Novemeber... ALREADY???

Yes... November is indeed right around the corner. Tuesday is Halloween... the start of Holiday insanity here. It does not end for me until mid-January as we not only have holidays but birthdays galore to deal with.

That is why I am truly loving my new monthly series and I know many of you are as well!! It is now in stores and ready for your use.

I took a poll on FB and election information was not included in this package by request. My election unit and freebies are also in stock. Just a few more days until the move is over and I am hoping to complete a few more items I have been working on. =)

Instead - we are focusing on families, harvest, fall, and Thanksgiving. I hope you enjoy it. If you have any suggestions on additions you would like to see in future packages, leave me a comment. I am trying to add more to each one to make it truly one stop shopping.

I polled my children and this month they wanted to make 3 different sets of calendar numbers and letters. I also changed it by making the vowels a different color than the consonants.

One of my personal favorites of these packages are the monthly sight words. I included an easy way to track these with my Sight Word Magic set as I use the same method for both. We all know how important vocabulary is.  We have all seen and used the Fry's list for sight words but I wanted something more.

Each monthly kit includes 50 seasonal "sight words"! These are words that are specifically related to the season and the events that occur in this month. These are words your students will encounter while reading seasonal books. By creating a list of words for them to learn, I know that no matter what they check out of the library, they will know these words.

It is also a great way to challenge your "gifted and talented." =) 

As a bonus... my students know that these words MAY show up as challenge words on their vocabulary and/or spelling tests. I may require them to use these words in their writings this month. There is so much I can do with these lists!!

Just like last month... this kit includes calendars, journal prompts, newsletters, center labels, stationary, and interactive notebook pages. Some of the fun this month includes:

Creating a family tree! Writing about our families and traditions. Exploring our origins and learning more about the trip to a new land.

Math in action... recipes! There are 2 different versions. I am hoping to complete a freebie to go with this to take this one step further math wise. =)

Speaking of math... I have been working a lot on a math project lately! But I realize that many students are still struggling classifying numbers. So this month's packet focuses on identify odd, even, and prime numbers.

In addition I spent A LOT of time this month going through my personal library (well the boy's library anyways), polling teacher friends, and researching to find books for this months collection! I found some new favorites and hope you will as well.

Please leave me a comment with your book suggestions for fall, Thanksgiving, or the upcoming elections and I will be sure to add them.

As always... there is a lot more inside but this is just a sneak peak at what is in this month's  packet o'fun! You all enjoyed my freebie weeks this month and so I am going to try and schedule another freebie week and linky party too!

As always - leave a comment and I will have one of my boys pick a lucky winner! =) 

Nouns & Verbs in the news

Since the second week of school, we have been working with students on recognizing nouns and verbs, subjects, and predicts. Most of this is done during their morning work but the concept is revisited often throughout the week.

We discuss it during reading. We use it during writing. We try to find it in our oral conversations. Nouns and verbs are everywhere! But do our students really understand this or is it just something we do/know for school?

Remember my reusable anchor charts? Did you notice that the title "noun" is in red and the title "verb" is in blue?

There is a reason for that. Each part of grammar is a different color. The correlate with our highlighters. This allows the students to highlight these words their writing, morning work, phonics readers, etc...  It works so well to keep it consistent.

 

We took used this week's newspaper to bring grammar to life. Most of my students are not able to actually read the newspaper. It is above their skill level so this was a very exciting and challenging activity. 

Before the students were given a page of the paper, it was carefully edited to remove any offending materials.  This requires that you have knowledge of each individual child and what they might find offensive. For example, we removed news of a successful adoption as one of our students is hoping to be adopted.

The students looked for the "who or the what" of each sentence. They looked at where the words were placed in the sentence for clues.

I wish you could see their happy faces. As you can see we did this as a floor activity so that there was plenty of room to spread out and work. The students worked independently, with buddies, and sometimes as a whole group to check to make sure something was a noun or a verb.

We also discovered a lot of interesting words. As all of my kiddos are learning English this time was great for introducing new vocabulary and oral conversations. We spent a lot of time talking about football and the names for the various types of players as one kiddo had the sports section.

They loved this and asked if we can do it again. We saved their papers so that they can continue to work on it as a "finished early" activity.

WallWisher & Tips for new Teachers!

So... a  few months back I saw this amazing new idea from Josh over at Mr. B's Beach Brains. He has so many amazing ideas. It is called WallWishers and it is FREE! It is so free you do not even have to create an account. Be still my heart!

Check this out!

I made a wall to store all of the tips, suggestions, and great ideas that new teachers or student teachers need to know about. Every day I am learning something new and I love all the great things I am finding out!

This is one of the things that I am using with my students in my current classroom. We are using this to create word families. I have asked students to pin their add-ons to each family as close as possible. We also have one for interesting words ala CAFE method. Parents can access it at night to see what their child has learned during the day.

LOVE this!! 

Classroom Photos & Schedule

I haven't told ya all about what I am up to now that I have left Kindergarten. For the next 16 weeks, I am completing practicum in an ELD (English Language Development) 1/2 combo classroom.

This is the writing process, the CAFE board, and the I PICK bulletin board by the library. These items are located in 3 different areas of the classroom. Notice the colors - yellow and green. The entire classroom is done this way. She even painted (yep found out we CAN paint!) 2 walls yellow and 2 walls are green. Anyone wanna guess what school she went to?

Give me 5 and the Scientific process. These are on the same bulletin board. I am thinking of recreating these for my own room so I have close ups of what they say. =) School: University of Oregon. She even found UoO duct tape! I gotta show you that.

This is two walls combined. I was trying to get the strategies for writing and the journal rules. see the wall colors? Oh and there is here clip chart. Sports style. The motto of the classroom is Win the day! also the motto of UoO.

See the fan -- It is DESPERATELY needed in the classroom.  Our AC is set at 86 degrees; its 115 outside. The classroom is always warm. It is directed to blow on the students as they work in front of the board. We have a project that uses this board and on Friday everyone got a document camera. HAPPY DANCE!

Can I have a smart board too???

I took a bunch of pictures of the things pertaining to my current course: reading and assessment. I need to take pictures of the classroom as a whole. I will try and remember to do that on Monday. My mentor is amazing!! She just mailed off her National Board Certification Package. She missed it by 2 points last time but she will nail it this time.

I have learned soooo much from her! She describes her classroom style as a game of double dutch. Daily 5 and stamina building is the key to success.

As there are 2 grades they are learning 2 separate things. 4 hours a day is English and 2 hours is math. We are not required to teach anything other than those two items.  While one grade is working independently the other is working at the carpet near some board getting instruction from the teacher. They switch off constantly throughout the day.

Our schedule looks like this:

7:55-8:15 morning routine

8:15-9:15 DOL & Grammar

9:15-10:15 Writing

10:15-11:15 Reading

11:15-11:55 Lunch

11:55-12:00 Read Aloud

12:00 - 1:00 Oral English

1:00-1:20 Calendar

1:20-2:10 Math

2:10-2:25 Number Talks

2:30-3:00 Specials

Everything has to be in blocks due to the type of students in the class. Number Talks is A~MAZ~ING! But I will share that with you in another post.

ELL Resources

There were SOOOO many books to read and use in this class and then once I was done with all of those my mentor teachers had even more. I learned a lot as I mentioned before but it was overwhelming. I have added 5 of these to my collection and maybe adding more in the future.





What books would you recommend for ELL teachers? Do you think ELL teachers should be required to be bilingual at a minimum?

Teaching the ELL

I have learned more strategies in teaching during this past course than all of my courses combined! Why? Well.... there are so many facets to the student learning English. How can you communicate with someone who does not speak the same language as you?

There are four main ways:
1. TPR (Total Physical Response)
2. Storytelling
3. Narrating
4. Contextual Clues

But there are SOOOOOOOOOOO many more! This is what I feel like when trying to write a lesson plan for these students:

Despite all of the many, many, many strategies we discussed and explored... one thing kept coming up. No matter what you do, no matter what strategy you use or theory you believe in ... it won't work without a relationship with your students!

Everything I am learning circles back to the relationship between student and teacher. Without knowing your students, understanding their culture, background, strengths, and weaknesses they will not grow to reach their full academic potential!

Heidi for Raki's Rad Resources shared this same thing during the expo that I attended in April. She had some great tips and stories about why this is so essential. It is also essential to try and build a relationship with the parents of these students. Go out of your way to invite them into class.

Stop by her blog to learn more ways to connect with these students and enhance their academic success!!

 

Alphabet Songs

Have you heard about the Alphabet Songs from Have Fun Teaching? I have just discovered them and LOVE them!! I am so excited about these videos and I know just who to show these to first! Take a look...

I have spent a lot of time with with ESS (SPED) and ELL students in the last few months. What they need the most is a fun way that is engaging to learn phonics, sight words, etc. Its what all kids need when mastering something difficult.

They also need to retain this information which is difficult for some students with disabilities. I have spoken before about how I love to use music to help them retain information. We sing a lot in my class. My poor kids all know I sing in the key of  M (me!).

These videos are available for free on YouTube or if it is banned at your school... you can purchase the set. But wait! Right now, any teacher who posts a review like this one can get a free set! Open to everyone. FREEE! Unlimited winners. Hurry as the giveaway ends May 31st.

AND as if this is not enough... you have got to go and check out the free worksheets and things they have to go with the videos. Here is a link to their phonics section.  This is seriously my new favorite spot... It is TEACHER HEAVEN!

Free centers. Free teaching resources. Free activities, games, smartboard lesson plans, and behavior management resources. Free music for all kinds of subjects. They have free giveaways about once a month. I am going to have to start stalking them!

I am heading out the door to see if one of  my favorite students is still around as she never was able to grasp the letter P. I am Mrs. Oland. No P. She works with Speech to correct this.... hmmmm.... maybe I should show this to the speech therapist as well.

Oh so many possibilities! I love it!