A Challenge

I challenge you to check out this TED talk by Dan Meyer.  What do you think about this?

Book Recommedations

At our last faculty meeting, we talked about the importance of our students and the sharing of what they are reading.  Came across this lovely display today outside of Mrs. Girse's room.  Students were pictured with their book and then they had written a summary of what the book was about.  

What is Close Reading?

One of the topics we focused on in our data team meetings this month is close reading.  You might be wondering what is close reading?  It can be defined as a careful and close REREADING of a text.  Typically students

This is a great anchor chart with ideas for marking text.

Check out this blog post for some great ideas for doing a close read. Some key points include:
- using SHORT passages or excerpts (this could be a couple paragraphs to several pages to a chapter in a longer book depending on grade level).
-limited pre-reading activities - rereading deliberately -discussing the text with others-responding to text dependent questions


Here are TONS of ideas on Pinterest that will help you support your students for close reading.  Check out this video about bringing close reading and accountable talk into an interactive read aloud of gorillas.


Bringing Close Reading and Accountable Talk into an Interactive Read Aloud of Gorillas (3-5) from TC Reading and Writing Project on Vimeo.

Summarizing

We noticed a trend in our data team meetings that students were having difficulties with summarizing.  Here is one resource that might be helpful. 

Another idea would be to use a hand as a model.  Here is some additional information on the "Gimme 5" strategy.

In addition, students need to be able to summarize nonfiction as well.  Here is an anchor chart that shows the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

At the end of your guided reading lesson, try having students write a summary of what was read.  Share them in the group and vote on the best.

Sharing Video of Your Students

Check out how Maria Clancy is sharing video with her parents in her weekly email.  She has created a 2013-14 playlist on her youtube channel.

Here is the text from her email:  You can find some adorable pictures of our third graders at the holiday program on our Class Blog. Some video clips can be found on my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOFHPjJP04Gar8XG1bKViXA/videos?view=1 on the 2013-2014 Playlist. Thanks to Ms. Bowles and all of you for helping these wonderful kiddos shine on stage! Have a great week!

Snow Day Fun!

Tarren sent this home to her kiddos today for a fun way to engage kids in writing while at home.

Another good thing your student could do today would be to login to their google account (this will give them that wifi login practice as the info is the same 25firstnamelastname@lindberghschools.ws and their 10 digit PIN.

They could email me on their gmail account with a story about what they are doing on their snow day. They could type their spelling words. They could write a teaching story about how to sled, build a snowman, make a snow angel, ice skate, etc. 

Anything else you are encouraging your students while they are away from school?  Enjoy your snow day!

30 Apps Perfect for BYOD

Check out some new apps today!

Reading Resource

Looking for a good resource for short nonfiction reading passages?  Check out TeachingKidsNews.com. This site "was born from the desire to teach balanced literacy in a meaningful way. We provide teachers with a current events resource ideal for shared, guided, and independent reading lessons."  The articles on this site are current (their top article right now is on the Amazon delivery drones) and tagged by grade level or subject to make navigation easy.  You can project them, view them on devices, or print them out in PDF format.  Each article has teaching ideas for reading and writing at the bottom (note: the site is Canadian, so the standards they list may look a little strange).  Check out the site here!

A-mazing Apps!

Check out this extensive list of apps!  This is a great way to share with parents how they, too, can support learning.

Math Centers....Food for Thought

Some things to think about:

How will you organize the centers?

How will you keep students engaged in rigorous activities?

QR Code addition-students solve the problems in their math notebook and then check the answers with a scanner by using the QR code and iPad.

Turkey Day Meal Planning-Students put together a menu and determine how much they will need to spend on various items.

Provide clear instructions-See these for XtraMath and Ten Marks so students can work independently.

Motivating our Readers

Several groups have been talking about how we can help motivate our young readers.  Here are some of the great ideas discussed.

Goal Setting: 
Have a card on their desk with their weekly or monthly goal.  Conduct a mini-lesson on goals.  What are some examples of different goals?  Try a certain genre, try for a certain mount of at home reading.  Here is a sample template.

Status of the Class:
The goal is to be able to monitor the pacing and text that children are engaging in during reading.  After procedures are in place, Status of the Class should take about 2 minutes.  As you call out each student's name, s/he should say the title and page number of the text s/he is reading while you record information.   Check out this document for taking Status of the Class.   And here is another one.

Reading Logs:
This is a great way for students to keep track of what they are reading.  
Reader's Notebook with free download for reading log
Reading Log for Reader's Notebook

Digital Communications: Our Fabulous Specialists

Be sure to "Like" all of our specialists on Facebook or check out their blogs.  

P.E. Teachers 

Music with Mrs. Bowles

Art with Mr. George

Reading Teachers

ELL with Mrs. Crawford

Character Club

Kicking Off Unit 2-Informational Writing

Did you know Mrs. Schmidt loves to go camping?  I know I learn something new every day!  :)  In this writing lesson, students were gathered on the carpet as Mrs. Schmidt shared her writing piece about setting up a camp site.  Students were highly engaged as she shared from her own personal "expertise" about this topic.

Because she had not written the entire piece, she had students help her generate a list of additional things she could write about for her subject.

Looking for a highly engaging math lesson?

Check out these 3rd graders as they engaged in a variety of math centers.  All students were very focused on the task at hand.  As you can see, Ms. Gardner started out by setting up the parameters of the centers with a detailed list of what to do.

Students were then working in various centers around the room.  I heard lots of great mathematics conversations happening.  "Don't you think this is a great price?"  "This pattern is just like the other one."

The best part about this lesson is that the teacher was able to focus on a small group of students as they worked on the skill of the day-telling time to the minute.

Inferencing Mini-lesson with Clickers and Highlighting

I saw another highly engaging lesson today. Mrs. Prides's class was gathered on the carpet and she was reading a passage together titled “Holding it Together.” She was highlighting the helpful phrases as students used the clues to make inferences about what object was. The passage was displayed on elmo. Mrs. Pride did a think aloud with the first 2 stanzas and modeled how she wanted them to use this skill.  

Then she passed out a copy of the poem and a highlighter.  The students partnered up and had to read the rest of the passage and then highlight on their copy the clues they were getting.  As a team, once they figured out how what the object was, they had to text it in on the clicker.

Looking for a way to engage ALL students?

I was visiting Deanna Folluo's room today and saw a great use of clickers. The class was talking about how to figure out the theme of a passage.  The teacher read the passage aloud and then students text in their ideas of what is the theme.

What I love about this lesson is that everyone was highly engaged b/c they each had to share in a response.   You couldn't just sit back and relax-students had to actually engage in the lesson.

Kindergartners Posting to the Class Blog

From Keller's Kids Blog:  I tried something new with my first Star of the Week and it actually took a little bit off my plate!   Through out the week, my Star was given the same iPad to take pictures of things that were important to her (her show & tell items, her desk, her poster, snack, etc.).  She took all of these pictures while in "Pic Collage" the app.  I had already prepped the background.  Then on Friday morning while my other kiddos were doing the name page for her book during morning work, Madelyn was moving & reshaping pictures.  She added her name as text.  I saved it and posted it on the blog to share with the other families and I'll email it to her parents in case they want to print it off.  It minimized my running around collecting photos of everything and the time I spend blogging about it. 

Here's how it turned out: 

http://kellersappington.blogspot.com/p/star-of-week_8.html

Thank you Mrs. Keller for taking a moment to share this tip!

3rd Grade Celebrates Writing

Students celebrated with treats.

Students gave compliments to each other with sticky notes.

Look at how proud these young authors are of themselves!  Giving our students an opportunity to celebrate the growth they have made is so important.  How are you celebrating the close of your first unit?

Apps for BYOD

Check out this infographic with some great ideas for using devices to accomplish your learning objectives.


Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Learning with Pumpkins, Spiders, and Ghosts

Check out all of the awesome ways our students are learning! With pumpkins, spiders, and ghosts, our students have been busy working on grade level skills.