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Writing

How-to Create a Mary Poppins Bulletin Board

This year, my classroom theme is Mary Poppins. It has been my favorite classroom so far in my teaching career. It’s not in your face, but it’s also pleasing to the eye. It is my happy place.

SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!

One of my absolute favorite aspects of the room is actually outside of my room – our hallway display board! It’s so simple and so vibrant. It’s easy to create and (seriously, the best of all) it can be kept up all year long! I’ve had questions about this board from the second I put it up, so here we go!

You will need: black bulletin board paper, bulletin board paper in a bright color of your choice, a fun border, bulletin board letters or white paper to print your letters on.

Step 1: Tape a long piece of black bulletin board paper to any type of Smart Board or onto a wall if you have a projector.

Step 2: Find a Mary Poppins silhouette image online (by searching “Mary Poppins silhouette” on Google Images) and enlarge it to your entire computer screen by zooming in on the picture. Project this on your Smart Board or wall.

How to make a Mary Poppins bulletin board

If your paper does not fit over the entire image (see the suitcase above) you may choose to use another piece of black paper and tape them together at the end.

Step 3: Trace the outline of the image with a pencil.

Step 4: Take the black paper down and cut out the image.

Step 5: After adding the colorful background paper and border, place the Mary Poppins cut out on the board. Slightly lift her off of the board so that she looks as if she were flying. Staple carefully to the board, and tape any excess pieces that hang off onto the wall.

How to make a Mary Poppins bulletin board

Step 6: At the beginning of the year, I use this as my welcome board. I used an image of a umbrella from Google, inserted it into PowerPoint, and added each child’s name. You can download the font here (I used the Solid option). Print these onto patterned card stock for a fun look!

Mary Poppins welcome back bulletin board

Step 7: To make the title, use bulletin letters or download the font I used to make your own. If you choose to make your own, the SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOIUS title on the board will take for.ev.er to cut out. But, just embrace it. You’ll only have to do it once. Grab your stack of paper, scissors, and start that Netflix marathon!

Step 8: Staple the letters from one end of the board to the other. Overlap some, because it may JUST fit. Add the umbrellas and any other text that you want on the board. Ta-da! Done!

Mary Poppins welcome back bulletin board for any grade level!

This board display is extremely versatile!

Titling the board with SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS makes it perfect for displaying student work. I did not change anything but student work the entire school year. I will never again change paper, borders, and titles each month. Work smarter, not harder! Below are some of the displays our class has had so far this year…

SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
London Bridge is… (Kindergarten was England for Multicultural Night)
SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
What do you eat for Thanksgiving?
SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
Describing the setting of our gingerbread men stories.
SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
Penguins!
SUPERCALIFRAG..... bulletin board. Perfect for a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
Duck for President opinion writing – Should Duck be President?

If you are interested in using Mary Poppins as your classroom theme next year, check out these other ideas!

First Day ideas – FREE printables

Mary Poppins first day of kindergarten treat for parents.
Parent gift for Meet the Teacher night before kindergarten
Data Wall in a Mary Poppins themed classroom and versatile for the entire year!
Student data wall with a Mary Poppins spin!

 

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Filed Under: Decor, Misc Tagged With: Bulletin Boards, Classroom Environment, decor, welcome back, Writing

Writing Throughout the Day in Kindergarten

Writing throughout the day in kindergarten

When I taught third grade, my students whined and complained when I asked them to write. They struggled to write when directed and when working independently. They lacked experience in sentence formation and frequently struggled with spelling. It pained me to watch them get frustrated, and it pained to me edit their work and ask them to write it over yet again. I was determined to make my students enjoy writing, and to produce quality writing in the process.

We are daily writers in Kindergarten. I strongly believe that if you encourage writing from the get go, students will naturally write. No stress, no frustration, no tears. I intentionally integrate writing all day long. This has developed a love for writing in my kindergarteners.

(DISCLAIMER – The first month or so of kindergarten is rough. I get that. Believe me, our first unprompted writing sample was no fun. I had criers and quitters. However, I teach writing in a teacher directed format during the first month or so, and then move toward independence. I differentiate in my classroom and within activities every day. The activities below are just samples. They are not necessarily completed by my entire class.)

Each morning, we begin with our morning journal. The kids come in, unpack, and grab their journal. We keep the lights low all morning so that we can “focus like scholars”. It is nothing fancy…just the date and a short sentence written on a hanging white board. The sentence is connected to our thematic unit. It usually contains one blank space for students to add their own word or phrase. As the year progresses, the journal becomes more open ended.

morning journal

Students are expected to use capital letters, commas, and periods to form complete sentences. I give a quick check and send them on their way to create an illustration. We focus on matching the illustration to the words. This friend drew a picture of bats in a cave with man-made bat screening and a “NO” sign. I was so impressed that he remembered these details from a book about protecting bats!

bat morning journal entry kindergarten

During literacy centers, the writing center is where most formal writing takes place. (However, students are also writing in the word work and fluency centers, as well as in small group.) I absolutely LOVE Sharing Kindergarten’s “Write Me Three” packs. I use the mini word walls she includes, cut them, and hang them on twine. We use her organizers to help us form complete sentences.

This center layout is the same each week, which I love! Students rotate through this center twice every 6-or-so school days. When all students are finished, I simply change out the graphic organizer and the word cards.

writing center kindergarten

Write me three sentences kindergarten

I also use the graphic organizers occasionally in small group to reinforce sentence formation in a more directed format. The “Write Me Three” format has given my students a fantastic foundation. They are able to write simple sentences and are now working to extend them further. After creating a directed drawing of a bat, this friend introduced her writing, gave the reader four sentences about bats, and then closed out her writing.

bat directed drawing and writing kindergarten

A handful of my kindergarteners are great readers. They are able to write independently, and are beginning to use spelling patterns we have learned on their own. During small group time, we focus on reading comprehension and writing. Once a week, we complete a passage like the one you see below. The reading focuses on one specific short vowel sound. We discuss reading with fluency and expression. We look for picture clues. Then, students work to answer each question independently, as I float around as needed. Who, what, when, where, and why questions are included with every passage in this set. We work on underlining evidence in the text and writing in complete sentences. Recently, we even began labeling our underlined evidence with each corresponding question’s number (Look really closely at the first sentence. You will see the student labeled it with as evidence for question #1).

5W comprehension passages with short vowels

At the end of the day, we have about 30 minutes to solely focus on writing. Some weeks we are consistently writing in our “colorful journals” during this time. You can find these journals (named by my kids for the bright covers) here at Lakeshore. We write our weekly skill words and underline similar patterns. We make sentences with sight words. We write math sentences and solve them. We learn how to slow down and think through sounding out unknown words. And sometimes, we simply free write as you can see below. “School is so fun because I get to go to small group. I like writing in my books. I like to learn. I like to see Mrs. Nardone.”

kindergarten free writing during independent journal time

Some afternoons, I let the kiddos take the lead and we Write the Room. Everyone grabs a clipboard and they go anywhere and everywhere they want to. The only instruction: “Write as many words as you can find around the room! Go!” This is a HUGE hit.

write the room kindergarten

During certain thematic units, I incorporate separate journals. We planted pumpkin seeds at the end of October, and then wrote about what we saw each day as the seeds grew. (Click the picture below for a link to this unit.) After 5 days, students brought these plants and journals home. They were encouraged to continue keeping track of their plants each day.

Kindergarten Pumpkin Plant Journal

We sometimes also use this time in the afternoon to dig deep into our specific weekly standards. Here we had read the book The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything. We retold the story many times before this, so this was a review. We wrote a little in each space to retell the story together. After writing, students drew an illustration to match the writing. This activity was as simple as folding paper, but it was new and exciting to my kindergarteners. They were thrilled to share it with their parents!

The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything retelling

Writing has been a huge success in our classroom this school year! Students have moved from not being able to form letters to writing sentences. We have gone through more erasers than I can count. We have lost quite a few pencils. But we have worked really hard. We have tried our very best. We are becoming super writing scholars…and that is all this teacher can ask for!

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Filed Under: Literacy, Misc Tagged With: content integration, Reading Centers, Writing

Informational Writing – Red Eyed Tree Frog

We’ve been working on informational writing for the past week or so, and today I taught a mini lesson. Here is the process in images…
First, we read a big book called Red-Eyed Tree Frog. Then, we decided to write about it! I created this chart with the kiddos. As I wrote, they tried to guess what words I was about to write and chanted them out loud. They thought it was hilarious…although I’m not quite sure why…
Gotta love 6 & 7 year olds!
I picked a few students to write example sentences on Post Its for each part of an informational writing piece: introduction, key details, and closure. They then came up and put their Post Its on the chart.
We read all of the Post Its and talked about why some were “super duper” and why others needed a tiny bit of fixing. Then we put them in order. Other volunteers came up to write those Post It sentences onto our chart paper. We used different colors to color code our paragraph into three parts. These parts matched our anchor chart.
 Believe me. Give a scented marker to a kid, and BAM instant hard work!
 And of course I needed some form of assessment at the end of the day, so my students completed an informational writing piece about the red eyed tree frog. Here is one piece of hard, hard, hard work. I’m so proud of them!
Grab this writing freebie here!And of course, we had to make some little frogs to match! This craft was made using this free printable tree frog from Learn Create Love.

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This writing assignment is part of our unit on the rainforest. We practiced close reading using these passages while we learned about the different forest layers.
At the end of the week, my students were asked to write about the emergent layer. I explained the importance of looking back to our anchor chart to make sure that all three parts (intro, details, conclusion) of their writing were included. Two samples of students at different levels are shown below. Click here to see a preview of this rainforest unit!

 

Filed Under: Literacy, Misc Tagged With: craft, freebies, literacy, shared writing, Writing

Student Funnies!

We learned about Meerkats last week and worked on the format of informational writing. One of my firsties gave me this beautiful drawing. She called them “carrot tails”. (Look close for the humor…I couldn’t believe my eyes!) LOL
What crazy/inappropriate pictures have your kids drawn in class?
Leave a comment below and then head back to Sugar and Spice to link up with other teachers!
 

Filed Under: Misc Tagged With: research, Wordless Wednesday, Writing

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