My Little Soapbox

I know the title seems like I'm going to go on some annoying rant, but really I just want the world to know that the field of education is filled with lots of "heavy on your heart" things.  We can't change kids' home lives, but we have to find some way to change their outlook on life and education.  As the holidays are being ushered in, I realize how blessed I am with friends, family, and a job (and a great class of kids!).  I can also see who really needs help, who can't focus because of their worries, and who needs me to steer them in the right direction.  I just wish I had more right answers!  I truly believe each child is talented in some way, but that doesn't mean everyone will make it through college...some even through high school.  I just wish I had several pathways I could help lead them down based on their abilities whether its higher education, a career, or just something that makes them happy.  I was lucky enough to have parents and a community to do that for me, and I'm hoping that my students have some of those resources too.

I don't want to be a teacher complaining about all of the changes coming down the pipe, because with a mom as a teacher I know that the field of education is in constant evolution.  I'm actually excited for the new Common Core standards, because of how much it will benefit our college-bound kids.  It is definitely intimidating to teach, but it will mean that they will be wonderful writers and problem solving gurus...I just worry about the kids who will be left behind.  With the new assessments, less and less modifications are going to be allowed for struggling students.  That worries me a lot. On the other hand, I've been listening to NPR lately about amazing turn around schools in Tennessee who don't let high poverty rates become an excuse.  I feel that my county is doing a good job at pushing the kids, but still rewarding them.  I just hope I can make some headway in my classroom, because every kid deserves a chance!

Alright, I'm off my soapbox.  I've just had lots of conflicting emotions lately, but the important thing is that I still enjoy what I do very much ;)  The proof is in the turkeys...see below!

Hamburgers, Lysol, & Cute Faces

I have to say that this post is long overdue...I am constantly coming across things to blog about then I forget them before I can get to the computer!  Anyway, with the holiday season just around the corner, things in my classroom are in full swing.  I can't seem to keep up with the kids or their demand for treats and rewards!

That is one thing that has been bothering me lately.  Part of it is my fault for rewarding them so much, but I often turn my lessons into games for prizes (tickets or snacks) to motivate them and get them involved.  But, I don't like when they start asking for rewards for everything!  I don't remember getting many rewards when I was that age...I remember crying when I made a B due to my own internal motivation!  I am off my soapbox no, because I do have several students who care and those who don't care don't have a good example.  I guess I should be that example ;)

Getting to the hamburgers...we used hamburger writing to start creating paragraphs.  The new Common Core writing assessment demands that students be able to create 3 different kinds of writing (narrative, informative, and persuasive) in a 5-paragraph essay format!  What?  I know it will help them so much in the long run, but it is overwhelming to teach when they can't even write sentences yet.  That's why we decided to have a little fun with it and start small with paragraphs.  I cannot take credit for this idea!  I stole the recipe from my teacher pal, Marissa Summitt, and I stole the template from someone on TeachersPayTeachers.com.  

The Hamburger Method is a visual for the parts of a paragraph.  The top bun is the topic sentence.  The lettuce, tomatoes, and burger are all details.  The bottom bun is the conclusion.  To reinforce this idea, after writing, we made hamburger cookies using oreo halves, nilla wafers, and colored icing!  Yummy!

So, the Lysol reference is because both of my classes entered the Lysol story contest!  We had a great time creating stories about germs...ewww but fun! See pics below.  

Finally, for the cute faces...I am turning into a sucker!  My kiddos do one of two things to me...melt me or light me on fire...haha...it's not as bad as it sounds.  What I mean is that third graders are mischievous but still sweet and innocent.  I get irritated when they yell out or do silly things that make messes or hurt other kid's feelings but when they apologize or look down at the ground while I'm lecturing them, they are just so darn cute!  Grrr...oh well...I guess empathy is pretty important to teaching ;) 

What a Week it Was and Will Be!

So fall is starting to make me fall asleep! The weather is rainy but that doesn't stop all of the major events that have been wearing me out lately.  It's time for a quick recap...

Today were parent conferences and I will say that I enjoy meeting parents and telling them good things about their children.  The other half of that isn't always so good but I lean towards the positive.  I really am blessed with some great students and parents this year.  I only wish I could keep my face from getting so red...granted the heat was newly turned on in my room making it stuffy but who am I kidding?  I'm a red head so I'm meant to be red!

Talking about the heat brings me back to last week and a pretty crazy event...our Halloween Dance!  Most of the third grade was able to host a Halloween Dance including face paint, costume contests, lots of food and music!  It was fun and pretty memorable.  The face paint requests I had were perhaps the most amusing...bald eagles, dead relatives names across the forehead, American flags, "red, green, and blue devil" as some boy described it.  However, the heat that happened before the dance was probably more memorable...with my room full of students staying after school for the dance my AC overheated and started smoking.  The mean teacher that I am didn't believe the kids at first...poor babies!  But, there was no danger or any flames, but it did startle me.  The curse continued as 2 DVDs wouldn't work...spooky!

Following the dance was a fun field trip where I believe the curse was lifted.  The kids behaved really well and no one (including me) got lost in the corn maze we visited.  I did feel my blood pressure spike since we weren't on a real schedule.  The kids handled it better than I did!

Well, there are more events sure to come...stay tuned for details on the dreaded sugar filled Halloween Party and events that follow, which may include my own sugar coma...I'm as bad as the kids!  They really should require that holiday to be on a weekend.  Also, stay tuned for a writing and election unit I'm hoping to share!

 Pumpkin patches are fun!

One of my lovelies walking in the corn ;)

Fabulously Festive Fall Fun!

I am absolutely delighted that my favorite season is upon us!  Fall just matches my hair, my style, my mood, possibly my soul ;)  Even though I feel the pressure to meet all of the state and national standards in education...I just had to incorporate some fall fun into my lessons lately.

I started with a new (and literal) twist on poetry.  I found this lesson a couple of years ago here:  http://www2.crayola.com/lesson-plans/detail/falling-leaves-poetry-spinners-lesson-plan/

I wasn't sure how to implement it until I did a unit on poetry.  We focused mostly on sounds and did some easy acrostic poetry, but I let them write their favorite poem on one of these spinners; which I drew on construction paper beforehand.  I was surprised at how well they were able to cut in a continuous spiral without being confused!  It feels great when something actually goes right!  It might have been a little more educational if I had had them write their own poetry on it; but, that would be a good idea for 4th or 5th graders.  We definitely need to work on writing!

Also, check out www.shelsilverstein.com for some awesome links to Shel's poetry, which is my all time favorite!  We divided up his poems and performed them as reading groups...it was so fun!

Last but not least, here is a pic from our Fall Carnival.  We had a night full of western fun and the kids surprisingly loved the corn hole that I brought from home.  Corn hole is a fun and simple game that the middle schoolers (and middle aged men) get seriously competitive about.  I loved the view of the sun setting and the fresh air that night.  Stay tuned for more posts after my fall break!  I am hoping to upload a matrix containing a review of all of my favorite picture books...coming soon!

In the Mind of a Child...

Having the mindset of a child simply means to be curious, easily excited, and a little strange.  I feel like one of the main reasons I became a teacher is because I have the mind of a child!  Hopefully I am a little wiser, but who really knows?

The reason I was thinking of a curious mind is because I, along with my students, have been very curious and excited in these weeks leading up to fall break.  We were thrilled to get a Promethean Board then a laptop!

Here is one of the first accessories I bought for my new technology.   It happened to be the cutest and cheapest mouse at Walmart!

This little USB lamp makes me smile because one of my students said it reminded them of the lamp from Pixar!!

 

I tried to harness some of their curiosity by making main idea tables with the supporting details as legs. I got the template from www.brainpopjr.com.

So we also worked on identifying nouns by cutting them out of newspapers and one kid brought me this!  I had done such a good job at cutting out all of the stories about murder and mayhem, but didn't notice this little gem.  Hahaha...the mind of a child probably inspired this cartoon ;)

So Much to Blog About...So Little Time

The last week and a half have been truly blog-worthy in my classroom, but I have a feeling that any elementary classroom around 7 week itch time (a.k.a. approaching the end of the first grading period) is pretty exciting.  Lately there have been several times of trial (large and small) for the kids in my class, but they are handling it well.  They were also on their best behavior for my first observation...though with it being 8:30 on a rainy Monday, they were too quiet for an interactive lesson!  Oh well, I got what I asked for ;) and I am bringing them popcorn tomorrow as a treat.

The lesson that I have learned from them recently is that children are much more resilient than adults.  Whatever personal tragedy or illness strikes them, they are somehow able to bounce back.  It must be in our DNA to block certain traumas to survive childhood.  That sounds harsh and I, by no means, am saying that children lack a sense of morality; because even though most are resilient, they are still sensitive and caring.  I just feel that they take bad news with a sense of curiosity.  They want to solve the problem instead of just complaining about it.  I can learn a lot from them! I will say that kids can also say some of the most thoughtless things from that sense of wonder, but you can't blame them.

Enough with the inward reflection time and on to the fun stuff!  I'm not sure how wise my hat lesson was, considering lice, but given the amount of fun involved and the lice-prevention spray you can buy, I think the risk was worth it.  I used hats to teach the types of sentences!  First, I acted it out for them then let them pick which hat went with each sentence that they read.  See photos below ;)

 The detective hat represented Interrogative Sentences...the kids got a kick out of how I went around pounding my fists on their desks and asking questions...I got a little carried away ;)

The gardening/southern lady hat represented Declarative Sentences, so I went around saying "Well, I declare..." and spouting off silly statements like a chatty Cathy.

This was my favorite because wearing a crown just feels so good.  The crown obviously represented an Exclamatory Sentence because I was an excited beauty pageant winner!

I think the kids liked the Imperative Sentences the most because I was a bossy coach and when it was their turn they loved it; however, I did not let them use my whistle...haha...germs!  (I was already risking my hats with lice).  Anywho, we had a really fun time!

A Confession & An Obsession

I guess I'll start with the confession...more like confessions.  I'm a little manic about crafts and projects so I spent all of last weekend making wreaths...the good thing is that it was quite fun and I only suffered a few minor glue gun burns (which doesn't compare to the 2 scars and power outage I caused with my last glue gun!).  This little problem is just a facet of my personality.  I have lots of energy then I crash...or I have lots of patience then I lose it suddenly!  This leads me to my other confession...I have been losing patience with my students.  And, I learned when I first starting teaching not pray for patience because God will send you lots of things to try that patience.  It's better to pray for mercy.

I thought I could cure my frustrations by spending 3 days going over the skill of "following directions" because I've been so frustrated!  The results were pretty humorous...we did this activity sheet that said to read all of the directions before beginning but most of them (literally 18 out of 19) read them one at a time and embarrassed themselves.  Here is a brief account of the worksheet...

1. Write your name on your paper.
2. Stand up and say "Moo!"
3. Draw a star on the back of this paper.
4. Clap 3 times.
5. Only do direction #1.

The funny thing is that this activity (in which I tricked them) has caused them to ask even more questions so I finally came to the conclusion that my students are wonderful, cute, smart kids but they are still kids...with very little attention spans.  More importantly, I learned that my attention span isn't much better than a kid's and that I still ask a million questions just like they do.  Plus, I don't want the kids to be afraid to ask questions because that's what learning is all about!

The only known solution I have come up with to save my sanity is to use my digital timer! I have them do as much work as they can on their own for the first 15 minutes in the morning and force them to skip and circle questions that they don't understand.  When the timer goes off they can ask for help...this does end up in line of students but it goes faster because they've circled just the ones they have questions about.   Stay tuned for more updates as this is definitely not a perfected procedure!  I just need to be more patient...which is so hard for me and pretty much everyone.

I guess my obsessions are intertwined with my confessions, but I will go ahead and tell what my original obsession was going to be in this post.  I love office supplies and I go nuts when I find something new and innovative.  I found these "backpack file folders" at Target that are just too cool.  I doubted my $3 investment until I opened them and fell in love.  They are files that go in your (or more likely a child's) backpack to organize your papers without the need of a binder.  The tabs face up so you can see them...see picture below.  Also see the pic of my classroom wreath ;)  I love what I do!