When two vowels go walking

This week we've been working on reading words with vowel pairs. I always tell the kids the rhyme that I remember from school--when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and it says its name.  I have thought for a while about making a little sign to post, so I finally got to it. I'm sharing here and at my TPT and TN stores. By the way I am just having too much fun making these little frames and borders. 

I also show my students this catchy little video.

Let me know if you have other videos or tricks to help kids learn about vowel teams! This post is linked up at Teaching with Nancy for TGIF, and with Manic Monday  at Classroom Freebies.

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

Morning Meeting fun!

I am always amazed by the fantastic classroom ideas other bloggers are sharing! Last week I read about interactive morning messages and a doubles chant for morning meeting. I have always done a morning meeting, but it keeps getting shorter and less meaningful. After reading these posts, I decided it was time to do it right, and it was amazing!

When the kids came in on Monday, I handed them a post-it and told them to read the morning message and answer the question. My question of the day was-- Can you name a vegetable? (We are studying food groups in health--I was pretty shocked by the amount of difficulty they have with it.) I didn't know exactly what to expect when I gave this direction, but what happened was amazing! Kids helped each other read the morning message.

They found the book we read about vegetables and referred back to it. They discussed spelling. It was wonderful. When I saw the answers, I was a little disappointed by the lack of variety (carrot and broccoli were the only responses), but I quickly realized that we could turn this into a mini-math lesson! Last week we learned about graphing, so I arranged the responses to make a graph and we analyzed the data.

 It gave me the opportunity to ask lots of higher order questions and expose them to lots of vocabulary words!

The doubles-chant activity was also amazing. They LOVED this little chant so much.

 We just went around the circle rolling dice. When someone got a double, we did the chant and my modified actions (we bumped our own fists for bump, air punched over our heads for pump, jumped, and sat down to do a little rump jump). I used some big foam dice so everyone could see what numbers were rolled. The best thing that happened was the kids were so hoping for doubles that they spontaneously started analyzing the numbers. If a 3 and a 4 were rolled, they commented about how those numbers were neighbors and how close it was to being a double. If a 6 and a 4 were rolled, we talked about how if only we could move one of those dots from the 6 to the 4 it would be a double--ok, that one might have been me spontaneously analyzing the numbers. They really wanted to do something to "celebrate" the neighboring numbers, so I told them I would think about it. Well, I came up with a little neighboring-number chant, so we'll try this next time:

I think I'll just have them shake hands with their neighbors while we say it. I'm hoping it will really drive home the fact that neighboring numbers are right next to each other. If you'd like to use my little chant signs, you can download them for free.

Thanks to Jennifer Elementary School Garden and Donna @ Math Coach's Corner for inspiring me! Thanks Holly @ Fourth Grade Flipper for this opportunity to share what I've been doing--when I can get my excitement out on my blog my husband doesn't have to listen and pretend to be interested!

Daily Math Review

Last year my district implemented a formalized Daily Math Review. We do DMR for 10-15 minutes each day. Daily math review is supposed to review 3 skills. It's a very structured lesson designed to maximize student engagement.The kids really enjoy the routine. For each question, we begin by saying, "Pencils up!" We state the problem and give students some independent work time. Then we give the students a few minutes to talk to their partner about the strategy they utilized. Next, we switch to pen, and students correct their work. The teacher usually asks one student to share what they did, or paraphrases something a student did. Students correct their work, then stand to read the key statement. (The key statements are my favorite part!) The teacher reads the key statement twice, then the students read it twice chorally. I always try to include actions with the key statements.  To help the kids internalize what each step looks like and sounds like, I've been taking pictures and posting expectations.

 I'm trying to work in a reflection component, but my students are still struggling with that part. I know other grades have students writing the key statements a couple times a week. Things are always a bit different in K-1. We stick with the same three skills for 2 weeks; then we assess. If 90% of the students can get 100% on a skill, we move on to a different review
skill, otherwise we continue with the skill.

If you'd like to try some daily math review, here is a free example of what we do. It includes one cycle of questions, an assessment, and a lesson plan. 

I am very curious to know what others do for math review. Is the process this formal in your district? We're very mobile, so we try to be as consistent as we can.

This post Mathematical Monday post is linked up with

Non-fiction writing

We've been working on writing non-fiction stories about animals. The CCSS require first grade students to write non-fiction stories with a topic sentence, 2-3 details, and a conclusion. Can I just say: I am pretty sure I didn't have to do anything like that until at least 7th grade!!!

I'm not a big fan of our writing curriculum, but we were able to break away from it for 3 weeks. We asked the kids to write animal stories, and it was so much fun! First, we read some non-fiction animal books. Then I did some modeling. For guided practice we created an anchor chart together. 

Click to download this non-fiction writing anchor chart.

My handwriting is not pretty, so I like to type out the components of my anchor charts and have the kids help me assemble them. For this, I cut apart all the pieces and displayed them in a pocket chart. I asked the kids to help me figure out the correct sequence.  The next day the kids worked in small groups to assemble their own anchor chart puzzles. (I used the same anchor chart and wrote about different animals, then I just cut them apart in random places--you can get them at my TN store for free). Once they had the charts assembled, I told them they needed to be ready to share their topic sentences and conclusions with the class. This really helped to drive home the vocabulary 'topic sentence' and 'conclusion.' We looked for commonalities in the topic sentences and conclusions. All this work enabled us to create sentence frames for topic sentences and conclusions together. (It wasn't accidental, but they don't know that.)

__________ are animals.

__________ are amazing!

All the kids chose an animal. I gave them colored paper, and they folded it in half. They wrote their topic sentence on one half and their conclusions on the other half. I told them they needed to end their writing with a POW! So now they think the words conclusion, exclamation point, and POW are synonymous-- oh well. The next day I gave them a different color paper, and we folded it into fourths. They wrote a fact in each section. They got to do research from my ridiculously large selection of animal books. When they put their sentences in order, the different colors made it look kind of like a sandwich. I started using my desk status tents around this time, which really helped maintain order. They were pretty proud of the finished products.

This post is linked with:

Valentine's Day

Hi! Welcome to my blog! I'm just starting out, but I am determined to make this work!  Any tips from experienced teacher bloggers are welcome! I'm looking forward to making some connections!

Like it says in my blog title, I'm not a very fancy teacher. I don't get into decorating or crafty projects, but I try to have a few activities that are related to the holiday.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/V-day-Following-Directions-1064059

I created this activity to give students practice following directions.You can get it for free in my TPT store.  It seems like we practice following directions all the time, but for some reason this paper is different. I was completely shocked the first time I did an activity like this! I remember I was teaching a science lesson about tops and there was an extension activity that I decided to do on a whim. It involved coloring tops, then arranging them into a specific order according to the teacher's directions. I thought it would be a fun. It was so much harder than I expected!

I started doing these activities around holidays because I don't feel like it gets addressed in the standard curriculum. The kids think it's fun because they get to use markers, but I always have to have extra copies on hand because they get very upset if they make a mistake, and there will be mistakes!

Let me know how it goes in your classroom!

Managing the Class with Status Desk Tents

Make this stand up by folding on the lines to create a prism. Students signal their status by flipping the prism around to put their status on top. Get your own at my TPT  or TN store!

I have been contemplating these desk status tents since I came across these flip charts from Hawk's Nest. I love the idea of giving students a way to tell me how they are doing without needing to sit and hold their hand up for a long time or come interrupt me during a conference with another student. These status tents give them the ability to keep working while they wait for me. The flip charts I saw had a different status on each side, but I wanted to be able to see the status from anywhere in the room. Rather than having one status on each side, these have the same three options on each side, the students flip the tent to put their status at the top. The two statuses that mean they need to talk to me make the tent tall. It looks like this:

The colors help me to know what the tent says even if I'm too far away to read the text. Speaking of colors, that's another thing I put quite a bit of thought into. I think colors like red for needing a question and green for working hard have quite a bit of a stigma, so I wanted to avoid them altogether. 

I started using these this week, and I am so happy with them! The language for the status choices really has helped to shape the conversations we have. I've been using them during writing, but I plan to use them during math when we work on problem solving. The kids never get the option to tell me they are done, they need help. When I go to conference with a child, I begin with, "What is your question?" or "Read me your story." This has really sped up my conferencing. I got to meet with so many more kids! Also, since "playing with my pencil" is not a status, when I see that kind of behavior, I say, 'that doesn't look like a plan.' They usually respond with, 'I don't know what to do,' then I tell them to change their status to, 'I have a question,' and work on free writing while they wait for me. The whole interaction is just much more positive this way.

You can get these at my TPT  or TN store for just $1.

In this space-

As I contemplated how to begin my blog, I thought it would be fitting to lay out my teaching philosophy. It's pretty simple. I believe education is about connections. 

Teachers help students connect with content. We do this by first connecting with our students and helping them to connect with each other. We connect new concepts to prior knowledge. We connect with authors and characters. As we make these exterior connections, we are also creating connections in our brains. New learning doesn't happen without connections.

Last summer I got a bit philosophical and wrote this text to remind myself to stay connected to my vision for my classroom. I do not claim to be a poet, but I did write this. I was experimenting with borders, so I have it in 3 different frames.

If you like it, you can have a copy. It's free in my TPT store. Obviously, I wrote it about my classroom, but I thought it was also a good description of what this blog will be as well.

Come again soon!