Getting my Game On ~ The Meek Moose Rears Her Tired Head

As per usual,  I get really crappy at maintaining the blog during the school year. But it doesn't mean that I've been hiding under my covers- though some days I wish I were able to... blah.

So how did everyone's Thanksgiving break go? I ended up with an extra day, as we received about five inches of snow Wednesday morning.

Ain't it grand?  Don't get me wrong, I liked the extra day off.  It's just that this Alaskan girl can't get excited about snow.  Like- I've done that, ya know?  Kids beyond excited though.  So, yay, Winter!

Today, being the thirtieth of November, I am aware that I completely missed doing the November currently. And I will not dare to link up today, I will wait and do the December one when it comes out (in theory- you never know with me)  But I did go ahead and fill out November's just so you could see what I'd been up to in the last month:

click to go to Farley's post last month

Most of these don't need a lot of further explanation.  I will say that as far as the song goes, my favorite part is when Nicki Minaj is rapping B to the A to the N to the G to the "heyyyyyyy".  I can do that part super duper dorky, yo!

I plan to do another post about Code.org this month in honor of The Hour of Code, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

Career direction.  Always a hot topic.  Stay in the classroom, become a specialist, change grade levels- you know, all the normal thoughts you start to have after parent teacher conferences when you have that mini-breakdown about the direction your life is headed.  Today I hope to pursue a career as a full time gamer playing Sims 4 24/7.  Because there's a life I can completely control....

I got a nasty cold just before my birthday.  Nasty enough, in fact, to put me in bed on my birthday, and obnoxiously near death for my entire birthday week.  I missed all of the planned celebrations.  All of which being two.  But for me, that is quite a full social calendar.  I recovered enough the following week to go out to eat with two of my best local girls and we had Mexican food and I wore the birthday sombrero.  I would not allow the staff to come out and clap and sing for me.  That would have been too much.  But I hammed it up for the camera enough to make a random man stop and take my picture.  What he plans to do with that photo- I don't want to know.

Apparently, this thing I am doing is called Duck lips.  I THOUGHT I was just puckering up for the camera.  Since my lips are so lovely. Ha.  But whatevs.  I was not intending duck lips.  I was intending to show off my true dorkiness in the middle picture though- as I'm sure that is much more like my normal face than the other two.  Either way, all three make fantastic profile pictures for my newest experiment and #epicfail of on-line dating.

I came to the obvious conclusion that one cannot marry an outrageously rich organic strawberry farmer, regardless of how ridiculously adorable one is, by sitting around doing nothing.  So I foolishly signed up for this virtual meat market gig.

Kittens...as socially awkward as I am...as out of practice as I am...as destined to be single for all eternity as I am.... on-line dating does little more than confirm for me the death of the English language in our culture.  And how irresitible I am to the AARP crowd.  Seriously- old men LOVE me.  I get winked at eighty times a day by 65+ guys wearing cowboy hats.  And they do not know the difference between womEN and womAN.  And I'm sorry if that sounds snobby, but this English major can't handle it.  #butI'mnotsorry  I will say that I recently received an ice breaker message from someone my age, however it began with "Sup" (no, really, it started with Sup) and ended with "Bitches stay back i have no room for drama" (and the i wasn't capitalized. And this line was preceeded by an announcement that he was passionate for all things science, including vaping and hikking.)  So, if you don't mind, I will be hiding under my bed from my phone for the next three decades...

To distract myself from this travesty, I shall throw myself into my work.

Did you know there was a TpT cyber sale tomorrow and Tuesday?  Of course you did.  Here's the ad that's been blasted across your eyeballs as of late:

click to go to my store

I have put the entire store on to the maximum discount for ya'll, and even added in something new- which my children have been LOVING.

Click to go to the product

The product description sums it up for you:

Cute owls and Superheroes?!?! Get outta town!

I have a lot of students this year struggling with sight words. The words on the Dolch lists comprise 80% of everything we read – if I can help my students master these words, then I can concentrate on multi-syllabic decoding, comprehension and other reading strategies. And so can you!

To play this sight word game, students draw a card from a face down pile and read the word aloud to the group. If correct, they keep the card If incorrect, the card goes back into the pile. Bonus cards drawn either entitle the player to draw more cards or lose cards. Bonus cards are not returned to the pile after being drawn. Player with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

I have all five sets of Dolch words in separate games, if you want to just zero in on one needy group of students.  I have two videos here for you to see my kids playing the Pre-Primer words game with me.  I only have a couple of kids with trouble on the pre-primer list, but my class is also 80% ESOL this year- so I added in a variation to the basic game where we practiced making up sentences to go along with the words.  You'll see that in the second video.  I've found this variation of the game to be excellent practice for oral language skills with my kids.

When the game is over, you can also have your kids write down the words that they "won" and create sentences using them if you'd like to add some extra accountability to the game.

And I reallllly need to work on my positive affirmations, as I say the same thing over and over in the videos.  Maybe I'm just nervous when I film.  Or just a huge dork. As always, there is at least one kid completely off task in the background.  Just keeping it real, yo!

Enjoy the sale, kittens!  

The End is Nigh

End of the year.  Tomorrow is it.  Over by 12:30, and half days are always a blur.  It's a mixed bag of emotions.  I am ready for the break of course, but I really got to love my kids this year- and it's always nerve wracking beginning with a new group, even though it always turns into a big love fest in the end anyway.  So I sit here tonight thinking about ends and beginnings and how both of them can just be sort of sucky but glorious at the same time.  *big sigh*

A quick shout out to some info I ran across on Chickadee Jubilee, she has a wonderful post about this program called Tagxedo , where you can input words and it will collage them for you inside a shape.  She made gifts for her kids with descriptive words her students came up with.  Completely inspired to copy, I gave my kids a class list today- had them write their favorite colors by their name, and then a positive adjective next to each other name on the list.  Collected all of the lists, brought them home, picked out a shape (I liked the shooting star), found a color theme that matched their favorites and loaded in the adjectives. Presto change-o! Annnnd Print.  End of year keepsake ready.  If I have time I'll laminate them, otherwise I'll just put them in the report card folder.  Next year though (super teacher year)  maybe I'll have bought some frames ahead of time so I can give it to them framed. Bit pressed for time here at the last minute though.

Made some good dents in the mess today.  Sorted out quite a bit that belonged in recycling.  Got the back table cleared up.  If I can get in early tomorrow and attack my desk- I think I will be pretty golden there for my half day Monday plan.

Today we had a going away assembly for our assistant principal.  Each grade level was meant to bring something to present, so borrowing from Pinterest, Fablous Karen and I decided to go with the thumbprint tree idea.  I found an image of a leafless tree on the internet and then put it up on the promethean board and outlined the tree shape onto brown construction paper.  Then I cut it out and pasted it onto an Elmer's foam board.  Each class chose a different color to make their finger prints in.  We had each kid in second grade put their thumbprint either as leaves on the tree, clouds in the sky or grass on the ground.  Then we wrote the child's name next to their print, and put on a punny quote "Thanks for helping us through all of our seasons, Remember your roots!"  I added in a bit of detail with some markers like extra grass strands and flowers- just to use up some of the white space.  I should have taken a picture of it, but the thought escaped me at the time.  It's a cute keepsake though, and I decided I'd do a quick one with just my kids tomorrow.  I think it would make for a sweet tradition every year to have a class tree of leave thumbprints.

Discovered a die cutting machine in the teacher workroom.  It's amazing how oblivious I've been this year.  I was afraid to make color prints until April.  just learned how to use the poster maker probably around the same time.  I was shy about laminating until May.  Which is also when I finally used the book binding machine. And today I finally poked around the big huge gigantic machine with computer interface and discovered that it did all of the cutting for you and you didn't have to pump down on a handle!  It has moose templates! Score!  And it had a leafless tree!  So I cut one of those this afternoon for my thumbprint plan tomorrow.  I must promise myself to take better advantage of the resources I am offered next year.  I tell you, I am working in a wonderland and not even dipping my toes in the chocolate.  It's just sinful.

A Well Oiled Wheel

I have been made fun of a fair share of times.  Comes with being a dork and flying that freak flag high, I suppose.  And I haven't outgrown it in adulthood.  There is a particular person that relishes referring to my thought process as "the hamster wheel is turning".  I could spend time getting upset over it, but I'll take my own advice that I give the kids and ignore it.  To a point, anyway. The key is to try not to pick up scissors without a solid plan to use them as they are intended...


If it is a hamster wheel up there and not a super duper nuclear powered energy portal of awesomeness, then my hamster has had plenty of Pepsi today and has been sprinting along on that wheel- and there is not a squeak to be heard.  I pause for a moment of reflection on my younger days of owning hamsters...get within a hair's breadth of considering having one again....and then, ummmm, no.  The last one I owned had babies in her first week.  The babies, although cute and pink and jelly beany in the beginning- grew up to be ruthless gladiators that tore out each other's eyeballs when they were all placed in one giant wood shaving filled aquarium. (True story) Eventually, my dad made them each individual cages and they lived in the garage and he took care of them until they died. I think the one-eyed one was named Champagne, and you had to wear thick leather gloves when you put your hand in her cage because she'd attack and try to chew off your fingers.  Ah, good times.  I'm relatively positive that all of my feelings of being an inadequate parent stem from this episode in my life, and also probably my fear of rodentia.... Time for a cake pop then.  Food is love.



I never said the hamster was running a consistent track- we've got some ambient scenery flashing by as we sprint here.

Things I feel good about today:
1) Hobby Lobby.  This mega super center of crafting, makes Michael's look like a cheap wh---, I mean, lady of the evening.  The only reason why I am not there now, setting up camp to live there the rest of my life is because the baby was sleepy.  And for BabyZilla, sleepy means scream aggressively until given milk, blanket, prime seating on the recliner, and Sesame Street.  Which, even though Hobby Lobby is the epitome of awesome, they can't provide BabyZilla with his "needs".  I bought my glorious treasure and left.  Vowing to return again one day!  My happiest find of the day was  "Toobs."  Made by Safari Ltd., they offer tubes of not only your standard animal habitat fair (which I will get more of to have a complete earth biome set...) they also had Ancient Egypt.  SCORE!  I hope they are making an Ancient China set eventually, but I didn't see it whilst scoring their online store.  And they had Powhatan Indians!  I additionally hope they come out with the other Native American tribes.  I plan to use my Toobs to create oral language stations where they can tell fictional as well as non-fictional stories about the pieces.  We can also use them to construct dioramas.  And I do love me some dioramas...

2) The 7 section expanding plastic file folder.  Pretty much looks like this one here, except mine are blue.
What am I going to do with these babies?  I'm thinking "Homework folder".  Sounds like nothing right? Sounds like everything you've ever heard before, you're already snoozin'- BUT WAIT!  Here's my super duper amazing Hamster running his little heart out plan (should I be concerned that when I liken my brain to a hamster running on a wheel the hamster is male?  I should talk to my therapist about that...):  


First of all, I hate homework.  Partly because I find it a pain in the butt to grade, partly because I can tell when the parents HELPED and I know it's going to come up in parent conferences when I try to discuss failed test scores and a lack of understanding for the basic concept the parent is going to say "but he understood it when I went over it with him!" It's the magic kitchen table effect, and it bites me in the behind every year.

I also dislike homework for the times when it is not done, because I have a tendency to take it personally- don't know why, it's not like they're sitting there at home evilly chuckling and drumming their fingers about how they are going to SHOW ME a thing or two by refusing to do it- and I don't like feeling upset first thing in the morning when they are or aren't turning things in.  And then, if I press the issue with the parents, I either find out that there is absolutely no one there available to help them with their homework, or they have no materials at home to do it properly, or they are busy going from karate to football to debate team to bell choir and then feed the homeless and sing to the elderly every night and I'm just a horrible beast for adding pressure to their already schedule driven lives.

So I really don't like giving it.  I just want them to read at home for at least 20 minutes every night to keep their skills fresh.  Our district also has a homework policy that it shouldn't be more than thirty minutes- so IF I do send home some math to do- and it takes longer than ten minutes- then I start to worry about getting in trouble. And then, dag nabbit!- there is always that set of parents that wants MORE homework. Load my child up with so much they can't breathe sort of homework. Yarg, I just can't win with it.

ENTER BIG IDEA- dun dun dunnnnnnnnn- okay, so in this file organizer I put in a pencil pouch that has a pencil or two, a sharpener, an eraser, a glue stick, a pair of scissors, and a standard 8 pack of crayons.  These are the basic stand-by supplies of any possible homework assignment, that no one apparently keeps in their homes. Are we, as teachers, that odd that we keep glue sticks in our homes?  I feel like my closet might be filled with glue sticks right now.  I will never in a million years run out of glue- but whatevs.
In the first pocket slot, I put the supplies pouch and a letter written in both English and Spanish (and it's laminated) explaining how to use the homework folder and how to bring it back and forth everyday.

In the second slot I put a standard weekly reading log and a couple of books on their reading level to practice with at home.  They can change these out at "shopping time" during language rotations.  In the third slot, and word work they have that week, and a laminated list of different ways to practice the words at home without doing boring call out the word and write it down sort of things.

In the fourth slot, I put laminated or card stocked copies of the math games we are currently playing in math workshop.  Our district is using the Math Investigations series, and there are some very neat games in the series that can easily be played at home.  The kids can teach their siblings and parents and it's a fun learning time for all!  Also put in any baggies of game supplies.  Use felt or foam to make counters and what not so you don't worry about the pieces being lost or returned. Make sure to get Spanish translations of the games.

In the fifth slot, this is where they put study guides for Window of Inquiry, lists of websites they can visit at home, and any foldables that might help them study.  The sixth slot is for a composition book, where they are assigned one day a week to turn in where they have written me a letter.  I will write them back.  I will not be "grading" this letter, just working on getting to know them better, helping with writing skills, looking for spelling patterns that need addressing, blarty blar blar.  I don't tell them it doesn't count for anything- but I will make sure that I put a fun stamp on the page where they write, or draw them a little picture, or include a sticker- so that the word gets around that if you write a letter to the teacher, you get a little something for your trouble.

And then in the last slot they have their regular round trip take home folder for our other handouts from the office and I'm looking into this idea called Fun Folder Homework, and if I get that off the ground next year, this would be a great place to put that.

So here they will have this homework contraption- no they are not required to do what is inside- except the reading part- that's why there is a log- but if the parents are all Ai Yi Yi where is the homework?! Well, cowboy, there you go- pick something. Giddy up and let's go dancin'!

I'm glad I found the folders at the Dollar Store.  I've been thinking about this for awhile and all the folders I had found elsewhere that would work were all seven dollars.  I really didn't feel like spending $210 bucks on a project that I don't even know if it will fly.  But I am hopeful. Ever hopeful.

Pile of Post-its, before sorting

3) And the last thing I feel happy about today is that I sorted through all of the spy notes the kids turned in, and I think I've come up with a pretty decent idea how to present the praise on Tuesday and motivate them to be better spies for the rest of the week.  If you are needing a refresher on what the heck I'm talking about, you can refer yourself to my previous posts about behavior management and character building.

I brought all the little yellow post-its home and sorted through them.  I sorted them out by who was spied on, and then I read through them all to see what was actually said.  I am a bit sad that a good ten of them at least were negative comments.  Nothing mean really, just so and so is not listening.  So and so wont stop talking.  And then there were a handful of ones that were more like activities- so and so is eating.  So and so is staring at the floor.  Things like that.  But all in all, they seemed to be consistently looking for times when a student was listening, paying attention, giving the silent signal, being quiet, helping others, cleaning up, working steadily, and following directions.

rainbow brick cards to make the wall out of

So then I took a regular sized blank index card and drew brick shapes on two corners like it was a piece of a wall, wrote the child's name on the card and summarized the contents of the spy notes. I didn't think it was necessary to write 18 times on one card "is being quiet".  I think once is plenty.  Also, I'm not turning the yellow slips over to the student, because there are many many many spelling errors and difficult handwriting, and I can see already that it would turn into a negative moment with things being said about spelling,  or handwriting, or bragging about the number of post-it notes compared to another student. Because some kids had 18 post-its and others had one.  And one student, had five post-its, but all of them were negative comments- so I had to come up with my own positive memories of her to put on her card for her. No, no, no- I'm not going to give them the chance to compare notes.

close up of brick cards. 

I'm going to take the cards on Tuesday for our morning meeting and read them out loud on the carpet, and add them to a piece of foam board I have where we will "Build up a strong wall of caring and compassion" for the last three weeks of school. On the last day we'll take the cards down, and staple each person's together into a little mini book they can take home. At the meeting we'll talk about trends we notice in the compliments, refer back to the chart we made last week about how to be kind, see if we need to clean that up at all, and then maybe make a goal for how to compliment better this week.  I'm also going to look at our PYP Attitudes, and maybe pick one to concentrate on each day to get some more sophisticated language going on with the compliments.  She is nice- is just uber general, and we've got to get to the meat of this.  I'm hoping that at the end of these three weeks, everyone will have at least one card with a real, authentic compliment that truly reflects their inner character.

Boy, howdy!  This hamster needs a rest, methinks.  Because I have lots of fun to have tomorrow getting those store samples done. Nighty night!

Reading up

This is my tenth year teaching, but not consecutively.  I had a couple of years off recently, and now that I'm back in the saddle, I'm at a new school with a new way of doing things, and I feel - well, NEW.  I don't know if I would have gotten exposed to this book or not at my old job.  And to be fair, I will leave the possibility open that I might have.  But I don't know if I would have gone through the anticipation of implementing it. I had gotten pretty complacent with my teaching style.  But. as I mentioned earlier this week- I sway easily to group dynamics.  Since my co-workers are pretty big into the Daily 5, I figured I should give it a shot.

I finished my reading today, in between dealing with my oldest having an Autism super meltdown, my middle having a birthday party, and my youngest deciding that 13 months is the perfect time to abandon napping- so actually, I'm surprised I found the time.  But it is an excellent read.  I suppose on one level I feel pretty dopey for never having heard of it before.  But then again, I'm also relieved that I've been exposed to it now.  Earlier in the week as I had been reading it, I tried out a couple of the management style tips as far as practicing correct models for muscle memory and creating I charts- and I was impressed with the results.  Definitely something to kick off next year with, and perfect for practicing now.

I already downloaded the CAFE book and hope to have devoured that in the next week.

 

This is another book I am a big fan of.  The Title I coordinator in our building put me on to it while she was doing a fabulous job giving me some training and pointers for the Jan Richardson Guided Reading Approach.  (*sigh* Another thing I knew nothing about, even with nine years of teaching behind me. Like I said, I'm a total newbie again, back on square one)  What I love about this book are the visual manipulative approach for teaching young readers some sophisticated comprehension strategies.

My kids can actually USE the word "schema" correctly because of this book.  And so can I, for that matter.  It's an easy read, the materials for the visual presentations are easy to come by or to make- and the lessons are fun (to teach and learn).  There is a "whose garbage is this" sort of activity for teaching kids the skill of inferring, and it was so much fun to show the kids some random objects from around my house and see how they created a whole explanation as to how I must have had a birthday party.  I hadn't actually had a party, but they gave sound explanations and evidence as to how I could have.  And they have great anchor charts for the kids to reference for all of the strategies.  I've taught these strategies before, but always with worksheets, and never had the results like I am seeing from using this book.

If somehow, I am not the only person on the planet that hadn't read these books yet, and you're out there saying "Whaaa?" Then by all means check them out.  You will not be disappointed.

And then to just finish this week out, and before I re-evaluate my Great To-Do List challenge for next week, I would like to acknowledge that I got my library all fixed up and spiffy at school.  Baskets are labeled, books are sorted, and I think it's looking swell!

All of my regular books are now fitting on three bookcases, and one display rack. No, my baskets don't all match, but I've got to make do with what I have.  Maybe I can spray paint them for next year, but I'm not worried about it at the moment. I started this job at the end of September- the school had too many kids in the classroom for being a Title I school, so they had to add a new position- and I'm so glad they had to.  I love this new job!- But I inherited everything, luckily for me, extremely nice things too.  One of the freebies was a set of book basket labels from Really Good Stuff.  I've seen them before, but had never bothered with the purchase- but now I've found out I really like them and will be buying another set, as I ended up with 39 total baskets.  There's the link if you'd like to look at them for yourself:

http://www.reallygoodstuff.com/product/book+basket+label+set.do?sortby=ourPicks&page=7

I ended up with 39 categories after I was looking at some overflowing baskets and realized I was just going to end up breaking the basket and also that I was over-generalizing some categories.  Especially the picture books.  Yeah, just about everything is a picture book.  So I really tried to separate them out based on what I might need them for, as well as what the kids might be looking for.  For example, we teach an illustration unit at the beginning of the school year for writer's workshop, so I set aside some specific picture books that I felt would be good examples for that unit and put them in a basket labeled "Books With Great Illustrations".  Also I have a basket for "Books With Beautiful Language" for when I need examples for really choosing your words carefully for mood in writer's workshop.  I also made a special category for Wordless Books, and Books that are in Letter Form, and a basket of award winning authors, as well as My favorite read-alouds.  When a book really didn't seem to fit in a specific category, I noticed that they generally fell into either a family story or a friendship story.  So I've got those baskets too.

Some books are just too big to be in a basket and fit on a shelf, so they are in the display rack.  I have two of these racks, but I generally like to put books that match our window of inquiry content on the other one.  This rack is pretty full though, so I may have to rethink that, or get another rack...  And then I also have a modest collection of big books, and I put my listening center baskets on top of their cupboard.  I have individual CD players that the kids use.  I find that it avoids the inevitable argument that arises from too many kids around one CD player.  This way they can just scamper off to a private corner and not worry about who wants the volume changed or who wants to hog the book to themselves.

The books are easy to put away- as the kids don't actually have to remember what the title of the basket was.  They just match the number on the sticker on the book.  So each basket, aside from having a title, is also assigned a number.  And then I just stick little round label stickers on the front, top right corner or each book and write the corresponding number in the circle.  Kids find it extremely easy to know where a book goes.  Books that are "too big to be allowed" have a sticker, but no number.  

I did not take a picture of where I have my non-fiction brochure resources filed yet, as they are sharing shelving unit space with math manipulatives and I have that in a bit of an un-holy mess right now.  But, cleaning up that section is on this coming week's to-do list, so it's only a matter of time.

Another thing I like about my library categories is now I can see what type of book I may be lacking, and where I really don't need any more on that topic.  And that knowledge is going to help me immensely as I sojourn to the great GreenValley Book Fair in the morn.  May the force be with me!