Monday Made It - Reading Records, Bathroom Passes, and Organization!

The last Monday of summer.  Next Monday kicks off our school year (no students until Wednesday).  Of course, I'll be in my classroom all day today and at training for most of this week.  But, I'll pretend it's still summer.

The rapidly approaching school year has kicked my butt into productive mode though, so I've got a few Monday Made-Its to share!

First up, Bathroom Passes:

At the beginning of each month, I give each student a bathroom pass with the word "bathroom" on it.  Each letter is a pass.  When they need to go, I cross out a letter (of course, we still have the talk and expectations about when appropriate times to go are).  At the end of the month, unused letters become tickets for our raffle.  This is the system that all 4th grade has used at my school the past two years.

I like to have the name of the month on the bathroom passes.  Some of my teammates just rotate through the colored paper we have, but I could never remember which color I was on.  So I made one for each month.  I'm going to copy them all as soon as our copy machines are up and running so I am ready!

Next, Reading Records:

I gray out the days that they do not have to get their log signed (weekends, including Fridays, and days off of school).

Parent signed reading logs are expected at my school. My first year and a half, I used a half sheet of paper each week that students had to write how many minutes they read each night and have a parent sign.  I HATED collecting them each week and would often forget to make sure I had copies each Monday.  So, part way through last year, I switched to monthly logs.  It's still just minutes and parent signatures, but I only have to collect it once per month.  Most of the kids really liked the calendar aspect of it! I made the fonts match the bathroom passes and I'll copy them on the same colored paper (one of those cute, but doesn't matter things, I know).

Would you like to use these too?

Click HERE for the link to the bathroom passes and reading records.  All days are white on this reading log since I don't know your schedule :)

And last, some cute organization:

Label shape from Ladybug's Teacher Files; Font: Oh {Photo} Shoot
I used lots of Mod Podge to stick those cute papers on!
They match my turn-in boxes nicely (though I wish I had found this paper before I made those!)

I decided to do Copy, File, Laminate instead of Copy, File, Grade for a couple of reasons:

1. It's just not realistic to think that my grading will all fit in that drawer :(
2. I feel like I always have some small little thing that needs laminating but doesn't seem worth turning on the laminator, so I save it for later, when I have a bigger job.  BUT, then I forget or misplace that small thing.

Alright, I'm off to my classroom now to see if I can get it ready enough to show you all tomorrow for Teacher Week '13!

Throwback Thursday - Writing "Shots"

The First Grade Parade is hosting a throwback linky!  Now, I have to admit that I almost decided not to participate since I've only had this little blog for a year and was MIA from it for half of that year.  BUT I decided to choose a post from when I only had a couple of followers, so even though it isn't that old, it will be new to most of you!

From September 2012:

Right now, we are working on narratives.  Our first district assessment, which is mid-October, is fictional narratives, but we start with personal narratives and then move into fiction because it's easier for kiddos to put details in about something that has really happened.

Last week and the beginning of this week, we worked on Snapshots, Talkshots, and Thoughtshots.

For each one, my lesson went the same way:

1.  Read a published example from books most students know (Harry Potter and Rick Riordan books to the rescue!).  

2. Have a class discussion about how they felt as readers (they make you feel in the story) and what kind of information they got from the excerpt. 

3. Take notes.  I do my notes under the document camera, and they copy.  We have a special section in our writing notebooks for notes.

4.  I model from the story I'm working on with them.  I pick out a scene from my Backwards S (our picture mapping) and then do think-aloud writing on the document camera.  I make sure to talk a lot about how I don't remember every exact detail, but I make up reasonable details.  They just watch and listen. Some try to give me ideas.

5.  I tell the students that when they get back from lunch, they will do what I just did from one of their own Backwards Ss. I remind them they need to come in silently.  

6. We have lunch.  I write a reminder of instructions on the board.

7. They come back from lunch, and 99% of them silently get to work.  It is far and beyond the best transition time of my day!

8. When writing time is almost over or I see them getting antsy, they share their work with someone.  We do elbow partners, face partners, stand up - hand up - pair up, and back partners on different days to mix it up.

9. The next day, we start writing by reviewing the most important things about a Snapshot/Talkshot/Thoughtshot to make our mini-poster for our writing wall.  I laminated these before hand and used whiteboard makers, so I'll just be able to erase and use them next year!

We're starting to get good at writing for longer and longer!  Half an hour is my goal for them!

I'm hoping we get through our full personal narrative unit in the next two weeks.  I think for fictional narratives this year, we'll write spooky stories to read on Halloween! (June update:  We ended up doing monster stories and they were not ready anywhere near Halloween, but the kiddos loved writing them and most turned out spectacularly!)

How do you teach writing?  Do you have a curriculum?

Hello Again

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted.  Over a month since I've really read blogs either.

So, hello again, bloggy world!

I've been super busy and haven't really wanted to think about school when I got home.  Major drama going on at my school.

The super busy is not subsiding.  Report cards are due one week from today.  Yikes!

The drama is somewhat subsiding, so I'm not running to hide from anything education related.

What better way to step back into (hopefully) regular blogging than to link up with Tara for a Monday Made It (ignore that it is Friday, please)?

I posted this summer about some professional development books I read (Book Whisperer, Notebook Connections, Daily 5).    I have been integrating those with our curriculum (Treasures) to make my own Reading Workshop.  One part of it is our reading notebooks.

I feel like I'm getting really good at teaching those lessons.  One day I teach the comprehension strategy.  Students practice when they read.  The next day, I teach them how we write a response using that strategy by modeling it with a text we all know.  Then, they write a response, either on the same topic as our model, on the same book but focusing on a different part, or on their independent reading book.

Then, during Reading Workshop, they are supposed to write a response on any book using any of the strategies we have learned.

"We were supposed to remember how to do those?"

Well, yeah, I'd like them to, but if they've only done it once, I get that it'd be hard to remember.

Enter the Reading Response Strategy Binders.  There are two of these in our Work on Writing drawer for students to reference.

Instructions for setting up every entry.  Formatting matters, kiddos!

On the back of each instructions is a typed up copy of the one we wrote whole class when I taught it.

Do you want a copy of my oh-so-pretty (if I do say so myself ... I'm rather proud of these) pages?  Well, here they are!  I already need to add more strategies so check back soon for an updated version!

Happy Veteran's Day Weekend!

Currently and Writing Wednesday (err... Thursday with Freebies for you!)

First up, Currently:

Thanks, Farley, for hosting!

Okay, okay, so I know The Witches isn't really all that seasonal ... actually, no I don't know, as I still need to read it!  But, it is what I am most excited about right now.  One of my awesome teammates has a unit she does every year in October with The Witches.  My kiddos ordered enough Scholastic books with our last book order that I was able to get a class set of The Witches, so our two classes are going to read them at the same time this year and of course I'll be using her unit.  I am ridiculously excited!

And now, Writing Wednesday on a Thursday (don't you hate forgetting your camera at school?!?!?)

With our district narrative writing assessment window starting NEXT week and of course a million things trying to butt their way into our writing time, I'm having a hard time getting through all of the pieces of a narrative before testing them.  Never mind revising and publishing.  That's going to have to come after the district test!

So far this year, we had been brainstorming and writing "shots" (see post here and here, respectively) on whatever students felt like that day.  Many had worked on pieces of upwards of 10 stories!  But now that we want to be published in the next two and a half weeks, I wanted the kiddos to start focusing on one story.  We made this checklist of questions to help choose a great story for them to write:

After we had all chosen a story, we talked about what drafting actually is:

Next, we identified the problem and solution.  We talked A BUNCH about how problems don't have to be bad and how solutions don't always have to be happy and took some notes on that:

 

Each student brainstormed and wrote on a sticky note a solution to the problem of an alien landing in your campsite.  They LOVED it.  Many were not school appropriate (too violent), but some were super creative!

Then, we got back to work on our stories.  Once we figured out the problem and some possible endings, students worked together to choose a solution that fit the problem.

Click here for the worksheet!

And finally, we got to leads.  I "read" two leads - one from a Magic Treehouse book and one I said was from a rough draft of mine (I'm going to tell you about my airplane ride.  Great, right?).  Almost all of the kiddos seemed to get why the Magic Treehouse one was better.  Then, I gave them notes (it would have been WAY WAY WAY too much writing notes) and we glued them like so into our notebooks. We read over the notes, wrote an example for each, and outlawed some annoying  uninteresting "leads" (Hi, my name is _____ and I'm going to tell you about ____ is one of my biggest pet peeves!)  Last, the kiddos read the leads in their independent reading books and we talked about what made those interesting.

Click here for the notes. Fonts from dafont.com

And finally, today, we wrote leads!

Happy October!

Writing Wednesday - Snapshots, Talkshots, and Thoughtshots

Since I love writing so much and feel like it is one of my strongest teaching areas, I'm going to try to regularly write about what we are doing in writing.  I already posted a bit about writing here.

In my district, we don't have a set writing curriculum.  It's a bit of a hodgepodge, do-what-you-want sort of thing.  Our Language Arts curriculum, Treasures, has writing in it.  A few years ago (before I was there), they did 6 Traits of Writing trainings.  I have the materials they got at the trainings.  We each have a teacher's edition and half a class set of Write Source.  Using any of these as the set curriculum  does not prepare students at the right time of year for the three district-wide writing assessments and certainly won't get our 4th graders ready for the state writing test in March.  

So we just do what we want, basically.

Right now, we are working on narratives.  Our first district assessment, which is mid-October (yikes, that's soon!), is fictional narratives, but we start with personal narratives and then move into fiction because it's easier for kiddos to put details in about something that has really happened.

Last week and the beginning of this week, we worked on Snapshots, Talkshots, and Thoughtshots.

For each one, my lesson went the same way:

1.  Read a published example from books most students know (Harry Potter and Rick Riordan books to the rescue!).  

2. Have a class discussion about how they felt as readers (they make you feel in the story) and what kind of information they got from the excerpt. 

3. Take notes.  I do my notes under the document camera, and they copy.  We have a special section in our writing notebooks for notes.

4.  I model from the story I'm working on with them.  I pick out a scene from my Backwards S (our picture mapping) and then do think-aloud writing on the document camera.  I make sure to talk a lot about how I don't remember every exact detail, but I make up reasonable details.  They just watch and listen. Some try to give me ideas.

5.  I tell the students that when they get back from lunch, they will do what I just did from one of their own Backwards Ss. I remind them they need to come in silently.  

6. We have lunch.  I write a reminder of instructions on the board.

7. They come back from lunch, and 99% of them silently get to work.  It is far and beyond the best transition time of my day!

8. When writing time is almost over or I see them getting antsy, they share their work with someone.  We do elbow partners, face partners, stand up - hand up - pair up, and back partners on different days to mix it up.

9. The next day, we start writing by reviewing the most important things about a Snapshot/Talkshot/Thoughtshot to make our mini-poster for our writing wall.  I laminated these before hand and used whiteboard makers, so I'll just be able to erase and use them next year!

We're starting to get good at writing for longer and longer!  Half an hour is my goal for them!

I'm hoping we get through our full personal narrative unit in the next two weeks.  I think for fictional narratives this year, we'll write spooky stories to read on Halloween!

How do you teach writing?  Do you have a curriculum?

Big Smiles and Writing Workshop

Big Smiles:

Even though I am exhausted at the end of the day, almost every day in our three weeks of school have had so many more great moments than bad.  I am having a fantastic year so far!  Great group of kiddos, and I know so much more about what I'm doing this second time around.  It feels great, and I can honestly say this year that I am LOVING being a teacher and am looking forward to work each day.  I am so happy!

Ok, so on to one of those great things going on in my classroom this year:  Writing Workshop

Now, I LOVE writing.  I was a creative writing major.  I was the kid with a notebook full of stories from the time I could write.  And this year's group (at least many) seem to be on that page with me.  Writing Workshop was the last part of our normal routine that I got going.  By Back to School Night, we had only done two days of writing and still about a third of my class wrote that it was their favorite part of 4th grade in their note to their parents.  My kind of kids!

I've been taught how to teach writing to kids by multiple people who have read and/or been trained in Lucy Calkins, so if you're familiar with her writing instruction, I bet you'll see pieces of it in mine!

We stared off making lists of important people, places, and events.  Lots and lots of lists.

Then we talked about Seed Stories and Watermelon Stories.  This lesson went FABULOUS!  They seemed to really get it, even my space-cadet kiddos!  I started by group brainstorming a description of a watermelon.  Then, I told them we were going to focus on two parts of it - that watermelons are big and have seeds (both of which were on our list).  I modeled the beginning of a boring watermelon story (it was about 2 minutes and we didn't even get to Disneyland in the story).  At this point, about eight kids were practically jumping up and down because they got it before I even talked about seeds.  So, I had one of them explain seed stories.  We wrote in our notes just a few things about seed stories and then worked together to find a few seed stories out of our watermelon ideas.  Last, students used the worksheet below to find the seeds in their watermelon ideas.  They wrote the watermelon idea on the rind and then seed ideas in each seed.  It worked great!  They "wrote" for 22 minutes that day - blowing our last stamina record out of the water.  I love that it validated their watermelon ideas and helped them realize they could write about so many different parts of their trip or memories.  I had to make extra copies because they want to keep finding seeds!

Font: Oh {Photo} Shoot by Kevin and Amanda
Watermelon: Coloring page from About.com (© Sherri Osborn - familycrafts.about.com)
Click the picture to go to my google doc!

Now we've mapped out our stories using pictures and started writing descriptive "snapshots."  The kids can consistantly write for about 15 minutes now!

My only challenge with writing is that they are so worried about doing it "right" that a million hands go up as soon as they start practicing.  I'm really trying to get them to just write, but I'm having a hard time getting the idea across to them that if they are writing, it isn't wrong!  Do you have any tips for getting this idea across? 

Trying Out Daily 5

Daily 5 has been like a whisper on the wind for a few years now for me.  When I volunteered in a 2nd grade classroom during my undergrad, it was something the teacher down the hall did.  During my credential program, it was something some of my fellow teacher-candidates were experiencing in their placements.  Last year, it was something mentioned at every single district literacy meeting.  I started to get more familiar ... it was a way to do Universal Access.  Then, I started reading blogs and saw how so many of you used it.  Finally, last month, I went to a one day Daily 5/CAFE training/workshop and got the book.  

The training/workshop was super helpful.  It was for 4th-6th grade teachers in my district.  That meant we were all working on adapting it for slightly older than The Sisters teach and dealing with integrating it with the same curriculum.

A brief overview of my "Reading Workshop" last year:

1. I went week by week with the curriculum, except for grammar because I just couldn't find a way to teach what a complete sentence was before I taught what a noun was.
2. I used some activities from the curriculum, but also haphazardly tried to create hands on, fun activities that mostly confused students.
3. Using the theme and strategy for the week, I found more difficult reading passages for my advanced kiddos.
4. I typed out instructions for each station.
5. I made students a checklist.
6. I was exhausted and never actually planned what I would teach small group.

This process took basically an entire day each weekend.  

In the beginning of the year, the kids rotated through the stations, including small group.  Later on, I let them choose the order and just called groups back.  Kids were off task and my small group was tossed together last minute.  It wasn't very differentiated in anything but reading level difficulty.  

Reading was where I felt the worst last year.

Now I'm trying aspects of Daily 5 and so far it is fabulous! I'm still calling it Reading Workshop ... I like that better.  We are working up to doing Daily 4: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, and Work on Writing.

As most people I know and bloggers I follow do, I give students a bit more structure about what has to be completed than The Sisters do.

Read to Self: This is the one I'm keeping the most open - the kids read what they want and their only recording is the title and author.  I'm playing around with the idea of letting them take one AR test each week during this time, but I'm not sure yet.  Suggestions?

Read to Someone:  This is where I'm having them read stories from our curriculum, but I'm not necessarily going in order.  I'm picking what works best with the strategies I'm teaching and with our social studies and science curriculum.  I like that by using curriculum stories, both partners can have a copy of the same thing to read.  This is also where I'm having kids use graphic organizers based on strategies we're working on.  They will have something to turn in from this station each week.

Word Work:  This station has must-dos and may-dos for grammar/vocabulary.  The must-do so far has been pages from their workbook and the may-do is more hands on.  Again, they have things to turn in from this station.

Work on Writing:  I'm going to introduce this today!  Each week, they will have to write a reading response (a la Book Whisperer meets Notebook Connections).  Then, if they do more Work on Writing, they'll have lots of choices, such as another reading response, continuing what they're working on in writing workshop, writing a letter, writing another story, writing something persuasive ... you get the idea!

I made a recording sheet, but it will look the same each week (I already have the next two weeks photocopied!).  On Mondays, the students and I will fill in the must-dos on their checklists and they'll keep track of their progress during the week by marking when they do what and recording what they read.  The kids are getting a bit confused by all my Must-Do/May-Do categories (because each Daily has them plus some Dailies are must-dos and some are may-dos), so I'm thinking I need to tweak this.

 Click HERE for the google doc!

I also have this pocket chart up with must-dos and may-dos for the kids to reference.  Work on Writing isn't up yet since it isn't a workshop choice yet.  We're practicing whole class this week!  I'm not sure how I'll fit it on there ... going to have to get creative!

I posted these before, but click HERE if you didn't get them the first time!
Another genius idea from Clutter Free Classroom:  Use whiteboard markers on pocket charts!

I'm really enjoying taking the time to set up the procedures and practice stamina, but I am also feeling panicky about not having taught a lot yet during reading.  It's also really hard to keep whole class lessons to 10 minutes, but I'm getting better.

This year vs. last year:

Planning takes less time than last year.

The kids are more on task than last year.

There's less busy work than last year.

There's fewer papers for me to grade than last year.

Yep, I'm loving it!

One Class, Many Cultures - Freebie!

I've mentioned this project/bulletin board a few times, and now that this year's group has done it, presented it, and I've (almost) finished reading their reports, I'm going to tell you more about it!

We tweaked it this year, and I'm so happy with the results!  We tied it into our social studies curriculum by telling the kiddos (and putting it on the instructions sheet for the parents) that we will learn throughout the year how California is made up of immigrants and migrants from many places, so their first task as 4th grade social studies learners is to find out how their family got here and learn about the country/ies their families came from.  This tie-in wasn't as specific last year, and I'm really excited to be able to reference this project throughout the year!

Here are the parts:

1. Report - we give very detailed instructions about what should be in the report.  I modeled for students that if their family has come from many different places, they could start with something like "My family came from many countries, such as ___, ___, and ___.  I am going to focus on my ____, who came from _____."  So that the kiddos with many countries didn't feel overwhelmed.  Most of my students' parents moved here after they got married in another country, though, so they just had one country to write about.
2. Presentation - The students presented on their family history, one interesting fact they learned, and showed their Mini-Me.
3. Mini-Me - I give them each one of these cute little popsicle sticks.  Last year, I let them choose from the boy or girl ones ... which left me with about 25 girl sticks and 8 boy sticks.  One of my fabulous teammates suggested breaking off the skirts.  Yay for not having to buy more!  I broke off the skirts for all of the boys before handing them out and, then had any girls who wanted the skirts taken off raise their hands, and I quickly did theirs.

Click HERE to get them on Amazon
... so much cheaper than they were at the teacher supply store!

Most of the kiddos did fantastic on the presentation, though there were some who just read their report (totally not following directions)!  I did have to have a few re-write their reports for handwriting/neatness issues and a few whose parents clearly helped a bit too much, but overall the reports came out great (especially for the beginning of the year). 

This is such a great project because the kiddos love it, it gives me a great baseline of their writing (and how much their parents help) and presentation skills, and we get to know about each other better!  I'm working on planning some activities for them to compare and contrast their history or country with others.  We're definitely going to do a Venn diagram.  You could also do a lot of things with graphing and data as far as how many kiddos are from where (just look at all my kiddos whose families came from China!).  

It also makes a wonderful board that can be left up all year long!

I didn't do great at planning os the kids were spaced out.
 I'm thinking about putting some flags in the blank areas.

Now for the freebies!  

(Click on pictures to go to google docs!)

**Note: These documents are a collaboration between my grade level team and myself**

My bulletin board letters:

The letters are a bit crazy when you look at the document.  Just print, cut, (laminate), and put them in this order.  It will work, promise!  For those of you who don't want the California flag in there, the font is Oh Photo Shoot by Kevin and Amanda.  I just put it on outline (in the format font menu) and then put the flag image behind it.

Assignment Instructions:

Currently and Monday Made-It

Thank goodness for Labor Day weekend!  I got tons of work done and still took half a day completely off from anything school related (except, of course, blogs!).

As my kiddos excitedly pointed out to me on Friday, it is now September.  This is exciting for them because at the end of each month, any unused bathroom passes become raffle tickets.  With only eight days of school in August ... let's just say we have a very full raffle bin!

So, first up .... Currently!

Thanks Farley for hosting!

First off, I have to say that I LOVE this month's currently template.  I am all about bright colors right now.  Let's hope that lasts since my classroom is covered in them! :)

I absolutely adore my class this year!  With the exception of two (aren't there always), they are so well behaved and so excited about what we're doing!  I have quite a few space cadets (Student #1: "Is this social studies or math?" (holding up a worksheet full of addition problems).  Student #2: "Uhhh ... I think we did that one during social studies." No. We didn't. We did it during math).  I prefer space cadets to naughty kiddos, though.

Favorite Things:
1.  I got a Kindle this summer.  I am reading so much more now.  I used to read constantly.  Then college happened.  I was a Literature/Creative Writing major, and I stopped reading for fun.  Being able to instantly get new books on my Kindle is making me love reading again!
2.  Last year's plan binder was plain white (that is, except for the stains on it...).  This year's binder is pretty and that makes me happy every time I take it out!

3.  No, I don't have a new couch.  I just didn't appreciate it all summer like I do at the end of a day of teaching.  So it makes the list!

And now ... Monday Made It! (with freebies for you)

Daily 5 Board
So, I'm not quite done making these, but I created, printed, cut, laminated, and cut.  All that's left to do is arrange them in the pocket chart!  I'm going to post more later about how I am adapting Daily 5 to fit my classroom, but basically I'm doing Daily 4, calling it Reading Workshop, and giving some must-do and some may-do activities for each choice. Here are the labels for you!

Noun Sort
My first Word Work activity!  Students will sort the sentence cards into the four categories, then record the nouns on a recording sheet.  Lots of laminating and cutting here! Here are the sentences and recording sheet for you!

The sorting page.
Their recording sheet doesn't have the "not nouns" category,
 but there will be cards that go in there!

Card baggie is stapled to the back of the sorting chart.
Each set of cards is also a different color.
Crossing my fingers for no supplies lost!
They sort by the underlined words.

Writing Wall Name Tags
Lots of typing, printing, coloring in the parts where my printer was running out of ink, laminating, and cutting.  I think they are going to look great next to the black backgrounds for their writing!

California Regions Fact File
Most of the first chapter of our social studies textbook is on the four regions of California.  The textbook takes three lessons to do this and each lesson talks about all four regions.  By the end of it, I even have details about the regions mixed up!  This year, as we read those lessons, the kiddos are going to organize the info by region.  Here is the document, if you want to use it!  They need to be printed double sided and then folded into a booklet.  Note:  There is one page that I am doing some old fashioned copy-pasting, so it's blank now!  You can put your own map of California there!  Font from Kevin and Amanda!

The page on the right will have a map.

That's all for now!  Have a wonderful week!