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?