Winter Projects

Winter break.  The long awaited week and a half (give or take) that we get to rest, re-group, and relax.  Well, this year, I got hit with a sickness.  BIG.  TIME.  

So far, I spent five of these six days bed-ridden with my family taking care of me.  Merry Christmas to me!  But, I have to say, I'm very thankful that it happened over break and that I didn't have to miss any teaching days.  

Anyways, I set my sights very high for my winter break and had gigantic plans to get all kinds of fun projects done for my own classroom.  I've got a file started of a list of projects.  Looks like that will be postponed a little longer.  However, I have gotten a few projects done:

(1) Erasable To-Do List

It's so easy and so useful!  All you need is a picture frame (with decent glass), cute paper, and a dry erase marker.  I like to be crafty so I also bought fun stick-on metallic letters and glitter embellishments.  At the very least, have notebook paper to put inside the frame to give you helpful guidelines.  If you don't have a dry-erase eraser handy, just hot glue a pom-pom ball at the end of the marker and VOILE, an eraser for your marker!

2) Dull and Sharp Pencil Cups

This may be the end to my misery.  Pencil sharpeners are noisy.  Even if you buy the "extra-quiet pencil sharpeners" or the machines that claim to be "classroom friendly".  It always seems like one of my kiddos needs to sharpen their pencil at an inopportune moment - as if it were life or death!  I've seen this idea many places and didn't really think about how helpful it could be until now.  So, I plan on putting them in my room after break so students can trade their dull pencil for a sharp one.  During free time or before school, I will have a student sharpen the dull pencils for me.  Such a simple solution!

All you need are two cans/jars/containers that have a sturdy side and bottom (so they don't wear out).  I used old peach cans for one set and peanut containers for a gift set.  Using Modge Podge, create a fun design that matches your classroom or personality and you've got a fancy, useful classroom tool!

I'm sure you've got a big project wish-list like I do.  Here's hoping you will be motivated to do at LEAST one of them.  But don't stop there, keep going!

Enjoy your winter break, everyone!  And STAY healthy!

Emily   :)

Please Remember

Joining me in a day of silence, Monday December 17th, to honor and remember.

"But the thing about remembering, is that you don't forget"

-Tim O'Brien

Charting Character Changes

Analyzing characters is an important aspect of reading literacy.  There are a million ideas out there for how you can encourage students to think deeper about characters, focus on particular details, and recognize character growth throughout a book.  

Right now, my kiddos are finishing up a long novel that we have been reading.  It's more advanced, and requires a lot of critical thinking.  I wanted to do an activity with my students that allowed them to look at main characters with a different lens on.  Typically, main characters change mentally, emotionally, socially, etc, throughout a book.  Sometimes I feel as though I get caught up in wanting my students to understand what's going on in the book and overlook important details such as character changes.

Here is a graphic organizer that I created a while back.  Recently, I decided to tweak it a bit and make it as useful as I could.  The worksheet is to be completed for one character.  Students will have to identify different characteristics of their character, including what he/she thinks, sees, feels, says, does, etc.  It's a great way to get students to look beyond the surface of a character and truly analyze who they are.

(This is just a preview of part of the worksheet)

In my small group, I assigned each student a main character (there are a lot) in Part I of our book (there are three parts in all).  I made copies of this worksheet back-to-back.  When we began the book I told my students to fill out the front side as best as they could.  Now that we are finishing the book, I asked my students to complete the back side of the worksheet about the character at the END of the book.  We spent a lot of time reflecting on how each character had changed throughout the book and how they have become a different person.  After a deep discussion, I had each student write at least one page about their character's transformation.

There are MANY ways to use this graphic organizer.  The bottom line is, we all want our students to critically think about important characters in their books.  Using programs such as balanced literacy, we look to develop a student's comprehension skills and critical thinking abilities.  I have found this graphic organizer to help me cultivate those skills within my kiddos.

If you're interested in purchasing this graphic organizer, check out my TpT store!  

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Ms-Rothering

Otherwise, I hope it gave you some inspiration or ideas on how to help your students get to know their characters.

Emily :)

Thumb-tastic!

I just love thumbprint activities.  All you need is a thumb, paper, and ink.  That's a total of about $3.50!  

Today, I decided to have a little fun with my intervention group.  We recently learned about fingerprints and irises.  We learned that everyone has their own fingerprint and iris color - no two people have the same.  My students were specifically interested in what fingerprints look like and how intriguing they really are. 

So, the light bulb in my head went on and I decided that today was a perfect opportunity to take a break from our rigorous intervention lessons and have some fun.  We made holiday-themed art work using our fingerprints!

In addition, we made a "class photo" of all of our fingerprints.  After we analyzed them and looked for similarities and differences, we decided to turn them into thumbprint people to post on our bulletin board.  Sorry the photo quality isn't great, my camera is on the fritz.  However, you can't deny how cute they are - it's so interesting to see how they drew themselves!

Happy Thumbprinting!

:)  Emily

How do you say this word?

Okay teachers, let's think about this.  How often do you hear a student ask, "what is this word?" / "how do you say this word?" / "can you tell me what this says?".

All-the-TIME!  As if we aren't asked a million questions a day already, we also have basic learning barriers to deal with.  Don't get me wrong, I love my students and one of my main purposes as their teacher is to be there to answer questions - whatever they may be.  

Something I've been working on lately with my kiddos is teaching them to be self-reliant.  There are a few areas I have been targeting the most that relate to these questions:

(1) Schedule: What are we doing today?  What are we doing next? 

(2) Tattling: Can you ask (name) to stop doing this?  Can you tell (name) that I don't like them when they do that?

(3) Preparedness: What am I supposed to be doing?  What do I need?  How do I do (this)?

(4) Unfamiliar Words: What is this word?

At this point, I'm sure some of you are smiling, thinking about how often you hear these questions or these questions in some form or another.  I first decided to tackle #4 - Unfamiliar Words.  As I've told you, one of the small intervention groups I teach is with basic-minimal readers.  I also teach reading to my after-school program students.  In addition to the learning barriers I work with, I have many ESL/ELL students also.  

So, I needed to help my kiddos, and fast.  I noticed that many of my students were either falling behind or at a road block.  I wanted to teach them a sort of weapon they can use to arm themselves for the future, so they can be more self-reliant and not so dependent on teachers/peers.

The result: my Word Strategy Packet that you see below.  It is a packet that teaches three strategies kids can use to identify new and unfamiliar words - in their terms, BIG words.  The three strategies I included were: (1) chunking, (2) sounding it out, and (3) word within a word.  Through a bunch of research, I found these three strategies to be the most commonly used and accepted.

To purchase it, go to my TpT store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Ms-Rothering

This packet worked out really well for my needs and the needs of my kiddos.  Each page gave an explanation of the strategy, an example, a walk-through, and a lot of practice.  In addition, I had a full page of "big words" for students to identify and choose which strategy that helped them figure the word out.  The results were very positive - with my struggling readers, students with learning barriers, and my ESL/ELL students.

Okay, so I planned and executed a strategy for ONE of those areas.  There are three more to go.  I know teaching is a constant process of evaluating, planning, implementing, and re-assessing, so I know this isn't the last of word strategy problem-solving.  For now, I'll check this off my list and move on to the next hurdle.  Hope this helps if you're finding yourself in a similar situation!

Emily  :)