The 5 Ways to Be

This summer I learned all about Whole Brain Teaching and I absolutely love it!  The one thing that I just couldn’t bring myself to do though was to give up my classroom “rules” to switch over to the WBT ones.  For the past 8 years, I have used The 5 Ways to Be.

There they are hanging from the ribbon in my classroom.  I love the 5 Ways to Be because they aren’t really “rules,” but more of a way of living life every day.  They cover pretty much any classroom or playground scenario a kiddo could think of.  We spend a lot of time at the beginning of the school year learning about the 5 Ways.  On the first day we do a carousel cooperative learning activity and make looks like, sounds like charts.  We talk about what each of the 5 ways would look like and sound like in our classroom and other places around school.  These charts then hang in a high profile area (near the drinking fountain) part of the room all year.  We spend a lot of time talking about them and getting gentle reminders throughout the year about being the 5 Ways. 
I have been playing around trying out some new things on my new laptop and created these colorful polka dot posters for the 5 Ways. 

You can grab them by clicking on the picture or downloading them for free at my TpT store!

Fall Sale!

Hop on over to my little TpT store and stock up!  Here’s hoping this brings a little fall weather to the desert!

Plural Nouns….and a stoplight?

We are a family of educators.  My husband is also a teacher.  He teaches one of the best. classes. ever. in high school…..Driver’s Ed.  Talk about easy classroom management.  He gets to dangle a driver's license in front of their nose.  What teenager is going to mess with him?  All kidding aside though, he is an amazing teacher and really loves his job.  So, what does that bit of info have to do with this post?  Well, I was thinking that it was fitting that I used a driving analogy while teaching my students how to write plural nouns.  I have been using this method for about 8 years now and I love it. 
Green light nouns are most nouns.  You can just add s and keep on moving.  Yellow light nouns (my stoplight has 2 yellow lights) are the nouns that you have to slow down and use caution.  They have rules that you have to follow.  Red light nouns nouns are the irregular nouns.  You need to stop, think, and change the spelling!  I make a foldable with my class as we learn these and then we do LOTS of practice!

The stoplight noun foldable is part of my plural nouns pack available here at my TpT store. 

On a side note, I was asked by my principal this year to be our grade level leader (we have a fairly large grade level, there are 5 sections of third grade).  I am curious.  How often do you meet as a grade level?  If you are the G.L. leader at your school, what do you do for your team?  What does your team leader do for your team?  I don’t feel like I am doing a very good job right now, but I also don’t want to appear to “know it all,” or like I am trying to make everyone do the things I do.  Just curious and wanted to hear what teacher blog land has to say!

Have a Happy Wednesday Night!

“Bring it on Monday…”

So, I checked facebook this morning and saw that my friend was having a rough Monday morning.  She ended her post by saying “Bring it on Monday, you can’t scare me.”  Here is my response to that friend.  Please don’t ever again challenge Monday.  Monday will always win.  A little bit of fear is healthy.
The morning started out just fine.  Then the announcement came over the P.A. system.  All music classes cancelled for the day.  There was a shortage of subs and would be no class, so no prep.  Not that bad I know, I’ve had worse Mondays and I won’t go into personal details, but my poor friend’s Monday made mine look like a walk in the park.
So, what to do with a class of 29 third graders and no break.  Monitor and adjust as my fellow teachers know!  I moved tomorrow’s super fun science activity to this afternoon and let me tell you, for 35 minutes those third graders were working hard and having fun!  What were they so excited about?  Eating Earth’s layers!  We have just finished up learning about the layers of the Earth and they were so excited about today’s activities.  We made our Earth s’mores, compared the layers of our “s’mores,” to the layers of the Earth and then wrote the recipe with step by step instructions.  So, while they were having a blast and enjoying a yummy treat, they were actually reviewing the layers of the Earth and writing functional text!  I’d say that was a good use of our time!

The activities came from my Earth’s Layers…An Edible Activity packet available at my TpT store. In honor of Monday winning this battle, you can purchase this packet at a discounted price for a limited time! Click the link here to find the packet.
Happy Monday everyone!

Fluency Friday….and a Giveaway!

Every Friday in our room is “Fluency Friday.”  I LOVE routines and so do so many of my kiddos.  They love to know what is coming next and exactly how do it.  Our fluency routine is a great 5 minute fluency practice that we do each week.  I start teaching them the routine early in the year by introducing one thing fluent readers do each week.  That is then our focus for our practice. 
We start out on the carpet reviewing the things that fluent readers do.  We then move to our seats and get our “Fluency Folders,” out.  Our folders have our passages and our fluency graph.  The students put on their “fluency ears,” to help block out their neighbor’s voice and I time them as they read aloud for 1 minute.  As they are reading, if they come to a word they don’t know they circle it.  I walk around the room listening to them read and jotting down notes.  When I say stop, they draw a line after the last word they read.  We then talk about a few of the words that I noticed circles around and read the passage again for 1 minute.  After the second read, they count up how many words they read and I ask them 2 questions for comprehension.  The last part of our routine is their favorite!  In their folder they keep a graph where they chart each week how many words they read.  They LOVE watching the bar graph go higher each week and celebrating their hard work!
I have put together a packet of all of the things I use in my weekly fluency routine.  It includes posters with the 3 things we review each week and includes an explanation of the hand movements we use as we say them (love WBT…I will have more to say about that in another post!).  There are 2 sets of posters, one with cute little monsters that I just couldn’t resist, and another more traditional set.  Also included are the parent letter I send home, a fluency folder cover, and a few different graphs.  Not included are the actual fluency passages.  I use the ones that came with our reading series.

The “Fluency Friday,” packet is available at my TpT store here….but I am giving away  free packets to the first 2 people who comment on this post and become a follower! 

Multiple Meaning Words……FREEBIE

This week’s vocabulary skill was multiple meaning words.  I wish I could say that I am an amazing artist but we all know pictures don’t lie.  I am terrible.  My daughters had a good laugh when they walked in my room after school and saw my attempt at drawing a bat.  My oldest tried to fix it for me, but it was too far gone.  Anyways, you get the idea and my loving students complimented me on my effort!  We made this anchor chart together as we talked about what multiple meaning words are and how the meaning of the word changes depending on how you use it in a sentence.  They had the best time coming up with their own examples of multiple meaning words. 

Afterwards, the students went back to their desks and picked a word out of the basket.  They had to write 2 different meanings for the word and then use the word in a sentence for each meaning.  Then we did a “gallery walk,” around the room to see everyone’s work. They spent the rest of the week pointing out all of the multiple meaning words they saw in books or heard people use.  Just another one of the many reasons I love third graders…..they are still so excited about their learning!   The anchor chart pieces and worksheet are available in my TpT store as a free download.  If you are interested you can get them here!

 

Classroom Management

Today I am linking up to The First Grade Derby to discuss my favorite reward or incentive.  Last year I implemented the clip chart and I absolutely, positively L.O.V.E. it.  I love to be positive and I love to recognize students who are behaving appropriately and setting a good example.  I like that the clip chart gives the students who continually display great character something to aim for.  I have found that when I use those students as a positive example I almost immediately get the same behaviors out of all of my class. I also feel like I am not constantly pointing out the negative behaviors that occur.

As a special reward for making it all the way to pin,k students get to punch their behavior card at the end of the day.  I hang on to everyone’s card in a box on the desk.  When they fill their punch card they get to pick a prize coupon from the prize catalog.  The best part of the prize catalog is that it doesn’t cost me a thing.  There have been years when I felt like half of my paycheck went back into my classroom!  The punch cards and prize pass catalog were an amazing Pinterest find from First Grade Fever and the BEST part…..they are FREE!  Just click on the link to find them! 

I happen to think that my students are amazing and I love to celebrate how amazing they are!  Can’t wait to hear what everyone else is doing!