Not very fancy--just nerdy

This month I'm giving you a glimpse of my teacher-nerdiness and a peek at just how "Not-very-fancy" my life truly is! Visit the Show and Tell Tuesday link up for more great classroom tidbits. 

My little girl somehow got really excited about Valentine's Day. This is the best I could do for a celebration. I cut out some hearts and she taped them to the door. I suppose someday she'll realize how incredibly inadequate this truly is, but for now she's thrilled.

School has been taking a lot out of me lately. When I get to my car and find a frosty windshield, I just turn on the defrost and wait. It's about the only rest I get all day, so I just enjoy it, but I feel ridiculously lazy.



I have been teaching my students the three sounds of "ed" for years, but I have never really understood the rule. It seemed that there should be a pattern, but I never knew. This is the story of my discovery.

I showed my students this digraph video about Mr. H and his 4 girlfriends: Miss S, Miss C, Miss W, and Miss T. In case you're curious, Miss T was actually is ex-girlfriend. Whenever they saw each other, they would stick out their tongues. Sometimes quietly and sometimes noisily. I used it as a springboard to explain the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds. This is helpful for kids because they often have confusions with reading and spelling sounds like d/t, v/f, s/z, p/b, etc. It also helps them learn to whisper!

Later that week I was explaining the sounds of "ed" to my reading group when it dawned on me: The /d/ sound and the /t/ sound are the same, but /d/ is voiced and /t/ is unvoiced.

Then I started looking at my word lists and realized the rule:

When a word ends with an unvoiced sound, the "ed" says /t/, like "asked." When a word ends with a voiced sound, the "ed" says /d/, like "called." When a word already ends with /t/ or /d/, the "ed" says /ed/, like "wanted" or "added."

I was, and still am, way more excited about this discovery than any person should be.

After my discovery, I updated my Monster-themed Reading Strategy Posters to include the poster above. The set of 18 strategies for emergent readers can be found in my TPT store.



 ***UPDATE: a day or two after I published this post, I heard this Grammar Girl episode (see what I mean about nerdy?) about the -ed ending. She talks about some of the exceptions to the rule, incase you are as abnormally interested in this as I am.***





Recently some of my colleagues were intrigued when they saw me cutting and pasting to make some large printed posters for my classroom. For some reason many teachers are unaware that single page PDFs can be printed and assembled into larger posters. If you've been wondering how to do this, pin this post so you don't forget! It's easier than you think!

Open the PDF print window.

See the little button that says "poster?" Click there and adjust the tile percentage. To enlarge this landscape single-page to a 4 page poster, I used tile scale 185%. You can see how it will look by clicking in the viewing window. Clicking on the viewing window will give you alternating views of the whole poster and individual pages. For some reason I'm able to use tile scale 210% on portrait pages. It is a bit of a pain to assemble these nicely, but it can certainly be done.

Head over to Forever in Fifth Grade to see what other teacher-bloggers and showing and telling about this month!

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Not Very Fancy Show and Tell from First Grade

Today I'm sharing a few bits and pieces from my classroom and life. I've got a bit of spontaneous greatness, some adorable student creativity, one of my favorite reading strategies, and a piece of advice I got in the teacher's lounge. Visit the Show and Tell Tuesday link up for more great classroom tidbits. 

We learned to add and subtract 10 from any number a couple months ago. This week I tried to introduce a game using the skill to some of my more advanced students, and it became very clear we needed some serious review. I set the game aside and broke out the cubes. After a quick lesson, most of the kids seemed to be remembering. When it was time for my next group, something came up and my attention was needed elsewhere. Not sure what to do, I handed the cubes to a couple kids and asked them to teach the next group what I had just taught them. It worked beautifully! They were engaged like this for the whole group time!

Our building is slowly transitioning from PBIS to Responsive Classroom, which I've written about before in posts about morning meeting and teacher language. During this transition, our official school-wide expectations have been a bit ambiguous. Recently we rolled out "BARK." (The bulldog is our mascot.) B-believe in yourself, A-Achieve new goals, R-respect our community, and K-keep it safe. To help my kids remember, I put some motions to the words. Believe in yourself is giving yourself a hug. Achieve new goals is climbing a ladder. Respect our community is clasping your hands in front of your chest. Keep it safe is just making your body into the shape of a K. We went over these at the end of the day before packing up, and one of my students got really into it. She decided to do "the K walk" all the way to her locker. Her best friend joined her. The next day, it caught on, and I had 20 kids doing the K walk to their lockers. It made my week!

I had a major breakthrough with a couple beginning readers this week. I broke out these CVC word blending roads, and they started decoding! They were so proud of themselves! This strategy has never failed me! Once kids have their letter sounds, this bridges the gap to decoding. If you have a couple kids you think would benefit from this, you might want to check out my post, Teaching Tips for Blending CVC Words.

I'm concluding my show and tell with a non-school related picture. This is my dog, Java (named for coffee, not computers). He's about 14, and not doing so well. He can't see anymore, and his hearing is not great either. Unfortunately, he's also starting to have a little bladder trouble. I tried getting some dog diapers, but he took them off or they slid off. I was talking to one of my teacher friends about this problem, and she suggested a bandana. I folded up a cloth baby diaper for a little extra absorbency, and he kept it on! It definitely looks cuter than a dog diaper! Teacher friends are such awesome resources for all of life's challenges. 

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Thinking Globally About My Classroom

I became a teacher to make the world a better place. It can be easy to lose sight of that this time of year, so I'm taking some time to reflect and refocus with the Global Glitter Tribe's monthly link-up. I've just discovered this collaborative blog, and it's a great source of inspiration for teachers.

Thanksgiving is a time for remembering what we're grateful for. I'm grateful for my family. My husband, Jim, is the most trustworthy, reliable, honest person I know. I have the most amazing children: Cody (7), Corinne (3), Carly (almost 1). My mom is incredible and supportive. My sister is hilarious, practical, and fun. 

I do love the saying, "think globally, act locally." Our school organizes a few events each year to benefit the community. Right now there's a food drive going on. I try to model contributing to my community by talking to my students about my life choices. I tell them why I teach, and I model contributing to my community by talking to them about some of the things I do. (I donate blood and play music in nursing homes as my ways to contribute to the community.)

Other than my students, my classroom library is the pride and joy of my classroom. I have spent hours (and hours, and more hours) collecting and organizing books. It is like the eye of the storm in my classroom. This isn't exactly a quick organization tip, but you can find out all about my system in my Classroom Library Organization Guide.

As you would guess, I'm a huge fan of children's literature. I think high quality literature is the best way to get kids thinking deeply. I've written before about the book Duck! Rabbit! It is piece of literature to kids thinking about different perspectives. 

Affiliate link:

I love doing directed drawing with my students. It's not exactly expressive art, but it develops the skills kids will need to be able to produce art they are proud of. I know my own artistic abilities improved when I started doing directed drawing because I had to think more analytically about the subject. If you are hesitant to teach directed drawing, Art for Kids Hub will do it for you! Check it out!

For the final question the Global Glitter Tribe wants to know what they should chat about in an upcoming blab session. I haven't been struck by the blab-bug, but if you have an idea, go ahead and list it in the comments!

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Back to School: Does Anyone Else Feel Like This?





It's back to school time! I'm ready to go back to school and relax. How on earth do stay-at-home moms survive? It takes more energy for me to deal with my one six-year old (and keep in mind he also has two younger sisters!) than it does to deal with the 20 in my classroom. (Only 20 so far! :)

 

 

Back to School time...

 

 

...reminds me of: Mom

 

I used to help my mom prepare her classroom. She retired the year I got hired, so now she makes the thousand mile trek to Iowa to help me. She's awesome.

...makes me want: cooler weather.

We have air conditioning in my building, but it doesn't help with the humidity. It's much cooler in June. I'd rather teach into June and go back mid-September.



This is what I want.

 

...drives me to: drink copious amounts of frozen coffee drinks from QT.

 

I blame this partially on my mom. (I find I can blame her for lots of things. --Hi, Mom!) She can't get the frozen drinks back home, so she always wants to stop for one to drink while we work in my classroom. It makes me crave one whenever it's hot in my classroom-- so, until mid-October.

 

They don't exactly look like this.

...makes me need: to get on a schedule.

 



Over the summer I wonder how I have time to work because there just doesn't seem to be time to get anything done. When I stop hanging around in my pajamas drinking coffee until 11:00, it's amazing how much I can get done!

 

...causes me to: wear real clothes.

 

When I'm not teaching, I'm perfectly content to hang around in my pajamas half the day and wear baggy t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops the rest of the day. I also skip drying my hair. I don't really dress up as much as some teachers, but I do wear actual clothes with buttons and stuff.

 

...makes me think: I hate real clothes.

 

I used to think I was just someone who liked to be comfortable. I'm starting to think my aversion to real clothes is more than that. Since my six-year old will throw enormous fits over things like being asked to wash his hands or change clothing, I've been researching Sensory Processing Disorder. According to what I've read, somewhere between 5-15% of kids have SPD. I don't think I have SPD, but I do think I am more sensitive to sensory (especially tactile) stimuli than others.

 

I feel more distress about wearing real clothing than any other aspect of going back to school! Why can't teachers wear scrubs? My sister works in healthcare, and she says they are the most comfortable clothes ever. Could I get away with it?

 

I'm sure if you're reading this, you love teaching, but what aspect of back to school causes you the most distress? Am I alone here?

 

I have been writing quite a bit about back to school topics recently.

 

ICYMI:

What to Do During the First Days of First Grade (see my "plans" and grab freebies)

Thoughts on Starting the Year

 

I haven't done a linky event in a while. Thanks to Cara from Creative Playground and the crew at Primary Pack for the inspiration! Follow the link to read back to school feelings from other teachers.

 

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!

Tea

During college I spent a semester in Ireland. The program I was with involved meeting lots of different people all over the country. Everyone offered tea and coffee. For the first few weeks, I asked for coffee because I didn't care for tea. The coffee was usually pretty bad. Once we went somewhere and coffee wasn't offered, so I drank some tea. Delicious! That was when I developed my theory. This is not intended to be a serious theory, so don't be offended.

My theory is that Americans drink coffee because they don't know how to make tea, and the Irish drink tea because they don't know how to make coffee.

Interestingly enough, I have presented on this topic during classes for both my undergraduate  graduate degrees!

If you think you don't like tea, chances are you're just making it wrong. I drink coffee most of the time. I'm not trying to convert anyone, but if you think you don't like tea, I'm encouraging you to try it again for the first time.

1. Warm the pot (or cup). I usually just fill it up with hot water from the tap.

2. Boil the water! (My mom just made the water hot. That is the key reason I thought I hated tea!)

3. Pour the water into the pot (or cup) and then put in a tea bag. Don't pour the water directly onto the teabag. If you are making a pot of tea, use a bag per cup of water +1 for the pot.

4. Allow the tea to brew for a few minutes, then remove the tea bag.

5. Add some milk and sugar.

(In Ireland they used plenty of milk and not much sugar. I was often asked if I liked to have tea with my sugar.)

My favorite tea is Twinings Irish Breakfast. These directions are for black tea. Green tea and herbal tea are different. 

This is my final installment for my Teacher in the Kitchen summer series. Thanks so much to everyone who has linked up! This linkup will be open for a month. I'd love to hear about your kitchen adventures.

Are you going to try tea again for the first time? I'd love to hear about it! Leave a comment.

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!