Wow, it's already August! We cannot believe the start of school is right around the corner. We have spent the past week beginning to get our classrooms ready for the kids. It is amazing to watch each section of the classroom get transformed into an inviting, exciting, learning area. Don't get us wrong, it's also overwhelming in the process. Below are pictures of Kim's completed math, science and social studies areas. The reading and writing areas are still under major construction. Those two areas of the classroom always take the longest to organize so she saves them until last :).
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| Looks strange without student work! |
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| Their writing about what a scientist does will hang from the wire. |
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| Kim may change the sign to say Where are you on the map? She hasn't decided yet. |
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| This takes days to set up! Still thinking about what will go on the bulletin board. |
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| Hopefully the custodians will hang Kim's new bulletin board soon. |
We did find a fun website for students to visit. It is filled with math, word, and reading activities for grades K-5. The website is called RoomRecess. Check it out!
Thursday, August 1st, we were part of a K-2 assessment committee. With several kindergarten and first grade teachers from neighboring districts, we wrote assessments, rubrics, "I can" statements, and lesson activities that target the Common Core State Standard Text Types and Purposes. At the second grade level, this standard involves writing an opinion and supporting it with evidence from a text, as well as proving the evidence supports the opinion. As we were discussing our very challenging assessment for our second graders, the administrator facilitating our group asked us how we were going to teach our students this skill. We said, "Through a lot of modeling." We worry about modeling too much because the the common core, and how we are evaluated, focuses on students being actively engaged for most of the lesson. While we agree with this, we also truly believe we need to make our thinking transparent to our students. We need to show them how to do the concepts we are trying to teach them. So we were thrilled to come across this article yesterday. It is titled "The Think-Aloud Strategy: An Oldie But Goodie" by Elena Aguilar. As much as we both try to keep up with the research and implement new ideas and strategies into our classroom, it is nice to know our tried and true strategies still have an important place in our teaching.
We wrote last week that we were going to try a new "Getting To Know You" activity by having the kids make "Getting To Know You" necklaces. We are also going to try another new ice breaker. We are going to have our students interview each other and have them make iMovies of the interviews to share with the class. The idea came from an article titled, "10 Techy Icebreakers for the 21st Century Teacher". We decided to use iMovie, but Animoto is fun. Kim used it a little bit in her ESL Technology course last summer.
We hope these articles and the website are useful to you. Good luck transforming your classrooms into magical places for kids to learn. Have fun creating and finding lessons that will spark imagination and enthusiasm in your students, and take time to relax a little more...the first day of school is almost here!
Kim and Anne
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