Knuffle Bunny Love

This week is K week, so naturally I broke out my stash of Knuffle Bunny books. I always hide them away until K week so the kiddos have no familiarity with the stories until we read them together (unless they've read them at home, but I've been lucky so far in being able to be able to introduce my classes to the wonderful world of Knuffle Bunny). 

I've posted about my love for all things Mo Willems in the past, but having just read Knuffle Bunny Free to the class today, I had to share about it.

Knuffle Bunny Free always makes Mrs. Sneaker cry.

Even more so now that I am a mama to this cutie girl. 

She will be 11 months old tomorrow. Where did the time go???

I can handle the story until the part where Trixie decides to give Knuffle Bunny to the crying baby behind her on the plane. Then I start to get a little choked up. But when it gets to the part with the letter from Trixie's dad, I'm just a sap. I felt a bit embarrassed getting all emotional in front of a parent helper and an IA, but there is no escaping it when it comes to Knuffle Bunny. 

What stories make you cry?

After I read the story, I had the kiddos use the StoryKit app on their iPads to record what their favorite part was and why. They also drew a picture of their favorite part using the Sketchio app and imported that into their StoryKit book. We are still working on proficiency in using StoryKit because the kiddos email me their work when they're done, which can be a bit tricky for some of them. But, it is awesome that I can have their work in my email inbox and forward it to their parents, have an audio clip of them telling their favorite part and why they liked it, and have a paperless record of their work. Tomorrow or Friday I am going to use the app called Socrative to have the kiddos vote for their favorite Knuffle Bunny Book. As they cast their votes, a graph is created on my iPad, which I project onto the board so they can see which book is getting the most votes. Once everyone has voted, we discuss the graph and decide which book was our class favorite. 

Over the years I have purchased all three Knuffle Bunny stories and a few pigeon books, but I am feeling the need for a trip to the library so I can introduce the kiddos to all of Mo Willems characters. I need to make a note to remember to introduce Pigeon during P week. 

***

In other news, I officially have a date to defend my dissertation. It was going to be May 15th, but I moved it up to April 24th to ensure that I can graduate in Spring term. All defenses need to take place before May 10th to count for spring graduation. I met with my adviser today and turned in my application for graduation. I am not done with the actual dissertation yet and have about 4 more weeks until I need a final draft, but I'm getting very close to the end and that feels good. I mostly have to work on chapter 5 and then just go back and do some formatting and editing to the rest of the document. I am currently at 173 pages. Yikes! 

I heart technology

Posts on two consecutive days...this is getting a bit crazy.

I just have to write a quick note about technology. I should be blogging about all the amazingness that is 1:1 iPads in Kindergarten, but I just don't have the energy or stamina to keep that up. I know there are other bloggers out there doing just that, so I'm gonna stick to something much more simple.

email

I have an email address for almost every child in my class and that made scheduling my spring conferences a whole lot easier.

I emailed my parent email list with a list of conference times and asked them to reply with their top two choices. We do student led conferences so I usually have 3-4 kids scheduled for each 30 minute time block. Within a few hours I have almost half of my class scheduled. I know I will need to make calls to a few parents (probably 3) but three calls sounds much less time consuming than 21.

I know that not all of the parents will get back to me, but I indicated in my email that I would just schedule the ones who didn't respond, so it is what it is.

It feels really nice to save time and be efficient.

And that is all I have to say for now.  :0)

Teen Numbers

I am so excited!

I use a Teen Number song in my class that came from a youtube video by Harry Kindergarten. The song starts with the verse Come on everybody let's get this done, numbers in the teens they start with a 1. I love the song and so do the kids, but we focus a lot on the ten groups within teen numbers so I had to add an extra verse.

When I was viewing the video last week, I noticed that Harry was getting some negative comments on youtube because people think his song will confuse kids and won't help them learn the place value in teen numbers. I shared my second verse with him and he made a new video with it.

How awesome is that!

I don't actually sing it the way he does (just the first part was mine), but I actually like his version better. I can't wait to show it to my kiddos this week!

Here is the "second verse"

Shout Out for Help!

Hello all you lovely teachers out there. I'm just popping by the 'ol blog today with a question for you...

I used to get great fillable, printable calendars from Busy Teacher's Cafe. I love them because I could type in the information I wanted on the calendar and then print them out. They also had really cute designs.

But alas, Busy Teacher's Cafe must be very busy because once we hit 2013, the calendars were no longer available.

Do you know of anything similar to what I am talking about? I'd rather not have to write the info on the calendar myself because my handwriting doesn't look as neat as typing.

Let me know if you know of anything or use anything I should check out!!

Thanks!

Checking In

Well we all know that since I became a mommy, I became a crappy teacher blogger. So, I figure every once in awhile a post from Sneaker Teacher will be appreciated (if anyone is even still out there and still interested in me!)

So, here's a little of what is going on.

• I'm still LOVING working part time. It's the perfect balance because I get to do the teacher thing and the mommy thing, but I also get a break from both. 
• I'm still working on my dissertation and am in the data analysis phase. My ultimate goal is to finish in time to graduate in June, yet I don't really think that's a realistic goal anymore. My entire paper would have to be done by early April for that to happen. I'm still trying...
• Baby Sneaker is now NINE months old! Can you believe that? I can hardly believe it myself! We had a wonderful time celebrating her first Christmas in Arizona with Mr. Sneaker's parents and his grandmother. Baby Sneaks is army crawling, cruising around, clapping, laughing, and loving her books just like mommy does. She loves daycare and she's a great baby. 
• Exercise is almost completely off my radar so for the time being I am very thankful for breast feeding induced weight loss. I would love to start running again (but it's really cold out now) and I would love to start doing some daily yoga or pilates but I feel like all my free time should be devoted to cleaning/keeping house or working on my dissertation. 
• I am finally on Pinterest! Woot Woot. And I love it. Especially for discovering cool teacher ideas. I can just "borrow" creative ideas from other super creative teachers and that works really well for a busy mom who still wants to be a rockin' teacher. 

I have done a new years resolution post or a goal post for the past few years and obviously missed that, but here are a few things that are on my radar right now in terms of goals:

• add exercise back into my life-now!
• finish my dissertation, defend said dissertation, and become Dr. Sneaker-by fall
• donate 100 oz or more of breast milk once Baby Sneaks turns 1-Spring 
• start reading books for pleasure again (I read Gone Girl and Bitter is the New Black recently)-now

And I will finish with a question---anybody out there??

below the line

I've done a lot of work in my district with Courageous Conversations which focuses on paying attention to the role race plays in learning, instruction, and the institution of schooling. That work influenced my dissertation work and as a result I have done a lot of reading and thinking about what it means to teach in a culturally responsive way. One of the things we learned about/worked on last year in the series of trainings my team did was trying to uncover what is called "below the line" information about students. Below the line refers to information about students that helps you really know and understand them better. Particularly in reference to students that come from cultural backgrounds that differ from my own, getting "below the line"info means getting information about students and their families directly from the students and their families as opposed to making assumptions about them based on their cultural background.

I don't know if it's because I am in the middle of my dissertation work and so I am thinking about getting to know families better or if more experience under my belt makes me more comfortable in talking with parents, but this year I got a lot of below the line info at conferences that really makes me feel like I can understand certain students better. Parents were open and shared with me and for the first time I think I felt more comfortable to probe a little and ask questions. I always fear that asking questions about what they do for a job or who cares for the child after school is going too far, yet truly it helps me get a better picture of the lives my students live.

A few interesting tidbits...

• one student lives in a hotel
• one student has a mom that does Mixed Martial Arts fighting
• one student's dad is Santa Claus (well he is like Santa Claus because he drives a delivery truck for a big company and works extra hours during the holiday season to make sure packages are delivered on time)
• one student has a mother that is getting married soon
• 2 students have moms that are currently working on degrees and they study at night and take courses online
• 2 moms are daycare providers/nannies so they can be home with their kids

Knowing these little things about parents helps me understand my kiddos better and certainly helps me feel more connected to my students and their parents. I definitely want to continue making those types of connections with students and their families because it feels good!