How about some balloons?
noise makers?
confetti?
That feels more like a celebration!
I have recently noticed several new followers popping up, so if you are a new visitor....welcome! I hope you like what you see! I kind of feel like Sneaker Teacher has strayed from my original intentions....I blog about my life as a teacher, but not so much in terms of writing specifically about what I am doing in the classroom. I do that more on my classroom blog, but for the sake of maintaining the privacy of my students, I keep the two separate. When I first started blogging it was more about specific teaching ideas and sometimes I want to get back to that, but I also appreciate how the blog changes as my life changes. I have some really cute student work that I wanted to post, but somehow scanning a copy or taking a picture is not at the top of my to do list. I will try to get those up this weekend because they are SO cute.
We have been reading Mo Willems' books up the wazoo and the kiddos can't get enough. We have read "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late" several times and each time it is just as entertaining as the first. The kiddos are starting to try and read our Mo favs during their quiet reading time and I love to see them so engaged in real literature! As much as I can, I try to include themes in our reading, writing, and math, which doesn't happen that often because we use different programs for each. This week, I have tried to bring in more Mo and we've done several activities related to his books. I wanted to work on graphs with the kids, so I made a blank graph with Mo's main characters along the bottom. I "polled" the kids one at a time to see which character is their favorite and created the graph as they watched. We discussed what information we could get from looking at the graph and then each child go a completely blank graph which they used to poll the rest of the group. Most kiddos used 5 different colors along the bottom and then asked the other kids which color was their favorite, but a few got really creative and drew five different snacks or sports teams. One kiddo even drew 5 different characters from a Mario Brothers game. Both groups LOVED going around and asking each other their question and coloring in the bars on their graph. It also gave them practice in writing the numbers 1-10 along the y axis.
Mo Willems Work
In writing, I created a sheet with some sentence frames and had the kids complete the sentences, "My favorite Mo Willems book is ____________. I like it because ___________." We talked about giving a reason why they liked it with details about something that happened in the story. Most of the kids wanted to write, "I like it because it is funny," but some did go beyond that and say why. A few wrote they liked Knuffle Bunny Free the most because they liked it when Trixie gave Knuffle bunny to the baby. I love seeing the deeper thinking from some of my higher kiddos. They are making connections between the different Mo books and it is so fun to see their excitement each time I bring out a different one. I have cleaned out both our school library and the local library, but there are still several I haven't come across.
Today in writing we read Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late again and I had the kiddos come up with something that the pigeon would say to try and stay up late. I gave them a sheet with a picture of pigeon and they did their writing and then drew a voice bubble around their text. They did such a great job and I am in love with their work! Every single student was engaged in their writing and I got good work from everyone--even the kiddos who struggle a lot. I really wish I could post my favorite ones!!! Stay tuned because you will love them too! For the first time, we gathered on the rug after we wrote and I shared all of their work with them. They got to see what everyone else did and they smiled really big when I read what they had written. I think I will do that more often!
Pigeon Voice Bubble
In other news, I am getting another new student tomorrow. I got two new students last week (or maybe it was the week before) and now another one. All boys....and they are all boy. At least with the one that starts tomorrow, I got to choose whether to have him in my morning class or my afternoon. I chose the afternoon because I already have a few really challenging boys in the morning, but in reality the same goes for the afternoon. I got to glimpse at his report card today from his previous school and it seems as though he has some behavior issues....lovely. When I think about how that might work with the very rambunctious kiddos that are in my PM class, I wonder if that was a good choice, but I already made it. The afternoon class has gotten about 8 new kids this year (as of now....) so they are really good at accommodating new students. They were so excited to find out about our new addition, so hopefully things will go smoothly tomorrow. Getting a new kiddo always makes me a bit of a nervous wreck! On that note, maybe I should go put my feet up and relax :0)
Cheers to 600 posts on Sneaker Teacher and 600 more to come!
