Mentor Texts for Writing

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I am currently taking the most wonderful Masters Class-Writing in the Primary Grades.  This class focuses on The Writers Workshop and really utilizes a lot of Lucy Calkins Units of Study.  It has been powerful so far, to say the least.  As many of you know, I have been using Writers Workshop for the last two years in my classroom, but I had never been “officially” trained in it.  I read multiple books, took a balanced literature class that touched on it, but never an official training…until now!

One of our assignments this summer was to read a professional book and present to the class one of the chapters.  One area that I wanted to just know more about was beginnings and endings.  I read the book, “Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6” by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli.   

This book really explores the importance of using literature and mentor texts to show students the experts using the craft you are teaching.  Chapter 5 focuses on Beginnings and Endings.  This is a MUST-HAVE book!!!

Here are a few of my “notes” for my presentation with some of the mentor texts mentioned for you to use.  Click on the notes page to get to my Google Document.  I am planning on updating my “Good Hooks” documents later!

Pigs Will Be Pigs

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We have been working REALLY hard on our money skills in Math.  The kiddos are having a hard time recognizing coins-sigh!  So, I introduced the book, “Pigs Will Be Pigs,” by Amy Axelrod.

The pig family eats all the food in the house, even though Momma Pig went shopping that morning (hmmm…sounds like my house.  Why is it that my kids want to eat EVERYTHING the day I buy it?)  So, the pigs all go out for dinner, but they don’t have any money.  They hunt around the house for money to go to the Enchanting Enchilada restaurant. 

I wanted my students to keep track of the amount of money they found and how much the family found all together.  Then, they had to figure out the bill at the restaurant and how much money the pigs have left. 

Here is the organizer that they used while I was reading!  I hope you can find it as useful as I did!  Click the picture below to download!

Now, THIS is important!!!

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Another fun, fabulous, and super-d-duper cute writing activity!!!  I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the book “The Important Book” by Margaret Wise Brown.  It has such a pattern in it and is great to use for teaching the trait Organization. 

My kiddos are preparing for our district writing assessment this week and we have been talking a LOT about good beginnings and endings.  They knew about the details in the middle that they needed to add, but I thought this lesson would be PERFECT to focus on those a review of those details!

Another GREAT thing about this book is that you can tailor it to fit ANY of the curricular areas that you want.  I had intended to use this book at the beginning of the year for them to write about themselves, but now that we are at the end of the year, I think it would be an awesome way to review facts they have learned about their insects (Yes, I have live mealworms in my classroom right now…they are sooooo cute!)

So, take a peek at my lesson and tell me what you think!  We are going to be publishing these later this week in the lab and I will try to get up a sample soon to show you!

IPod Touch Apps

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Phew, it has been awhile since I have had the opportunity to post anything!

Hello blog friends!!!

Recently, a very good friend of mine won an iPod Touch for use in her classroom. She asked me what I use mine for (mine is a personal IPod Touch that I just take to my classroom to use for music.) I didn’t have any wisdom to share with her. Well, her excitement led to mine! I have been looking around for fun ways to use this technology in my classroom!

I came across THIS article that was 100% valuable! It has pages of apps that are good for educators. You have GOT TO check it out!

Open publication - Free publishing - More technology

How do you use your IPod Touch in your classroom???

Removal of Items

Sorry about all the “weird” posts on my blog and the recent shutdown of it.  We got a notice from administration that we can’t have ANY pictures (including artwork or any of their work) on our blog.  So, I have had to remove all samples, pictures, artwork, etc.

I will continue to post teaching ideas!!!  So, stay tuned for more goodies!

Scrappindoodle Giveaway winners!

I am excited to be announcing the Scrappindoodles clipart giveaway winners….Drumroll please…..by random generator, the winners are:

Ladybug Teacher ($5 choice from ME)

AND

StephFerrell (Graphic Collection only set from Scrappindoodle)

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes and for being such fun “friends” of my blog.  I will be relaxing after a long week of conferences with my high school friends (Can you believe we are still such great friends after being out of school for almost 20 years-they are AMAZING) in VEGAS (first time going!!!)  Enjoy your weekend.

P.s.  Ladybug Teacher and StephFerrell…get in touch with me to let me know which sets you are choosing!  If I don’t get back to you right away, it is because I have left for my trip and I will return on Sunday!

Birthday Giveaway!!!

In spirit of having over 100 followers on my blog and my birthday coming up soon, I have teamed up with Scrappindoodles for a fun GIVEAWAY!!!  I use her clipart almost 100% of the time.  

 She was even nice enough to take me up on a suggestion of creating a couple sets with reading kids and writing kids!  

I am in no way gaining anything from this promotion.  I just LOVE her stuff and want to pass it along.  She has top-notch customer service!!!

 Here is what you have to do:

1. Go to scrappindoodles.com and check out some of her sets 
2. Become my follower (if you already aren’t.) 
3. Comment below what your favorite set was and how you will use it!

I will let you know by random generator on Wednesday, February 9, who will win a set valued at $5 or less (courtesy of my pocketbook!)  My birthday gift to YOU!  

Scrappindoodles has graciously offered to donate a SECOND set for the giveaway!!!  If you are the winner of the second set, you can select a  set from her "Graphics Collection" category and she can send it to you!  SWEET!!!  See, I told you she ROCKS!!!

 I can’t wait to hear what you would do with her fun sets!

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Blogger Friends...HELP

HELP…I was just telling my teaching partners about a GREAT idea I found on one of the blogs that I follow (or maybe it was proteacher or 2^nd Grade Teacher’s Club) with a book students make out of the Valentine’s they get from classmates. 

For the life of me, I can’t find it.  I am hoping it was one of you that made it and can link to my blog through the comments???  Thanks so much!  I can’t wait to use your idea!

EDITED TO ADD:  Here is the link to the book I was looking for over at What the Teacher Wants.  Check it out!  What a fun scrapbook idea for the kids!

Snow Art

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With all of the snow, wind, and COOOOLLLLDDDD weather we have had lately, we decided to put our student’s background knowledge and experience to good use (of course, we tied it into curriculum ;o)

We did a little shaving cream/glue snowman coupled with a SNOW acrostic poem that taught the students how to use small words, such as onomatopoeia along with longer phrases-in an essence, we were practicing our sentence fluency!  They were sooooo cute.  We have gotten a lot of compliments (and fingers touching our art-grrrr!)

 

 

Mangament:  We used simple Dixie cups and popsicle sticks for our materials.  Each student opened up the lid of their elmers glue and poured a small amount into the bottom of their Dixie cup (probably about 2 Tblsp…give or take some.)  Then, I came around with one can of shaving cream and squirted enough in the cup to fill it up.  They then used their popsicle stick to stir it up.  Of course, I had already laid the ground work BEFORE the activity and warned them about how the shaving cream didn’t come out of their cup or they were DONE with art! 

Students painted their snowmen with their popsicle sticks.  The THICKER the shaving cream on the paper, the fluffier the snowman will be when it dries!

We had students put their buttons in the FLUFFY, wet shaving cream-this serves as the glue!  They also cut out their “goodies” for the snowmen out of construction paper and put it on the wet shaving cream.  There was NO GLUING needed!

After they were done with their art, they worked on their SNOW acrostic poem!  This was their first acrostic poem of the year, so they were a little “rough,” but they did another one the next day for another subject and they were soooooo much better!  Here is our publishing paper!

A couple on the bulletin board:

How-To Blow a Bubble Writing

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I have been sooooo inspired by posts that I have seen on proteacher and the 2^nd grade Teacher’s Club that I just HAD to do this lesson with my kiddos.  They LOVED it!  We just started publishing today and most of them are already done!  I can’t wait to get these up in time for conferences.  I will post pictures of the kids trying to blow bubbles and our hallway display later next week when we get them up.  For now, here is our Writers Workshop Lessons and printouts that we used for the lesson.  Enjoy!

Hooks, Details, and Endings!

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My co-teacher was given a document by her mentor that I thought was VERY useful!  Of course, I had to change it up to make sure it had cute clip-art…so, here is the end result.  I hope you can find these documents useful with teaching writing!  I know that we are going to include them in our student’s monthly writing journal along with other helpful files, like a monthly calendar full of ideas found at www.busyteacherscafe.com.  My next post will probably include details on what all we include in our writing journals each month!

Enjoy!

Dowloading Google Docs and Embedding your Own Document!

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Some of you are new to using google docs in blogs (I know I JUST learned how to embed my files, so I am fairly new myself), so I thought I send you to a GREAT tutorial that a friend of mine posted on her blog:  2ndin1st

As you can see, you just simply have to click on the “box-in-a-box!”  This will take you to the google docs page where you can then download my file!

If you have your own blog and you would like to learn how to embed a document (this means that people will see the picture of your document on your blog!!!), here are the steps:

•  Upload your document onto google docs.
• Click on your document name to open it (you will see your actual document and what it looks like)

• To the right, you will see an option with a url to embed into a webpage or a blog.  COPY this URL

• Open your blog and create a new post
• Type any instructions you would like to type in your message.
• UNDERNEATH where you type your message, there will be an option called “Post Options.”  Click on this!

• Change the Edit HTML line breaks by selecting the following: 
  Use <br /> tags
• Change compose setting to “interpret Typed HTML”
• In your message, paste the url from your document where you want it to appear…IMPORTANT…you might need to skip a line after your message and after your url to have your url be its own “paragraph.”  This made a difference the first time I attempted to embed a document!
• Click “Preview” and you should see you document appear in your blog! 

Let me know in the comments if you are still having trouble downloading my documents or if you were successful in getting your document to show up in your own blog!!!

Paper Plate Clock-revamped!!!

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So, we are getting ready to start out “Telling Time” unit in Math.  A while ago, I was browsing my favorite blogs and teacher websites and came across a paper plate clock that Mrs. Madden had her students create.  I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the idea of having the flap for them to look under to see the minutes!  So, I told myself that I wanted my students to create one of those as well. 

My team teachers and I were talking about making these at our plan session and wanted to make these a little less prep for us teachers, so I was messing around on my computer and designed the following document to match Mrs. Madden’s wonderful idea, but be less prep work for us.  I hope you like them!

By the way, my daughter made a sample clock (so I could see if my dimensions were correct in my document,) so I just had her use a marker to color in her numbers and hands.  Take a peek:

Comments for Confidence!

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So, here I am sitting on a snow day in my pajamas finishing up report cards with a hot, steaming glass of hot chocolate with fluffy, miniature marshmallows.  As I am writing my comments, I am keenly aware, as a parent myself, how much these comments impact a child and their parents.  I need to be honest and purposeful with my feedback, but I also need to be very aware of how my words are the ones that stick in my parent’s thoughts and minds.  This is their little baby that I am focusing on and making judgments about.

With that said, I am hoping that the following documents (created solely by information found in various sources on the internet…I DID NOT create these on my own-just formatted them differently to fit my viewing pleasure,) will possibly inspire you to focus future comments in a more positive fashion on your report cards!  Good luck with the next semester of teaching!