Happy Holidays!

We made it to the break!  Yeah!  I had so much fun with my studnets on the last day of school.  We spent the morning caroling with almost half the elementary school and then spent the afternoon reading and playing board games.  We had a "Secret Santa Reader" gift exchange and to my amazement all 15 of my students (even those little guys that don't have a lot of stamina built up for reading) spent 25 solid minutes reading and sharing their new books with each other.  I am thinking I should wrap books up for "read-to-someone" time in the future!   I bought four new board games for our classroom and had each table group open one.  They were so excited and now we have more games for rainy/snowy days when we can't be outside.  Several students brought games as well.  Such a fun way to get to spend time together.  Here is an Animoto video I whipped out to share with the kids right before they went home for their much deserved winter break.  Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Sight Word Phrases with Pictures

Class sizes are bulging across the country right now, but I am lucky to have only 15 students this year.  However, many of these little ones are reading and writing below grade level.  Because of this I have been studying like crazy to come up with strategies to help them.  I have been reading an excellent book called The Successful Inclusive Teacher: Proven Ways to Detect and Correct Special Needs, edited by Joyce S. Choate.  Many of my students need a lot of help with sight words (reading and spelling) and fluency.  One of the strategies in this book suggested making flash cards with pictures to help students make a visual connection with the word.  I decided to try this with the phrases and short sentences for repeated reading that Timothy Rasinski suggests using to help build reading fluency in his book The Fluent Reader, 2003. New York: Scholastic Professional Books. I am introducing ten phrases a week and then students will practice reading and writing them during our Daily 5 word work.  I am also sending the list of phrases home with students to practice reading and writing over the weekend.  Here are the first three Fluency Practice.

Adjectives...and Letters We Flip For.

This is a chart I made to help students remember which letter's can have more than one sound.  There are few  more I will be adding....ow and gh to name a few.   I find this chart especially helpful for those kiddo's who struggle with accuracy.

These are some turkey's that we made during our adjectives unit.  After reading  A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Batemen and Jeff Shelly, and brainstorming a list of adjectives, students created a turkey using acrylic paint, construction paper and paper plates.  Students then wrote stories about their turkey's using adjectives.  The turkey's and stories were quite entertaining!

Thanksgiving & American Symbols

I decided to do a timeline of American symbols. I have started with the Wamponoags and Pilgrims since Thanksgiving is just around the corner. We read a poem written by 3rd graders who had studied the Wamponoag tribe. After reading the poem we talked about what we thought the authors message was. Then we went through and underlined all the words we didn't know or understand. This was interesting because some of the words we underlined were common words used in a different context. After discussing the meaning of this vocabulary we read the poem again and discussed whether or not we understood the authors message better. All of the children seemed to have a better understanding of the authors message after discussing the unknown vocabulary and re-reading the poem. After our discussion students drew pictures and brainstormed keyword labels to put on their pictures that would help them retell what they had learned about the Wamponoag tribe to classroom visitors. We plan on sharing our learning with our family and friends when we return after the holiday break.  We also read about the pilgrims and their journey across the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower. Students made  hand print Mayflowers (an idea I saw on pinterest) and labeled the important parts of the ship that we learned about.

Storybird is a Success!

My students are loving Storybird.  Did you know you can do a school/class fundraiser with your students published stories?  We are so excited about this we are trying it out so we can buy more books for our classroom library.  Here is one of the stories a student published.  She has been writing at home on the weekends!

Cats on the Moon. by A2011P on Storybird

Reluctant Writer's Beware!

I have been reading and rediscovering this weekend!  I have a class full of reluctant writer's and my usual tricks are not working.  I hit the books and looked through my notes from previous years and my trip to the ISTE conference that I attended  in Philidelphia this past summer.  Storybird!  How could I have forgotten you?  This morning my Kindergarten son and I explored the website and created a storybird.  I can't wait to introduce this website to my second graders!

An Alien and a Monster on Storybird

Move Over Pokemon!

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned a trading cards website that K-2 and 5th grade used at my school to make trading cards for some of the plants, animals and geology we learned about on a field trip at the begining of the school year. We finally got all the cards printed and spent a half-hour on Halloween trading our cards with each other. It was so much fun! The kids were really excited about it and couldn't wait to get back to class and read them. I will definately be doing this again. Learning was definately contagious on this day!