Christmas Gifts

Today's post is short and sweet.  One of my favorite things about Scholastic are the $1 books.  Boy do these make me happy.  I like to buy a set for small groups and occasionally I'll buy a class set.  My favorite thing to do is to use them as Christmas gifts though.  For a dollar a book you really can't get a better deal.

My first year, I didn't think my students would like the idea of getting a book as a present, but I was wrong.  My kids loved their books.  I had kids that couldn't wait to start reading.  Some started in the middle of the party.  Even the kids who aren't fans of reading got excited to take a book home.

Sub Plans

So part of the job of teaching is that inevitably you will be absent. That means sub plans. Inevitably you will also be absent for multiple days. This year I headed to the MSTA State Convention (my third year and it's like Christmas, birthday, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one). That means three days out as I travel several hours and spend two days at convention. As much as I love coming to convention I am terrified of the possibilities of a sub in my room. Let's face it, everything that can go wrong will. My first year I left almost ten pages for sub plans. Did I mention that was just for day 1? I worry. A lot. Plus, I've been a sub. I have been in rooms where they leave a stack of papers and no instructions or they don't leave enough work or there isn't a roster or any number of not great things. Not in my room. I have managed to cut it down to 4 pages or so per day which gives them enough detail that if they are clueless in the classroom it gives some assistance and if they are an experienced teacher they can quickly scan and get the important details.

One of my favorite activities though is leaving a writing prompt where the kids get to guess where I am and what I am doing. This is great for convention since I am gone several days and it gets their imaginations going. Last year I moved, changed jobs, had a boyfriend, went to the beach, took my daughter to the doctor (I am single and I don't have kids haha), and so much more. I was laughing so hard I was crying. I was actually really sad that I didn't get to be there to see it in action during the writing process and it became my inspiration for "My Teacher's Secret Life," a writing prompt about what teachers  do on their weekends. 

This year, I actually forgot to put it in my plans, so before I left I had a few minutes and we did a quick writing that was just basic ideas. The first thing I noticed was my kids wanted to write two sentences and be done. I think I need to do a daily journal to get them used to writing more. They absolutely loved writing about me though. They were dying to know what I was doing. They will be so disappointed to find out I didn't climb mountains, skydive, travel to Paris, cook a Thanksgiving dinner, get married or bring them back souvenirs. Those were just some of the awesome ideas. I think they think I'm a rockstar. My life is way too boring for their high expectations. Haha. 

My Journey to the Centers of the Classroom 3

This year I have a specific group of kids that can read every word on the page, but they struggle to understand what they read.  One of my favorite resources I've started using is close reading passages from the 24/7 Teacher.  I love these because each passage has four different reading levels. They also have different questions that are leveled from questions that are explicitly in the text, questions about new vocabulary, and inference and higher level questions.  I love these because she has themed ones for each month and there are more than I can possibly ever use.

My Journey to the Centers of the Classroom Log 2

So in June I blogged about my ups and downs with centers and small groups.  Just into November I've changed course again.  My goal at the beginning of the year was to have five centers and the students would visit a different center every day.  One of those centers would be at my table.  I had done this before and it had worked well in getting me to focus on pulling a group and really working with them.  This year I have huge ability differences in my reading specifically. I teach third grade and have students who read anywhere from first grade level to fifth and sixth grade level and then I have a group of students that struggles with comprehension.  Meeting in mixed groups wasn't meeting the individual needs of my students so I had to do some revamping.

One of the big shifts I've made this year is that I rarely meet with my lowest group as a whole group.  I have gotten to where I meet with them individually and I usually don't meet them during centers. Instead, I try to pull them throughout the day as I have time.  The activities I do with them are usually more individualized and we do anything from sight words to phonics books to just practicing fluency.  They each have their own needs and it is just easier to work with them one-on-one.

One of the games I love and so do my students is Buzz.  These are fluency phrases and Buzz cards.  The students have to read the card and keep it if they read it correctly. If they get a buzz card they have to put them all back.  When we do play it with the group they are so excited they can barely stand to wait their turn.  Even my kids who really don't like reading love to play this with their friends.  This is definitely one of those little gems from TPT that I love having as a resource.

Another resource I enjoy using with them is from Miss DeCarbo's store.  Her text evidence packages are great for my lower readers that need practice going back and looking for text evidence.

Animal Classification Reading Passages

One of the things I find it difficult to teach is science. I am not naturally good at understanding science which makes it harder to explain it.  On top of that, science and social studies somehow always get pushed to the back burner because math and reading take precedence in the classroom.  I am making a concentrated effort to be more effective, but it still manages to slip through the cracks.  I did manage to make this set though to help out with animal classification.

We don't have enough science books for a class set so my students need something in their hands they can read.  Plus, this also has comprehension questions to go with it.  I like using it to review after we've used our science books, talked, done activities, etc.  It has reading passages for mammals, reptiles, amphibians, arthropods, vertebrates, invertebrates, and fish. Each passage has an accompanying set of questions that build on all the previous knowledge and answer sheets to go with them.  If you would like to try it out you can grab it here.

CUBES and Word Problems

So this is a method that I saw other teachers use. While it doesn't fix all my kids problems in word problems, it does at least help a little bit.

The underlying idea is that students have to break down the word problem and really understand the information and what is being asked BEFORE they solve the problem.  At the moment, some schools are trying to move away from the "action words" like "in all" or "how much more." This method does work better for some of my students though, so I do introduce it to them. It helps them make sense of all the "stuff" they are reading.  This is a page I like to print for them to keep close in case they need it to help them figure out where to go. If you like it you can download it as a freebie from my TPT store.

Halloween Scrapbook Pages

It seems like this time of year I add quite a bit to my kids' scrapbooks. During October we go to the pumpkin patch on a field trip and we have a ton of fun and take lots of pictures and I make a field trip scrapbook page.

To add to that we also do monster writing. I love working on descriptive writing because my kids really need help making their stories more interesting.  Monsters make it easy because they get to use their imagination. The first thing we do is draw monsters. My kids are much more into art this year so their drawings were spectacular and every kid had their own brand of creativity. Once we drew our monsters, we practiced brainstorming and we spent a ton of time talking about adjectives. Then they wrote paragraphs describing their monsters.  We got these up in time for conferences so our parents could see them.  The kids loved showing them off.

We also include our first publisher project in our scrapbook.  Most of my kids are great with technology, but in third grade they haven't really worked with any word or computer programs designed specifically for publishing.  In October my kids get a crash course in text boxes, fill color, lines, clip art, fonts, and typing skills. We do all of this in Microsoft Publisher and the kids get so excited.  It takes a lot of convincing to get them to focus on the writing and not all the extras.  Ok so that doesn't really happen in real life because who doesn't love clip art, but a teacher has to try.