Let's Play Dress Up!

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Hi Everyone,
Sorry I've been MIA for awhile.  Anne and I have spent a few weeks planning for the beginning of our school year.  We have so many new things planned because we were so inspired by what I learned at the Get Your Teach On conference.  In fact I loved that conference so much that we are going to both go the conference in October because they are coming to Lombard!!!! Yeah! We are absolutely so excited, and this time we are going to the 4th-5th grade sessions.

As I might have mentioned in my last post, Anne and I are very passionate about student engagement, especially in these days of Common Core Standards and high stakes testing.  We want students to enjoy the rigorous lessons we plan for them so they can absorb as much learning as possible.  So, we are stepping outside our comfort zone on the advice of Hope King and the GYTO conference speakers.  To get our students excited about coming to school and anticipate what third grade is all about, Anne and I are going to dress up as Safari explorers!  Before we even enter the school, we are going to tell the students we are going to go exploring and we want them to come with us.  On their desks they will find safari hats, binoculars, and a little globe.  They will need to put these on before we begin our adventure.

I had so much fun looking for this costume.  Boots from Walmart, shorts from the Gap, vest from Charlotte Russe, and hat and accessories from Amazon.

Supplies from Oriental Trading Company and Walmart.

After everyone is in the room and dressed, we are going to explore our room to try and discover what third grade is all about.  We will have special pencils and clip boards on their desks with a recording sheet.  They will need to go around the room and explore what's there!

These recording sheets will be clipped to a clipboard waiting for them on their desks.

When we have observed, and explored, and recorded all that we can, we will do a writing activity called What I Anticipate Third Grade To Be All About.

As Hope King has advised, it is important to hook them in, but then get into the rigors of learning.  Following their first writing activity will be a reading activity using the poem Rules by Karla Kuskin and the book Back To School Rules by Laurie Friedman.  We will discuss poetry devices students recognize, as well as compare and contrast the book and the poem.  These two pieces of literature will guide us into a discussion about leaders, what leaders are and how leaders behave.  Then we will brainstorm Leadership Expectations for our classroom.

We have never started out our school year with such fun and such rigor the minute we've stepped into the classroom.  We super excited and think this just might be our best beginning yet.

Kim and Anne

Get Your Teach On Conference

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Hi Everyone!  Happy July!

I just got back from the Get Your Teach On Conference in San Antonio a few days ago.  I must say it was even more fabulous than I expected.  Hope King and her speakers were very inspiring and had exciting ideas to share with us.  The overall theme of the conference was engagement.  Engaging students is critical if we are going to help them enjoy learning to a point of wanting to be life-long learners.  However, engaging students does not mean just having a bunch of fun, hands-on activities for students to do.  Every single engagement activity shared was connected to the standards we need to be teaching our students.  As we know, some of these standards are boring or difficult to get across to students, and that is where applying engaging activities comes into play.

The two days I spent at this conference were chocked full of ideas.  I learned about transforming the classroom into a totally new environment to excite students about a unit of study, creating songs to sing about difficult reading and math concepts, using costumes and props to grab their attention, playing games, using new websites and applications, and new twists on how to teach close reading and the writing process. Of course I want to try them all, but I know that will be overwhelming.  As Anne and I plan our lessons for the upcoming school year, we will try to incorporate a few of my favorites.  Some ofthem do include stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying something new, but I guess that is the only way to grow and become better.

Here are a few pictures of some activities I would like to try.

Team Building/Stem Activity.  A good activity to do at the beginning of the year or anytime students need to be reminded of how to work together.

Groups of students use gummy candy to make a maze.  Then another group tries to move a gum ball through the maze to the end.  It was so much fun.

Get Your Neon Read On. A cool way to introduce close reading.

Kids make neon glasses to use while they read a nonfiction text.

Students read a nonfiction text and go through the checklist.  Of course, you must spend time teaching them these steps.

Once the students figure out the text structure in Read One, they then highlight each new detail in a different color highlighter.  They should use the key details found in Read One to help them decide which details are important.  Then, for Read Three the student turn out the lights and use a blacklight to make the important details stand out.  They use them to summarize the text and draw conclusions.  

Costumes.  This is definitely an idea that is out of my comfort zone, but I have an idea that Anne and I can do for our beginning of the year kick off to science.  I'll take pictures and post if we have the guts to do it.

If you can see here, Hope King is dressed up like an army soldier because she is teaching use writing lessons from her Writing Boot Camp unit.

Room Transformations.  I'm still brainstorming ways Anne and I can transform our classroom with a unit of study.  I'm thinking about our fairy tale unit...but I don't have any great ideas yet.  This will be another "out of my comfort zone" activity.

This is Hope King's spy lab.  She created this to engage the students in identifying important details and summarizing.  Use the link above to read more.

The above activities show just a drop in the bucket of the cool things I learned at this conference.  I will share more as we incorporate them into our lessons this year.  If you want more detailed information about Hope King and her amazing talents visit her website.  And if you ever have a chance to attend a Get Your Teach On Conference I say go!  It is amazing to see and listen to this very talented young teacher.

Kim

Great Professional Reading Book

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for coming onto our blog!  We really appreciate it.

I have less than one week until I attend the Get Your Teach On conference in San Antonio.  I'm super excited!  In the meantime, I started reading the book Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison.  I'm only on chapter two, but I'm already loving the authors' message about thinking and learning.  My favorite two sentences are, "When there is something important and worthwhile to think about and a reason to think deeply, our students experience the kind of learning that has a lasting impact and powerful influence not only in the short term but also in the long haul.  They not only learn; they learn how to learn."  These sentences are so powerful to me.  I want my students to learn how to learn so they become more independent learners who have the ability of managing their own thinking actions.  This is what Anne and I want for our students--to become life long learners.

I love this book!!!!

From what I have read so far, it is important to these authors that students are actively engaged in their learning and not just passive recipients of knowledge.  This seems to go right along with what I will be learning in San Antonio.  How perfect!

In upcoming chapters the authors share many activities and strategies we can use with our students to help them think about how they are thinking, choose the most effective way of thinking for the task at hand, and make their thinking visible.

Ok, I'm signing off so I can get back to reading!  I will share more soon.

Kim

Get Your Teach On!

Friday, June 16, 2017

Hi Everyone,
I'm getting so excited.  In about a week I'm heading to San Antonio, Texas to the teaching conference called Get Your Teach On!  I cannot wait to meet to fabulous teachers I have been following on Instagram, Facebook, and TeachersPayTeachers.  These girls and guys are going to present many ways to engage students in their learning.  I decided to attend the 2nd/3rd grade session, but in the fall when they are in Chicago I am going to attend the intermediate sessions.

As soon as I get back I will share all the fantastic, challenging activities I have learned.  I know after this conference I will be chomping at the bit to get back to school so I can engage my new students. Hopefully some of these activities will excite you, too.

Until then...

Kim

Friday, March 31, 2017

Good Morning!  We are in the final days of our Spring Break, and we just wanted to take a moment to share a few of the final activities we did with our Amelia Bedelia unit.  The students had such fun reading about Amelia Bedelia and her antics, as well as engaging in the writing activities we planned for them.  Keep in mind, each of the activities met at least one Common Core State Standard.  Anne and I are all about having fun with the standards!

After reading many, many Amelia Bedelia books, the students chose two books to compare and contrast.  We supplied them with a Venn Diagram to complete with a partner.  Then, they used their diagrams to write a compare and contrast paragraph about the books.  Writing this type of essay is still a challenge for even our most advanced students, so we provided them with a frame.  This made the task a bit easier, but they still needed much support from us.  We always tell the students, if you need support and you are challenged then you are learning.  So, this struggle felt great!

There are two pages to this essay.  I've only shown one page.

 On a whim, we decided to throw in a little technology!  To help the students learn about character perspective, as well as get a deeper understanding of homonyms, we had the students create Amelia Bedelia comic strips.  Each pair of students pulled out a homonym from a hat.  They had to think of a situation involving Amelia Bedelia getting confused with their chosen word.  The students were so engaged they did not want to stop for a break.  They worked until the comic strips were finished and printed.  Our students loved this activity so much they chose to write more during Daily Five.

Idioms prove to  difficult for our students to understand and use properly when writing and speaking. Reading Amelia Bedelia books gave them several opportunities to identify this type of figurative language and use context clues to try and determine their meanings.  Anne and I also read aloud several books about idioms to help our students become more familiar with them.  As a fun activity, we had our students write idioms in a sentence and illustrate the literal meanings of them.  They turned out really cute.  Now, whenever we come across some type of figurative language, the kids are always asking if it is an idiom!!!  They are so cute.

This weekend we will be hanging all of these lovely projects in our hallway and on our classroom doors so the parents can see the exciting, but challenging activities we do.  We are so proud of the kids' accomplishments.

Anne and I have uploaded free Amelia Bedelia lesson plans which include the Venn diagram and compare and contrast page in our TeachersPayTeachers store.  We hope you will check it out.  It says it is a cause and effect frame (I just noticed that); it's not it is compare and contrast.  I will fix that soon.

Next time on our blog we plan to share with you the activities we created for  Brave Irene by William Steig and Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.

Until then, happy teaching!

Kim and Anne

More Amelia Bedelia

February 26, 2017

Last week we told you about the character traits slideshow that our more advanced students created. Our more guided group also focused on Amelia Bedelia's character traits, but in a different manner. Here is what they did.

The students read the books Teach Us, Amelia Bedelia, Thank You Amelia Bedelia, and Amelia Bedelia, in a shared reading format, where they recorded and discussed their thoughts while reading. Most of this time was spent with Anne modeling her own thoughts while reading because this is still a struggle for students.

For their project, they created a character trait web in their notebooks. Then, they selected three of Amelia Bedelia's traits and used a notecard to find the best evidence from one of the books to support that trait. We did the first trait together, and then they had to independently find the next two.

The kids also wrote their opinion to the question, 'Would you want to work with Amelia Bedelia?'
To begin we started with a Tug-of War activity from the book, Make Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison to debate our reasons for answering yes to this question or no to the question. Once the students decided on their opinion, they wrote a paragraph on it.  In their paragraph, they needed to begin with a lead, state their opinion and give support with two or more reasons and evidence from the text. After working hard, they had fun making their Amelia Bedelia craft.

Great book!!!

To wrap up our unit on Amelia Bedelia, we will be comparing and contrasting two different books using a Venn Diagram, and then we will write a compare and contrast expository paragraph.

We will share these with you next week.
Kim and Anne

Amelia Bedelia

Friday, February 17, 2017

Once again the heart-warming character, Amelia Bedelia, was a huge hit with our third-grade students this year.  Amelia Bedelia and her stories were the perfect resource in helping our students to analyze a character, determine the meanings of idioms and homonyms, compare and contrast plot events, and write an opinion essay.

In this blog, we will share two of our highly engaging activities with you.

After reading and discussing Amelia Bedelia, Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping, and Come Back, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, we introduced our students to how to analyze a character's traits.  We emphasized the difference between a character's traits and a character's feelings.  Here is a link to a PowToon video that effectively explains this concept.

Our students then read a variety of Amelia Bedelia books during reading workshop.  As they read, the students completed a Character Analysis/Character Trait web created by Irene Fountas and  Gay Su Pinnel.  They were asked to determine one character trait of Amelia Bedelia, as well as write evidence from the story that supports it, for each book read.

Once the students began to know Amelia Bedelia on a deeper level, we asked them to use Comic Life 2 to create a situation where Amelia Bedelia is confusing multiple meaning words.  They had to take the perspective of Amelia Bedelia and the other character(s) involved.  This activity also required the students to understand two or three meanings of a homonym.  The students had a ball!  We could not believe how creative they could be their first time on Comic Life!

The second activity involved students in making a character trait slide show.  They used Google Slides and their character analysis web to demonstrate their understanding of how to identify character traits.  They were so motivated and engaged in this activity that they did not want to stop. They worked for over an hour!

This is just one slide out of 5!

This is one of the first of several slides.

This is an introduction page that includes the students' opinion of Amelia Bedelia.

Next week we will wrap up the Amelia Bedelia unit by writing our opinions to the question, Would you like to work with Amelia Bedelia? We will also complete a Venn diagram and write a compare/contrast paragraph about two of the Amelia Bedelia books we read.

We hope you are experiencing the same unusual spring-like weather we are having here in Lombard, Illinois.  It really is invigorating.

Until next time,
Kim and Anne