Do you wear enjoy wearing fun teacher t-shirts in the classroom on Fridays? I do! I cannot wait to grab a few new ones this year as I move to kindergarten! If you are on the lookout for adorable teacher shirts, look no further. Aplusimages.com, teachershirts.com, and classroomfaces.com have everything your teacher heart could desire! Last month, as I was prepping to travel to Las Vegas for the SDE and Teachers Pay Teachers conference, I heard about a company offering bloggers a FREE t-shirt with their logo. Of course I jumped on that opportunity! The online editing tool on aplusimages.com was very simple to use. I picked a t-shirt style and color, and poof! I had a beautiful new teacher shirt! Within a few days, my t-shirt was on my front steps. Just in time for Vegas! Let me tell you…this shirt is perfect! The color is bright, and my logo is not one bit blurry. A+ Images was so thoughtful to include blogger instructions as well as directions on how to get the best results when you first wash the t-shirt. While in Vegas, I loved seeing all the other bloggers showing off their blog with a shirt. 🙂 Continue Reading
Because August marks the beginning of the school year and we are just starting to focus on classroom rules, I love reading Interrupting Chicken! This book is all about…how did you guess??…an interrupting chicken. The little chicken wants a bedtime story, but he constantly interrupts his father throughout the book. David Ezra Stein uses powerful illustrations and speech bubbles to show how and when the little chicken interrupts. I use Interrupting Chicken during the first week of school to teach students the importance of being respectful and not interrupting others. There is some repetition throughout the book which helps students to participate actively the entire time. One of my favorite aspects of this book is the fact that the chicken appears inside a book inside of the book! This is an excellent opportunity to show students the difference between the actual book and the story within the book. My students are always thrilled to read this story again and again! After we have read the book one time, I show my class this video as a review. Then, we use this freebie from Mrs. Wheeler (see the pictures above) to apply the book to our real lives. We sort the Continue Reading
Hey everyone! I am thrilled to be sharing some improvements with you today as part of the #2getherwearebetter monthly link up hosted by Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd & Lucky Little Learners. Today, we are talking about classroom improvements. We are thinking about this past year, learning from it, and making improvements throughout our teaching and our classrooms! REFLECT After co-teaching in two third grade classrooms this year, I have learned a lot about myself and other classroom management techniques. I have seen my co-teachers do things that I would NEVER have done or even thought to do in my own classroom (positive things, I promise!). I watched as they allowed a child to read and come to centers on his own time in order to not “throw him off” or provoke a meltdown. I have worked daily in classrooms that were so completely different than mine, but have grown to love their differences. This year was also an important one in my professional career. I completed my master’s degree in Reading and began assisting in and teaching professional development opportunities at my school. As I look back on my first major presentation to staff, I laugh. It seems like I have come leaps Continue Reading
I am so {beyond} excited to be sharing my schedule with you today as part of the #2getherwearebetter monthly link up hosted by Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd & Lucky Little Learners. (Let’s just stop right here and talk about two of the most genuine, friendly, encouraging ladies on the face of the planet! …I may be biased; Ashley & Angie are amazing!) Scheduling is my thing. I love it. Could be my type A personality. Could be my colorful flair pens…but I love it. Wait! 🙂 My schedule is a bit confusing and very broken down into groups and rotations. I co-teach during reading only, so this is helpful to note: 8:00-10:10 – Classroom A with Ms. H, Reading 10:40-2:00 – Classroom B with Ms. N, Reading (No, I do not have my own classroom this year, however, I do have students registered under my name, if that makes sense…) —– Here’s a little peek into my day of co-teaching third grade! 8:00-8:15 (Classroom A) Welcome students, attendance, check homework, announcements, begin morning review. Homework usually consists of a reading comprehension passage and a math review page. We check homework for completion (Except if there are BIG noticeable mistakes…then we Continue Reading
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
“Every child in your class is someone’s whole world.” -Unknown My brother is diagnosed PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified) with a processing disorder. That means that he is on the spectrum, but they aren’t quite sure what he has. This past weekend, we toured a fully accredited college that is specifically designed for students with learning disabilities and/or ADHD. (If you haven’t heard of Beacon College, check it out! It is amazing!) It is there that we realized that he is not ready. There are too many reasons to list to describe why Michael is not ready. I have been in a funk since last weekend because my mind has been filled with the doubts and the uncertainties of his future. However, that is not my focus today. I want to look past that. Far too often we focus on the negative. Let’s change our perspective, and think of what students succeed at, what students find joy in. —– Visualize your students. Write down the names of your “low”, “struggling”, “behavior” students. Think about how many of them are formally diagnosed (with anything). Picture the ones that you can sense have “just a little something else going 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
As I look back on this week, I feel like my fun teacher spirit was dumped off in Timbuktu. We have tested EVERY day this week during our reading block. No small group. No center activities. No hands-on learning. You see, the official countdown to THE BIG TEST began a few weeks ago. Our state test (Florida Standards Assessment, FSA) is in 22 days. So you may ask, “Why in the world are you testing now?” In third grade, students are retained if they do not pass the FSA assessment. There are many other ways to promote to fourth grade, so it’s not black and white. Still, we have to follow the protocol. One important piece of the protocol is the Portfolio testing. This test consists of a series of passages and questions. We assess students on one passage each day. Then after like 2-3 weeks of testing all the different passages, we basically do an item analysis of each standard to see which ones they passed. If the student has “Mastered” all the standards with 70% accuracy, they can be promoted. If they don’t, we continue the process that the county provides (Summer School, alternative testing, etc.). It is Continue Reading
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