Classroom tour, part 1

I cannot believe it is already the middle of September, but here we are! I was hoping to get more blog posts up but, well, it's September. I actually took these pictures before school started but am just now getting around to posting them. Yikes!

One of my philosophies of teaching is that the classroom itself should be a calm and organized place. I have so much respect for my fellow teachers and the amazing things I see them do on a daily basis, but one thing I notice again and again when I go into other teachers' classrooms is how much stuff there is. We seem to like to cover our walls with posters. Every available surface is being used for something. I admit it…I used to be guilty of this as well. I was lucky enough to have several fabulous mentor teachers early on, and one of them gave me some great advice. She told me that kids who are overstimulated don't learn well. Think about a situation you've been in where you were feeling sensory overload. Were you able to concentrate or focus? Were you at your best for learning? Yeah, me neither. Yet, we fill up our classrooms with visual clutter. Take a look at everything you have on your walls, your counters, everywhere. What do you actually need? What do your students need? Get rid of the rest of it. Seriously. It will feel weird at first. And then it will feel fantastic.

Here's a partial tour of my room:

I do put place mats on the table groups for decoration. I also have two plants in the classroom and a lamp. Are these necessary? Do we need these? Strictly speaking, no. But these things do convey a sense of "homey-ness."  I also try to stick with a simple color scheme throughout the room, as if I were decorating a room in my own home. You'll notice there are no store-bought posters though, and very little on the counters.

Part 2 of the tour coming soon!

Back to School...Here...We...Go!

I'll admit it. I haven't wanted to think about work. I've been fully enjoying my time off. But I had to go in for a meeting, and...well...you know that crazy anticipation-slash-excitement feeling you (hopefully) get at the beginning of each new school year? Well, I have it times a thousand! Who wouldn't be excited, seeing this:

And this:

Okay, so it's not as impressive through the lens of my phone camera,  but still! This picture represents all the potential of a new school year in a brand-spankin'-new school. As in, so new it's not quite done yet (notice the missing ceiling tile?).

I was so excited that I went home and mapped out my units for the entire year with standards:

I do have to say that my district did most of the work for me. They have given us maps for reading, writing and math standards. For reading and writing, I went through and created units to fit each of the topics and standards.

As I set up my classroom, I will be sharing pictures and tips for organizing. Stay tuned!

Book Review: The Great Good Thing

I know I said that I wanted to read books for adults this summer—and I am!—but I have also slipped in some kid lit and thought I would do some book reviews for you. Awhile back (like two or three years! oops!),  I had a parent recommend a book called Into the Labyrinth by Roderick Townley. I thought I would finally get it off my reading list this summer, but discovered that it was actually the second book in a series. I don't know about you, but I never jump into the middle of a series. Never. So I went down to the library and picked up the first book, The Great Good Thing:

Townley starts with a great concept. What if the characters in a book were really alive and performed their story over and over, like actors in a play, whenever the book was opened by a Reader? What if a character—in this case Princess Sylvie—got bored with the story and wanted to change it?

I adored the beginning. How could I not, with lines like this: "Everyone dove for cover, the jester closing himself inside parentheses, Queen Emmeline wedging herself into a dependent clause, and Sylvie racing to the Acknowledgements page, where she disappeared among a dozen names, including the author's pets and several friends without whose help this book could not have been written." Ah, nerd humor! I heart.

I also loved Townley's description of the relationship between the characters and the Reader. "Storybook characters live for the sound of Readers breathing, especially as it softens and settles like the breath of dreamers. It gives the characters courage to go on through the most difficult plot twists." He continues on to describe how the Reader responds to the different parts of Sylvie's story. What a wonderful discussion you could have with your students about this idea!

Unfortunately, Townley seemed to have saved all his best bits for the beginning, because the story starts to go downhill rapidly. Sylvie makes contact with the Reader (Claire), and begins to have adventures with her in Claire's dreams. Claire's brother ends up burning the book, and the characters escape, thanks to Sylvie, into Claire's dreams. But the problems don't end there! The jester turns evil and takes over the new castle, characters start rusting as Claire begins to forget them, and much more.

This was not a tightly woven narrative. Characters are inconsistent. For example, Prince Riggeloff performs a noble deed by making sure the Princess and her family escape the fire, and then later supports the jester when he takes over the throne. Um, what?

The plot wanders all over the place. Should we be concerned with the jester overtaking the throne or with the fact that Claire is dying and the characters must find somewhere else to go? Hmm, what's the bigger problem here? Also, for a book that tackles some pretty big concepts, some of the mystical and (presumably) deeply meaningful elements of the book were laughable. For example, one of the characters, Claire's old geometry teacher (whose name is Fangl—sheesh, really?), gives sage advice like "Keep your eye on the shape" and "You can't solve a problem from inside it. You've got to get outside the parallelogram." Um, okaaaay. Sorry, Fangl, you're no Kung Fu master, and Sylvie's no young grasshopper.

So, basically, I started out loving this book and thinking of all the wonderful ways I could use it in my classroom for a whole class read aloud with mini-lessons and class discussions. And then I just liked it and thought it might be useful for a small book group. And then I thought it was okay, but I probably wouldn't use it in the classroom. And then…well, you get the picture. While I could easily have finished this book in a couple of hours, it actually took me almost two weeks. Every time I put the book down, it took me longer and longer to pick it back up.

I guess I won't be reading the second one, after all…

A New Kind of DOL

Many of you probably do Daily Oral Language (DOL) or something similar. When I first started teaching, my school gave me a big DOL book with sentences for me to put up on the board every day that my students then corrected. (The book wasn't big because it was thick; rather, it was big, as in, long and next to impossible to find a convenient place to store, because it didn't fit on any of my bookshelves—what were the publishers thinking?!) There are a couple of problems with traditional DOL, in my opinion. First, there's usually no real and meaningful connection to what the students are learning and, second...it's boring. Not that everything we do as teachers needs to be exciting and fun, but it certainly helps! :)

Enter: The Class Letter. The first change I made to DOL was to turn it into a letter to my students. I write it every morning before the kids come in, and we begin our morning meeting with it. Each letter has a variety of mistakes in it that are targeted at the different levels of my students but with the overall level and learning objective of the class in mind. For example, at the beginning of the year the mistakes will mostly be capital letters and missing ending punctuation. As the year goes on and we learn about different conventions and spelling patterns, the mistakes start getting harder (but I always put in a few "easier" mistakes for students who are still working on those skills).

It only takes me a couple of minutes to write a class letter each morning, but the difference in the engagement of the students is huge! We correct the letter as a whole group. Usually, I call on about five students from my jar o' sticks. If they are stuck, they can call on a friend to help them out. After that, I start calling on volunteers since the mistakes that are left are usually the more challenging ones. Here's an example of a letter (everything in blue is what we edited):

Now, you may be thinking what a great idea this is, but wait! Here's the best part! We add sounds and gestures for our punctuation! I got this idea after taking a great workshop on whole brain and body learning. The class was such a great reminder to incorporate visual, oral and kinesthetic elements into teaching. But how do you do that with something like DOL? Well, I have to give credit to Victor Borge here. Yep, that's right. Victor Borge's famous routine about phonetic punctuation. This video is 4 minutes and 37 seconds, but you'll get the idea after about a minute and a half—although I highly recommend watching the whole thing just because it's funny:

I don't use all the same sounds and gestures as Mr. Borge, but you get the idea. And the best part is that the kids L.O.V.E. it. When I am conferencing with kids during writing time, they can't always say, "Oh, I need an apostrophe there," but they can definitely make the sound and gesture for it!

If you decide to use this idea in your classroom, let me know how it works for you!

One Lovely Blog Award!

Wow! Only four posts, and I've been awarded the One Lovely Blog Award. Definitely encourages me to keep blogging! Teachers are a supportive lot! :) A big thank you to Amanda at  I Heart Elementary:

Summer Bucket List

It's summer. Finally. That time of year where teachers get to do all the things they put on hold the rest of the year, because they were too busy with school stuff. Here's my "bucket list" for this summer:

1. Play with my daughter!

Isn't she adorable?! I have a ton of cool activities pinned on Pinterest just for her. Like this glitter bottle I made yesterday:

The original directions can be found here, although they didn't really work for me. My glitter is no longer settling to the bottom. Too much glue, maybe? I will continue playing around with it until I figure out the right amounts. This might be a good project to make for the classroom as well—especially for those kids that need a sensory break. Even though mine isn't working properly, my daughter doesn't seem to mind:

2. Crafty things. (Again with the pinning on Pinterest. It's like an addiction or something.) Here's my first creation:

Ahh. I love my husband! He deserves a medal for everything he's had to put up with this past year.

3. Relax and read some good books. First up on my list, Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn.

4. Blog! I plan on working on this blog as well as my photography blog.

5. Okay, I'll admit it...I am also planning on doing some prepping for next year. I just can't help myself. I am so excited to be at my new school with my new team! :)

6. Did I mention relax already? Yeah, that one is waaaay overdue.

Not a very long list (or a really, really long list if you look at my Pinterest boards!), but a satisfying one.

What's on your summer bucket list?

Butterflies and Life Cycles, Oh My!

Yikes! Time got away from me, and I haven't been blogging. Sorry about that. So here's the scoop: I am leaving my school, where I have been for the last eight years, and I am going to a brand new school! Brand new, as in, they are still building it! I am so excited! I have gotten to tour it twice (the first time I've ever worn a hard hat!), and it is absolutely beautiful. Actually, it's quite messy and full of construction junk, but it's going to be absolutely beautiful. So, along with all the usual end of the year requirements, I have been packing up my room (how did I collect so much stuff?) and working with my new staff to get our beautiful new school off and running to a great start in the fall.

I met with my new third grade team this morning. We looked at our state standards and created a year-long plan for next year. We are starting off the year with a life cycles unit in science. Each student gets a caterpillar to observe:

(We order Painted Lady butterflies from Insect Lore. They are safe to release in the wild in our area, but be sure to check out your area if you decide to do something similar.)

Once the caterpillar has formed a chrysalis, it goes into an aquarium. We hot glue the lids to some poster board like this:

And then leave the poster board on the top of the tank (I usually tape the far edge so that you can lift it like a lid):

The tank is empty in this picture, but I usually put flowers, sticks and yogurt cup lids with sugar water in the tank right before the butterflies come out.

We also give each student a butterfly book so they can learn about and track the growth of their caterpillar. Here is a caterpillar observation sheet which you can have for FREE because I am super happy with all of the awesomeness going on in my life right now and am feeling generous! Oh, yeah, and also because it's SUMMER! :)

CAFE strategy signs

If you've read The Daily Five by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, then you've probably also read The CAFE Book as well. I began teaching mini-lessons that incorporated the CAFE strategies a few years ago, and set aside some wall space that looked like this:

You may have noticed that the strategies aren't handwritten. In the book, they recommend writing out the strategies with students (or having a student write the strategy) but I wanted something that looked a little bit more…well…polished. If it was going to stay up on my wall all year, I thought it should look more like a final draft. So I typed up the strategies and added pictures to them as another cue for young readers. If you'd like them, I have made them available as a free download from Teachers Pay Teachers. Just click the picture below:

Please be sure to leave a comment below or write a review on TpT, so I know whether they were helpful or not. Enjoy!

A welcome and a freebie!

It seems strange to be starting up a teaching blog right as I'm ending the school year, but there's never a bad time to say "thank you." And that's basically what this blog is. A big, fat "thank you" to all the teacher bloggers and Pinterest fanatics out there. You see, I'm wrapping up my thirteenth year of teaching, and for too many reasons to go into, it's been a rough one. I had to reassess why I was a teacher in the first place: the kids, of course, and my passion for spreading the love of learning. To keep that passion alive, I started spending a lot of time on Pinterest. A lot of time. You know what I'm talking about. Admit it. You spend too much time there too, right? (Please say yes, so I can tell my husband I'm not the only one.)

Anyway, it turns out that there are a lot of teachers on Pinterest, and in the blogging world, who are really creative and awesome and, most importantly, share their creative, awesome stuff! They've saved me a ton of time and made my teaching even better. And while I was getting super excited about all of this and maybe driving my husband a little bit nuts, a thought popped into my brain…Hey, I've made a lot of my own stuff. I could share it and maybe save someone else some time too! Because, as we all know, time is a hot commodity among teachers. So here I am.

And here is my first gift to you:

Reading Strategies Bookmark

This freebie could be two separate bookmarks or one double-sided bookmark depending on what you want to use it for. One page is the IPICK acronym from The Daily Five, and the other page (shown above) is a list of "Handy" Reading Strategies to help kids decode difficult words. I give my students bookmarks throughout the year that focus on the different skills we are working on in reading. This bookmark is what I use at the beginning of the year, since we start out with lessons on choosing good fit books. Most of my students come into my room familiar with the strategies on the Handy Strategies side since our entire school does Daily Five and CAFE. If they didn't, I would probably choose to introduce the Handy Strategies bookmark after I had taught them the strategies. Let me know if you find this bookmark useful!