States of Matter

I am blessed to work at a school that has great traditions.  One of which is 50's day.  Typically, we celebrate this the last day with students before Spring Break.  This year, we celebrated the Friday after due to a scheduling conflict.  Our fifth graders perform dances in the morning assembly and in the afternoon we have a live band, hula hoop and bubble gum blowing contests, and each grade dances.  It is a ton of fun!

This week, our learnt focused on this school wide event as well as finishing up loose ends.  During our writing time, we wrote directions for how to make a root beer float.

It is fun to process with the class and get them to think through the fact that we actually have to buy and gather the ingredients.  It was also neat to see their background knowledge of all our cooking experiences come to life when I asked them what they thought the ingredients would be.  They instantly named sugar.  We had great discussions throughout the week leading up to us making the root beer floats for snack on Friday.

 

My science unit for second and third quarter is solids and liquids.  We wrapped up the unit on Friday with our special snack.  We talked about the ingredients and the state of matter they represented.  

Earlier in the week, we listened to non-fiction texts about matter and acted out the three states of matter with our bodies before making a foldable with Cheerios.

 

When we acted out the states of matter, we were close together for a solid, some space for liquids, and even more room for gases.

 

We also finished up working on consonant diagraph sh and th.  I have many children who substitute the /f/ sound for th.  As we wrote words, I had children identify where the sound could be found in the word.  Depending on our time, either I wrote the word or they helped.

 

We will work more with the consonant diagraph th this weeks as it holds more opportunities for learning for this group of children.

My school also celebrates its 50th anniversary in May. Each grade level is working on a project for a time capsule to be buried and dug up in twenty five years at the 75th anniversary.  Our class worked on a class book of letters.  When I introduced this project, I talked about how it was a birthday present for a Monroe.  My class has lots of questions about how long it would be before we opened it. When I told them, they would be my age on Monroe's 75th anniversary, I shocked them!  We also talked about how kindergarten had changed throughout the years.  We have been reading Ramona the Pest during our quiet time and I referenced the story and how Ramona only goes to kindergarten for half day.  I asked them to think about things that make our school (and class) special.  Some of them understood that and it shows in their letters.  I loved the final outcome.

 

 

Student Led Conferences

I love Spring in the classroom!  It is when the fruits of labor from Fall and Spring are reaped.  One of the hardest parts of teaching is the realization and reminder about how different these fruits look from year to year and student to student.

We just finished our third nine weeks and student led conferences.  The preparations leading up to these conferences are exhausting.  Student led conferences are a ton of work on the front end.  Year after year, student led conferences are similar.  This year, I had 8 school days to prep my learners because of a couple of unexpected snow days.  Eight days sounds like a lot of time but this is while our regular routine and learning is going on.  In reality, student led conferences are the work of three quarters of work not just eight days of prep.
 

As I planned student led conferences this year, I thought about the personalities of my group.  I made slight changes in accordance.  Each child in my class has a data folder where we are tracking their learning based on school wide expectations and grade level interventions.  I have used premade pages from on teachers pay teachers.  My team selected pages that we thought were important for our students.  Most of their data folder has been the result of my work even though as learners, they can track their growth in terms of standards such as letter knowledge, letter sound fluency, sight word fluency, oral counting, and number recognition.  It would be a complete different blog post to tell you how I want to do this differently next year based on what I have learned this year.

I decided that their data folders would be where we would keep the work they selected to share with their families since I had decided to not have them move around the room a as they shared writing samples, a good fit book, and math game.  My group still struggles with transitions so it was obvious to me to take out components of the student led conferences that would distract their showcase of their work.

In the Fall before parent teacher conferences, we filled out a personal report card.  I read each part of it to them and the circled the one that they thought best fit them.  I did the writing component at the end after they told me what school made think of.  We did the same report card this week.  I read it to children who still needed that while others completed independently.

It is fascinating to see how sometimes their answers are exactly the same, other times how they change, and when children are 100% honest even if it is not pretty.  

 

It was rewarding to see them complete the writing component independently and with ease!

 

It is fun to see their personality come through especially in the writing component.  This personal report card can be found at this blog, What the Teacher Wants.  Their blog has some great resources for parent teacher conferences as well.

 

One of the ways I get children on board with helping to get families at school is writing an invitation using interactive writing.  We listened to A Letter To Amy by Ezra Jack Keats and talked about different purposes for invitations.  Together, we established how we wanted to start our letter after talking about how different children would have different parties visiting that evening.  It took us a day or two to get our invitation written.  The piece of writing may seem simple but it holds so many components of their growth.  

 

I saw something similar to this reflection of their learning on Pinterest.  I adapted it for my class.  We worked on this during our writing time one day this week.  I knew this could be tough for my class because of their lack of independence so as I thought about ways to help them have success, I knew I had to break the directions up into small pieces.  I used my document camera to give one direction at a time.  I told them the expectation was a picture and words that matched.  Here's where something magical happened, they used their resources without me reminding them.  They used words from the paper, words from our word wall, and words from our schedule and around the room without me reminding them.  This may seem like less than a big deal, but 120+ days of this reminder and the are finally doing it is glorious for me.  

 

Here is one of my high readers who struggles with writing due to fine motor.  I loved that he put he still needed to work on writing.  This reflection of learning promoted great discussions for me and the children as well as their families.  I had a great moment with a high child when he told me there was nothing he needed help on.  I remarked that it was not true.  I told him even as an adult there are still things I need help on.  He said, "well not me".  Yet, he sat there not completing any of the reflection because he told me he needed help with his words.  I told him that he should go back and out that he needed help with tricky words in the first box.  He was less than happy being the perfectionist that he is.  However, here is the important part of student led conferences for me, letting children reflect on their learning and growth and continue to set goals as they meet others.  I had 19 different conferences that evening but that is the beauty of the process.  Each child is different, emotionally, academically, socially, in all developmental areas.  It is powerful when teachers and families embrace that because it is then that we can really help each learner grow.  If you are interested in using the template for reflection of my learning, click here.

Does your school conduct student led conferences?  What is your favorite part of student led conferences?

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite author studies.  I live for this time of the year.  He has so many books with wonderful lessons but one of my favorite things is adapting lessons from year to year because it is so easy with his stories.  The books also just lend themselves to integration.  Over the past few years, I have had a student teacher who is implementing during Seuss.  This is the first year in about five where it has been all me.  I have had so much fun this past week and looking forward to continuing this author study for two more weeks until Spring Break!

One of the first books we read was Yertle the Turtle.  I also love Seuss because of the history behind his books.  This one is about Hitler and although I didn't tell my class that, we did talk about what a leader is to give them a reference for Yertle and his power.we compared Yertle to our president, governor, principal, and the classroom teacher.  I chose to use a Venn Diagram to compare him to King Bidgood because my class loved that book.  It was amazing the comparisons they made.  

We also painted and made turtles for the hallway.  My class was begging to not be on the bottom like Mack but they said they didn't want to be on the top like Yertle.  They are beginning to amaze me with their connections they make even when it isn't right in the moment of a literacy lesson.

 

We read And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street earlier this year but I am all for reading the same book multiple times.  We listened to it again and wrote about something we might see on our way to or home from school for a class book.  This is one of my favorites because he did it independently!  I know you can't see thunder and we did have a discussion but I loved that he worked independently and was creative.  I am still seeing children struggle with the use of capitals and lowercase so we always talk about this and I model it but I think with time, it will come.  More than anything, I want them to be confident and love writing.

 

We also brainstormed a list of places we could eat green eggs and ham before we read the book.  After listening to it, we made a class book. I intentionally started the list before reading the book to get some variety on the list and hoping for some variety in the class books.

They are still building their confidence in themselves as writers (and illustrators) because many of them used car for where they would eat them. We also talked about the difference between in and on so we could add both of those words to the word wall.  

 

I loved this one! Can you tell we live in a football town? Another example of differentiation because the fact that this learner wrote the sounds for football was amazing for him.

This is an example of one of the little ones using the list to spell his word.  As you see, there are still a mixture of upper and lowercase letters but this child is using their resources and was independent.

 

A green eggs and ham snack for the same day we read the story! I prefer to cook on Fridays because while it is so much fun it also is exhausting!

 

We made oobkeck on Monday after I paraphrased the story.  They made some comparisons to the leader in this story to King Bidgood.  We spent "extra" time this week writing descriptive words to describe oobkeck.  One of the best decisions I made was putting it in a container inside the sensory table instead of directly.  It was disgusting by the end if the week and I decided to dump it and the container!

We made green eggs and ham on Friday for snack.  Each child got to crack their own egg.  Some had never had that experience before!  We added the food coloring and Velveeta before cooking.  We also talked about solids and liquids.  While they were eating the eggs one of my little boys said, "I have never had green eggs and ham before but this is amazing!"  It totally made my day!

We also had "pink ink" to drink or strawberry milk.  Same said child that loved the eggs was caught blowing bubbles in his milk.  There are times by Friday afternoons where I just have to laugh.  This was one of those times.  I laughed after I told him to stop!

 

Of course, we graphed whether or not we liked green eggs and ham.

We made at words after listening to The Cat In The Hat.  I might have been really excited when they pulled in the diagraph ch to make chat!

 

Then we made hats!  Our school is celebrating Wacky Wednesday and kindergarten is dressing up with hats and cat whiskers.

 

When they made their hats, they could use our list or make their own words.  The hats took multiple step directions and for the most part, we were successful! 

 

Here are our whiskers.  Using a Popsicle stick, they glued the whiskers on.  I used a hot glue gun for the pom pom nose.  We are requesting that children wear red or black on Wednesday to go with the hat and whiskers.

 

My school is decorating doors for Read Across America week.  I love this quote from Horton!  That is where my mind went.  We listened to My Many Colored Days which was published after Seuss' death. We talked about warm and cool colors and how they make us feel.  We used water colors to paint people.  They were asked to use warm or cool colors.  I love the way it all came together.  

 

Last summer, when Target had Seuss all over their dollar spot I stocked up.  I even made the goody bags and had it all ready and almost forgot!  I will send them home with children tomorrow.

What's your favorite thing about teaching Dr. Seuss?  What is your favorite Seuss book?

Happy Heart Day!

I keep anticipating that things are going to slow down.  I aim getting through the hurdles and milestones of one week only to find that the next week holds just as many.  It's hard to believe there are only 2 weeks of February left and 4 weeks until Spring Break.  Really?  Where does the time go? 

With that realization it's time to start reassessing for my third quarter progress reports, begin entering grades, and get my kindergarteners ready for student led parent teacher conferences.  Yikes!

I don't hate Valentine's Day but I think it's overrated.  Hallmark and chocolate companies make a killing off of people that are not kind to each other and then suddenly want to show love on this one day of the year.  However, teaching has made me love it and embrace it.  The week was full of great moments in anticipating of our celebration but it was so fun to see them get excited about box covered in red and pink paper with a heart cut out. 

A couple of snow days the week prior really threw off my game.  I felt as though I was playing catch up all week long in addition to getting ready for Valentine's.

The week before when it was single digits outside and outside recess was something we had long forgotten about, we tasted hot chocolate as a part of our snack.  Before we drank it, we talked about our five senses and asked children to think about those as they enjoyed it.  We had begun writing descriptive words before the snow came so we spent some time last week finishing it up.  They are really doing some amazing things as writers.  

 

Every time they reference resources they can use, something they know, or the word wall, I tend to get excited.  You know those moments when you feel as though you have preached something until your blue in the face and they still are not taking ownership, how utterly frustrating those are.  As frustrating as those moments are, it makes it so worthwhile when they begin to independently do things.  Our writing workshop is starting to really rock and roll.  I still feel like a ping pong ball as I bounce around helping children, pointing to the word wall, and giving reminders but they are finally starting to exhibit some independence! 

I took pictures of all my children over a month ago for this pose and idea that I saw on Pinterest.  I suppose it is a good thing I was ahead of the game but we spent last week getting the valentine ready for their family.  It was a lot of teacher prep but my families loved it!

We have been reading tons of Robert Munsch stories over the last month.  If you have never heard of him or read his books, you should check out his website. It is an amazing resource.  He has saved my life on a few occasions but more specifically he did often during my first year.  You know those moments when you have a few minutes and you are not sure what to do - let them listen to a Robert Munsch story.  He is a story teller and it is amazing how engaged they are when they listen to his books.  Once you introduce him though, be ready for them to beg for more!  This week, we listened to Love You Forever.  It is a story that almost all of them have heard and I knew this.  We have been working on making connections, both text to self and text to text.  We talked through this before listening to the book and for my children who are still wanting to share their connections by blurting, I had them hold up a c with their fingers as they made connections.  I partnered them up after listening to the story and had them share their connections with each other before choosing a connection to share with the whole group.  One of my little boys asked me, "do you ever feel like that mom in the book?"  I said, "I love you like that mom in the book". 

We began our 3D shape museum this week.  It is so hard for me to deal with "stuff".  It is only fitting that I had valentine boxes and 3D shapes over taking my classroom on the same week.  The children brought shapes from home and I collected some as well.  They helped me classify where the shapes would go and then we played I Spy throughout the week using descriptive words to describe the shapes.  We had not talked about rectangular prisms yet so that shape was introduced as well as talking about real life example.  I asked them if they could think of examples right off the bat.  I almost regretted it until one little girl raised her hand and said "door".  Then children began raising their hands and naming off a variety of examples. 

Some other fun things we did this week...



Valentine Photo Booth - pictures for parents as well as photo booth pictures during book buddies.  Best $5.00 I have spent in awhile!  They loved it!  I will probably add these props into dramatic play for fun.

We listened to The I Love You Book by Todd Parr as well as Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James and introduced letter writing.  They love it.  They have been writing letters to me, class mates, peers, family, and other teachers.  I added the letter template to our writing choice for daily 5 this week.

I read The Biggest Valentine Ever by Steven Kroll and before I even asked they were making predictions on what might happen in the story and how it would end.  We did some interactive writing as we identified the characters, setting, and sequence of the story.  It was really neat to watch them make the connection and verbalize once we had written the name of the town: Mouseville and use that resource because they knew that mouse and house rhymed. 
 

 

My school holds an arts festival annually to raise money to promote the arts at my school.  We are blessed in that we have a work room full of paint, water colors, and almost anything you could think of you might want.  Over the past few years, a guest artist who is also a teacher in the building comes in and does a canvas painting with each class.  The paintings are auctioned off and then that money is used to buy supplies.  It is one of my favorite school wide events.  I found this idea on Pinterest and decided it is what I wanted to do with my class for the arts festival.  The lines were drawn on the canvas but my children painted the canvas and stars.  We are currently in the process of gluing on buttons and other fun knick knacks.  I love it!  I feel blessed to work with such talented people.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

I love football!  Sadly, this weekend is the end of games until August.  Last year, my class reflected on our hopes and dreams with a football twist - super goals.  They really loved it so I tried it again this year with some changes.  We looked at our kindergarten wishes from the beginning of the year and talked about how we have grown as well as things we still want to get better at.  There was lots of prompting and redirection in the Fall so it was encouraging to see how much they had changed just by answering the same prompts.

I think setting goals is powerful.  That's how my mind works and I am a very determined person, however, I think it is most powerful for the strugglers (the ones who aren't setting goals outside of the classroom).  For instance, no one ever became a doctor, president, etc. without setting goals.  There are children in my classroom who need to be challenged to think about the right now as well as first grade and beyond.  While the academic and social standards of kindergarten seem little when compared to the years beyond, I believe it helps them know and understand my expectations, kindergarten expectations and how to deal with life challenges.  

Here is an example from one of my boys who has been having issues with his peer relationships.

I like this one because sometimes I feel like the preacher that no one is listening to.  He used the word stamina and knew it could help him grow!

There was some teacher work involved.  The day after I hung it all up as the kids were coming in, one little boy begged his mother "come look at my super goals".  Totally worth every minute of prep and thework.

 

As I was thinking about the Super Bowl and some ties in for building their background knowledge, pickles came up.  One thing I love about Kindergarten is building their background knowledge through vocabulary.  We tried dill, sweet, in addition to bread and butter pickles.  We graphed whether or not we liked pickles. 

 

 

It was interesting to see how many of them did not like pickles!  I am not a pickle lover but I will eat bread and butter pickles.  Their faces as they tried them were comical too!

 

We graphed who we thought would win the Super Bowl.  The first little boy picked the Seahawks and therefore, most everyone after him picked them as well.  They kept asking me who I wanted to win so at the end as we are counting totals, I revealed that I want the Denver Broncos to win.  We did this on Thursday.  On Friday morning, one of my little girls came in and asked me at 7:40 a.m., "who won the Super Bowl?" 

 

Who doesn't love a great tailgate party?  I set up dramatic play as a tailgate by collecting items that maybe you would have at a party.  It was fun listening to them talk about the stuff as I set it up over a couple of days in the middle of the week.

 

 

They are fascinated with the "grill" which is so aluminum foil.  I also made "hamburger patties" out of pink play doh.  They have loved flipping them as they cook.

 

Before I opened dramatic play on Thursday as the tailgate, I asked them if they knew why someone would have a party and what kinds of things people might do and eat at a tailgate.  Their answers were pretty spot on.  Some children mentioned chips and dips, others mentioned various items to grill, and still other said lots of food!

 

I am thrilled beyond measure that it is February!  I do not love The Mitten but this week, we used a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the two versions of the book.  I was amazed by their learning!  Sometimes, it isn't that the story is so wonderful but the conversations that the story helps promote.  This week, as they talked about characters that were in both stories and how the stories were alike and different, without teacher prompting, it made  me realize how much we have grown since August.

 

We are still a work in progress when it comes to letter formation and the understanding of when to use capital and lowercase letters.  We had a great conversation about fiction and non-fiction this week because they were talking about how certain things in both stories could really happen but one of my little boys said referring to the fox in the Alvin Tresslet version, "but foxes do not wear clothes". 

 

Another moment which I wish I had on tape was when we read The Mitten by Alvin Tresslet on Monday and one of my little boys starts comparing the animals that want in the mitten to our gingerbread stories.  The book references how the mouse does not want to let the fox in and the little boy refers to how it is similar to The Gingerbread Man because the mouse is afraid to get eaten.  We talked about text to text connections.  I really think graphic organizers are powerful ways that children can organize all the information you are hoping they are taking in.  I wonder if the same child that was making the text to text connections would have been able to do so without the organizers.

 

 

This week, our poem for our weekly poetry folder was about Groundhog's Day.  The weekly poem is one way we practice fluency through repeated readings.  We also work on sight words, rhyme, and phonemic awareness.  We made a groundhog pointer for children to take home to read the poem with.  I hope my little predictors are wrong.  I am tired of the cold weather.  Although, I am open to some snow days occurring.

 

We also enjoyed groundhog snacks!  Yum, yum! 

 

 

Pre-K and Kindergarten had a guest artist come visit and each class did a rotation with the artist where they worked on one canvas.  My class did the orange one, Fall.  I love it all but feel so blessed to work in an environment that values the arts as well as with colleagues who want children to receive opportunities that they might not otherwise receive.

Thursday afternoon during centers when I look over to my classroom, two boys are listening to a book on tape.  They rigged these stuffed animals to listen with them.  We have been practicing reading to self with a stuffed animal as we work on our fluency.  They love it!  This just made me happy and was a sweet reminder to enjoy the little things.