Picky Picky

Do you remember that was the name of Ramona Quimby's cat? 

Ok, that was totally random. 

Onto the point!

Let's play a game...

what's wrong with this picture? 

don't blurt it out right away, I want everyone to think about it...

think time....think time....think time

Ok. In what Common Core Kindergarten world is a ball an example of a circle? 

Kinders these days develop and very sophisticated understanding of 2-D versus 3-D and therefore they are quite familiar with the term sphere. (well who am I kidding, many of my kiddos point to a sphere and say circle), BUT I certainly don't want to encourage this confusion by posting a picture of a beach ball next to a circle as if the former is an example of the latter. 

Why couldn't they just make it a clock? 

Do you ever wonder who makes educational materials? 

Did a teacher seriously design this? 

My other pet peeves are "teacher" fonts with a and 4. That's not how we teach the kids to write them, so why would I want to display anything in my room with letters and numbers that are different than what we use! 

What is your teachery pet peeve?

Whacky Back to School Dreams

Having weird dreams, ok more like nightmares, about school is pretty common for me as it gets closer to the beginning of a new school year. Only I'm not sure they've ever started this early before. My typical back to school dream goes something like this....

It's the first day of school but for some reason I have not prepared anything and have not gotten the classroom ready at all. I have children who are severely misbehaving and the principal decides to come in for an observation visit.

My. Worst. Nightmare.

But last night's was just odd. More funny actually. I was in my classroom setting up (which I have plans to do with my classroommate (I think I just made that word up) on Thursday and I was hanging photos of all of the suitors from the Bachelorette on the walls. I had a big string and then their photos were hanging from it so I could display all their faces on the wall. Then I went outside and met up with my principal who had some serious summer weight loss and who was telling me about how she got fit. Cardio is out, she said. Rock climbing and barre work are how to get it done. And, eating high protein meals every two hours. Then an anteater crossed our paths as we walked on the playground.

Where does this stuff come from?

When I went back into my classroom, there were three beds lined up in front of the whiteboard instead of desks and Mr. Sneaker was taking a nap in one of them.

Yeah.

Super duper weird, right?

Do you have back to school dreams or nightmares? 

Will you be tuning into the Bachelorette finale tonight? 

classroom ideas you have to see!

Check out this article that shows some great classroom organization ideas! 

My favorites are pictured here: 

Check out the link and tell me which ones are your favorite!

Throwback Thursday

I am loving the idea of Throwback Thursday that I've seen on facebook, Instagram, and some blogs. So instead of writing something new today, I picked a post from the summer before my first year of Kindergarten. I had just decided to go with a beach theme in my classroom and shared some of my ideas for decorating.

Originally posted August 12, 2010

Which Way to the Beach?

Not only do I wish I were at the beach today because it is gray and rainy out in Germany, but I finally decided what my classroom theme will be and the winner is....BEACH THEME! As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I spent a LOT of time yesterday on the internet looking for ideas and making lists of what I need to buy/print/organize/put together next week. I only have three days left in Germany, can you believe that?! I am so ready to hit the ground running and hopefully jet lag will  not interfere. Last time I flew to Cali I was totally fine, it was just the return that killed me for about two weeks.

Back to the beach, I have been trying to decide on a classroom theme for awhile now and I started looking in the direction of the zoo which intermingled a lot with wild animal and safari themes. As I was looking, I came across some really cute decorations that sparked my interest in a beach theme. I did some shopping at Oriental Trading since they have fun, cute decorations that are pretty reasonably priced and I found some good stuff.

I am picturing the balloon lanterns hanging above the tables because I like to assign each table group a color and I already have rainbow colored material bins, so I typically use rainbow colors anyway. I am not sure if the janitor will allow that, but I am going to try! I think the beach ball string lights will go along the top of the whiteboard, but I don't think I will actually use them as lights, just decoration. I will find a place for the big sun, probably in the area where I do whole group lessons. I was thinking of incorporating some ocean/fish stuff as well to go with the beach theme (maybe for attendance and/or bulletin boards). I have to see what materials I find at the teacher store when I get back. I also want to use buckets for supplies like in the picture above, but I will get more beachy buckets instead of metal ones.

That's cute!

It could be cute to use something like this Popsicle for attendance. I usually have laminated names with magnets on the back so the kids can move their names to sign up for their lunch choices. My Kinders won't have lunch at school, but I do want them to be in charge of "signing in" daily when they arrive. If the popsicles were on magnets they could move their pops to indicate they are present. I need to do more thinking on that...still not sure where I want to go with it.

The ideas are still coming together, but I am glad that I at least have some semblance of a plan. Also, the bee folders actually still coordinate quite well because there are always bees as the beach! I am excited to get working on arranging and planning out my room. I know I will need restraint to not start decorating right away, but I need to be a planner first once I see the room and think through everything before I start moving stuff. I will definitely post pictures of the room and the progress once I get started! If you have any ideas or have done the beach thing before...I am all ears!!

Life's a Beach! 

Revisiting Star of the Week

Yesterday I spent some time working on my plan for how I want to do star of the week this year. Last year we decided to have a star and a co-star and go through the rotation twice so that each kiddo got to be the star and co-star once during the year. One of our star responsibilities was to bring a family photo for our family tree, so we wanted to make sure we'd have all the photos up by mid-year instead of some kids having to wait until almost the end of the year. Although star/co-star worked out reasonably well, I once again want to change it up and try something new this year. I'm going to ask all families to send in a family photo at the beginning of the year so that even before we start up our star of the week rotation, I can have all the photos on the family tree. 

Some of the activities I removed from star of the week are: 

star of the week snack that correlates with the letter of the week

bringing in items that start with the letter of the week

an open ended family project

family photo

I decided to ask parents to send in bulk snacks so that I can plan more easily and so that I can kindly request healthy snacks. I always felt horrible when a parent had to buy an entire extra package of something in order to accomodate the number of students, particularly when that last student was absent and an entire package went unopened. So, having non-perishable snacks on hand just cuts down on the waste or the food that gets returned to families. 

I am not really correlating star of the week with our letter of the week because it always sucks for the kids who get X or W and I want star of the week to really be all about the kids and getting to know them. We can reinforce academic skills at other times. 

I downloaded this star of the week package from TPT and it's free, which was awesome. I'm not going to use it as is, but it gave me some great ideas and inspiration. 

This packet includes a letter template so that all of the students can fill in a sentence and draw a picture about what makes the star special. Particularly at the beginning of Kinder, the writing skills just aren't ready for that kind of task, so I spent some time yesterday altering the template. I am going to send a blank template home asking parents to write about what makes their child special and I will write a letter as well. I think the kiddos will really enjoy hearing those letters. I plan to save them for their Kindergarten memory books. Making those adjustments really just involved changing the closing to "love," on the parent letter and to "your teacher," on the teacher letter. Easy peasy.

Then I redid the letter explaining the star of the week tasks since mine are different than the original. I loved the border and the font of the original, so I did an internet search for CK Handprint and was able to download the font. It's really cute. Then I put a text box over the original letter and typed my own.

You can download my letters here. I hope I am not infringing on anything by borrowing the border from the original creator, but her work was free and I'm not selling mine, so I think that's okay. And I'm linking back to her so you should all go check out her stuff on TPT!

Star of the Week Letter-Teacher

Star of the Week Letter-Parent

Star of the Week Description Letter

I've already sent these off to the print shop so all the copies will be ready for me when I go back. Now I need to translate them into Spanish (or attempt to) and find someone who can proofread them to make sure there aren't any errors. I hate sending papers home in Spanish if I'm not certain they are perfect and google translate just doesn't cut it.

I am hopeful that the changes I've made make star of the week even more special for the kiddos and make it more about them than it has been in the past.

Are you working on school stuff or savoring summer break?

Hanging with ODE

Yesterday I drove almost an hour and a half to be a guest at an instructional materials review for English Language Arts. I was pretty nervous about going because I really didn't know what it would be like and I didn't know any of the participants besides the man who invited me. It turned out to be really interesting. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I forgot my wallet, so I didn't have any money to buy lunch and knew it wouldn't be pretty to be driving home later in traffic while also starving. Have you ever heard the word hangry (hungry + angry = hangry)? That definitely would have been me.

Since I was only participating yesterday, I didn't get to see any of the publisher presentations or the actual review process because those are taking place today through Saturday. I would have loved to do that, but the individuals involved in the reviewing process were recruited last year and went through an intense process to apply and get selected. I was invited to attend as a guest by a man who also just completed his doctorate at PSU who is an education specialist for the Oregon Department of Education. When I got there he asked me to give him feedback on the process so they can continue to improve how they go about reviewing curricula in the state of OR.

The basic gist is that publishing companies present to this group of evaluators. The evaluators score the programs based on a set of criteria that has been established by ODE. The programs that meet a certain criteria are then put on a list of recommended instructional materials that address the CCSS.

During the morning while I was there, directions for the day were given and an ELA specialist from ODE gave a presentation about CCSS and how they impact ELA. There are 6 "shifts" that are taking place:

1. Increase reading of informational text
2. text complexity
3. academic vocabulary
4. text-based answers
5. increase writing from sources
6. literacy instruction in all content areas

All else aside, listening to the presentation was really interesting in terms of my own teaching. I wasn't there "to learn" but I was really thinking about my own instruction and am really glad I was able to attend. 

I think the greatest nugget of the day was a statement that really gave me a new perspective on my own research. I have always believed in the importance of helping kids connect what we read with their own lives in order to ensure that everyone has a chance to understand the content. Yet, when the presenter was talking about asking text-based questions, she said, "departing from the text privileges only those that have experience with the topic." That statement really made me think. I don't agree with throwing out questions that ask students to relate the text to themselves, yet CCSS is really pushing to focus on information in the text and to ask questions that require students to actually read and understand the text in order to answer them. The CCSS really emphasizes that students can negotiate the content and think and respond in ways that are not canned. So, staying within the text doesn't mean asking simple recall questions, it means using the information in the text to think, process, and understand at a higher level. And, if we stay within the text, we are ensuring a shared understanding because we are discussing only what we have read together. 

Good stuff. Still have to process it a bit. 

Have you been using the CCSS to teach ELA?

What do you think about text-based comprehension questions?