Wife.  And also I did find a typing mistake and feeeexed it. Someone beat me with a wet noodle.

I love picture books.  I love the technique in illustration.  The precise language.  The labor of love that they must have been to write, and how excited the children get to read them and share them and love love love on them.  My classroom library has 40 baskets at this point, and I've bought more books this summer, so I know I'll have to add more come end of August.  But I care not! I love them so!  It's hard to pick the 5 BEST ones, but these are old favorites that I read again and again.

1. When Pigasso met Mootisse by Nina Laden serves many purposes.  For one, the illustrations are excellent, showcasing both styles of Picasso and Matisse, two of my favorite artists.  My second graders always think both styles are super cool, and want to try both out in their own drawings. Secondly, it's a great story for discussions on friendships, competition, respecting differences, and being unique.  It's a great text to refer back to often when dealing with friendship issues in the classroom. And as a great third reason, the end of the text has real information of both artists, to provide that non-fiction link that kids actually adore.  They LOVE finding out that these were actually real people.

2. Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran is a beautiful story! I used to bawl like a baby at the end every time...but they make a pill for that now, so now I just choke up a little. Anyway, I tend to like books that do a lot of different jobs for me in the classroom.  This book is a great example of memoir, and I can use it in Writer's Workshop as an example for writing about small moments.  I also use this book as an introduction to my economics unit, as the children in the story create their own town, and it's a fantastic springboard for getting my kids to think about what they would need in their town that they are going to create.  It also works for showing changes over time, which is a social studies standard. 


3. Tough Boris by Mem Fox is AWESOME.  I'm starting to worry that I'm running out of adjectives for this post.  All of these books are incredible.  What makes Tough Boris special?  I use it for my illustration unit to show how the picture can show a story that the words don't tell. Which also makes it great for that Daily 5 lesson on Three Ways to Read a Book.  This book has a repetitive text structure, which makes it great for the kids to quickly catch on and echo back the lines with you.  And it teaches about stereotypes.  You can spend the whole book thinking about how awful pirates are and then find out that they are capable of loving and being loved just like everybody else.  But not in a hit over your head sort of way.  This was also a tear jerker for me.  The kids would be all, "Why are you crying AGAIN?" Ah, pills are good.

4.   Ms. Rubinstein's Beauty by Pep Montserrat.  I hesitated on this one when I found out that it's no longer being sold, which I guess means it's not being printed anymore? But I MUST post it, because it is, insert adjective that means so super fabulous beyond belief here. Look for it at yard sales, or borrow it from the library.  This, like Tough Boris, works for teaching about stereotypes and how everyone is beautiful and has worth and how we all need to look for the good in people and be open minded.  BECAUSE Ms. Rubinstein is the bearded lady at a traveling circus.  I will not give away the rest.  But it is a beautiful love story. *sigh*

5.  Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. Who, coincidentally, illustrated Roxaboxen.  A sweet story about a woman who decided to make the world beautiful.  I have always used this book as a beginning of the year read aloud and had the kids write a little paragraph about how they would make the world beautiful.  Providing kids with opportunities to think about how to give back to the world is so necessary as we nudge their character building.  It's a great example of memoir, small moments, beautiful language, and changes over time.  I also want to point you in the direction of Wendy at Teacher's Toolkit, who also uses this book in her classroom.  But she went an amazing step farther and has a free powerpoint of lupin pictures that she shares with the kids and then they make these gorgeous fingerprint paintings.  It is an inspiring project, and I want to combine it with my writing activity and have the kids create lupin paintings for a bulletin board display and then put up our paragraphs of how we'd make the world beautiful.  A great opportunity for text to self and text to world connections.  Please go give Wendy a visit and give her props for her beautiful art project!

Oh this is sad!  Only FIVE books!  And now I wish I had been able to add in Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein because of how it shows the writer's process, or I Love Guinea Pigs by Dick King-Smith with how it pairs non-fiction informational text features with memoir, or Chin Yu Men and the Ginger Cat by Jennifer Armstrong because it works in wonderfully with my Ancient China unit and character education, or When I was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant for small moments! There are so many.  Sniff.

Trying out a New Look & Wondering about Word Work- Part Two - Center Time

Well, I have a button now, at least.  And I played for HOURS with photo editors trying to do something, ANYTHING!  And this is pretty much where I ended up for now.  I am trying to make the pic to the right my own tiled background, but I'm having an epic fail of it. Every time I try it says cannot upload because of internal combustion- or whatever.  Something like that.  If anyone wants to tell me what the heck to do, I would appreciate it.  And the header, it would be nice to figure out how to make it long with out stretching everything out like Jabba the Hut. *sigh*  Those are the basic colors in my room scheme I'm going for next year though.  What do you think?  Foresty enough?  Yet still cupcake accessible?  I would eat a cupcake in a forest if I had the opportunity.  I would eat a cupcake anywhere.  And I would certainly eat a cupcake during Word Work time, if it wouldn't completely derail the kids' work.


So, let's get to the fun part.Word Work Centers.  The time consuming part at first will be putting them all together- but my hopes are to pick items that can be used long-term (I'm hoping YEARS), adaptable to other parts of my curriculum, and don't need constant changing.  I also want to try to make the activities kinesthetic when possible, and also a place to practice fine motor skills. My school doesn't have a specific handwriting program, but I did have three kids this past year that really needed to work on it.  And I'm pretty sure it came down to fine motor skills.  I know in the first grade rooms now they have fine motor activity time- but I don't have time in my day to make that separate.  So I'm going to incorporate that into the word work practice.


Ever watch Baby First TV?  I watch it on Netflix.  They have this one show called Art and Music, and I use it to help my Babyzilla fall asleep (although I have to say, I'm getting a lot of drawing tips from it myself).  Anyway, there's this segment on the program called Arty Party.  And two hands work on different simple drawings covering them up with little toothpicks, and shells, and pompoms, and seeds and what not.  So I was staring at this thinking "Why not have the kids do that with sentence strips and their words?"  Same idea as the wikki sticks or playdoh, right?  






So I make up the words from the word lists on sentence strips, laminate for long-term use, store in envelopes marked with either the sight word level or spelling feature so they can be found later, maybe even color code them somehow so the kids know which words to pull.  But then the kid takes the strips for the words they have that week, and work using tweezers or even just fingers to cover up the letters with these different materials. For one) the words change every week, so that keeps it somewhat fresh, and two) the dollar store is ripe with these sorts of baubles and they change up seasonally.  So I can have a change of materials from time to time as well, but nothing that really kills me to get out and ready.  I figure I could store them in little travel soap dish boxes.  If I want to work math into it, after they've covered their word with hair bands or rocks, they lay them out side by side and then measure how long that word is.  Nonstandard units and then with a ruler.  


Time-Saver ALERT! ( from me? how unconventional! ) Ms. Jessica at A Turn to Learn has a super-awesome-inspiring-world-changing tutorial on how to print onto sentence strips.  I can choose the perfect font for this center, type in all my words, and let my printer handle it without me making any "Gadzooks, my big toe itches!" or "Oh, look! A duck!" sort of handwriting mistakes.  Am I the only one that happens to?






I was also looking at this sight called PreKinders for fine motor activities and saw this picture:  and I thought "How easy would it be to punch holes for the list words so they can sew them?"  Yes, it would require some prep work- but if done on nice heavy card, and laminated- I think this would be a good one. -Time saver thought- (another one?  What was in YOUR watermelon lemonade this morning?) Plastic canvas.  This stuff was the golden craft of the 80's.  Rarely hear about it anymore, but I still see it in the craft aisles.  I could use a Sharpie to write the words large on the canvas, and then the kids could sew over that or use a pipe cleaner even.  Then I'm not punching holes or laminating for hours. I'd just buy the kind that had the largest spaces.




3rd Grade Thoughts has three different word work stations related to math that I really like- scrabble tile adding, word worth money, and place value word work.  And those are three that would be easy to do, long term, but also put out at different times of year as I progress through the math curriculum.  Scrabble early on, money next, and then place value (because you can end up with some quite big numbers).... She has this available in her TpT store as a trio bundle for $3.50 and folks, I believe it will be worth every cent.  I have not yet bought anything for actual dollars yet at TpT, but this will be the first come August.  She deserves the support for this level of genius-ness.



Over in Mrs. Bushong's Second Grade, she made up a very cool homophone activity with puzzle pieces, that I thought was super groovy.  This is easily adaptable to ANYTHING.  I was thinking they could match sight words, math facts, I could even do Window of Inquiry questions I suppose...  Of course, I went out and bought puzzles.  Now, my memory, if it ever were like an elephant's, would be like a geriatric elephant with dementia. Sooooo I got the kind that don't have a board behind them.  Dork dork dork.  I shall win in the end though- I have decided that I will put the puzzle together, lay it on a piece of tag board, trace the lines of the puzzle, add my questions, answers on the pieces, LAMINATE, and then put on a cookie sheet.    Then I just have to put a little snip of magnet on each puzzle piece and VOILA, I've feeeeeexed it.  After hours of work, I am sure.  But isn't this the glory of how I roll?


ok- and hey hey hey, also thinking about how, since I'm tracing and all, I could trace a basic puzzle pattern and let the kids design some?  Am I breaking a law there, by tracing a puzzle pattern?  I'm not sure...


Now here's a gem at Make, Take and Teach, Bowling for Sight Words.  My big score is that I found a never used plastic bowling set in my son's room.  Along with a lot of other cool goodies that I am plundering, emancipating, setting free, granting independence, pardoning, etc.  He's not using them, so it's time that I got my money's worth out of it, dang it! I like this idea activity for it's kinesthetic appeal, and also the boys will eat it up.  And, handy handy handy- can be adapted for ANYTHING.  I could even put Window of Inquiry QUESTIONS on the pins, they bowl, whatever they knock over they have to ANSWER the question correctly to get the point. Genius, I say! Huzzah for the Moose!

I admit that I think a lot about my boys.  Being a girl (yep, that's what the birth certificate says), I can easily pick froo-froo stuff for the girls.  But then I feel bad having the boys decorating with lace and what not.  So I ran across these two beauties on Pinterest:
                       
The nuts and bolts is from Michelles Charm World.  I like this idea because there are tons of these dodads in different shapes and sizes FOR CHEAPS at the hardware store.  I also don't think girl's would be opposed to using them.  AND they've got that fine motor thing going on with the twisting.  The kids could easily "race" to see who could twirl their word the fastest.  And I could add in math and have them measure the length and what not, or see how heavy it is on the balance scale.



The second picture is of rubber worms for fishing bait from Teach 123.  Same idea as wikki stix, just a different medium.  She also has word mats available for sale in TpT.  I like the creative use of other materials.  I have never been to a fishing store, but I am imagining that besides worms, there might indeed be any other number of interesting finds that could also be used to cover up words with the Arty Party idea I have swimming around. (ooo, punny!)  I do not know if my girls would go for it, but that's ok for the boys to have something that is THEIRS.

Two kinesthetic winners here:

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas has used a Twister game board for sight word practice.  The gold here folks, is that you can adapt this to any part of the curriculum.  And, if you don't have a Twister board handy, it's easy enough to get a Dollar Store shower curtain and put the circles on yourself.  I am concerned a little over the noise level on this one, so it might be something that I save for an indoor recess, or game day, or even make available for outside time.  Because I have control issues, yo.  And also, I really have volume issues in general because I happen to be a loud person.  Shocking, I know.  But your room volume and tone is set by your volume and tone- soooo yeah.  I need to get a muzzle or something.

The gals over at Kindergarten Rocks had a cute version of a slap-it game for sight words.  I have seen slap-it games before, and even played them myself, but I liked how they themed it up with bugs on the shower curtain.  It is similar to the Twister idea, but no feats of freakish contortion are necessary.  Just a quick SLAP.  Which can come in handy for the ladies later in life, right? Heh heh heh.  Anyhow- I like it.  It gives me ideas.  Again, Dollar Tree, ripe for the pickins!  Get some curtains, get some Sharpies, I could make these for the sight word lists and keep them for a loooooong time.  Kids just have to get out which list they are working on. I've differentiated, and still kept it interesting. And is it not adaptable to other areas?  Math facts, and trivia.  Win win win!




There are tons more ideas, but I'll stop here for today.  I collect them on my Pinterest Board if you want to take a gander.  


Have a lovely weekend, everybody!

Woot!

I am a happy happy woman today.  For one, I WON the 100 follower giveaway at Miss Elementary. 

  That's ME!!!

I am the ever gushing winner of 7 different TPT lessons from 4 different fabulous blogs, all of which are going to be AWESOME for my curriculum (oooooo I can't wait to get ahold of a fresh color ink cartridge!) and a Target Gift Card from another fabulous blog. Haaaaaappppppeeeeeee!  And I will be sure to blog about each of the TPT items so you can see how great they are and get your own set.  I also got to pick what I wanted from Mrs. Stanford's Class and am very excited to have gotten her Dolch Sight Word packet.  Activities for ALL 220 words!  Which is perfect for my word work plans. Yes yes yes!


You know though, it starts me thinking about giveaway's in general.  If I had one, I have NO STINKIN' IDEA what I would give away.  Perplexing....this blogging gig is getting more and more compliated...ideas and etiquette on this subject will be much appreciated.


But anyway, to add to my happiness of happiness- I LOVE my Dad.  He is "The Mayor McCheese", yo!
I'm sure we've all slobbered over this particular pin from Grade 2 Happenings:

I have been wanting, nay, coveting, Lo! ENVYING  this since I saw it.  I looked for inexpensive crates, and finally found my lowest deal at Big Lots.  $3.30.  And then I bought twelve and brought them home.  Enter Mayor McCheese:  "What are those for?"  Ohhhhh, but let me show you, Pookums!  So, I guess he was bored or something- because a couple of hours later I had this waiting for me.

I still have to add the batting and fabric cover for the top, but this is slick!  We didn't have baskets big enough to go in the middle, and I didn't want to pay $7 (I am sorry, Lowe's! But I must watch my frivolous spending), but Captain America saw $1 plastic shoe box bins and set me up with two running planks in the middle.  After he's made all three for me I will be looking at 32 boxes of storage!  This is going to be awesome! I totally can fit all of my math and word work centers in these three benches.  I'm planning on putting them on the perimeter of my carpet area where we meet in front of the Promethean board.  This means I can have 12 bodies at a time on a bench seat, and then the remaining 11 on the carpet.  I already have a plan for how to make sure everyone gets equal time on the benches so there is no fighting. Well, LESS fighting anyway.

The inner planks are zip-tied to the ends, and the crates are zip-tied together in the front and the back.  I think I'll cover up the zip-ties with some ribbon bows, or I'll figure something else out- but then he also bolted the top down to help with what he called "inevitable wiggling".  It's a nut and bolt though, so I can easily unscrew the top to put on the batting and fabric.  My mom found some fabric in her stash that will fit PERFECTLY with my classroom color theme/scheme, and she says she has batting somewhere around here too.  Score!

We (as in snoopy me) also found some discarded long plastic flower boxes under the porch and had moments of thinking of attaching them to the back of the benches to hold white boards and clip boards and what not- but there were only five, and it would take three to cover the whole back of one bench- but good ole' Mayor McCheese to the rescue!  We had also talked over this pin from Simply Second Resources about a week ago:

 

We'd changed it up a little though, and planned to cut holes in the center to drop in plastic baby wipe tubs so I could put all of the kid's writing supplies and markers and pens and what not in the tubs in the center. Which is still AWESOME, Mayor! Still. Awesome.  BUT!  With this new discovery of the flower boxes- with a little power washing, and a little divider magic going on in the middle- they will sit perfectly in the middle of my desk groups without having to saw or nail wood.  Or I could even set it on the Hillbilly organizer shelf I made up.  Either way- it's going to be cute.  I could even tape fake flowers to the ends of everything so that when they put it back in the flower box it looked like it "bloomed". Ahahaha, too cute!  Well, we'll see if I can get that cute.  But STILL, exciting developments in classroom decorating are in the works.  When I get them cleaned up proper I shall take photos for you to judge harshly. Or covet.  You know, whatever you feel like.

I totally see the resemblance!

Now, one last word of caution.  If you have a Babyzilla like I do- ALWAYS remember that QUIET = UP TO NO FREAKIN GOOD.  I found myself saying, "Wow, he is playing so nice and quiet!" and then my spidey sense tingled TARDILY. Gah, he ate half a glitter crayon aside from the art work.  No harm done though- I guess.  Meh, the package says non-toxic.  When you're at number three, kittens, you just don't worry like you used to. The most this will end up being is a "disco diaper change".




































Until next time- same bat time, same bat channel. POW!

Wondering about Word Work: Part One

Remember when we just called it spelling?  There are times when I think back with some affection to my old spelling textbook when I was in school.  The same regular activities each week- my favorite was write a story using all of your spelling words.  I seriously doubt that my teacher bothered to read them, as I often filled five or six pages each week.  I'm sure I was a homework grading nightmare.  But times are different now, and I suppose that this new fandangled way is sort of fun, and more appropriate.


These wonderings about Word Work, just like with behavior management, are all theoretical.  I don't have any kids to try this with.  Some of these things I've done in the past, and I'll be bringing them back out of the bag come September, but a lot of this is brand new to me- so we'll see.  Because I have a lot of ideas here, and I also get nervous about making my posts too long- I'm going to break this up a bit.  This post will just be the getting ready part.  I'll handle centers in the next post.


 I don't have a problem coming up with word lists.  I'm a big fan of the Ganske assessment, and have my own personal way of interpreting the data to decide on which features for how long a student gets.  Are you familiar with Ganske at all?  It's a 25 word test for four different developmental stages.  The younger your students, the fewer stages you have to worry about- but you do occasionally end up with a couple of super clever kids who get up there to the last stage.  In each of the 25 word lists there are five words for a specific feature.  For example, in the first stage, there is a feature for short vowel sounds.  






When I look over the data, any feature getting less than 5 points tells me how many weeks to work with that student on that feature.  Student gets a four, then one week of work.  Three equals two weeks, etc. And I start at the first feature and progress forward.  Every sixth week I retest and see what progress they've made. Yeah, sometimes I have seven different lists.  But eventually, over the year, they all seem to catch up to each other except for a couple of quirks and I might only have 4 lists going in any particular week.  The time consuming part is talking over the words with the kids and giving the tests, but making stations for word work not so much.  I generally rely on the same tried and true activities each week.  But I'd like to switch that up more this year to incorporate some other elements.


The thing is- there's more to word work than just phonics/spelling features.  I really need to be better at getting the kids to practice sight words, and also I need to incorporate language arts vocabulary like synonyms and compound words and the like.  And then there's handwriting- which really comes down to fine motor skills, when you think about it. My plan is to only make the spelling part of the word work ten or twelve words. 2 features, five words each.  Three features four words.  I rarely do the four feature sort.  It just seems inappropriate for my grade level.  But if I had to- I would make the list up to sixteen words and still keep four words per feature.  Three words only in a group feels silly to me.  I'm going to split up my sight word lists into groups of five, and then there will be five additional language arts related words to whatever grammar deal we've got going that week.  This grammar component will have to be flexible in the amount of words, because I don't want more than twenty words per week.


Ok- let's talk time management.  Assessment wise, I keep this on a six week plan (even though I teach by the quarter).  Spelling itself is not anywhere on my report cards, nor are sight words.  So as far as grading goes, I'd link it pretty much as a participation grade and then see how it affects their overall reading and revision of writing. So in the first week of school, I've given the Ganske assessment- just one a day (usually I can stop after two days).  I use the data to plan out my class word lists for the next five weeks.  So one weekend of deep word strategy and I'm good for five weeks- lesson plans written for that time block, kapow! Looking good.  


I use the Dolch lists for sight words, and there are five levels.  There are some lists with nearly forty words on them- 220 words all said.  If I do a simple 20 a day it will take me 11 days to get their initial data.   I will therefore spend the first three weeks teaching word work center behaviors using their individual names before they get their own individual list.  And that works out fine that the first six week spelling rotation will end with the quarter.






Lists are given from Monday to Monday.  My reasoning for this has to do with my literacy block schedule.  Monday's are morning meeting days, which means the only guided reading groups that get met with that day are the below grade level ones.  This, in general, frees up at least two reading rotation blocks for me. So that will be the time that I meet with word groups and give out new words.  But what about giving the test?  Aha! I have a new plan for this.  In my room, there is an old cassette recorder, and a good twenty or so unused still-in-their-plastic-wrap cassettes.  Why do I need to give anybody a spelling test?  All I have to do, is record myself saying the word, the sentence, and the word again.  They listen to the tape, they can rewind it as much as they please to hear it again, and I'm free to just talk words in small groups, as opposed to droning out a test. And that is their listening center rotation for the day. 


Since the first three weeks are assessment and routines and regulations and all- I've found that a great way to get them acclimated to word work is to use the names of my students as the word list.  These will also be the first words that go on the word wall. And I'll save my word wall thoughts for another post as well- since I've never done this justice either.  In the past, I thought up five or six different spelling activities and they did them all year and only the list changed.  And yeah- they got bored.  So did I.  But here they are:


1) Write your sort - blarty blar.  It was meant for them to always have a list to look back on whenever they sorted their words for a self check.



2) Word Shapes - long guys, tall guys, short guys (which I like, but it needs revamping) The idea of it is to see the word form in another way to give their brain an extra way of seeing if the word "looks" correct or not.

3) Rainbow Words - as long as I allowed them to use "exotic" coloring utensils, this never lost it's juice for the kids.  The thing here though, is that I don't let them do a different color for each letter.  I want them concentrating on the whole word, not just a letter at a time, so we write the word in one color, and then trace over it in two or three more colors.






4) Create a Word Find - gave them a square grid and had them put in their words, fill in the extra spaces with the alphabet randomly, and then switch with a friend to solve.  They actually liked this one pretty well.  






5) Comic Fill-In - I'd take comics from the paper, blow them up a little, white out the speech bubbles, and then copy them for the kids to use to write their own sentences in using their words for the week.  Probably broke tons of laws doing that- but I never sold them or shared them, so maybe I'm o.k. in the eyes of the law.  This, you'd think the kids would like, but they didn't really go for it.  And many times the sentences they wrote didn't make any sense, so I'm not so sure I was doing anybody a favor.

6) Scavenger Hunt - whilst reading any book of their choice, be on the look-out for words from their list, or words that matched the feature on their list.  I found that most of the kids would willingly sit there with a book, but very few would ever notice that they found one of their words, and they rarely - if ever- noticed a feature.






7)  Definitions - now this, I like, because they need the skill of how to properly use a dictionary- but the kids hated it.  They had to look up two words a day and write down the definition.  I really don't know how to make the dictionary exciting outside of the realm of finding a kick-ass word for Scrabble in order to defeat my Dad.  And that's sort of a very specific and individualized motivation right there.  Hard to pass that on.







*sigh*  And then, in the end, they turned in their word work folders and I was supposed to grade them. Time consuming.  And on top of it, spelling isn't even on our report cards.  So what am I taking a grade for anyhow?  So- the mission- that I have chosen to accept- is to create word work that 1) doesn't have to be graded and 2) actually provides legitimate practice that the kids should likely find enjoyable.  Fingers crossed that this message does not self-destruct...




...

Blogger Award- and the VBA goes to...

I have been given a blog award by Laurie at Chickadee Jubilee.  It is my first, and I admit to being a bit dumbfounded.  I still find it hard to believe other folks actually read these things I ramble on about- even though they often leave me wonderful comments.  Regardless, it's pretty cool, and Chickadee Jubilee is a great site.  It is one of my regular reads as I scour blogs looking for inspiration.


The rules of the award are as follows:
1) Thank the blogger who nominated you - Thank you, Laurie!
2) Include a link to their site - yep
3) Include the award image in your post - check
4) Give 7 random facts about yourself
Well, hmmm...I'm just sort of a random person anyway, but here's seven
a) I have an 11 yr old boy, an 8 year old girl, and a 15month old Babyzilla
b) How do you get such an age difference? You get divorced, jaded, and then naughty.
c) As a kid, I taped my fingers together overnight so that I could make Spock's "Live Long and Prosper" sign to impress my Dad.  I don't know that he was impressed, but at least now I can make my students go "Cool!" before they start showing me how to do gang signs.
d) I hate making left hand turns without a light.  My heart begins to pound and my inner elbow area starts to sweat.  
e) I am afraid of clowns, for no real particular reason except that they are the spawn of the devil. 
f) I failed gym in the eighth grade. Yep. I am THAT dorky.
g) For one year of my life I gave up red meat and used a crystalline stone as deodorant.  It was my ex-husband's idea.  We were going "earthy".  Absolute rubbish.  I like my meat to have little bit of a moo to it and I bathe in Degree.


random enough?  I hope I am doing this correctly...


5) and 6) and 7) Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award AND leave a link to their site AND let them know you did.


I'm a little flummoxed on this point, because I don't want to just randomly pick 15 blogs.  I also don't want to pick people I really haven't had any conversational exchange with, because then it just feels like rolling the dice, you know?  So I guess I'm going to break the rules just slightly on this one.  I have selected 10 blogs that I have either had a contact with at this point, or I read their blog on a regular basis for inspiration.
So here's 10- and I apologize, but I don't know how to do the button thing- so if anybody wants to teach me, I am game.  (Plus, I'd like to make my own button.)

Reaching for the Top  A second grade blog that I am looking forward to learning about classroom economies from.
A Differentiated Kindergarten  Lots of great inspiration and ideas for differentiated lessons.  I got some great lesson planning freebies and multiple intelligence posters from this site.
A Turn to Learn  A great place to read up about technological feats.  I can't wait to print on a sentence strip!
Clutter-Free Classroom  I read this religiously, hoping the organization gets in me through osmosis.
Flamingo Fabulous  My super fabulous teammate, also a tech guru and crafty mccraft craft goddess...
Heather's Heart  Some great posts on classroom management using Conscious Discipline, you can really tell how much she loves her students in her very caring and spirit filled posts.
Stapler's Strategies  I have been enjoying a little bit of a pen-pal email relationship, as well as Pinterest with Melly.  She is starting Daily 5 this year in her second grade class and I am looking forward to exchanging ideas and learning along with her.
Teacher Idea Factory  Some great stuff for kinesthetic movement in your lessons on this site.  I have received great inspiration from her Move It Monday posts.
The Science Penguin  Fascinating stuff on taking Science and putting it into the Daily 5 sort of format.  The Science Weekly 5!  Very inspirational, I'd love to make it work for my classroom.


I would assume that all of these blogs have already been given the nomination, but I add my nod in there too.  I still don't know how I taught for nine years without knowing about teacher blogs.  I'm surprised I can find my car keys in my own purse though, so that should say something.

Have a great Fourth everybody!

Classroom Management Take One

I don't even know that any of this is going to work.  Kind of hard to try out without children, I should say.  But it's about getting a plan together.  Why is classroom management my weakness anyhow?  I'd say my natural disorganization is a big culprit.  Coming in a strong second, or possible tie for first, is my temper.  And if I had to peg down a third reason, I'd say it's because I'm sort of goofy.  No one takes goofy seriously.  No matter how much taller you are.


I think what I've discovered in the past couple of weeks will help me out with the first two issues.  But I don't know that anything can be done about being goofy.   And I can't say that it's something about myself I dislike either- so it's not like I'm going to really be able to fix it.  Because I'm goofy, I know I'm not going to find a one-size-fits-me management strategy.  I'm going to have to pull a Frankenstein number on this one.  There's a title for ya! But whatevs, I'm already into the composing part.

I'm going to pull thoughts from Daily 5 



Baldrige in Education  

Conscious Discipline 
also check out Heather's Heart for some great posts on this subject of Conscious Discipline


The Responsive Classroom 


and my own brain 



This past Spring I started doing some of the Daily 5 management tips as far as making I-charts for desired behaviors and making muscle memories and I found that it worked very well, even with my kids who'd pretty much trained their muscles to drive me crazy.  I feel like beginning with this method from the start is going to help me a lot this next year.  I also started using the charts and training in all other areas of the classroom, not just literacy.

I admit to not knowing anything about "common core".  It's apparently everywhere though.  And with it comes these "I can" and "We can" statements.  I like the idea of putting everything in positives and avoiding the negative.  I made up booklets for my different class routines using these statements.  The sensational Lyda laminated and bound all of them for me before the end of school.  This one shows a picture that one of my kids drew to illustrate the page, but all of the books were laminated and bound WITHOUT pictures, because I want to give the kids each year an opportunity to draw a picture that matches the pages.  I was also thinking that if they were doing a behavior that I didn't really appreciate, they could read the appropriate book, find the page that was the opposite of their choice, and draw THEMSELVES doing the desired action.  And now considering it, I think I can easily take photos of the kids doing the desired behaviors for the illustrations.  Make it into a powerpoint or something...hmmm.

The categories of books I currently have are: 1) How to Make Every Morning Marvelous, 2) How to Make Writer's Workshop Wonderful, 3) How to Make Guided Reading Great, 4) How to Make a Quality Line, 5) How to Make Recess Really Fun, 6) How to Have a Lovely Lunch, 7) How to Make Math Workshop Magnificent, 8) How to Make Every Encore Excellent, and 9) How to Make Window of Inquiry Incredible.  Corny, I know- but it worked for me.  They have anywhere from nine to fifteen We Can statements each.  Taking a quick moment to read them aloud before each activity helped get them centered as well.  I bound them with a blank page on the front and a Can statement on the back, so that if I ever have to take out a page, or add a page, it can be easily done.  I bought photo tabs to put on the blank pages to hold the pictures I take or the kids draw.


I saw this chart on Pinterest:



And that had me thinking about the PYP attitudes, and how I could easily make charts to go with them.

And I also ran across this visual scheduling pin: (she has great stuff PERIOD, besides just this)


My oldest son has autism, and has used many visual schedules in the past.  And considering how many times my kids asked me "When is..." "What are we going to ....." everyday all day- I can't believe that a visual schedule could be bad for anybody.  I also discovered on the Conscious Discipline site that the part of our brain that handles self-control and rules is also visual.  So I'm definitely going to amp this aspect up next year.

I also have to consider the behavior system my school already has in place.  We do a lot with Baldrige when it comes to Quality Students, Quality Teachers, Mission and Vision Statements, and mottoes like "I am Responsible for the success of my own learning" and "I am response-able to the success of the group".  I can beef all of these up with better visuals and more concentrated classroom meetings.  We also have a star punch attitude card system where when they get ten punches for the desired behaviors the card gets sent to the counselors office and she sends up a small prize like a pencil or eraser.

I have a tendency to forget about those cards.  It's just not something I want to stop and do- go punch someone's card when I'd rather be teaching.  I also confess to hating sticker charts as a behavior management tool. I know, going to teacher jail. But I can't help it.  I want to be teaching, not patting heads all day.  But I also know that I am RESPONSE-ABLE to the success of my group- the school- and I need to do my part when it comes to this school-wide expectation.  So during the year, I came up with a chart to help me figure out who needed punches.  I confess it also helped me monitor poor behavior, and I used it as a tool to get kids to notice what they were doing.  Of course, now, after reading all of these positive discipline blogs- I feel like the devil.  But, learn from your mistakes, right?  So I'm going to change it into a chart to NOTICE good behaviors of others.

So, combining two Pinterest ideas:
  

The first one is from What the Teacher Wants, and the second is a pin that does not have a website link so I'll just connect it back to my pin, and then if it is anybody's, they can let me know.

I'm going to use the picture frames on a bulletin board to visually represent the desired behaviors : A smiling face for using kind/polite words, a hand with a heart inside it for helping others, an ear for great listening, a brain for making great choices, the fifth will be the PYP attitude of the month, and then the sixth will be a graph.  Each frame will have all of the kids names underneath the picture representation.  So whenever I NOTICE students doing those things I can say a NOTICING statement and circle their name or add tallies as the case may be during the week.  These tallies will equate to punches on their cards, and I developed a system for slowly making more tallies equal a punch across the year.

Then, the brownie points deal- I'm doing a moose/cupcake theme next year, so on the bulletin board I'll have my moose baker holding a cupcake tin.  In the school behavior program, 80% of your class has to turn in a punch card each month to qualify for the March Madness Basketball competition.  So keeping with that guideline, each week, if any given frame has 80% of the class names circled, that earns a cupcake for the tin. I think I'm going to try to make them 3-D so that I can open the top somehow and put a class reward idea inside.  Once the class fills the tin, I'll work out some system for having someone pick a cupcake from the tin and we'll see what they got.  It should roughly take three to four weeks minimum to earn a class reward.  And let's say they are just AWESOME, it's basically three celebrations a quarter or 12 for the year.  And that is o.k. by me.

I was inspired by Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations when it came to classroom rewards.  I don't really want it to be material.  I don't think I'm doing anybody any favors by buying them gifts.  She has great ideas for free rewards that are really simple and easy.  I've decided on 12 that I think will suit me, and I broke them up into three types: full day, half a day, or one class period/short time.  When they choose cupcakes for the celebration the first will always be a short celebration, then half day, then full day.  I guess...Haven't really decided...


Full Day: Crazy Sock Day, no shoes required; Crazy hat day; Pajama Day; and Stuffed Animal Day.
Half Day: Outdoor School- plan some sort of teaching experience outside for the second half of the day; Book to Movie- watch a movie related to a book we've read and do a compare/contrast (see, keeping it LEGITIMATE);   Experiment Extravaganza- getting dirty with the science experiments even if they have NOTHING to do with standards.  We're at least going over the scientific method; and Craftivity- crafts gone wild.  I'm sure I'll TRY to make them relate somehow to what we've been doing in class.
One Class Period to 15 minutes: special snack; extra recess; dance party; DEAD time.  Saw that one on Pinterest too, Drop Everything and DRAW.

And I'm not completely satisfied with the last set, so tweaking will be necessary.  But I trust in Pinterest, see? Something will turn up.  And looking over it now during my preview, you know, the full day rewards are actually the most simple- so they might be the automatic first choices.  Followed by the short time period and then the half day things are sort of the big deals, right? Hermmmmmmm...

And that, kittens, is the beginning of my thoughts.  I know there is a lot more to accomplish.  I'll be working on that building of a classroom community that is featured in ALL of these management systems, and I'll be retraining myself to get rid of some bad habits and try some new techniques, and kinda let go of the stress.  I agree that I should come home tired from a day of work- but it shouldn't be a painful exhaustion.  It should be a charged energy high of a great workout.  Sleep should always come peacefully.