It's here!

Are you ready?

 We could hardly wait to end our Diggin’ Series with the BEST giveaway of the season!

Just in case you didn't hear these are our awesome prizes:

Come and join us, as  this is our way to THANK YOU for all your support and friendship!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Are you ready?

To conclude the Diggin' Series, we're holding a huge giveaway! 

Check out some of the fantastic prizes! Be sure to spread the word, there will be lots of winners!

In case you've missed a week of the Diggin' in Series, you can read any of my posts here:

Teaching Kids to Read 

Writing Non-fiction in first (includes a freebie)

Build Community in the beginning of the year (includes a freebie)

Manage behavior

Organize math workshop

Organize my classroom 

I hope to see you August 11-17!

Teaching kids to read

...teach emergent readers.

One of the trends I've noticed in reading education is the breakdown of teaching reading into the five categories of phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. When we do this, some of the foundational skills emergent readers need can get lost.

Early in my career I was able to participate in a professional development course designed to help me give instruction to English Language Learners. One of the products I saw at this professional development was a set of reading strategy cards with pictures to help explain the strategies. I loved them, but didn't have the money to buy it, so I created my own. When I started my TPT store, I realized I couldn't sell my strategy cards because I didn't have commercial rights to the graphics I used, so one of my to-do list items has been to recreate my reading strategy signs with different graphics. 

Well, I've finally done it! 

When teaching emergent readers we need to teach strategies that go beyond phonics rules and memorizing sight words. They need to be taught to reread text, look at the first and last letters (it's amazing how many students don't know what you mean when you say "first letter" or "last letter"), they need to think about the story and recognize when their reading doesn't make sense. 

These reading strategy posters are a tool I've been using for years to help students learn and remember these important reading strategies. You'll notice that I avoided the use of backgrounds and frames because I wanted it to be very clear exactly what the students were supposed to focus on. 

This product and the rest of my store will be on sale August 4-5 for the TPT Back 2 School sale.

Be sure to follow my blog because next week my bloggy friends from the Diggin' into next year blog series will be hosting an amazing giveaway. You WILL NOT want to miss it!! The prizes include gift cards to Amazon, Target, TPT, a huge bundle of products, and more. Check out the details at Where the Magic Happens Daily.

Word Study

...teach phonics and word study.

Most of the time I have to stick with the lessons in my curriculum for my phonics lessons, but when I break away, I love to use nursery rhymes and songs to help students with word study.

When I teach a nursery rhyme or song, I introduce it without showing any text.  Sometimes we act it out. We stomp our feet to the beat of the rhyme or keep the beat with our hands in our laps.

To work on self-control and develop inner-hearing, I have a stop/go sign that I use. When the sign says go, we say the rhyme out loud. When the sign switches to stop, we use "magic lips." When you say a rhyme with "magic lips," your lips move, but no sound comes out. I switch the sign several times during the rhyme. The kids really like the challenge!

One year I stumbled upon this website where there are printable mini-books for tons of nursery rhymes.

When I present the text to the rhymes, we identify words/sounds that have the sound we are working on and highlight them.

I recently created this product with some songs to help kids remember vowel sounds.

To get this verse for free, just download the preview file.

Don't forget to visit these linkies and see what my bloggy friends are writing about!

Writing non-fiction in first

I'm taking a little break today from the Big Time Blogging Challenge prompts because...

 

 

 ....teach non-fiction writing!

 

I really love teaching writing, especially informational writing and poetry. This year I was very pleased with the way my informational unit worked out.

These stories took us about a month from start to finish, but this post gives a basic outline of the most important elements.

To get started I took my class through the process of writing an informational story about an animal. First I we read some non-fiction animal books, then I modeled.

For guided practice I made this anchor chart (you can get it for free by clicking on the image), then I cut it up and the kids helped me assemble it.



A few days later I made a bunch of similar signs and cut them up, then I had the kids work in groups to assemble them correctly. The signs are free at my TN and TPT stores. I'd love it if you'd follow my store while you're there! :)

During this time I gave them two half pieces of colored paper and everyone wrote a topic sentence and a conclusion following the example from my charts.

Topic sentence: _________ are animals.
Conclusion: ________ are amazing animals!

I always end my conclusions with an exclamation point, and whenever I talk about conclusions, I make a circle gesture with my hand followed by an air punch because a conclusion pulls all the ideas together and gives your writing a POW!

Next they look through my collection of books for information about their animal. I give them three strips of a different color of paper for their facts.

Finally, they put their sentences in order, write their story, and illustrate.

 

Don't forget to check out the other amazing bloggers in our Diggin' Into Next Year series.

Keep following the series because we have a big giveaway coming up. You won't want to miss this one!

Little Tommy Tucker's Dog

One of the activities I like to do in the beginning of the year is teach my class to sing and dance Little Tommy Tucker's Dog.  This activity is great for a number of reasons. First of all, it gets the students up and moving. Second, it gets students interacting with each other in a non-threatening situation. And of course once the lyrics are mastered, we put it in our poetry folders to practice fluency.

....build community in the beginning of the year!

Click the picture to download for free!

Here are the written directions for the dance:

Stand in a circle. Assign partners very quickly. Assure them that they will have lots of different partners during this activity so it does not matter who they are partnered with.

When singing 'bow, wow, wow," stomp your feet. (one stomp per word)

When singing, "Whose dog art thou?" hold your hands up in a questioning way.

When singing, "Little Tommy Tucker's Dog," Hold hands with your partner and turn so you change places.

When singing, "bow, wow, wow," for the second time stomp your feet again.

Now students turn around to face the person behind them. That person is their new partner.

When teaching this to my class, I first teach the song by having them echo sing. Then I ask for a volunteer to help me teach everyone the dance. We stand in the center of the circle and model the dance. When we've modeled it, I quickly walk around the circle assigning partners. Remind the students of the actions after each line. When the song is over, I tell them, "don't turn around, but just turn your head and peek behind you to see who's standing there." Once everyone has looked behind them, I say, "Turn around and look at the person behind you." That person is your new partner! Then we do the dance again. Eventually, students should end up with the same partner they started with.

Community Building Tip!

One other thing I do to get the students talking to each other is give them quick things to say to their partner each round,

 Give your partner a high five and say, 'I'm sure glad you're my partner!'

Shake your partner's hand and say, 'This is so much fun!'

Wave at your partner and say, 'Partner, those are some cool shoes!'

Smile at your partner and say, 'Howdy partner, you're lookin' good today!'

This is a really fun way to 'break the ice and get kids talking to each other. It can be used anytime you are assigning partners.

See and Hear it in Action!

Below are some videos I found of people singing and dancing. The actions sometimes vary slightly from mine. You can alter them to suit you. I've played this game successfully with end-of-year kindergarteners and beginning of the year first graders.

For more beginning of the year fun please check out this linky party!

If you found this post to be helpful or interesting, I hope you'll follow me on social media and at my TPT or TN store.

Behavior Management

...manage behavior.

Let me start by saying something that I think teachers need to hear more often when it comes to lots of things, but particularly behavior management. THERE IS NO SILVER BULLET. Personally, I believe that almost any system you use is probably fine. Different approaches work for different teachers, just like different approaches work for different students. 

 

I don't have any flashy pictures of behavior management displays because I just have a class list on a clipboard.   I do not like the idea of publicly displaying record of student behavior.  I record checks/strikes next to a student's name, if they get 3 strikes, they need to be separated from the rest of the class for a few minutes and take home a note to be signed. In my building we keep this limited to 5 minutes. If the behavior continues when they return, they go to a buddy room for 5 minutes. If the behavior continues, then I notify administration. A week with less than 2 strikes earns a student a prize on Friday. This plan is really just a skeleton, and it provides on going documentation.  It gives me the opportunity to set goals with students and makes it easy for another teacher to step into my classroom. If it isn't working for a child, then obviously they need an alternative plan. I wrote about dealing with difficult behaviors a few weeks ago.

Something I want to share with you today is a book I would strongly suggest for managing student behavior.  The book is Teaching with Love and Logic. I credit this book with saving my teaching career. The number one concept from this book that helped me was the concept of empathy. When I'm implementing a consequence for a behavior, I do it with empathy rather than anger. I make sure the student sees that I am very sad for them. If you want to learn a little more about Love and Logic, here are some free articles for educators. Parenting with Love and Logic is also excellent, and I recommend it to parents if they express frustration.

A few other quick tips for behavior management:

 

 

1. Never ask a child why they did something. 

One time I heard a youth director at church explaining to the youth how to speak to adults in a respectful way if they felt they were being treated unfairly. She told them "why" questions are always attacking. After thinking about this I realized it was pretty true. Now I try to use phrases like, "tell me about...." "what made you decide to..."

 by stevendepolo 

2. Practice, practice, practice. 

It's often helpful to practice a procedure you want students to master, but practicing is also a logical consequence for inappropriate behavior. For example, if I see a student misusing the slide at recess, I tell them it looks like they need some practice using the slide correctly. We discuss what that would look like, then I have the student practice using the slide correctly a number of times. You would think this would be fun, but trust me, they have the saddest little faces when they are "practicing" going down the slide.

 

by  igorothighlande

3. Build relationships! 

Parents and students need to feel confident that you like them. Ideally, I would make a positive phone call home to every parent within the first few weeks of school. It's really difficult to make this happen, so I select kids I suspect will be a challenge, and make sure to make a positive phone call very early on. With less challenging students a little good day note or positive email is a good idea.  If your students like you, they will work harder for you and make your life so much easier!

Thanks for stopping by! Please visit they linky party hosted by Laura at Where the Magic Happens and read how other teachers manage behavior.



Organization of math workshop

Organize Math Workshop!

Math is my favorite! I think it's because our district realized a few years ago that our curriculum was not effective, and we've needed to make up our own lessons--which is one of my favorite things! Next year we'll be using Go Math, and I'm very nervous. On the bright side, we're getting lots of technology to use with it, so that's very exciting.

Our math block is broken into 5 key components. We have daily math review, mental math, fact fluency, whole group lesson, and small group lessons/math centers.

To keep me organized for daily math review, mental math, fact fluency, and my whole group lessons, I have math baskets. These are baskets with 3 compartments. There's one basket for each table. In the basket, I have counters, challenge task cards, flashcards, and two dominos.  

The flashcards and math task challenge cards (one of my most popular products) are to keep students engaged if they finish a little early. I use the dominoes to make partner talk smoother. The domino goes between the partners, and before partner talk, we spin a more/less spinner. This determines which partner gets to talk first.

My whole group math lesson is usually centered around problem solving. This is a real passion of mine. I wrote about it a few months ago; go read the post to find some freebies! I also have a 20 problem set of challenging problems in my store.

During small group math I have my students go to BUILD IT centers. You are probably familiar with BUILD, but if not, you can learn about it at Adventures in Teaching. I don't really implement it correctly, but I just like calling it BUILD IT because it helps separate math and reading. I added the IT (Internet/Technology).  I needed smaller groups to have a computer for each group member. I have 6 tables, so it made sense to have 6 stations. If the students are at Internet/technology, I let them use the 'math websites' section of my class website. I have a crazy number of math activities that I rotate through my BUILD IT baskets. You can follow my math board on Pinterest if you are looking for some good activities. I also have some missing part dominoes in my TPT store.

Center storage: functional, Not very fancy! When activities
are in circulation, I keep them in baskets labeled with letters B-U-I-L-D

Thanks for stopping by!! If you missed it, I posted some math freebies a couple weeks ago. Be sure to follow me on FB for fan freebies as well!

Hop back to the linky to read more about how teachers organize math workshop!