I want my students to love reading. Cultivating a love for reading while also improving reading levels requires a delicate balance between skill practice and well... fun.
My first round of Book Club is done with my small guided reading groups. Each group is given a choice of books at their level, and we meet daily (with my higher groups every other day,) practicing various skills and engaging in book talks. Through these groups, I set the stage for more independent work and student led discussions. Throughout the series, we gather information to create a Dodecahedron Final Project Throughout the years, I have created several novel study packets that end with a Dodecahedron as the final project. The kids love these, and the final project is so great for display!
0 Comments
A main goal of mine is to get kids to love reading. For the struggling reader, just getting started on a book can be half the battle. Here are some resources to help ensure all kids, especially the struggling reader, are getting what they need.
Graphic Novels
I have always found huge amounts of success behind graphic novels. http://dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/tools-technology/suggested-reading/graphic-novels/
Below you will find some of my favorite fiction and non fiction books.
Affiliate links included
What graphic novels have you tried in the classroom? Share below!
I have really been struggling with what to do about keeping track of student reading this year. I have never been a fan of Reading Logs and the feedback I received from parents in my first years of teaching made me drop them completely. The Reading Logs (and at one point nightly reflections) were making my kids hate to read. I still wanted to keep kids accountable for their reading, so I had students and parents sign a sheet stating they did in fact complete their nightly reading... And I am sure most of them did! Reading Logs just don’t work. Aside from keeping track of daily minutes, they are not effective as a tool to create life-long learners who love to read. This year I am going to try something new. I am going to have my students fill out a Reading Goals sheet. We are going to start with a mini lesson on different types of Reading Skills. We will brainstorm areas a 4th grader might need to work on and we will talk about strategies that might help a person obtain that goal. The key to this goal setting activity is that the document will be a constant work in progress. We will check in, update goals, add to strategies as we learn new ones, and change goals to better suit us as we grow... I am hoping to instill the importance of self reflection. We will see where it goes! You can download my sheet for free below or in my Teacher's Pay Teacher's store! Happy Teaching! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Reading-Goals-3360196 I have been severely neglecting this blog lately but as a working mom in a new school on a new position teaching math to grades 1-5..... something had to give and sadly it's been this website.
Never fear! I have a few great things coming including: March Mathness activities My favorite free math resources Easy differentiated math games More math art! More indepth blog posts to come but here are a few sneak peak pics as to what my kiddos have been up to this year. Over the past twelve years of my career, I have always felt the most pressure to meet the needs of my gifted kids. This is a nuanced group- as is so often the case with teaching, I have found that there is definitely not a one size fits all solution for the gifted students. More often than not, what does work for them also works for the majority of learners. To put it simply- being a good teacher for gifted students simply requires good teaching. What does that even mean you asked? I spent the last 12 years trying to answer that question. Below are some resources that I have found helpful.
I currently am teaching Math to gifted students in grades 1st through 5th. Finding enrichment and extension activities that are worth while has been my greatest challenge this year. I have had to create a lot of what I do from scratch and will post to my Teacher's Pay Teachers store when they are store ready. In the mean time, here are the resources that I love most. Byrd Seed - I saw him present at a gifted conference. If ever you get the chance to see him speak or better- if you live in the Irvine, CA area and can some how observe him teach... jump on the chance. His strategies are highly engaging to all students- and specifically aim to please the gifted learner. I surprisingly had a hard time finding useful information on Pumping at work. I went in half optimistic, half terrified. Some how, some way I made it an entire year- as a full time working mother- breast feeding. There were absolutely some bumps along the way; I definitely wished that I would "dry up" more than a handful of times- but I never did. And my sweet little girl is still gaining all of the benefits of being breastfed. (**Around 9 months I had to start supplementing- I'll discuss later.)
The Commute I live in LA- before getting back to work I lived a whopping 0.8 miles away from work. My commute was usually a 3 minute bike ride. If I left my house after 7:45 the parking situation got hairy and I usually didn't make it into my classroom until around 7:55 *gasp* an entire 10 minutes from the time I left home. That charmed life came to a screeching halt when we realized a dog, a baby, 2 adults and 900 square feet didn't mesh well. So we moved about 35 miles away next door to my parents. We had a lot more space for our growing family and free babysitting! ...And my 3 minute commute became a beast of a drive. LA traffic increased my commute from what should have been a nice traffic free 30 minutes to about an hour and a half. What's a nursing mom to do in such a situation? Pump. Of course. Maximize your time by pumping in the car. Yup. I fully endorse pumping and driving. I got an entire pumping session out of the way while sitting in the hellish traffic of the 405 freeway. Find a comfortable place to pump. For me that happened to be my classroom. I set up a nice corner in a place that I could easily hide in the event of an unannounced intruder. My next door neighbor teacher and every adult in the school knew this is where I pumped. In the event of a rainy day schedule, I invaded my principals office because the only other available space was the nurses bathroom and- no thanks. If you don't have a boss that is supportive, demand it. In most states its the law. Let my start with this: I was first introduced to Interactive Notebooks by an amazing Teachers Pay Teachers author and her absolutely fantastic Language Arts Interactive Notebooks. Her resources added what I felt was missing in my Language Arts Curriculum.
I am a STEM teacher at heart. Kids leave my classroom loving all things Science, Tech, Engineering and Math. A colleague of mine suggested we introduce some Interactive Notebooks into our Science curriculum so I happily jumped aboard. Until I saw the resources... and cringed. Interactive Notebooks are great. They are also incredibly time consuming. For grammar instruction, the time in is arguably worth it. The cut and paste activities add a little spice into a subject that is by nature boring. (I am sorry grammar lovers, but it's true!) STEM lessons scream hands on. To spend an entire lesson cutting and pasting vocabulary words into a journal is a missed opportunity to spark love for learning. While there is absolutely a time and place for the Interactive Notebook resource, please don't let that time and place be Science! Instead do this: 1. Spend time doing hands on activities Science is all about systems and process. A student won't truly understand any of this unless they get hands on with the material. The web is exploding with great STEM resources both free and paid. The activities don't have to be elaborate. They can be a quick and simple 20 minute thing or can spam over a week. Either way, the time spent is much more valuable than cutting and pasting words into a notebook. 2. Draw it out Students should be taking time to diagram things on their own. Instead of cutting and pasting that diagram of flower parts, have your students draw it and label it themselves. This is something a real scientist would do in their real journal anyway. Get your kids used to this. 3. Journaling Talk about a perfect time for a two-fer. Squeeze in some Language Arts time into your science curriculum by having your students journal about their experience. Have them record their observations and thoughts on the lesson you completed. When doing an experiment, follow the Scientific Process. Start by having the class make observations about the topic you are studying. Guide them to form a question to answer. Come up with a good hypothesis to the question. Figure out a process that will guide your experiment. Record any observations and data during the experiment. Analyze the results. And finally have your students write about the outcome. Interactive Journals are great. But in science, are they really interactive if all you are doing is cutting, pasting and coloring? I had a beautiful baby girl in February. It's now August... and time for me to get back to teaching.
I've read all kinds of blogs during my precious little's nap times in attempt to prepare for our inevitable separation. But in the end it seems that what will work best for you in such a situation is... what works best for you. So in the small quiet moments I did all that I could to set my year up to make it all as smooth as possible. The thought being the harder I work now, the more time I have during the school year with my family. Luckily a lot of the work I did before going on maternity leave set me up nicely for coming back to work. Long Term Planner This is pretty much a must have for a smooth year and where I always start my year. What do I want to accomplish? What are my teaching goals? What lessons and projects will I use to achieve those goals? With that set, I jumped to my next task... Here is what I used- it's a quick draft of the year. I gave my long term sub a more detailed week by week plan along with this! Homework This is a biggy- Homework is a time suck for teachers, students, parents... siblings- anyone involved! I wanted to make the homework thing as efficient and painless as possible for everyone. So I created a year long homework menu. Essentially, the menu provides differentiated options covering a wide range of skills and student needs. Following my long term planner, I set up homework for the entire year. The assignments all cover 4th grade standards giving students needed practice, but also leave room for adjustments in my pacing. I will get back to that in a separate post covering current research on homework and why I chose to go the Homework Menu route. Projects and Rubrics With my Long Term Planner set, I was able to solidify all of the major projects for the year. To make my life easier, and my classroom run smoother, I made sure that each project had a clear set of student instructions along with an easy to follow grading rubric. Again, my goal is to finish as much of my work at work. I want to be able to come home and spend time with my family. Setting up my year before it started will absolutely ensure that I am able to do that. You can find every project I have ever done here A Support System This one seems obvious but still worth discussing! No amount of reading can prepare you for going back to work as a first time mom. Will I be able to maintain breastfeeding? How, when and where will I pump at work? How will I cope with my baby girl being at day care?! All of these questions provided enough angst for my milk supply to drop drastically, and school hasn't even started yet. So, time to take a few breathes and figure it all out. Where will I pump? Employers are required to provide a clean and safe place for a mother to pump. After reaching out to my administrator, I considered my choices. 1- Her office. 2- A bathroom on the other end of campus that another nursing mother transformed into a pumping station. 3- The nurses bathroom. (?!) When all was said and done, I went with where I felt most comfortable. My classroom. I set up a nice, clean and comfortable pumping station at my desk. I made sure that everyone was aware that I was pumping in my room so I would not get any distractions or surprise interruptions. I have a tough group this year. I love them, don't get me wrong- and I've definitely had worse; but there is something about this year that didn't quite click in the beginning. After a friend came to visit and chat with my class about her job as a research scientist, she couldn't help but comment on the stark difference between this class, and the class I had last year. They lacked focus, respect, and were just a bit overly rambunctious.
And so, after a long winter break I reflected. Without argument the group as a whole is difficult. One teacher approached me after a week of rotating classes for science and offered help, "if you ever need a break from them, let me know- I can help!" ...not the words a teacher wants to hear. Translated, "Yes, your class really is THAT bad. You weren't imagining it!" Individually, each one has something about them that truly makes them my favorite. As a whole? I couldn't put my finger on it. They weren't my favorite class- but why? I met with an old colleague and she told me about this cool new behavior monitoring iPad app- it allows teachers to keep constant tabs on every child and will even send behavior reports regularly to every parent. The app covered any behavior you could think of- from lacking focus to down right disruptive. But it was so negative. So I decided to take another route- focus on the positive. When winter break was over- I had a long chat with my class- we discussed our strengths and weaknesses as a class. We talked about the need to respect each other and overall- the need to be kind. And I put up a "Random Acts of Kindness Tree." To start, the tree was bare. A blank slate, sad and empty looking. For homework they were told to write down any random act of kindness the committed in the past month or so. They wrote the good deeds on leaves, and the tree began to look more full. I gave them this resource to give them some ideas on examples of Random Acts of Kindness. And the feel of my class changed. The environment became more kind- the kids showed respect- and each individual child that I loved with all of their individual strengths began to work together as a classroom unit. And that app? I still haven't even downloaded it. I don't see the need. Every time a kid does something kind, they get to fill out a new leaf. And the tree keeps growing with every act of kindness. It's quickly filling out to be a bright and beautiful tree and my class is finally a bright and positive group. No need to take a break from them ;) This year I wanted to try something a little different for Halloween. Every year, we write "Haunted House" stories as our first descriptive narrative. The kids have a blast with the story writing so I wanted some new art to match the theme. I somehow stumbled across Haunted House Coffee Paintings in my search and gave it a try! This projects calls for the use of coffee (instant coffee crystals) to make different shades of brown. Kids learn about diluting solutions and have fun painting with their teacher's favorite morning drink! :) It's definitely a challenging and some of my more "Type A" personalities had a difficult time manipulating such a difficult medium. All in all I think I will try it again next year. Some pointers.... With younger ages, be very explicit about mixtures and water to coffee proportions. Emphasize that they will NOT be able to easily paint details so it is best to paint the picture from a distant view- leave tiny details out! I gave each student a spoon and choices of paint brushes, small and wide. Try it yourself first- I had the kids start with their darkest parts first and fade to light. Kids who ignored this tip had a really hard time. Here are a few samples of what my kids came up with! |
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see." - Alexandra K. Trenfor |