Sunday Scoop: reading assessment and freebie

Report cards are looming. You know how that feels. Stressful. On the positive side, I've been pro-active about getting running records done over the last month so I only have 6 left to do. And 3 of those are kids who are "exceeding expectations" in our current educational jargon, so they'll be fun to listen to. 

In our school district we are required to do running records for kids in second and third grades every term. Grade one's get a hiatus first term. From this particular assessment, anyway......

We use Nelson's PM Benchmarks kits. I really enjoy doing running records with the students, for a whole bunch of reasons. 

1.  When it's their turn, they feel very special to have me all to themselves. This still surprises me after only a thousand + times (16 years x 22 kids x 5 assessments each - I usually do at least 6/year/student now, but lots of years I had firsties). Seriously, I sometimes think I could give out prize tickets for this and they'd be thrilled!

2.  I get a really good first-hand snapshot of where they're at, and what their strengths and challenges are. 

3.  I know you're nor supposed to jump in, but I do anyway, because it's a great opportunity for one-on-one instruction if you notice that they're encountering a difficulty. But not a minor one; those can wait until they're done reading. Usually when I do this it's to get them to try a reading strategy that they're missing. And very often it's the one I call "my magic strategy":  skip over, read on, then go back and read the sentence again. Even though I teach this strategy at the beginning of the year (except in grade one where it's a bit later) many of the kids who have struggled a bit with reading are so stuck on sounding out that they've never tried this strategy until they do it during a running record session. I LOVE the way their eyes light up when they figure the word out from reading it in context. It definitely is magical FOR ME!  (Even though I code it as an error:  TG "skip over strat". ) The next time I listen to them they're just about sure to use it with a look of triumph. 

I made reading strategy bookmarks that they glue onto construction paper and I laminate. They keep them in their Home Reading bags to remind them of some options if they're struggling with an unfamiliar word. I also keep one out on my table during my running record sessions. If you'd like a FREE set click HERE. 

4.  I get to make an immediate positive comment or two about their reading. 

5.  I get to listen to them retell which not only gives me excellent insight into their comprehension, but provides information for the 'Listening and Speaking' reporting section. 

6.  I find out things beyond what level they're reading fluently at. For example, it sometimes is surprising when a child struggles through a book, sounding out lots of words, and then demonstrates excellent comprehension of the text. Or the opposite:  they read fluently and expressively, but hardly recall anything (which is often not that they CAN'T comprehend it, but that they're so focused on doing an impressive job of reading that they're not listening to what they're reading). In this case I usually tell them that I'd like them to read a different passage silently, paying attention to what they're reading, and then I have them retell it when they're done. Usually they do a great job the second time when the pressure of performing isn't part of the equation. 

7.  I get a very good idea if it's time to do a mini lesson on a particular aspect of reading with the whole class or a small group. 

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend.  Tomorrow I'm going to the Barra MacNeils' Christmas concert with my family.  (It's a birthday present!)  They come around this way every couple of years and it's always a treat to hear them perform. The highlight is always when Lucy sings O Holy Night.

 I was also lucky enough to attend the Lunenberg Folk Festival in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago and they were there all week.  It was fabulous!

I'm linking up with Teaching Trio this week for The Sunday Scoop.  HOpe you've had a great weekend!

Adding 2 digit numbers on an open number line

I've been busy writing reports cards, and have gotten way behind on blogging.

I'm almost done and made this set of pages for my students to practice adding 2 digit numbers on an open number line.  Grab it here if you can use it.

I'm going to link it up to Fern Smith's Freebie Friday over at Teaching Blog Addict - day late.

Mini I Have, Who Has Freebie Friday

It's time for FREEBIE FRIDAY with Fern Smith of Teaching Blog Addict again.  Click on her button at the bottom to head over there to see this week's goodies.
Last summer I made 3 new sets of mini I Have, Who Has games to play with my small groups.  I bundled them up with the 3 sets I already had on TpT.  They are for reviewing the diphthongs"aw", "ew", "ow", "oi/oy", "oo" (soft), and "oo" (hard).

I put one set on TpT for free so you can try it out and see how it works for you. To read the post and get the freebie click HERE.

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. 

Journal Starters for Freebie Friday

We are back to school and today we will get our new classes.  I just found out yesterday afternoon that my class would change from mostly grade 3's to over half second graders.  We have more kids who registered in our school this week, especially in kindergarten.  Last year we had one class of kindergartens and a k-1 combo with about 8 kindies.  This year we have 2 full classes of kindies and a handful that will be in with one of the grade one classes!  That's lots of kids coming up!
So we all spent several hours re-configuring our classes.  I am very excited to meet my new class!

Last year half of my class were firsties.  In the many years that I've taught grade one I have always had them write daily in their Journals, starting on Day 1.  Well, maybe Day 2.......

Since most of them didn't know HOW to write yet, this involved me printing "I like" in EVERY Journal and then drawing an ink line (even though the notebooks they use are already interlined - I noticed that many of the kids didn't "see" the lines that came printed on the page and wrote huge or slanty or randomly on the page.....).  Major time drain!

Last year I had an inspirational moment and made a page on my iPad with sentence starters and nice dark lines for them to print on.  They look like this:

They worked perfectly.  I just printed them off on the photocopier, cut them down to size and the kids did their printing on them, then cut them out and glued them into their notebooks!  Why didn't I think
of that 20 years ago?!?  (Well to be fair with myself I only got the iPad 2 years ago.)
If you have emergent writers you might find these really handy, too.  I used them until about mid-November when most of the kids were becoming more confident and independent writers.

There are quite a few different sentence starters, and extra lines for your high achievers who are ready to print more.
Sentence starters include:
I am                     I went to        I saw a...It was...
I like
I can                    I want
I have
Here is a
I see a
I see a...It is...
I have a...It is...

To get a set go to my store to pick up the freebie.
Then hop over to Freebie Friday at Teaching Blog Addict to see more goodies.

Have a great weekend!

Freebie Friday Calendars

What a busy week!

My staff had a highly productive 2 day planning retreat up at Sun Peaks, B.C.  Fall was definitely in the air up there. No snow yet, though. Thank goodness!

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at school working on my classroom. I thought I'd be done and have a 4 day weekend, but when I left yesterday the room was messier than when I left on Tuesday. I guess I shouldn't have started to organize my Math centers........

I made this set of school calendars for my classroom yesterday. I tried downloading some from the internet, but couldn't find any that were just what I wanted. While I was at it I decided to add American versions in case others could use them too. 

I'm linking them up with FREEBIE FRIDAY over at Teaching Blogging Addict. Click HERE on the calendar preview above  to download them!

School is only a long weekend away now in B.C.  Last year I got completely bogged down and didn't blog while school was in session.  I'm hoping to do better this year, and over the summer I've started a bunch of blog posts to keep me on track.  I've even finished next week's post for Freebie Friday.  It's a set of templates for Journal Writing that I made for Emergent Writers.  Check back for that!

Happy Labour Day!

Grab and Guess freebie

I can't believe that it's Friday again. So soon!

I'm going to do a double link up this week with Fern from Teaching Blog Addict's FREEBIE FRIDAY.  

And Doodle Bugs' Five for Friday. 

 

 

It's been a busy week!  Last Friday we took the ferry from Nanaimo to Vancouver.  We thought we'd have to wait for the 10:45 sailing because it was looking pretty busy, but managed to get on the 8:30 ferry.  Amazing!  We drove into the terminal at 8:15 and pretty much straight on to the boat.
The scenery is beautiful.  This is a photo just as we were entering Horseshoe Bay on the Vancouver side.

My hubby had a meeting at 1:00 downtown, but we were there so early that we had time to stop in Stanley Park and go for a walk.  Stanley Park is a bit of heaven on earth.  In literally less than one minute you can go from a view like this:

to this:

Here I am near Siwash Rock (where a grey whale was spotted yesterday).

And later in Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver, looking at the steam powered clock. 

 After we left Vancouver we drove to nearby Richmond to visit friends.  On Saturday they took us to Richmond's Marine Days celebration.  They have restored a lot of the waterfront there to what it was like 100 years ago.  There were little houses built on pilings over the water.

One of the most interesting belonged to a Japanese family.  The mother of the family, Asayo Murakami, had a very interesting history.  She came to Canada as a "picture bride" in 1924.  She had been married to a young man from a rich family, but failed to produce a male heir (she had two daughters and her third child, a boy, died shortly after he was born).  The family decided to get rid of her and sent her picture off to Canada where a Japanese worker in Vancouver agreed to pay her passage and marry her.  When she arrived in Vancouver she took one look at her prospective husband and refused to marry him, saying, "He wasn't my type, too short."  So she worked for two years picking strawberries and working in the cannery and other jobs to pay off her debt to him.  At the cannery she met the man she married and raised 10 children with.  The cannery is now a museum. Great gift shop!

Sadly at the start of  WW2 the family were interned in Alberta and never returned to B.C.  It is a regrettable chapter in our history, but the family came through it and prospered.
Mrs. Murakami lived to see many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.  She didn't tell her family about her daughters in Japan until she turned 100 years old in the late 1990's, but they were able to trace them.  Unfortunately one had died only a few years earlier, but the other came out to Canada to reunite with her mother and extended family.

©John Iuchi—Ms. Asayo Murakami on her 103rd birthday in Calgary, Alberta

The family has donated many family items to the heritage site in Richmond and have worked at restoring the beautiful garden in the yard.
I can't begin to imagine the heartbreak of losing an infant, then being sent away to a foreign land, never seeing my other two children and husband again (he was not in favour of sending her away because he loved her, but was overruled by his parents).
She lived to be 104!

Richmond has other attractions as well.  One of the best is an abundance of blueberry farms.  We picked up a 20 pound case (oh, oh - I'm supposed to be metric...).

Most of them went into the freezer, but I found a great recipe on the internet and made this fantastic cobbler for dinner on Tuesday evening. I love that the gluten-free included was delicious!

The link for it is HERE or in the picture.

LOL - my husband's aunt and uncle from Seattle are here for the summer and their 2 grandchildren came up to visit them for a week.  They are 10 and 12 years old and were having a great time playing with 3 of my grandkids.  When they all came over for supper all 5 of them were constantly comparing how they said and used different words (hence supper/dinner).  Pronouncing "about" was a particular topic of conversation!

When we got home the garden was BURSTING with tomatoes, cukes, zucchini, strawberries, eggplant, peppers and peaches! Hubby picked these goodies this evening.

Jack was DELIGHTED to see us when we got home on Sunday afternoon.

(If he doesn't look especially animated to you, please bear in mind that he's 87 and a half% basset hound) (and it was 100 degrees fahrenheit).
We had a great young couple stay to take care of the garden and look after Jack.  They gathered the pickling cukes and stored them in the fridge.  Yesterday was canning day.  21 quarts of dill pickles!

 

We don't go back to work until September 8th!!! after Labour Day.  It only happens this late every 7 years and I'm making the best of it.  In May when I was reading blogs about teachers being out for the summer already I was feeling pretty envious, but now.....not so much.  I'm spending some of my time "refreshing" some of the items in my TpT store.  Here are a couple:

See them in my TpT store by clicking on the pictures.
I've also been getting a bunch of items finished that have been sitting partly done for quite a while now.  No big projects (although I'm working on units for Guided Math which I'm pretty excited about), but I got these three done.  The first is Apple themed task cards with activities:  addition to 8 and odd and even.  I was making them for my firsties last year (I had yukky hand made ones that they were using in Math centers) and now I'll be teaching two's and three's!
Click on the picture to get it from my TpT store.

A second Math center activity that I finished is the FREEBIE this week.  Also made for my firsties and not finished!  I've used this activity in my Math centers for years (again they used the not-so-beautiful hand done version, but they didn't seem to notice at all!)
I put out my tubs of manipulatives and they grab a handful, estimate how many, then count them.  Super simple!  Super popular.  The FREEBIE includes 2 recording sheets:  one where I listed the manipulatives I have in my classroom for them to use, and a blank that you can fill in if yours are different.  If you are anal picky about hand done printing you could take a screen shot of it after you download it and paste in text boxes.  LOL!