Happy Halloween!

As a kid, Halloween was always such a wonderful time! Halloween sort of lost its appeal as I got older and it became more about skimpy costumes and drinking too much. However, now that I am a teacher, I get to rekindle my love for Halloween with my students, when the holiday was all about creative/fun costumes, haunted houses, carving pumpkins, and of course....CANDY!

Schools where I have taught in the past do not recognize Halloween the way my current school does. Certain schools do not feel it is appropriate.  I remember the excitement around the Halloween costume parade at my elementary school growing up, and I was thrilled to hear that my students (and us teachers) participate in a parade at school on Halloween! The teachers are in costumes from the staff Halloween play that we put on for the students. This year, the play included skits from popular Aesop's fables. I was in "The Tortoise and the Hare" as a narrator, so I stuck with the Halloween theme by simply wearing a black witch hat with orange trim around the brim. <-- HEY! That rhymes :)

Since the parade didn't start until after lunch, I planned fun Halloween activities for the morning.

I had a Halloween Word Search for the kids at their table spots when they came in to school this morning.

During math, we had all kinds of fun games to play that involved using pieces of candy corn and m&m's as counters or place holders (that of course kids got to eat when they finished the games)!

In reading, we are talking about retelling stories and sequencing events in a story. We watched a silly  video where Goofy takes us through the process of haunting a house:



Then we filled out sequencing worksheets to practice retelling how to haunt a house successfully! Always comes in handy this time of year, I think....

If you don't already know, I LOVE BAKING! I didn't do it as often as I wanted to living in NYC because of the lack of space for working with my mixer, but now that I have a bigger kitchen, I am able to bake all sorts of treats! Halloween cupcakes are without a doubt one of my favorite treats to make. As soon as it hit October, I raided the supermarket shelves for Halloween cupcake decorations and ingredients:

I'm sick of just plain chocolate or vanilla cupcakes, so I decided I wanted to create a vanilla/chocolate swirl cupcake for my class Halloween treat. Since I don't have a TON of time, I went with store bought cake mix to keep it simple:

Isn't my spatula adorbs? I was in London with friends over the summer and snatched up one of Cath Kidston's signature backpacks. My parents were over in the UK a few months after I was, where my mom picked me up another Cath accessory. It makes baking so much more fun because of the cute, floral design! I couldn't wait to get into the kitchen and bake!

I mixed the vanilla batter first, scooped it into the cupcake trays, and then mixed up only HALF of the chocolate batter.











I put a dollop of the chocolate batter on top of the vanilla mix already in the liners.

 

                  ( I know, it kind of looks like doggie doo, but stay with me people!)

Then, I used a plastic knife to gently swirl the chocolate batter in with the vanilla:

Stick it in the oven at 350 for 21 minutes, and TA-DA!

Here is the end result, sprinkles and all:

The class LOVED the cupcakes, and are already asking when I can make them another cupcake treat! There's always Thanksgiving, my little turkeys :) 

I hope everyone has a fun-filled, safe Halloween! I can't wait to head home and hand out candy for the trick or treaters! I hope I bought enough, although I know that my fiance won't complain if there are a couple of extra fun-size Krackles or Mr. Goodbars around this weekend...

 

Inspiring Quotes

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein

   

Recently, we had a staff in-service day ran by All Kinds of Minds, an organization that focuses on the science behind successful learning (and teaching FOR successful learning). At the end of the presentation, the educator put up this quote. The reaction I had towards it was very emotional.

 

When I think about this quote, I think about my students. My biggest challenge (and the most rewarding thing!) about being a teacher is that I have to figure out ways to incorporate many learning styles into my lessons each day. Some of my students respond better to written directions or visuals. Others are more comfortable with oral information. Some benefit from watching the teacher or another person demonstrate different activities. I try my hardest to engage each and every one of my students in lessons and activities based on how they learn best!

 

For example, with practicing multiplication facts, some kids benefit from practicing flash cards, so we created "multiplication rings" to take home and practice:

 Other students are physical learners, so to reinforce our facts, I play "aerobic multiplication", where I will write down on the board AND say a multiplication equation. The kids have to do as many jumping jacks/sit-ups/toe-touches as the product of those two factors.

 

Some kids are visual learners, so drawing pictures, like arrays, with the two factors as dimensions to find the product, keep them engaged in remembering facts.

 

 I also think about myself when I read this quote. My whole childhood, I was a "middle-of-the-road" kid in school. Not the smartest, but certainly not failing. Still, the fact that many of my teachers did not take the time to think about all of the different learners in their classrooms caused me to struggle. Maybe not academically, but with my confidence. 

 

I never thought I was smart, because I felt that learning did not come naturally to me. It came with studying, tutors, and lots of practice. Sure, not everything is going to come easily to everyone, and it is only normal that sometimes kids need to work hard to understand certain concepts. I have realized, after experiencing being in academic environments that honor and accommodate for different learning types post-high school, is that not ALL learning should be a struggle. I am POSITIVE that many of the concepts that were introduced to me in my primary and secondary school years could have been exciting and confidence boosting for me, if only teachers took the time to present them in more than one way. I now know what kind of a learner I am, and that brings me joy in learning new things every day :)

 

I never want ANY of my students to feel the way I did about myself when I was younger. This quote by Einstein reinforces my commitment to my students to make their learning experiences enjoyable, and to make them believe in themselves and their strengths! We are ALL geniuses! 

And because I can't leave without sharing something organization related:

Last year, my student's drinking cups (from Ikea) would always fall off of the small counter where I kept them. There just wasn't enough room for 21 cups on one small shelf!

This year I inherited this wonderful shoe hanging bag, which I intended to use for miscellaneous art supplies. However, I realized the pockets were the perfect size for the cups! Now, when students are done with getting a drink, back into the pocket it goes! No spills, and more shelf space. Win-win!

Native Americans, Numbers and Novels!

Happy October to all....even though this sudden spike in heat is reminding me more of the 4th of July than Halloween! I love hearing my students chat with each other about their costumes...can't wait for the Halloween parade to see what everyone ends up dressing as!

Last Thursday was crazy busy. We had a field trip AND Back to School night. Obviously, I had more than my typical AM cup of coffee that day!

We are studying the Lenape Native American tribe, so our first trip was to a nature center that has a model Lenape village. The students loved it! They had educators there dressed in traditional Lenape clothing to tell us all about the Lenape customs. Students were able to imagine themselves as Lenape Native Americans. We learned how the Lenape made tools and built homes, how they hunted and prepared food, and what games and activities Lenape children liked to play!

Clay was abundant in this region. Lenape children would use the clay that the adults used to make cooking pots to create animals and figurines to play with. Our class had the opportunity to make their own clay toys. 

We also learned about the structure and customs of Lenape families. Did you know that when a Lenape woman wants a divorce all she needs to do is throw her husband's tools or weapons out of their home? Talk about no muss no fuss!

(A traditional Lenape longhouse--no tools on the ground outside, so I am assuming this is a functioning, happy marriage!)

After school, it was a quick cup of coffee and prep for Back to School night. I generally stress about this in the days before, thinking about how to fill the time, but in the end, I always end up going over!

One thing I have learned from my experience doing Back to School nights is that PARENTS LOVE PAPER. Honestly, just throw a bunch of papers at them and they'll be happy:

At each child's table spot, I had out the following:

1. The child's published short story (our first writing assignment of the year)
2. A text-connections bookmark for parents to use at home when reading with their children
3. A copy of our group's schedule
4. A letter that the child wrote to his/her parents and an index card for the parents to respond (don't forget to provide pens!)
5. An overview of typical development for 3rd and 4th graders (adapted from Yardsticks)
6. The parent letter from our first math unit (with suggested "at-home" activities)
7. The parent letter from our first word study unit (with MORE suggested "at-home" activities)

After the parents got a chance to browse the classroom and respond to their child's letter, I had us all come together to play a game called "No Talk Toss" that I play with my students. It comes from the Energizers! book. I put a spin on the game for the parents. Typically, the game is played without talking so children can practice making eye contact and making connections as they throw a bean bag to a friend in the circle. For parents, I asked that once they catch the bean bag, they introduce themselves, who their child is, and a memory from their 3rd or 4th grade experience. It was hilarious and informative to hear what the parents remembered from their time in elementary school!

After we played the game, we sat down and I gave parents the overview of the curriculum. Reading, writing, math, social studies. The whole shebang. Fortunately, there weren't too many crazy or uncomfortable questions. Overall I think it was a success! I even received a few emails the following day from parents thanking me for a great evening--SCORE!

******

My 4th graders are really working on automaticity of their multiplication facts up to 12. We have been working on using facts that we know to solve for facts that we don't know. I had the students break up into groups to create posters with the five multiplication facts that were the most difficult for them to remember. I asked them to come up with a multiplication fact to "start with" that would help them figure out how to solve the "tricky fact".

Check it out! If you are having trouble with 12x5, just think about what 10x5 is. Then think about how many more groups of 5 you need to add. Two you say? Isn't that 10? Add the 10 to 50, and viola! The product of 12x5! 

Now...onto the organization segment of this post!

I have noticed that many of my students are not sticking with books during their 15 minutes of Independent Reading Time (IRT) each day. That makes things difficult for me, because when kids are constantly switching books, I never know a.) what they are reading and b.) if it is "just right" for them.

I decided to take action!

First, we had a conversation as a class about why people sometimes stop reading books in the middle. Some responses included:

- boring
- too many characters
- not what I expected
- I see another book I want to try

I introduced the class to our new system....DRUMROLL PLEASE......

Each child has an index card with their name on it. When they finish a book, they need to come talk to me so I can write the date on their card and the title of the next book they will be reading. If they are reading a book and want to abandon it for something else, they need to come to me as well and have a conference about why they want to stop reading their current book and begin a new one. If the reason seems valid, such as the book is too hard/too easy, I will allow them to choose a new book and record it on their index card with the date. Hopefully this not only keeps me up to date on what they are reading, but teaches them how to maintain stamina and get through the books they enjoy!

Friendship and Connections

We are nearing the end of the third week of school, and almost into a new month. Time is flying!

This week has been rough for me personally. My dog, Angie, passed away on Wednesday, just a few days shy of her 15th birthday. The day we brought her home when she was just 8 weeks old was one of the best days of my life, and it will be difficult to come back to my parent's home and not see her waiting for me in the foyer as I walk in the front door :(

Each year, my students hear about Angie. I always have her picture up by my desk, and am constantly telling them stories about her.

  

Even though I didn't tell my students about Angie, I wanted to honor her in some way in my classroom (even if I was the only one aware of this)....keep reading to see what I did :)

 The past couple of weeks, I have been teaching my students about making connections to our reading. 

We began with making text-to-self connections. I modeled the "stop and jot" strategy as I read My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco. The students got the hang of it pretty quickly, and were jotting down connections in their reading notebooks that they had to Trisha and the relationship she has with her brother. The next day, I modeled using a venn diagram to make text-to-self connections while reading Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber. On one circle, I wrote Ira's name. On the other circle, I wrote my name. In the center...you guessed it! What Ira and I have in common! 

My students practiced using the venn diagram in partners. I gave each partnership a picture book to read together. They did an excellent job recording what was different about the main characters from themselves, as well as the things that were similar. I was so impressed!

As many of you know, I have been reading The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School as our read-aloud book. The story follows a class of children and their teacher, Mr. Jupiter. Each chapter is a take on an Aesop's fable. To practice making text-to-text connections, I decided to re-read the chapter "Dance, Stanford, Dance!" which is based on the moral from the fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper": It is wise to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow. After re-reading the chapter from Fabled Fourth Graders out loud, I gave partners a copy of "The Ant and the Grasshopper" and a text-to-text connection worksheet.

We came together as a class to share some of our connections: 

Finally, it came time to make some text-to-world connections. This is where my "Angie Tribute" came in. I decided to do a read-aloud of The Two Bobbies, a true (and incredibly emotional) story of a dog and cat who, through their unique friendship, survived Hurricane Katrina after their owners evacuated New Orleans. Angie was such a good friend to people and other animals, I knew she would love this story!

 I decided that before I read the story I would ask the kids about hurricanes:

Not surprisingly, they had a lot of information to share! With so many hurricanes threatening the northeast in recent years, many of my students have prepared for one and/or watched newscasts with their families. After we brainstormed, I read the story. Throughout the story, my students would notice that the author was describing many of the things about hurricanes that they had added to the chart, like flooding, boarding up windows, and community helpers coming to the rescue for people (and animals!)

On that theme, I plan on ending the week (and our unit on making connections) with Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen. I want to reinforce to my students how important it is to make connections, whether that means to their reading, in helping other people, or to our very special, animal friends.

RIP Angie. I love and miss you. 

First Week Fun!

I can't believe this first week of school is already over!

I had a blast (and a good sweat) putting together my room!

Here are some "after" shots of my classroom:

I laminated sentence strips with our schedule and added magnet tape to put on our whiteboard for easy schedule changing each day!  Always a good idea to keep those kiddos in the loop...

Of course, it wasn't totally complete until my students came on Monday  :)

This first week was all about community building and getting to know my new group of students. We started the morning decorating name tags, and then did a version this activity from Pinterest. It was nice to get a sense of how the kids feel about coming to school and how they see themselves as learners (and also get them moving around the classroom). We did a few activities that required the students to move around, like this genre survey:

I wrote the genres individually on pieces of paper and put them around the room. I then gave kids a sheet of stickers. Any book genres that they read over the summer would get a sticker.

After everyone was finished putting on their stickers, the kids broke up into groups of 3-4 to count the number of stickers for a specific genre and color in the number on the bar graph (a sneaky way to assess how much the students remembered about bar graphs!)

Speaking of reading, this is the best read aloud to start the year with! My head teacher read it to the class during my first year as an associate teacher, and I totally fell in love with it. It's funny, clever and has many wonderful lessons. So far, my students have been laughing out loud and cannot wait for read aloud so we can hear more about this crazy group of kids from Aesop Elementary! 

After decorating our heart maps, we reviewed the writing process. The kids did a great job remembering the steps that we added to this super-cute pencil:

 Of course, this post would not be complete without some tips for organization!

I originally intended to use a dish-drying rack to organize my papers/handouts for each day of the week...until I opened up all of my ordering and remembered that I ordered this handy-dandy hanging pocket chart:

 The first five pockets are for Monday-Friday. The bottom two are for items that need to be filed and copies that need to be made. Of course, I realized I have a totally new use for the dish-drying rack I bought! I plan on keeping file folders filled with materials for the writing process (peer/teacher conference sheets, revising strips, spelling "try-it" sheets, etc.)


 Also, there is nothing I hate more than clutter (especially when it comes to student work!) I decided that the only way to avoid things piling up and getting lumped together is to separate each subject into three different bins: homework, finished work, and unfinished work:

 Blue for reading. Red for math. Yellow for writing/word study. Green for Social Studies. Conveniently, the folder that the kids will have for each subject matches the color of the bin!

So far, the kids are really upbeat about being at school. They even complained that they only had reading for homework! I'm sure that won't last long...but a teacher can dream :)

Oh, for the love of BINDERS!

Okay, okay. Even though I didn't love school as a kid, I did (and still do) love BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING!

Now that I am half city/half suburbs (read: I now have a car to drive to mega-stores and fill up instead of schlepping only as much as my two hands can carry on the NYC subway), I rushed to Target to stock up!

Holy moly, does Target have a ton of cute and fun things to help organize!

Here's what I got to keep me afloat and on top of things this year:

TEACHER BINDER: This is what I will take to and from school on a daily basis. I wanted something a little more fun and easily recognizable as my go-to binder, so I picked this adorable navy and pink patterned binder. Notice the fun polka-dotted binder clip to keep my calendar in place? YUP.

The first page will hold my class list and a list of all other classrooms in a clear sheet protector.

Then, I have dividers that separate sections like weekly planning calendars, important contacts (parents/staff), and a section for staff meeting and professional development notes.

SUBJECT BINDERS: Each binder represents a different subject, including Math, Reading, Writing/Word Study, and Social Studies.

Each binder has a clear sheet protector with my (tentative--how quickly plans/schedules can change!) calendar of lessons in that subject for the month. Then, there is a section for lesson plans, a section for worksheets, and a section for homework sheets.

STUDENT INFO BINDER: This one's a biggie! It contains a section for each child in my classroom. This is where I will hold all of the parent questionnaires that were sent out prior to school starting, as well as any other notes I take about students (academic/social/emotional) as the year goes on. This will (hopefully) prove helpful for conferences and report writing! In the back, I have lined notebook paper to jot down any informal notes that I can put into each student's section. I also have copies of a
"Parent Contact Sheet" in the back. I use these to document any communication with a parent regarding an issue in the classroom. This also goes into the student's section...hopefully I won't need TOO many of these :-/

Here's that contact sheet:

  Parent Contact Log

Name:                          Parents:                      

Phone:                         Email:                        

Date:       Who: Type:

Reason/Response:

Date:       Who: Type:

Reason/Response:

Date:       Who: Type:

Reason/Response:

Date:       Who: Type:

Reason/Response:

PORTABLE FILE FOLDER: How cute and stripey is this little guy? Not totally sure how I will use this, but I can see pulling out a student section or two when I need to write reports/do conference notes at home and don't want to lug the entire student info binder home. I could also stick assignments that need to be graded in here if I need to do those at home too (although I am praying I get most things done before I go home each day).

DAILY FOLDERS: I am constantly looking on Pinterest for organization ideas. I saw someone use a dish drying rack as a file folder holder. GENIUS! I picked up a simple white dish drying rack (and realized that the utensil container is perfect for holding pens/pencils/paper clips!)

I bought file folders for each day of the week, plus one folder for copies (6 folders altogether). Whatever worksheets/homework sheets/parent letters are going out that day will live in that day's folder. The copy folder is for anything that needs to be xeroxed.

CLIPBOARD: I wanted a clipboard for writing down anecdotes during student work-times and to take notes during staff meetings. I didn't want just ANY clipboard, though. I found a regular, boring brown clipboard...and then I found PATTERNED PACKING TAPE! What?!?! I immediately snatched up two different patterns (lime green and white chevron and blue and white leaves) and got to work creating a funky, fun clipboard to carry around with me. Viola!

PHEW! Let's hope this makes the school year a little less hectic!

And It Begins...

The last week of summer is here :(

But, I am excited to begin setting up my classroom at the end of this week. Unfortunately, I have to wait until they install my new carpets, but I'm getting in there on Thursday! Yay!

I snuck in today to take some "before" photos of my new classroom. Take a look:

 My classroom isn't very high-tech! I'm actually one of the few teachers who has a white-board instead of a chalkboard!

 I'm hoping to make this loft area a cozy reading nook with pillows.

 Student cubby room. My students are REQUIRED to bring wellies and a change of clothes in the event that they get wet in the creek during recess! LOVE that!

I'm pretty sure this is going to be our meeting corner/read aloud area.

Stay tuned for the "after"! And please, any suggestions for set up ideas are much appreciated :)