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

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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

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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!

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?

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.

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!

Wonderful Words Wednesday!

If we are to teach students to love words, shouldn't we love words. To learn to love words join me each week in a Wonderful Words Wednesday Linky. Don't forget to link up below and share a wonderful word that you read or wrote this week. Share it's definition and origin. Then please visit the blog in front of you and after you, as a comment use their wonderful word in an inspiring sentence!

My word this week is: Epistolary: written in the form of a letter Novels that are written in epistolary form are listed as epistolary fiction.  

Origin as listed on dictionary.com
Origin: 
1650–60;  < Latin epistolāris  of, belonging to a letter. See epistle, -ar1

Nine Books Done!

The ninth Iowa Children's Choice Award nominee that I chose to read was Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur. This story addresses the age old theme of growing up.  Specifically that time period of leaving elementary school behind and entering middle school.  In the book it addresses it from Elise's point of view. Elise is a 12 year old girl who is being raised by her aunt and uncle, because her parents are deceased.  She struggles with school, friendship, bullies, and her identity.  Sometimes you want to shake her, sometimes you want to hug her!

This book would be good for teaching character, setting, theme, problem/solution, and using prior knowledge to connect with the text.  

Make sure you check out Suzanne LaFleur's website.  She shares some interesting insight into her writing process, which is so important for writers to see!

Wonderful Words Wednesday!

I have been reading several books about installing a love for reading and writing in students.  One thing I have seen in several books is in order to love reading and writing we need to teach our students to CELEBRATE words.

So in my classroom this fall I am going to implement Wonderful Words Wednesday.  Students will be asked to keep an eye out for wonderful words in their reading and writing.  They will pick one, record its definite and word origin, and bring it to class to share in our community circle on Wednesday.

This got me thinking, if we are to teach our students to love words, shouldn't we love words. To learn to love words join me each week in a Wonderful Words Wednesday Linky. Don't for get to link up below and share a wonderful word that you read or wrote this week.  Share it's definition and origin. Then please visit the blog in front of you and after you, as a comment use their wonderful word in an inspiring sentence!

My word for this week is fascination.  Definition: powerful attraction; charm  Word Origin: 1595–1605;  < Latin fascinātiōn-  (stem of fascinātiō ) a bewitching. Seefascinate, -ion  Definition and word origin found on Dictionary.com. Found in the book Wondrous Words by Katie Wood Ray.