Dear 2015 Me

I found this awesome linky through Teeny that Kreative in Kinder is putting on!
This part of the year is always overwhelming and stressful-even for experience teachers! This came at a perfect time, as I just spent almost 2 hours after school with a new teacher (I offered her an ear for whatever she needed, as well as a sounding board, 'stupid' questions, etc.)-it was a lot of fun! (Although I was a little hoarse by the end!)

Letter to future me:

I'll definitely have to remember some of these...it will be helpful when I'm stressing over the 'new' thing-as well as the PD plan!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Let's Start At the Very Beginning

A very good place to start.... :)  (sometimes I think in show tunes, and will randomly break onto song-especially if there is a spelling word that triggers it-then the kids all look at me weird :)

I will admit that I am not the best writing teacher. It is one of the subjects that I struggle to teach, and have not, as yet, found that magic wand that will explain everything. (I'm still looking though!)

So, after thinking about for most of last year, and this summer, I decided to break it waaaaay down, and start at the very beginning.


With sentences.

I started with the Essential Question (ha! look at me all thought-provoking!) of What is a Sentence?

We talked about it as a class, and I wrote what they said on the board (different colors for different students)

Before we had the red writing (in an order that makes sense), I wrote this on the board

Shoot fudge yellow run.

I told the kids that it was a sentence-based on their definition so far. (Which then led to a mini-discussion of comprehension and schema again! :)

 So then we added the making sense order :)

This is what the chart looked at the end of the first week.

In the next few weeks, we talked about the different types and kinds of sentences, adding them into our chart.

We've also added Erin's Build a Better Sentence to our writing wall, to help us remember how to write great 4th grade sentences.

Now that we have sentences down, we've moved onto paragraphs!

Of course, I started with the EQ-What is a Paragraph?

For this one, the definition came a little quicker.

We had to stop at topic sentences today, but we'll continue to add to the chart throughout the next weeks.

I'm modeling some of it off of my Perfecting Paragraph Series

Which I did in March of last year-but this year we are starting with it!

I did get rid of my hamburger chart (which is, I think, my most pinned item! :) last year, and we'll see how this new chart turns out!

We'll be moving into descriptive paragraphs, and I'll be trying out some cool strategies I've been reading in Making Thinking Visible (MAP testing leaves some free time! ;), so stay tuned!

I'm hoping that by starting at the very beginning, (which is a very good place to start!), my students will have those strong foundations before we move on to the more complicated stuff.

Here's hoping!

Linking up with the awesome Jivey for her magnificant

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Reading 2.0

We've continued to work on our reading skills by learning different ways to write a reader response.

The first one, I got from the very talented Meg over at The Teacher Studio

Of course, I did it on the whiteboard first

 and modeled it with Enemy Pie.

We also added the strategy to our notebooks.

This friend put it in sideways :)

The next one is a 3-2-1 Strategy, which I've used many times before, but this post from Science Notebooking reminded me :)

For this one, I got smart enough to pull the chart paper off (It's not easy to do the anchor charts with it tucked in the corner), and magnetize it to the whiteboard.

I used Enemy Pie to model this one as well. (Can you tell that it was our Mentor Text last week? :)

On the other side Catherine Reed's Letter Template from her Reading Response Packet

For each day, we practiced the strategies with the Scholastic News for the week-Tracking Turtles.

They did okay! We will definitely continue to practice this throughout the year!

This week we've started off with character traits. 

I continue to start teaching this with Hooway for Wodney Wat, as there is just so many traits and different characters. It's also a great one for character change and development.

Plus, the kids love it-and I hear them talking without 'r's for the rest of the day :)

I also continue to use this chart-although I may remake it next year! I used my magnet clothespins to hide the parts I didn't want them to see yet. 

After reading, we did the worksheet (pulled from Joanne's awesome post-it one) together, and we talked about how a character can have a lot of different traits.

Then, I sent them off on their own to practice.

Eventually, we'll add character traits to our reading notebook.

We've also started talking about making connections, using a selection from our literacy book (but shhh! we're using it sparingly and only following it for the comprehension focus).

They've had this in years past, so I'm going to be focusing more on their proof, and reader responses this year.

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Kicking off Math with Place Value

Now, I won't say that I'm totally in love with and want to marry Math in Focus, but I've found some things about it that I like and am enjoying.

One thing I really like-their place value chips!

I'm loving working with them, and I think they are really helping the kids visualize expanded form that much better.

Since my SMART Board is still a no-go (although it should be fixed eventually...), I've been doing a lot of whiteboard work.

We started by talking about numbers, and I would write a number on the board, and have the kids make it with their chips.

Then, I would have them walk me through how many I would need, and I would model how to write it in expanded form.

I've also spent some time teaching them different partner games that they can play so I can pull friends to work with them in small group.

(Groups have been created based on the pretest I gave before the unit started-it allows me to target friends who might need some additional help. If they come to group and don't need as much, I send them back to work in their workbook or play a game.)

My goal this year is to teach the whole group lesson (15-20 minutes), and then give them different choices to do while I pull friends to work with.

So far, it's running smoothly-but I've taken some time to teach them some different games.

One came from the book-Find the Value. I modified it a little, and of course, made it pretty :)

The other one, Place Value Battleship, is my own addition, but I've also made up worksheet with the different things you could do with the numbers (expanded form, comparing, adding and subtracting with regrouping, rounding, etc.) so it will be a long laster.

So far, so good!

Most of the kids are hard workers, and I haven't had any behavior issues yet (knock on wood!).

Hopefully, I can keep this up for the rest of the year!

Linking up with the amazing Jivey for Workshop Wednesday.

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Monday Made It

Happy Monday!

This Monday marks the first full week that I've had with students-hopefully it will go well! (and we are also starting reading groups...)

Still going crafty strong-so time for Monday Made It!

First up, my favorite made it...

I made fun clipboards for my teamies!

Thanks to my leftover scrapbook paper stacks (and letters), some washi tape, as well as some glitter tape!

I love the way they turned out-and both my teamies started using them almost immediately after I gave it to them!

I also did some cool made its for my class.

Like a Morning Work sign (that I can change easily every day!)

And essential questions for reading and math

I also went a teensy bit label crazy, and made tons of labels for the kids' notebooks!

I wanted to be VERY clear about my notebook expectations, as they will be graded this year. I made enough of those to put in each one of the notebooks they have!

While I was at it, I also made the labels for the first trimester check. :)

I made genre abbreviation labels, to go along with their 40 book challenge, so they can abbreviate when they are filling out their reading list.

I also made a cheat sheet for our mentor sentence notebooks of the abbreviations for the parts of speech!

For my last made it, I love my library labels so much, that I made labels for my Mentor Text library!

I love how everything is starting to coordinate in my room!

Have an awesome day!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn