Are you ready for testing?!?! We are! We have one more school day before the FSA (Florida Standards Assessment) reading test. Over the past few weeks, we have been working oh so hard to get ready. We have reviewed in groups, in small group, in pairs, and independently. But, truth is, we are all sick of reading comprehension pages and practice assessments. (Can I get an AMEN?!) Sometimes they are just not fun to do. As teachers, we can change this attitude! This year, my co-teacher incorporated many fun activities in order to keep our students engaged while continuing to practice using our strategies in the text and on test questions. I am sharing three of our favorites with you today! These “games” are extremely simple to make and will not break the bank. Many thanks to the Dollar Store! Plus, all of these activities can be saved for next year! Students should read the passage(s) and answer all questions first, showing their evidence in the passage. All of these activities are to be done while REVIEWING the answers with students. The review can happen in small groups or whole group. Ping Pong Balls & Cups Place cups in Continue Reading
I’ve recently been spending a lot of time studying and reviewing for my state’s K-12 Reading assessment which I have to pass to obtain my Master’s degree in Reading. This test also certifies you to be a Reading Specialist, if you so choose. As I was talking to my friend from class who already took the test, she said, “I thought it focused a lot on emergent literacy, but you’re more…you know…you’re dealing with that every day.” As I read through the emergent literacy section of the review book, I realized that there were SO many technical terms that primary teachers use quite often. On the other hand, intermediate elementary teachers may not. My friend has been in all of the same courses as me in the last two years, but she didn’t feel as confident with these terms. All of a sudden it made SO much sense to me! I mean, we’re human. If we don’t use complex (Tier 3, if you will) vocabulary often, we forget the true meaning. I get confused and think too far into all of these Ph words often, so these are the details that have helped me! Let’s take a look at a Continue Reading
Hey! I am so excited to share my brand new game show idea with you! I have some third graders who are quite low. They struggle with vocabulary and basic sentence structure. I decided that I needed to think of a way to engage them, but still teach hard-core vocabulary before our state assessment. So, I began working on this game show product a few weeks ago. Since then, it has been played by my kiddos and edited by many other teachers to make sure that there are no kinks. I am happy to announce that my first digital game show is posted and ready to be enjoyed by many students! Keep reading to hear more about it, and scroll down for a link to the product. What is a digital game show? Basically, it is like playing Jeopardy! The game is created in PowerPoint and has clickable links throughout. You MUST have PowerPoint to play it. As you click, new pages appear. The kids were amazed that the answers were instantly given to them! Why do I need a digital game show? First of all, who doesn’t love a game show?!?! 🙂 Digital game shows are engaging to all learners Continue Reading
Fluency Overview In the past, fluency was defined as the ability to read smoothly and effortlessly, at a quick, automatic rate (Harris & Hodges, 1995; Logan, 1997). A student’s reading rate and accuracy are very important because less time spent on decoding leaves more time for the brain to focus on comprehension. However, after recent research, fluency has come to encompass much more. It now includes prosodic elements such as expression, volume, phrasing, pacing, and smoothness. When students read with prosody, they are able to capture the meaning of the story or script. Current research supports phrasing, pacing, and smoothness as elements that help develop fluency in students. (Clark, Morrison, & Wilcox, 2009) Students who do not read fluently segment the text and read it word by word. However, students who read smoothly with appropriate expression, pacing, and phrasing make reading sound like natural language (Zutell & Rasinski, 1991). Fluent reading develops when students are able to make their reading sound like individuals speaking as they do in daily life. Although fluency is a large part of reading curricula, it is often neglected in reading instruction (Reutzel & Hollingsworth, 1993; Zutell & Rasinski, 1991). Many teachers refer to traditional methods of measuring fluency. This is usually comprised of giving students an unfamiliar passage and timing their reading while keeping Continue Reading
Recently, I gave a professional development to the teachers who are new to my school as a requirement for the last semester practicum of my Master’s (yippee!). The PD was focused on how to teach in and through literacy centers. But, not just any literacy centers. Real, data driven, standards based literacy centers. RIGOR is an important word these days with our new Florida Standards (as with Common Core). The goal of this presentation was to give teachers a deeper look into providing center activities that required students to do more than move task cards, match cards together, or order magnetic letters. I am not against the former. Yes, there is a time and place for both. However, the teachers that were in this PD were interested in how to create activities that would promote the thinking and writing that we are pushing for with our new standards. After many requests, I’ve decided to share some of the slides with you below. Enjoy! Disclaimer: Before we start, I know many people cannot call daily academic activities “centers” anymore, because administration and some researchers associate centers with play. “Stations” is becoming the popular term because it seems more work-based. However, my school still Continue Reading
I’m linking up with Miss DeCarbo for Wordless Wednesday! I know this is longer than a normal Wordless Wednesday, but I’m excited! This month we’ve been working on identifying character traits in books and short videos. This week, we watched Ormie the Pig. It is an adorable video about a pig who is attempting to get a jar of cookies off of the top of the fridge. He puts many different ideas to use trying to knock the cookies over. The kids LOVED this video. Before watching, students were given this handout. We (teachers only) chose specific traits, and students copied them into the boxes. As they watched the video, students graded Ormie and showed their evidence. We explain a general scale aloud to students before they begin. As you will see below, we allow students to disagree as long as they have evidence to support their opinion! It creates FANTASTIC discussion in groups. And that’s about it! Super simple. Highly engaging. Example Grading Scale for the Character Report Card A = OH! He is definitely _____! B = I see that he is ______. C = He can be _______, but _____. D = He’s not very _________. F = I Continue Reading
It’s been about a month since I began the leap from first to third grade, and I am loving it! Last year, I taught high achieving first graders who were almost (if not, just as high) as my third graders. So thankfully….the leap wasn’t too difficult. 🙂 My friend and now co-teacher last year in my first grade classroom. Co-teaching with one of my best friends and another energetic, hilarious, engaging teacher has been an amazing experience. We are each other’s physical, mental, and emotional help each day…which in the teacher world can be a wonderful thing! Today, I wanted to share a few of the things we have been doing… Schedule In our county, 18 is the maximum amount of students allowed in each classroom. Both third grade classes that I work in have about 25 students. Therefore, the school had to hire an extra teacher (me!) to work in both classrooms and provide support. I am teaching only reading. I begin each day with one teacher, and begin after lunch with the other. The three of us have synced our schedules. This way, I am teaching the same lessons when I am in both classrooms. It is SO Continue Reading
Today linking up with my friend Christina from Miss DeCarbo for Wordless Wednesday! My week has been filled with meetings, sessions, and testing. It has been crazy. BUT on the positive side, I am so excited to say that my first ever Professional Development session is complete! I am so thankful for all of the teachers who provide me with my own “Virtual PD” daily. Blogs and teacher friends are a beautiful thing! Have a great week!
I have be crazy busy with my new job back in the classroom {more to come on that soon}, but I wanted to share this fun set with you today! Last week, our skill was to compare and contrast two texts. In third grade, students are asked to compare and contrast the major points in two texts about the same topic. My two coworkers and I were searching for products to use, but we weren’t finding anything that worked for us… Fast forward to the weekend. I decided to create a passage to go along with the book Officer Buckle and Gloria. We wanted the students to be engaged in the topic {dogs}, so we used a fun fiction book that they would giggle at. 🙂 In the past, I have read Officer Buckle and Gloria to kindergarteners and first graders, so I was slightly worried. I didn’t know for sure if my third graders would think it was funny. OH was I wrong! They were laughing and asking to see the flipping dog picture again and again. Reading two texts can be time consuming, but “Just Do It!”. With my on level groups, I read Officer Buckle and Gloria Continue Reading
 Today, I must cut right to the chase because I am beyond excited about this new find! I was at a conference in Jacksonville, Florida right before Thanksgiving listening to a 2nd grade teacher talk about differentiation. It was a great presentation, but to be honest, I was thinking “I do most of these things in my own classroom”. That was until I heard her mention “this new DATA COLLECTION APP”. My ears perked up! My eyes flew from my notebook to her face. We are in the age of data, data, data. This is perfection! Really? I can just add my students into this app and log all of my annotations right on my iPhone? NO WAY. Wait what? I can take pictures of their work and add them to each student’s personalized file? This was too good to be true. But it IS true! It’s called Confer. I may seem a little too excited about this, but let me tell you – It is worth it! It’s available in the iTunes App Store or through Google Play for Android. There are currently two versions of Confer. Confer (regular) is the full price version. It is $24.99, which may be Continue Reading