Weekly Routines {Monday: Weekly Agenda}

My friend, who also happens to be our school librarian, called me the other morning to tell me about something overheard at the gym.  A former teaching colleague of ours who subs was asked which rooms she likes to sub in.  I guess mine was one that she named and she said, "Her students could run that class themselves, they know exactly what to do."  

That got me to thinking....and I think she is right.  I could probably not show up for school tomorrow and my students would know exactly how to proceed with our day!  There are so many routines that we have and for many students that predictability is extremely helpful.  So...it sparked an idea for a new blog series...Weekly Routines That Make Life Easier.  I am going to share with you the routines that we go through on given days throughout the week that really help me stay organized, keep our class running smoothly, and keep students on track to meet their third grade learning goals!

Monday:  Weekly Agenda

One of the things we have heard from the fourth grade teachers at our school is that our kiddos come to them and struggle with the increased independence and responsibility.  In fourth grade they start using agendas and students are required to write in them daily.  In third grade we have always typed out a weekly calendar and put it in our students' Take Home Folders.  To help ease that transition we have switched to a Weekly Agenda.  

Each Monday, I help students fill in the front side of the agenda.  We write down the standards we will be covering for the week.  Eventually I would like to move to having the students copy the learning targets from the board for this part.  Students write the name of the book they are working on for A.R. to help their parents hold them accountable for reading each night and it helps me make sure they are making progress in their books.  

The next part of the agenda is their Weekly Academic Vocabulary.  Right now I am typing this in for them, but the goal is to have students start writing this part as well.  

There is also a progress check where I can let parents know if their child is missing any assignments from the previous week.  My grade book is up to date by Monday morning each week.

The back side of the Weekly Agenda is probably my favorite part.  It has space for students to write in any reminders, like tomorrow is P.E. or field trip permission slips are due.  But, my all time favorite spot is for our daily reflections.  We do a lot with growth mindset in our classroom and I think it is so important for students to reflect every day on what they did well and what they need to work on for the next day.

This part of the agenda is a work in progress and I love to see how much students improve at self reflection throughout the school year!

Ready to try a Weekly Agenda in your classroom?  You can grab an editable version on my Weekly Agenda for FREE!  

Just click HERE!  I'd love to hear how it's working in your room or see some examples of your students' reflections!  If you post a picture be sure to tag me @theblessedteacher on Insta or @TheBlessedTeach on Twitter so I can check it out!

Text Features Using Who Would Win

My class has a new obsession….they can’t get enough of Jerry Pallotta’s Who Would Win series!  I had seen the idea on Pinterest to use the books to work on opinion writing, so I bough a big pack of them using Scholastic Bonus Points.

 
We used this awesome pack by Teaching in Stripes to organize our thoughts.  I read aloud from Whale Vs. Giant Squid, stopping before the big fight scene at the end.  I wanted the kiddos to form their own opinions based on the facts presented in the book.  Then they had to choose if they were Team Whale or Team Squid.

I gave them time to meet with their “teams,” and compare notes and then we wrote our opinion pieces.  After everyone’s writing was complete, I finally read the battle scene and they found out who would win.  They absolutely LOVED it!

They were so in love with these books that I had to think of another way to use them.  So we did a review lesson on text features because these books are FULL of them!  I partnered them up and each set of partners got a different Who Would Win book.  They had to go on a text feature hunt and fill out a graphic organizer.

After that, they got to create a poster about their Who Would Win battle.  Their poster had to included three text features.  I think it’s safe to say that this project was a huge hit!  They had such a great time and it made my teacher heart so happy to hear them discussing which text features would help them explain the information on their posters!

Want to try it out with your class?  Click HERE to go grab the graphic organizers and poster rubric, they are a FREEBIE in my store!

Student Praise

 

“You learned that so quickly! You’re so smart!”

“Look at that drawing, is he the next Picasso or what?”

“You’re so brilliant, you got an A without even studying!”

Many good intentioned parents/teachers have said these things and see them as supportive and self esteem boosting messages.  Reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck has completely changed my outlook on praise as both a parent and a teacher.

Read the praise messages again and listen closely to the underlying message that children hear.

• If I don’t learn quickly, I’m not smart.
• I shouldn’t try drawing anything hard or they’ll see I’m no Picasso.
• I’d better quit studying or they won’t think I’m brilliant.

According to Dweck’s research, messages like these will quickly put our children/students into a fixed mindset.  “Parents (teachers) think they can hand children permanent confidence- like a gift- by praising their brains and talent.  It doesn’t work, and in fact has the opposite effect.  It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong.”


We need to make sure that our messages of praise aren’t saying “You have permanent traits and I’m judging them,” but rather, “You’re a developing person and I’m interested in your development.”


So what/how should we praise then?


Dweck offers these suggestions……


Praise as much as you would like for growth oriented process.

• practice
• study
• effort
• accepting a challenge
• persistence
• strategies

When we praise students for growth oriented process they begin to attribute their accomplishments to their own effort, something they have full control over!


So, how can we do this in our classrooms?  Here are a few of my favorites…….

“My Favorite No”

I love this idea from The Teaching Channel.  I often use this very informally in my room.  When someone gives an answer that is incorrect, but I can tell that a lot of thought went into it, they really put in a lot of effort or they were using a great strategy that just didn’t work out for them, I will tell them that it was my favorite no and to keep trying!  It’s a great way to let students know that while their answer was incorrect, the thought process they were using to arrive at the answer was on track!

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/class-warm-up-routine#

Class Cheers

We love cheering for each other.  I use class cheers for things that we do great as a class, or for individual students to celebrate hard work and effort.  We love using them to celebrate students who take a risk, who try something and take a chance.  It’s a great way to build your classroom community and let students see that in your room you celebrate challenges and that even if the answer is wrong you can be proud of trying something new and taking a chance.  I introduce some basic class cheers at the beginning of the year.  It never fails though, each year my class will start making up cheers of their own that we add on.  This year we have “The Perfume Cheer,” they pretend to squirt 3 squirts of perfume and say “Oh La, La,” while shrugging their shoulders.  We have added several others too!

Click HERE to see a great blog post about class cheers and it includes a freebie to download.

Effort Awards

Effort Awards are something new that we just started in my room.  I use them to recognize students that worked extra hard.  Some days when we are learning a new concept in math, equivalent fractions for example, I can see that some of my kiddos (especially my “gifted” learners) are getting frustrated.  They aren’t getting it right away, because new learning takes time.  We talk a great deal about how learning something new means our brain needs to make new connections and it takes time for that to happen.  Anyways, I like to point out and recognize students who make it a point to not tune out or give up.  Students who continue to ask questions, discuss, and try to make connections with those new concepts.

Sometimes we use “Effort Awards,” to recognize students who met a goal in class.  Not, I got an A on my spelling test goals (that would be results based not process based), but the I practiced my words every night and improved my score from last week kind of goals.

Here are the “Effort Awards,” I give out in my classroom.  You can click on them to download them for FREE!

I love that some of my kiddos are even pointing out their classmates’ hard work and effort now and telling me they think someone deserves and effort award because….!  It makes my teacher heart happy to see them recognize hard work and effort in others as well as themselves!

I would love to hear your thoughts and hear about how you use growth oriented praise in your classroom.  Comment below so we can all learn together and work to get our kiddos into a growth mindset!

 

 

 

A Peek at my Week {Visual Plans for 9/15-9/19}

I fiiinnnallly feel like we are in a little bit of a routine.  We have learned all but Listen to Reading in Daily 5, have built our stamina to 20 minutes, and I was able to pull small groups last week!  WooHoo!  PTL for the small things! 

I am excited for this week for a few reasons. #1 as you are reading this, I will be in Flagstaff (yea for cooler weather) celebrating the wedding of our little cousin Shelby, who isn’t so little anymore!  Shelby was 4 when my husband and I started dating.  I’m feeling a little old that she is old enough to get married but we are so excited to celebrate with family!!!!

#2 We are working on one of my favorite units in science and cruising along towards a super fun culminating project in social studies.  In science this week we will continue our study of rocks and minerals.  We will learn about they types of rocks and how they are formed by completing this cute little flipbook.

Then we get to do candy comparisons!  We sent a letter home last week asking for donations of 3 types of candy and on Thursday this week we will enjoy 3 different pieces of candy and compare the candy to the types of rocks.

It is a super fun and hands on way to make connections!  If you would like information on this activity along with a few other rock activities, you can check out my “Rock On,” pack on TpT, just click on the pic below! 

This pack is also available in a bundle with 2 of my other popular earth science products.

  Click the picture to check out the bundle!

In Social Studies we are finishing up our maps lapbooks and moving on to landforms.  When our geography unit is finished I have created a super fun culminating activity.  I am all about project based learning and I would much rather have my kiddos show what they know by being creative and hands on than by taking yet another pencil & paper test. I will be posting it on TpT soon.  I want to make sure it is kid tested and teacher approved and that I have lots of fun pics to include before listing it!  

 

In math we will continue our work on multiplication and division and fingers crossed, math centers will be in full swing this week!

Click on my plans to download them.  After downloading the plans you will be able to click on all of the links and grab the freebies and check out the other products I’ll be using this week.

I'm off to the wedding now! 

 Happy Sunday everyone!

 

It’s Currently…..September 1st!

I can’t believe that September is already here.  This is the month that my baby starts to drive.  Yikes!  Permit test in 23 days.  Thank goodness for my amazing Driver’s Ed. teacher husband!  He is professionally trained to handle that parenting duty! 

Anyways, September also means it’s time for another Currently from the one and only Farley!  This is by far my favorite linky of the month!  I love reading everyone’s currently!

So without further ado….here is mine!

Listening:  This one speaks for itself.  Between all of our work/school clothes, workout clothes, and the girls’ dance clothes, I am up to my eyeballs in laundry every weekend.  It’s usually a race to get it done before Sunday night.  I’m thankful for the extra day so I could take my time on it!

Loving:  My crock pot and I are BFFs.  With our crazy schedule with school, dance and my husband’s basketball, it is so nice to come from a long day at school to a dinner that is already made.  It allows us to still squeeze our family mealtime into our crazy schedule!

Thinking:  Our schedules are about to really blow up.  The girls have an audition next weekend for dance, we have 2 weddings coming up, an out of town trip for dance and then basketball season will be upon us.  I can’t think about it for too long without getting overwhelmed.  I have learned to take it as it comes and to give myself a break if I can’t do it all!

Wanting:  Most of the time I love living in the desert.  However, my poor Nike running app is feeling neglected.  I am NOT a morning runner.  I have really tried to be.  It just doesn’t work for me.  The evenings are still too hot to run outside.  So, I have been stuck in the gym for months now.  I miss running outside and I really want it to hurry up and cool off already!

Needing:  I need to get to work on tomorrow’s presentation.  Our school board approved full day professional development days for us this year.  So, tomorrow the kiddos get an extra day off of school but we report for training.  My team was asked by administration to present tomorrow.  I will be presenting on Number Talks.  I am so excited and I hope that I can spread that excitement to the other grades in my building.  I made this pack of prompt posters to share with my colleagues and I am sharing them with you too.

If you are interested in them you can grab them FREE in my store. 

3 Trips:   1.  Technically, I have travelled all over the east coast.  I was born and raised in Connecticut and have spent time in all of the New England states.  However, I have never taken my children and that trip is #1 on my list.  There is so much history to see and I can't wait to show them where I grew up!  Every time I think about the trip, I think we will need to block a month out of our calendar to see everything I want them to see!  #2 England.  My MIL went several years ago and it is top on my list of European destinations.  Again, there is so much history and I was obsessed with the queen when I was a little girl.  I really want to see her castle in person!  #3  NCAA basketball tour.  This trip is on my bucket list.  My husband and I have a list of college teams that we want to see play in their home arenas.  Some day we will travel the country and cross them off our list. 

 

I’m off to go follow Farley’s rule of 3 and then get to work on my presentation! 

Happy Labor Day everyone!

 

Visual Plans For The Week {Freebies and Sales!}

I’m back!  I’m finally digging out from underneath the Back To School paperwork and craziness!  I’m linking up my visual plans for the week and they are full of freebies and sales!  To make the links clickable you need to download the plans!

I am so excited to start the year off with Jivey’s Mentor Sentences.  I didn’t find them until a few months into the school year last year.  My kiddos are already loving learning about grammar this way (it is so much more authentic than worksheets) and they love having their invitation sentences displayed around the room.  Click HERE to read more about this amazing idea!

I am also excited that my Read With a Pencil pack is finally finished and ready to go.  I spent all of last school year making these as I planned each week.  It is such a great feeling to have them all finished this year.  All I have to do is print and copy.  I especially love that the rubric is right on the writing paper.  The students can easily see how they are going to be assessed and the parents can refer to it when the writing goes home each week.  This week we will be reading The Strongest One and working on determining the lesson and showing our evidence! My Read With a Pencil Pack will be on sale this week! Click HERE or on the picture in my plans to check it out!  It’s a great close reading companion and it will give your kiddos great practice at answering those short answer questions!

This class came to us so prepared to learn multiplication and I am having a blast teaching it to them.  I am still loving our interactive notebooks and math journals and the kids can’t wait to start math centers this week!  I felt like my kiddos needing more practice with arrays so I made a set of 3 centers called, “Hip, Hip, Hooray!”  They are on sale this week!  Click on the picture in my plans or HERE to go grab them!

I was also excited to start Number Talks right off the bat this year!  My kids are LOVING them.  They ask every day on the way back from lunch if we are doing one, even though they know it’s routine!  I have also been asked by my administration to talk about Number Talks at our upcoming professional development.  I am so excited (and nervous) to share this concept with my colleagues!

I hope you all have an amazing week!  I can’t wait to go check out everyone else’s plans for the week!

Worksheet Wednesday {FREEBIE!}

It’s time for Worksheet Wednesday with The Teaching Tribune.  I love heading over there and checking out and downloading all of the free goodies! 

The theme this week was Summer.  My kiddos always love A to Z activities.  A to Z can be used as a fun and quick review for content areas.  Just have the students list the alphabet down the side of a piece of notebook paper, give them a topic and let them go.  Mine especially love it at the end of a science or social studies unit.  The goal is to come up with a word or phrase for each letter that relates to the topic.  It’s always best to teach a new strategy like A to Z with a non academic topic, kind of takes the pressure off of it!  I also like to throw in fun topics as morning work sometimes just to change it up a bit. 

For the FREEBIE today, I created a cute little worksheet with a Summer themed A to Z that you can download and use at the beginning of the school year or right now if you are teaching summer school.  It will be a great way for your kiddos to share what they did over the summer and to teach them how to use A to Z!  Click on the pic to download it for FREE!

Graphics:  Melonheadz

Border:  Teaching in a Small Town

Worksheet Wednesday {Freebie Alert!}

Today’s link up is Worksheet Wednesday.  It’s supposed to be a one page worksheet for free but my post includes two free grammar packs.  It’s all part of my quest to change the world, one social media user at a time!  Check out the old post below:

Originally posted on February26, 2014

This week we are working on those difficult homophones you’re/your and there/their/they’re.  I told my kiddos that one of my biggest pet peeves is how often adults still misuse those homophones on social media.  It. Bugs. Me.  So, I am on a quest to change that for the future generation! I told them that if they ever plan on “friending,” me when they are older they had better learn the difference! If you would like to join my quest, I created and posted these little packs and they are FREE at my TpT store.  Just click the picture to go download them!

As always, I just ask that if you download them you please leave feedback and consider following my little store/blog/Instagram account.  It will help you keep up to date on flash freebies, free downloads, new products/ideas and sales!  Thanks so much!  You guys are the best!

For The Future Generation of Social Media Users

This week we are working on those difficult homophones you’re/your and there/their/they’re.  I told my kiddos that one of my biggest pet peeves is how often adults still misuse those homophones on social media.  It. Bugs. Me.  So, I am on a quest to change that for the future generation! I told them that if they ever plan on “friending,” me when they are older they had better learn the difference! If you would like to join my quest, I created and posted these little packs and they are FREE at my TpT store.  Just click the picture to go download them!

As always, I just ask that if you download them you please leave feedback and consider following my little store/blog/Instagram account.  It will help you keep up to date on flash freebies, free downloads, new products/ideas and sales!  Thanks so much!  You guys are the best!

 

100 Followers Back to School Blowout!

 

I am so excited to have reached this milestone on my blog, TpT, and Instagram all in the same week!  To celebrate, I will be giving away freebies, having items on sale throughout the week, and having giveaways!

Here is the first giveaway and some freebies!  I just finished updating all of my parent and student beginning of the year forms and all of my first week back activities. 

 

 

Click here or on the picture to download my parent and student forms for free!

I also finished my Welcome Back Activities Pack.  It includes a Fan-n-Pick getting to know you activity, a time capsule activity, Find Someone Who, “This is Me….,” file folder project, and a class banner activity.  These activities are a great way to get to know your students and start building a classroom community.

 

 

To celebrate my 100 followers, this pack will be on sale for 50% in my store today and tomorrow, click here or on the picture to grab yours now!  It will also be part of the giveaway so make sure you keep reading until the end and enter!

 

Okay, hang in there, this is a long post but it’ll be worth it…promise! 

 

I have been planning for the first few weeks like crazy and updated my “Table Talk,” file AGAIN!  If you’ve already purchased it make sure you go download the updates.  If you haven’t gotten a copy yet, now is your chance!  “Table Talk,” will be part of my giveaway and will also be on sale in my TpT store until Sunday!  I added a few flap books since I will be using interactive reading notebooks this year.

 

 

Flap Book #1

 

 

Flap Book #2

 

 

Flap Book #3

 

I also made Table Talk questions to go with the story First Day Jitters.  I decided that I want the first attempt at Table Talk to be focused on having a conversation, looking at the speaker, and really listening to each other.  Not about trying to come up with questions to ask.  So, I made questions ahead of time for the students to use.  They will also serve a second purpose.  When we learn about the difference between “book questions,” and “brain questions,” we will go back to the First Day Jitters questions and sort them.  You can download the questions for First Day Jitters to use with “Table Talk,” here for FREE!

 

Now, here is your chance to enter to win your own copy of my Welcome Back Activities Pack, Table Talk, and any item of your choice from my TpT store!  The giveaway will end on Sunday so that I can get everything out to the winner before we go hang out with the cast of Dance Moms!  (more to come on that later!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway  

 

 

Thanks everyone for all of your love and support over the last almost year!  Love you guys!

A Proud Teaching Moment….and a Little Freebie

I had one of those moments today,  you know the one I am talking about.  The one that makes your eyes fill up and you can’t even find the words to tell them how proud you are.  I had one. 
 

We have been working hard on using evidence from the text to support our answers.  (Yes, I am gearing up for full-fledged Common Core next year.)  We have also been working on close reading and reading text for different purposes.  Today we did our 2nd read of Wilbur’s Boast from our reading series.   The students were given a question that they had to answer and they had to show evidence from the text to support their answer.  I was super nervous.  I thought for sure that it would be one of those times I would have to really spoon feed them and we all would end up frustrated.

We did a quick review of showing evidence by making this anchor chart.
 

 

As we reread the text, the students used sticky notes to “stop and jot,” spots where they found evidence to support their answers.  Afterwards, we talked about how to take their “stop and jot,” notes and use the sentence starters to write an answer to the question.
 

It was when they started finishing up their responses and bringing them to show me that my moment occurred.  I couldn’t believe the responses I was reading.  They were so well thought out.  They had actual evidence, that actually supported their answer! 
 

I made this rubric to use to grade their responses.  You are welcome to download it for free!  Just click the picture and it will take you to it!
 

 

This week we also have been working on the prefixes re-, un-, dis-, and pre-.  We made this anchor chart.
 

 

Then we did a little cooperative learning activity using the prefix cards in my spring centers pack.

You can check out my “Bring on Spring,” centers by clicking the picture below.
 

 

I will close with this little gem.  As you may already know, my family is pretty much basketball obsessed.  March Madness is like some crazy holiday in our house!  I always love when I have a student who loves basketball as much as I do.  As I was grading vocabulary sentences this week, I came across this…..
 

 

It is sentence #3.  “Aaron Craft wasn’t boasting after he made the winning shot of the game.”  Love it!  Melt my heart, this kiddo shares my love for college basketball and Aaron Craft! 
 

I may or may not have Ohio State winning it all in my bracket…I’m just sayin’. 

Go Buckeyes!

 

Whew….What a Week!….Oh yeah, and a Freebie!

This week was C.R.A.Z.Y. at school!  We had the Fun Run for our big school wide fundraiser, the high school’s homecoming parade, and door decorating for Red Ribbon Week.  Oh yeah, and we still had to try and teach some things!  I was chatting with my student teacher earlier this week about all the craziness that is upon us the next few weeks.  I feel kind of bad for her because there is so much going on during these few weeks that she has full responsibility.  However, I guess it is a good way for her to experience what life is really like this time of year in an elementary school.
Between all of the madness we did manage to do some work on inferencing.  Hands down, my favorite way to introduce inferencing is using Abby’s “Mystery Box.”  You can check out Abby’s blog about the Mystery Box Activity here.

My kiddos love this activity.
Then, a brilliant co-worker of mine showed up at lunch with a great third grade twist on the activity!  She used some pieces from Abby’s activity to have her students make a foldable and write clues about their favorite food.  So….of course I had to try it with my class.
How cute are the magnifying glasses this kiddo drew!


The clues were glued under each flap on the foldable.  On the back, students wrote their favorite food and covered it with the question marks taped on so that you can flip it up and reveal the answer.

Have you guessed what it is yet?

I love how she spelled tortellini!  Too cute.
If you don’t already have Abby’s Mystery Box activity, I highly recommend it.  It is a huge hit every year and something I pull out from time to time for a fun review of a super important reading skill.
Also new this week, we assigned our character pumpkin activity.  Students will be making the pumpkin part of the project at home and working on the character description in class.  If you didn’t download the project earlier, here it is again.  Just click the pic to download it for FREE!

And to round out my crazy busy week, I finally finished up my “Monster” pack of multiplication resources.
 
Just in time to begin our unit on multiplication.  This is by far one of my favorite things to teach in third grade math, I think because they come to third grade so excited to learn it.  It is 72 pages full of fun ways to learn and practice multiplication and it is all Common Core aligned! You can check it out at my TpT store!
I am off to watch one of my all time favorite bloggers, Cara from The First Grade Parade, on one of my favorite shows, House Hunters!
Here’s to the end of a crazy week, and the beginning of a crazy weekend!  Happy Friday everyone.