Five for Friday: animals, art, and Thanksgiving

It's been a while since I joined up with Doodlebugs' Five for Friday.
By the time it gets to Friday I have a hard time thinking of ONE thing, never mind five! But it was a really busy week in my classroom and I have a bunch of things to share.  Teaching 3 days a week makes it so crazy trying to fit in everything you plan to do.  Especially when there's a fire drill and an assembly! 

Earth Rangers came to our school this week.  They are a conservation group that goes to schools to educate kids on protecting animals and habitats.  This is the second time that they've visited our school and it's always tremendously popular because they bring live animals to show the kids.  This year they had a tortoise, a martin, a barn owl, and a hawk.  The birds flew across the gym just over the students' heads.  Pretty exciting!

This picture is from last year - I forgot to take any pictures this year!

I started a fall art project on leaves on Monday.  I got the idea from That Artist Woman.  If I was smart I would've just made the leaves and mounted them on a black background like she did.  But No, I had to add a painted background, forgetting that it would mean 3 painting sessions  - the leaves take 2 because they're done on paper prepped with Gesso and tissue paper.  We did NOT have time to do 3 painting sessions in 3 days, so the leaves remain unpainted, but the background is ready to go (my last group was just painting their background when the fire bell rang........).  We'll finish them next week.  I think they're going to look great.  Here's Gail's sample and a link to her blog with the directions.

Not being particularly artistic (Ha!  Understatement!) I didn't have any Gesso on hand, or admittedly, even know what it was.  Internet to the rescue!  I found a recipe and made my own using 1 part water, 1 part plaster of paris, 1 part white glue (Elmer's), and 2 parts white acrylic paint (although there was none in the school, so I used liquid tempera and it seemed to work fine....).  It only took a few minutes to mix up and it did the job of making a nice textured paper for the leaves.  I used one cup of the first 3 things and 2 cups of paint.  It made enough for everyone's project plus about 1 liter left over.  Should be good for another project.  If I remember what it is.  And if it keeps.  We'll see.  If you make it be sure to stir in the Plaster of Paris and mix it up well before adding the glue and paint.  Otherwise it's hard to get the lumps out.  Can you infer why I'm telling you this?  The directions said to do this, but I dumped everything in at once (duh!).......I'm thinking that watered down glue might have worked about as well as the Gesso.  I'm even thinking maybe it would've been just about as good to skip the texture step and just trace and paint the leaves.  
Here's how they turned out.

Speaking of leaves.......the kids were burying each other on the playground yesterday. This is my sweet granddaughter. I'm thinking there's probably an art project .........

I always like to have an extra activity for the kids to do while I'm working with small groups on our main art project of the week. So while we were working on our leaf painting the others were making these.

We made these thankfulness pumpkins that I saw on Pinterest. The orange strips have sentences that they printed on:  I am thankful for _______________ .  They turned out really cute and the kids were thrilled to have a decoration to take home for the holiday. 

I have my turkey thawing in the fridge and am making preparations for our family Thanksgiving dinner here on Sunday afternoon.  I like to do the dinner a day early so that on Monday we can relax, eat leftovers and play games.  And be rested up to go back to work Tuesday!

4 freebies: Work on Words activities

I'm This Work on Words is an essential part of my Daily 5 routine.  I have some activities that we do the same day every week and some that are choices that my students can pick. I'm going to share 3 of them today. 

I am joining up with Teaching Trio's Favorite Things linky this month. I always find some good ideas there.  

#1.  CHUNK SPELLING. I love this Spelling program that I found at Second Story Window blog a couple of years ago. I have always given my class a combination of sight words plus words from a "family" (-at, -ick, -ail...). This program gives the students practice working with the word families, and also allows them to choose the words they want to work with from the list they generate. (I still pick their sight words). This allows for a wide range of spelling abilities, since they make 3 different lists to choose from.  Words in the first list have a single letter before the stem (cat, sat, bat). Words in the second have 2 letters before the stem (brat, slat, chat). List 3 words are the "challenge" words with letters before, after, or both (catcher, attack, battle, matter). 

Pretty much everything you need for the word family lists is included here in the post, including a year's worth of word families for first, second, and third grades!  The post gives a detailed explanation of how the program works in the classroom. You can click HERE to see the original post and download the Sound Spelling sheets (pictured above is the flip side, the front has single letters), word list suggestions for the year and chunk tabs for grades one to three. 

My only reservation was how to manage the Friday Spelling quiz when everyone has different words. My solution was this:  students buddy up, trade lists, and give each other their quizzes. Works like a charm!  It's our Friday Work on Words. 

This is the sheet I made for them to practice their words on after they make their lists on the back. By the way, they don't actually choose off their own lists. Way too many chances for errors!  We make a chart together (example from Second Story Window in the top picture above) and they copy their words from it. I made versions for a 10 word Spelling list (interlined), and for 10 and 15 words, too. They're not fancy, but they get the job done. If you want them click HeRE.

#2. COLOUR CODER and RACE TO THE TOP. 

On Tuesday my students choose one of these two activities to practice their Spelling words. Both are tremendously popular. 

Race to the Top is played by rolling a number cube and graphing the result. I originally saw it done with numbers and adapted it for Spelling. I have them print the 5 sight words in the first 5 spaces and their word family rime in the sixth. When they roll a six they can print any word from the family above 6 on the graph. To make it more fun I let them print the words with felts.  Dice and felts together are a sure winner!

Colour Coder is similar to a word search, only they don't actually have to find the words on the grid.  They just colour in the letters used to spell the word.  I have them put an X on the letters because there are always those kids who will take a big chunk of time colouring in the spaces perfectly. 

Get these 2 word work activities free at my TpT store by clicking HERE.

#3.  MULTIPLE MEANING WORDS

I love this activity from The Primary Gal!  It's a great way to work with homophones.  The students pick a card with a word that has two meanings, then illustrate both meanings.  There's a FREEBIE SAMPLER HERE  or the FULL MEAL DEAL HERE!

Pinterest for your classroom: 3 Pins Worth Checking Out

I was so pleased to find this linky. There is so much amazing stuff out there, but so little time to find it. So you've got to love Pinterest!  It has the best of the best. But STILL not enough time!  So what a great idea to have bloggers pick their favourite pins of the month and post them. Thanks to The Inspired Owl's Corner and Pawsitively Teaching for hosting. Click on the picture to check out more wonderful Pinterest ideas. 

1.  I'm currently working on parts of speech with my class. Yesterday I was shocked to discover how many of my students had no idea what a noun is. It's Grade 3, People!  Last night I was cruising Pinterest, looking for nothing in particular, and came across these posters from Hannah at The Classroom Key.  I love songs both as great student motivators and super memory devices. I can hardly wait to get to school to introduce them!

I'm including two pins here because the nouns and verbs are in one post and the adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns are in a second post. 

I had trouble singing the adverb song to the tune of Skip to my Lou, but found it worked really well with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star if I repeated the first 2 lines at the end. 

2.  Next up is a a PIN FROM KAREN at Adaptable, Flexible, Versatile on how she uses Rory's Story Cubes. I love that she provides an example of a story that she wrote using the cubes and a freebie template to use. After I read about these story cubes A couple of years ago I knew I had to have some for my classroom. I had a hard time finding them where I live and was going to order them off the internet but we went to Disneyland that summer, and was able to duck into a Barnes and Noble right in downtown L.A. and get some. 

There are several other good pins about these cubes on Pinterest. Several of them also include freebies. Like this one.  Or this one.

3.  My last pin goes to a blog I wrote about EPIC!  The best book app I've seen for kids. And it's FREE for teachers. I originally saw it on another blog, but that post didn't have much info about what Epic! is. Basically the message was:  Check out this app, you're going to LOVE it. So I did and I do!!

Go to the pin here  and follow it  to get information on EPIC!  Or just go straight to my blog post HERE.

The kids in my class were so enthused when I showed them the app.  They loved that they each had their own profile that they could customize (they have to earn new backgrounds and avatars and frames by reading books - I haven't told them that lots of the books have audio yet.....).  They were also excited that they could rate the books they read and they would be offered personalized book recommendations based on their ratings.  (I love these features, too, but the thing I like best is that EPIC! has ALL of the Scaredy Squirrel books on it!)

I hope you have a great weekend.  Happy pinning!

CAFE Headers and Strategy Cards Freebie

I am excited that my Classroom Expectations posters are the featured freebie this week for Freebie Friday.
This week I am offering my C.A.F.E. headers and strategy cards.  I have used these for several years in my class and have finally gotten around to adding them to my TpT store thanks to inquiries from other staff members in my school last week at a professional development day.

Snatch them up here if you'd like them.  I find them really handy for introducing and reviewing the concepts.  There are 21 different cards in this set.  They are strategies for becoming better readers.  The four headers include a short definition for each word in the CAFE acronym. 

And don't forget to head over to see other great freebies with Fern at Teaching Blog Addict.

Make sure that you check out my blog tomorrow when I share my top three Pinterest Picks that I found for my classroom in September.  You'll want to check them out because there are some super freebies!

Setting expectations: Keep it simple

In our school we have a sheet of expectations and a rubric of expectations that include examples.  These are posted in each classroom, but I find that they are cumbersome and have too much print on them to catch students' attention on an ongoing basis.  So in the past I have gone over them on the first day of school and then posted them in a remote corner.
This summer I read an article about setting expectations in the classroom.  It said that it is best to keep expectations to 10 or less so that students can keep focused on them.  
At first I thought "That's impossible!  I spend most of the first TWO WEEKS talking to them about my expectations!"
Then I realized that most of the things I'm telling them are how we do classroom ROUTINES and that the expectations are overarching principles that encompass ALL of these.  And more.

I can't remember who wrote the post I read or I'd cite that for you (I think I followed a link and another link), but it included 8 basic expectations that were used in their school that I thought were very universal and covered the areas that I think are important for my students.  The source for the 8 expectations is a group called Great Expectations. If you go to their website you will find more resources to use. The link in their logo goes to the elementary site. 

I changed the language a bit because they were geared for older kids, (I have second and third grades this year) but I left in some that I considered changing because there were terms I thought they could learn and are important for them to become familiar with.
An article I read a few years ago (again I don't know who it was, but that one was research based - I read it for a paper I was doing for my Masters degree) said that there is no point in putting up any printed material in a classroom (including charts, posters, etc.) unless you are going to spend time on it REGULARLY.  If you don't it becomes part of the landscape and is ignored. I have noticed that this is true in my classroom, and I took it to heart.  I took down all the cute posters that were up on the walls, and replaced them with only things that would be used and that I would refer to at least once a week.  It doesn't have to be a big deal every time, but if you want the kids to use them they need to have their attention drawn to them.  
When I first put something up I do make a big deal of it, and we go over it a bunch of times.  They probably get tired of hearing about it.  But they remember.
So I made up 8" X 5" cards for each of my expectations.  They are very plain and to the point because I want the students to stay focused on the message, and they don't need any visual clues for them because we cover them over and over until I'm sure they know them. I put them up two at a time the first 4 days of school and we discuss them.  

Here's what they look like posted in my classroom:

If you'd like these for your classroom you can get them HERE.
I'm joining FREEBIE FRIDAY  at Teaching Blog Addict this week. Hop over and grab a few freebies. 

Math Workshops: Great Resources

 I've been seeing so many great posts on Math Workshops that I thought I'd gather some of them up so you can check them out too.

1.  The first is from Mandy Gregory from Mandy's Tips for Teachers.

This post includes a FREEBIE that gives a 6 day plan for setting up your Guided Math program. 

(There's another one for setting up Writer's Workshop, too!)

Click here to access her blog post about Math Workshops. 

2.  Next from Mrs. Beattie's Classroom:

In this post Erin from Mrs. Beattie's Classroom explains how she organizes and runs her Math time using the M.A.T.H. acronym. 

She also has a good selection of products in her TpT STORE for you to use during Math Workshop time.  These resources are focused on Grades 2-4.

 The Growing Bundle is on sale right now.  It is mostly made up of centers that you can use while you are working with small groups.  The center packages have varying numbers of activities included. For example the fractions centers file contains 13 different activities for students. 

This Odd and Even Numbers pack is a FREE SAMPLE of Erin's centers.  It includes three different activities: a game for 2 players and 2 activities for individual students.  One of these uses manipulatives and would also useful for small group instruction.

3.  Reagan Tunstall from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits has oodles of ideas. This is a recent post showing her newly created bundle of Math lessons for whole/small group. A whole year's worth!  I was so impressed that I bought it during the TpT BTS sale and it is worth every penny. A truly impressive document!  The post has a FREEBIE SAMPLE of the package.

Another post from Reagan tells how she sets up her Math Workshop time and offers these FREEBIE POSTERS.

4.  Tammy at The Owl Teacher did a 4 part series on Math Workshop to kick off 2016. She presents LOTS of great info on how she implements it in her classroom.

HERE IS THE LINK to the first installment, which is a quick overview. 

PART 2 is a rundown of Math "stretchers" that she uses as warm ups. 

PART 3 is a detailed breakdown of how she runs her Math block. 

PART 4 is a brief post on assessment. 

I found lots of useful info in this series, especially the second and third parts. Tammy included links ahead and back in each post to help you easily navigate between them (you don't have to come back here every time, but I did put links in the pictures above).  

5.  Dr. Nikki Newton has a Guided Math blog that you can visit HERE.

She has HUNDREDS of posts on this site for you to peruse. They include categories such as:

Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, During the Guided Math Lesson, Math Centers, and Math Workstations.  Many of these include links to resources that you can use in your Math Workshops.

Here is one that I plan to use with my third graders this year:

She also has an excellent PINTEREST BOARD for you to check out.   

I hope this post has been useful to you.  I know I certainly got LOTS of great ideas and information as I was putting it together!