Monday Made It!: Guest Blogger Guidelines, Birthday Flowers and more Shelves

I am linking up with   

Painting the small shelves in my classroom lead to my next project.  I took one look at the larger shelves and decided they needed painting. In my hurry to get done I forgot to take pictures of the before look, but trust me when I finish the last bit on the back of one they will and do look a tone better.

My second project involves my class blog. I really wanted each of my students to have their own blog, but our district isn't ready to undertake this. My solution is to have my students take turns being guest bloggers on our classroom blog.  I created guidelines for them to follow and example posts for them to look at.  Click on the picture below to get the guest blogger guidelines. Check out my class blog (Happenings in 4S) the week of August 19th to few sample posts.

My last project is that I created the birthday flowers that I will give to my students. I bought the foam flowers at our local Alco store. I would guess you might find them in the dollar bins at Target. I write the students name and birthdate on them with sharpies and tape them to fun pencils!

Monday Made It: Shelves, I Charts, Tag Team Revising, and Math by Myself

I'm linking up with  

The first project I completed this week, looked like this in the beginning:

With some elbow grease, patience, and help from my beautiful daughter it looked like this in the middle:

And here is the final product:

I am implementing Daily5 in my classroom this year, so I decided to put together I Charts for each of the rotations. Click on the image below to download them:

I have been reading up on teaching writing and looking forward to making some changes in how I teach writing. I found a cool idea for peer revising in an old issue of Bookbag Magazine, tweaked it to fit my needs and here it is:

I created several activities to be used during the Math by Myself rotation. The set includes some addition, place value, and multiplication. They would work great with strong second grade math students, at the end of the year for third grade and as review at the beginning of fourth grade. Click on the image below to check them out:

Have a great Monday! Enjoy what's left of your summer!

August Currently!

I can't believe it is time to link up at

 for the August currently.  Here goes:

Listening: Yes, I am a crazy cat lady! My husband and children gave this to me for Christmas and I love it. It is so quiet in my house this morning that it is the only thing I here. I am loving it!

Loving: I love having things planned and ready to go!

Thinking: I have been on this computer too long to day.

Wanting: We are going on a short vacation the weekend before I go back to work and my oldest heads of to college (for the first time, sniff!). I am so ready to go but don't want to time to go by!

Needing: If I don't get my classroom put together I am afraid I want enjoy our vacation.

1st Day: I am ready and exciting, yet I am not ready!

Don't forget to link up. For a refresher on how to create your own Currently and the three rules check out the post at Oh Boy Fourth Grade!

Jazzier Version of Word Work Activities and New TPT Store

I put together a jazzier version of the word work activities that I shared for Monday Made It this week and created a Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Check them both out at by clicking on the image below:

Techie Tuesday: Technology Tip for the Newbie Blogger

Hello, all! I am linking up at Technology Tailgate for

Yesterday I wanted to link up with Monday Made It hosted by 4th Grade Frolics. I had tweaked some word work games and created some homework menus and wanted to share them. I inserted the links for all of my shared google documents and thought-Wow that looks blah! I decided it would look better with pictures of my documents but wasn't sure how to do that. I new they need to be jpg format to insert them to my post, but wasn't sure how to do that. After a bit of searching I discovered how to convert PDFs to JPGs.  Here are the steps:

1. Download your google document as a pdf. Go to File: Download as: PDF

2. Find an online PDF converter.  I used pdf2jpg.net.

3. Click on Choose a PDF file and find the file you wish to convert. Open the file and then click the Convert PDF to JPG button. 

3. Click download and then proceed to insert your newly created JPG document.  

I also learned as I was putting together this post that hitting command+shift+3 will take a screenshot! You learn something new everyday! Have a great Tuesday!

Monday Made It: Word Work Ideas and Homework Menus

I am linking up with.

I was surfing Pinterest looking for ideas to use with my fourth graders during word work time.  I stumbled upon these two ideas from the Monday Made It! host 4th Grade Frolics.  One is Word Work Scrabble and one is Word Work Word's Worth.  I tweaked them a bit and made one of each for spelling and vocabulary. Click on the picture to get a copy.  Enjoy!

I also created vocabulary and spelling homework menus which include the above activities.  Click on the pictures to grab a copy. Enjoy!

Check out my Word Work board on pinterest to see where I got many of the activities I included on these.

http://www.pinterest.com/dsunderman/word-work/

Structure of a Writing Conference

This summer I read "How's it Going? A Practical Guide to Conferring with Student Writers" by Carl Anderson. If you have not read this and need guidance on conferring, I highly recommend it.

One thing I found very helpful in this book was his explanation about how to structure a writing conference.  I took his structure and created a cheat sheet that I placed in my literacy conferring notebook, so that I can refer to it as needed.  Here is the link to it, feel free to use it, share it, or tweak it to fit your needs:

http://goo.gl/jhQRL1

Technology Projects

I have taken on 2 major technology projects this summer. 

1. Scanning all my classroom library books into booksource classroom organizer:

This is a program where you can use your smart phone or tablet to scan the bar codes of your books and they will be entered into a database on the web. The database can be accessed from any computer. Students search for the book they are checking out by it's name or author in the database and then check it out on the computer. In order to be able to scan the books you have to install the booksource classroom organizer app on your smart phone or tablet. Did I mention that this is free!

So far so good.  I have one box of books left to scan.  I really hope this will make it a bit easier to keep track of my classroom library books. I will let you know how it is working once we get into the swing of things in my classroom.

2. Changing all my bookmarks to Diigo:

Diigo is an app that you can use to organize your internet bookmarks.  One of the features I like about it is that you can mark web articles as read later. So if you want to read them but don't necessarily need to bookmark the page, you can easily access them. You can also highlight things on your bookmark pages and you can type notes on a sticky note on your bookmark pages. Not only do you bookmark your pages but you also give them tags or labels. Then when you are just sure you had a web page bookmarked on how to use a book to teaching good endings, but can't remember the page name, you can search Diigo for various tags or labels to see what you find.  

Have any of you tried either of these sites? I would love feedback on them or suggestions of technology you would recommend!

Fourteenth Book Done!

I finished reading my fourteenth Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee, Athlete Vs. Mathlete by W.C. Mack.  In this story twin brothers, Russ and Owen Evans, seem to have very little in common until the new basketball coach comes to town. He orders Russ the mathlete to try out for basketball and Russ discovers that he likes it!

This was a fun, quick read.  It would make a fun read aloud for third, fourth, or fifth grade classroom. It could easily be used to teach checking for understanding, making predictions, and literary elements.

Thirteen Books Done!

I just finished reading my thirteenth Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee, "Summer of the Gypsy Moths" by Sara Pennypacker. In this book Stella and Angel have two things in common. One they live with Stella's great-aunt and two they live there because they have no place else to be. The story unfolds with Stella's great-aunt dying. Read to find out how Stella and Angel deal with this and find places to belong. 

This book would work well for teaching theme or main idea and details. Check out the discussion questions provided by the author.

July Currently!

First of all I just have to say that I can't believe it is July, already! That being said I am Linking up with



Oh' Boy Fourth Grade to do the July Currently.  So here it is:   

Listening: I've never been a big watcher of TV, but I seem to have become addicted to crime scene shows. Three of them in particular and all on TNT: Rizzoli and Isles, Bones, and Castle.
Loving: I'm loving having the time to read and workout. I'm currently reading Frozen Heat by Richard Castle and Words Their Way. I am also reading the Iowa Children's Choice Award Nominees for the 2014-2015 school year. I just finished "Summer of the Gypsy Moths" by Sara Pennypacker. I'm also loving not have to get up at o'dark o'clock to fit in my workout rather it be a run, yoga, or strength training.  
Thinking: I've been thinking about change. My son is headed off to college this fall. We will miss him very much. Family meals will not be the same.  My daughter just turned 16. I sure miss the days when they needed me, but I am very proud of them!
Wanting: I've been fighting shin splints this summer. I would normally have built my mileage up 15-20 miles a week by now. I am hovering around 9-10 miles. I really want to get past this. I'm trying to be patient, I'm not very good at it!
Needing: I'm needing to get past the shin splints, so I can up my mileage and ditch the extra 7 pounds I have put on this summer. I seem to be the queen of grazing: sweet to salt to sweet to salt. Can you say lack of self-control?
Have a Happy Fourth, everyone!

Found Poetry

Found poetry is taking language from a non-poetic context and turning it into a poem.  I first heard about this when I was reading "Poems Waiting to be Found" by Shirley McPhillips, one of the featured writers at the Stenhouse Summer Blogstitute 2014. 

I decided to give it a try.  The following are the original text I used and my attempts at Found Poetry:  

From Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

The process is all so slow, as dreams are slow, as dreams suspend time like a balloon hung in midair. I want it all to happen now. I want the catcher to appear. I want whatever miracle I am party to, to prosper and grow: I want the dimensions of time that have been loosened from their foundation to entwine like a basketful of bright embroidery threads. But it seems that even for dreams, I have to work and wait. It hardly seems fair.

Dreams

So s-l-o-w...

Dreams... are… slow

          suspends

Time                    like a balloon hung in midair

For the dimensions of time to entwine

I have to work... and... wait

So s-l-o-w…

Dreams

From the Summer of the Gypsy Moth by Sara Pennypacker.

I like to imagine the ties between us as spider silk: practically invisible, maybe, but strong as steel. I figure the trick is to spin out enough of them to weave ourselves into a net.  

Ties between us…

Like strands of spider silk,

Invisible but strong.

Strong as steel.

Weaved into a net.

I hope you feel inspired to try Found Poetry. If so feel free to share your attempts.

To Newsletter or Not?

Every year I debate on rather I am doing a classroom newsletter or relying strictly on my website to keep parents informed.  I am already having this debate. One issue is the creating of a fun layout that does not take forever to create or require me to purchase expensive software. 

I may have found the answer to the issue of how to create a fun and interesting newsletter after attending the Southwest Iowa Google Summit. It is called Lucidpress Layout and Design. It is found at the Chrome Web Store under apps.  

It seems to be a very user friendly way to create a newsletter. Once you have created your letter you have a lot of choices on how you are going to share it. 

You can publish it on the web.  I find this a great option since we are not allowed to print color copies in our building. This way you can make it as fun and colorful as you want and still have people see it. 

You can also share it through the Lucidpress software or you can download it as a pdf and share it through google docs or Doctopus or gClass folders.  

You can also print a hard copy, so that you can send it home with each of the students.  

Here is a practice page I created to experiment with:

http://pub.lucidpress.com/caf341d4-58dc-4ab5-9b8c-a82373edc192/

Feel free to comment if you still create a newsletter and if you do how do you create and share it. If you don't how do you communicate with your families?

Southwest Iowa Google Summit 2014 Part 2

On Tuesday the keynote speaker was Eric Sheninger, awarding winning principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey. The message I walked away from his speech with was that we have to be willing to change the way we teach. We have to give up control of the learning to the students. We need to make technology available for students to use when it improves the learning. 

The first breakout session that I attending was Using Apps to Help Struggling Students.  I walked away from it with a plethora of resources for helping students with various educational needs.  The speaker showed us how to regulate the reading level of the articles that students are searching and how to increase the size of text on webpages. He showed us apps such as Read and Write Google which will read webpages to students. 

The second breakout session that I attending was What's New in Google Drive. I learned that you can now edit images in docs and slides. I learned about several add-ons that I want to try.  One of them is Avery labels and the other was gMath. In gMath you can create graphs and coordinate planes.

Southwest Iowa Google Summit 2014 Part 1

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I attended the Southwest Iowa Google Summit.  Each day there was a keynote speaker and breakout sessions over different features of Google.

On Monday the keynote speaker was Angela Maiers, author of Classsroom Habitudes. The message I walked away from her speech with was that we have tell and show our students that they matter. We have to depend on them to contribute their genius or talent to our classroom. I ordered her book, Classroom Habitudes, and it arrived today. I can't wait to read it.

The first breakout session I attended was Adds-on to Ease the Google Workflow. The two add-ons featured at this session were Flubaroo and Doctopus.  Flubaroo is an add-on that grades and analyzing the results of multi-choice tests. If your district is 1 to 1 this would be a great way to do a quick 2-3 question exit ticket to assess learning. Doctopus is an add-on that allows you to create class roosters and folders, distribute paperless assignments, and receive paperless homework without over loading your shared folder file. 

The second breakout session I attended was Get Organized with gClass. After attending the session I figured at the gClass does basically the same thing as Doctopus as far as creating roosters and folders.  I have not been able to get the send assignment feature of gClass to work.  If I choose to use one of these add-ons it will be Doctopus.  Both of these may become obsolete with the release of Classroom this September!
The third breakout session I attended was The Benefits of Blogging. The instructor was a sixth grade literacy teacher.  He showed how he uses his class blog to communicate with his students and parents. He showed how his students use their blogs to communicate with each other, their parents, and students from other countries.  His students use their blog to post writing and receive feedback about their writing. They also use them to publish their finished writing pieces.  

A great overall resource that I left the Summit with is the following webpage http://www.googlegooru.com/. This webpage is an easy way to access information on how to do all things Google!

Twelve Books Done!

The twelfth Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee that I chose to read was The PS Brothers by Maribeth Boelts.

This story would work well for teaching literary elements, cause and effect, main ideas and details, and rereading the text.  

On Maribeth Boelts web page she has a question answer section in which she talks about her writing. There is some useful information here that would teach students about the writing process. 

Interesting Find!

While browsing the web one day I stumbled upon an advertisement for the upcoming Stenhouse Summer Blogstitute 2014. I decided to e-mail myself a reminder to check it out as it did not start for a few weeks.  I found the e-mail yesterday and went to check it out.  

So far there are two different posts by authors: The first post is on the teaching of grammar which is by Aimee Buckner ( I read her book Notebook Know How this summer. If you use writer's notebooks in your classroom, you should read it!) The second post is on writing found poems by Shirley McPhillips.  I can't wait to try writing one of these myself and then have my fourth graders try to write them. Not sure what those are here's a link to further information about them:
https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/18488chap1.pdf

If you read and leave a comment on the posts you are entered for a chance to win a package of eight books that are written by the authors who are writing the posts for the blogstitute. 

Take a second or two or three and check it out!

Teaching Writing!

I have been reading Wondrous Words by Katie Wood Ray. This is a great book about teaching kids to be successful at and enjoy writing.  

Part of the process is learning to read books like a writer.  

A topic that appears to be a long ways from both these concepts is that fact that my son challenged me to read Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella.  So for those of you who aren't from Iowa and aren't baseball fans this is the book that the movie Field of Dreams was based on back in the 80's. Being from Iowa and actually having visited the Field of Dreams I decided to give the book a try.

Now I feel as if I should say this up front, I am not a fan of baseball.  I can take it or leave it!  That said I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. Not only did I enjoy the story from a reader's point of view, I also discovered some great things to share with my students from a writer's point of view.

I found many examples of how this novel could be used to help teach students about writer's craft. One type of writer's craft that Katie Wood Ray shares in her book is "Super Ellipses". Those are the three dots in a row. They can be used to show continuation, transition, or the lack of words to describe something. On page 14 in Shoeless Joe Kinsella writes: "It must of been... It must of been like..." But I can't find the words.

Writers also use a close echo effect.  This style of writing as described by Katie Wood Ray is when an author repeats words or phrases close together when it is not necessary and creates an echo effect.  On page 25 of Shoeless Joe Kinsella writes: The process is all so slow, as dreams are slow, as dreams suspend time like a balloon hung in midair. 

Now keep in mind you will only share bits and pieces as this is a novel for adults. If your students are interested in the topic here are books that I found that would be appropriate for students to read: Shoeless Joe and Me by Dan Gutman, Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy by Phil Bildner and C.F. Payne, and Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson by David L. Fleitz.

Math Writing Dilemma!

During the last month of school I started the Math Daily 3 in my classroom.  I used these 3 rotations or stations: math by myself, math writing, and math with someone.  

My students enjoyed the new approach to math as did I.  The main problem I had was that math writing was creating a lot of paper work for me to correct. This was not really what I had in mind for this station. So I began searching the Internet for ideas.  I saw several sentence starter ideas.  I found two that I liked and did some combining and changing to create one I like.  

So here it is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q0Ij8Dx-WxXx7oBswkt0_JrC_Q8ZU_xTStRBHmSFvfA/pub 

Feel free to use it if it works for you or share it with a friend!

Eleven Books Done!

The eleventh Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee that I chose to read was Pie by Sarah Weeks.  In this story young Alice loves to spend time with her Aunt Polly at her pie shop.  When Aunt Polly passes away Alice's world is turned upside down.  To make matters even worse Aunt Polly left her famous pie crust recipe to her cat, Lardo! Or did she?

This book could help students work on sequencing events, using prior knowledge, cause and effect, setting, character, and theme. The author also includes some readers theaters on her website this could be used to work on many different fluency strategies including reading like the author would to convey meaning. If you are interested in doing an author study or you have a student who is, Sarah Weeks has provided some wonderful suggests on how to begin on her website.  Click on the gold circular emblem that says "Are You Doing an Author Study?" to get started!