Five for Friday 11-28

It's been a while since I've linked up with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday link-up.

 

 

Connecting with the Community with Persuasive Writing

Last year, one of my students' choices for opinion writing was to persuade me to visit a business in our town.  Several students chose this, and they did a great job.  This year I decided to make this a bigger writing task for all students.  As an added incentive, I told the students that I would deliver their paragraphs to the businesses, and they would likely display them.  At a conference last summer, one person talked about the importance of students writing for more than just an audience of one (the teacher).  It made complete sense.  The other ELA teacher and I finally finished up this project, and delivered over 100 student essays to over 25 businesses!  I live in the small town where I teach, and was excited today to see them already displayed in some places.

We gave them a green letter to hang with the paragraphs to explain them.  I'm excited to make this an annual project, and am already trying to think of another project that will allow students to feel "published".

  

No Crowds on Black Friday at the Park!

No Black Friday shopping for me!  Instead, my kids and I took the dog for a nice walk around Evergreen Lake at the wonderful Metropark that is just a few miles from our home.  We didn't come across one other person on our 1.5 mile loop around the lake!

  

Decoding Fun with Nonsense Words

 If you've read my others posts, you'll know that my Friday is a "center" type day.  I've loved this opportunity to be able to pull groups of students for a variety of purposes.  I'm constantly adding to my "Choose Your Challenge" board of choices for the students.  I finally got something for our decoding choice.  I made a series of beginning and ending sound sticks that students can put together to make nonsense words (with an occasional real word).  I adapted this from a flip book I made for my own children growing up.  I put great care into making sure that no inappropriate words can be made with the placement of any two sticks!

 

 

Unlocking Cell Phones!

Cell phones for kids: I caved in and got my daughter a phone when she entered 7th grade.  I always said she'd get one when she needed it, and cross country every day after school seemed like the need was finally here.  I put her on a Virgin Mobile plan.  It is a great deal!  If you set up auto payments, it is $30 a month for unlimited text and data.  Of course the lower end Smartphone I got her wasn't what she wanted, and I again caved and upgraded her to an iPhone when she broke her arm the following summer.  Now my son is getting to that age.  The downside of Virgin Mobile's cheap monthly plan is that you pay A LOT for the phone (price of not having a contract).  Today I researched unlocking phones.  We have a couple of other iPhones around the house that are tied to Verizon, and have been keeping them as back-ups.  Well, today I paid $45 to have it unlocked so that I can use it with Virgin Mobile.  Hopefully this works, it will save me a lot of money.  Here's the site I used, in case anyone wants to check it out.  *I'm not being compensated by anyone for anything in this post!

 

Bloglovin' Feed - A Wonderful Start to My Day!

I love Thanksgiving, but this year was a bit rough for me.  Nothing big, but had to deal with some family drama that was for nothing.  One of them involves use of FB.  I love how FB allows me to keep in touch with family and friends near and far.  However, people use Facebook in very annoying ways.  I can overlook annoying, but there's something I can't overlook.  People read something shocking on FB, and share without thinking or fact checking.  Fake stories are made up with an agenda to attack some group (religious, political, or other).  This propaganda needs to be stopped, not passed along.  It divides us as a people, and isn't productive in anyway.

What I've loved about my entrance in the blogging world recently is that everything I've read HAS been productive or positive.  Thank you to all the bloggers that I follow that give me something to read each day that is worth my time and inspiring!  

MMI - Interactive Book Browsing

I'm linking up yet again with Tara, over at Fourth Grade Frolics, for her great linky called Monday Made It.

 

Before I begin, I'll add that I made new MMI buttons to match my blog.  Super happy with the way they turned out.  It was a great opportunity for me to play around more with the instant alpha tool in Pages.

 

For those of you that have read my previous posts, it might seem like I'm mentioning my Readbox a bit too much.  If you haven't read them, my last post was about teaching students to be "Active Readers" to launch my book group format.  You can check it out here.  Well, I think this will be my last post about it.  What I'm sharing in this post is the way I figured out how to let my students browse the available books for them to read in small groups.  

Last year I put a lot of effort into a book that the students could look through.  There was A LOT of time involved because I wanted to level the books, provide a summary, give AR point value, and direct them to the correct bin.  The biggest problem with this was adding a new novel set...  Now, students can use an interactive Keynote presentation.  Adding a new novel is as simple as adding a new slide to the presentation.

This is the first slide, and where they begin.  I did not come up with these color choices!  They click on whatever color marks their reading range and they go to the slide that shows all books for that level.

 

Obviously, one more book and I'm out of room for this level.  Then, when they see a book they are interested in, they touch it to go to a slide with more information.

 

The book slides have all of the information that I had in my book from last year.  The other nice option I took advantage of was saving as a PDF and emailing to my students.  In a PDF, the buttons are all clickable.  So students can browse the collection from anywhere.  Of course it looks nicer on the iPad screen.  I'd like to thank my teaching partner Shane for helping me figure out this great way to organize my novel sets.  If you haven't yet checked out his blog, head on over to Math is FUNdamental and see what he's been up to.

On Tuesday my husband turns 50!  Yesterday I had a party for him.  It was a huge success, and he had a wonderful time.  We had 32 people and a ridiculous amount of food.  I'm grateful to my amazing sister and sister-in-law who helped in so many ways.  I tried my best to snap photos, but few came out well at all:(

 

I really wanted a nice picture of me (on left), my dad, and my sister.  My dad just kept making a stupid smile.  Oh well.

 

Here's a great picture of my handsome husband (on the right), his older brother (who doesn't look happy about this picture), and his 2 nephews in the middle.  My husband is 9 years older than me, and he is the baby in the family.  Therefore, most of his nieces and nephews are very close to my age and insist on calling me Aunt Mary.

As usual, I've made many more new things for my classroom.  But I haven't had the time to polish them and get them TpT ready.  As my phone cha-chinged earlier today (notifying me of a TpT sale) my son began strategizing for me.  He told me that I should bundle some of my products.  I let him know that I do have a few bundles, but he got me thinking.  Lately, a few of my language products have been doing well, and I've had some people buying several different products.  So, I decided to make a bundle of my most popular products.

My new ELA bundle

At least I got a chance to use some of my newly purchased Ashley Hughes clip art and backgrounds! You can check out this product in my TpT store.  My son just snuck up on me and saw I was creating a bundle and said, "I'm proud of you mom."  He's so funny.

Have a great week everyone!

No Prep Book Groups

After I reread my post, and looked at the title, I am adding in this disclaimer.  There is A LOT of prep work that went into creating everything in this post.  The "no prep" refers to allowing students to continue reading and engaging in book groups for the remainder of the year with no further work on my part:)

I've always loved the idea of literature groups with students.  What fun is seeing a movie by yourself?  Same goes with books!  Everything's better when you can share the experience with another.  

However, I've never been a fan of overstructured literature circles.  Giving everyone a "job" takes away from the authenticity of the experience, and doesn't promote students to contribute in natural ways.  Adult book clubs don't assign "roles", so why should we?  Plus, it's a lot more work on the teachers part!  Instead, I teach the students to be "active readers".  This process allows students to mark and share parts of the text that they reacted to while reading.

 

I've used Post-Its, somewhat, for the last few years since reading the book Strategies That Work.  Since becoming a blog reader this past summer, I've seen many others using Post-Its in a similar way to what I've been doing.  This year I decided to refine this even more.

Students are given a Post-It that has these marks on them for reference, and are encouraged to keep a small supply of Post-Its in the front or back of their text.

After we finished Unit 1 of our Wonder series, we read The Lemonade War together as a class.  We would read a chapter a day in class, and they would read a chapter for homework.  As I read the in-class chapters aloud, I would stop and grab a Post-It and make a mark and stick in my book.  Students would see me do this, grab their own Post-It, and do the same.  When I'd show them my mark, they would get excited if they used the same mark as me, which most often did.

** It is important to also tell them that your suggested marks are not the only marks they can use, but just common ones.  At one point in my reading aloud, I stopped to make a mark and told the students that my mark was not one that was listed.  Students started marking too, and one said out loud, "Don't do it!" (referring to the character in the book).  I quickly showed the class what I had written, and it was those EXACT SAME WORDS.  Cool moment for all of us.

Then for homework, they would be encouraged to mark about 3 parts in the chapter they reacted to.  Then the following day, I would have them use their marks to guide a discussion in small groups.   Like with me, students would get excited to see that they often times ended up making the same marks in the same spots!

Once we finished the novel, my Readbox was opened for business.  The students were so excited to finally be able to use this.  My Readbox houses novels in sets of 4.  I've created an interactive Keynote on my iPad that sits on top for students to use in selecting novels at their reading level.  I also keep a supply of Post-Its on top of my Readbox.  My anchor chart was also moved above my Readbox.

It has been 2 weeks since I opened my Readbox, and I am seeing great results.  Students are enjoying reading, reading MORE, and doing better on AR quizzes for the books they are reading in groups.

My next project is to create a place where students can review Readbox books they've read, so that others can use these reviews to also help select novels.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!  I'm off to finish getting my house ready for 30-40 people tonight to celebrate my husband's big 5-0!

Thursday - Focus on Writing

First, all of my previous writing products are half off, and I've added new writing items for free!  I'm pleased, but still amazed, that my venture into TpT earlier this year, and blogging this summer, has been so successful.  There is no better feeling than knowing that others are valuing your hard work and reading your words.  I just gained my 75th follower on TpT, and my number of blog readers is growing too.  I'm joining other bloggers in their policy of making all newly added products 1/2 off, or free, for the first few days for followers.  I've enjoyed this myself for the TpT sellers I follow!

Daily Writing

As I've mentioned before, we do 10 minutes of writing MOST mornings.  I try to keep these writing pieces short and enjoyable, and so far the students have been seeming to enjoy them.  Our Wonders series discusses the 6 traits during the Smart Start, and so I've been integrating this more visibly this year.  Of course the 6 traits are something we all teach, but I liked explicitly teaching these traits.  They are displayed in my classroom, students have mini posters in their writing spirals, and each day we focus on one trait during our 10 minute writing.  As a thanks to my readers, I'm making my TpT product 1/2 off for the next few days.  It includes a 17-slide teaching presentation, posters for hanging, mini posters for students, and writing spiral sticker label template.

 

See my "Tuesday" post to see a sample morning prompt and a pretty hilarious student sample. I've just added a FREE editable product on TpT that uses my writing theme to display morning writing prompts.  Enjoy, and please leave some feedback and let me know what you think!

Free on TpT

I also created posters for the three main 4th grade writing types (plus one for linking words and phrases) and just uploaded the mini-posters version for the students to refer to (these are put into the back of their writing spirals).  For my own room, I uploaded these to Vistaprint and used a Groupon to get these printed onto 18x24 posters to hang in my classroom (see pic in "My Classroom" page).  I've just put the posters, which are also FREE, into TpT.  

Free on TpT

 In order to hang, they would have to be the large size.  I'm sharing these through my Vistaprint account, in case anyone is interested, at the bottom of this post.  I do not get any commission from doing this, just thought it was neat that I could share this way.  If you check often, and wait for this item to be 50% off, they could be as cheap at $6 per poster.

NOW...for Thursday.  I realize that I need to shorten my posts! This will be quick.

We don't do 10 minute writing on Thursday, since we will focus more in depth on writing.  We do spend part of this day with some housekeeping items: AR on anthology story read for homework, partner/small group work with the back side of our ELA sheet (see "Monday" post), and hopefully eventually read the paired selection in the anthology text.

The rest of the time will be spent working on writing a more structured writing piece that is either informative, narrative, or opinion.  I'll be honest, so far we haven't gotten far with this.  We are working on an opinion piece that will hopefully be done next week.  If it comes out like the vision in my head (I have some pretty grand visions) I'll be sure to give more details in a later post.

So, that's all for now, hope everyone has a great weekend!

My Vistaprint Items:

Medium Posters - Horizontal by Vistaprint

Medium Posters by Vistaprint

 

Medium Posters by Vistaprint

Medium Posters by Vistaprint

MMI - 4th grade literacy centers

I've been posting about my weekly ELA plan using Wonders, and yesterday just finished my Wednesday routine description.  So I'm kind of getting ahead here, but everything I've made recently has been part of my Friday routine.  I've decided to make Friday a "Flex" day.  This means that we have a center-type day.  I'm sure there will be plenty of days where students have a must-do list, but the idea is for them to use this day to practice skills they need, while I work with small groups, or do guided reading.  It's a FLEX day, whatever we need is what we'll do.

Tara, over at Fourth Grade Frolics, has a great linky called Monday Made It.  When I first started blogging this summer, this linky gave me wonderful ideas and inspiration for my own classroom.  My Readbox and Quote board (see pics on "My Classroom" page) came from stalking other blogs that linked up on this site.  In the summer, Tara did this weekly, but now it's once a month.  That's the reason I'm jumping ahead a bit to Friday.  I do plan to elaborate more later with a "Friday" post.

 

So, even though I made my "Choose Your Challenge" board before school started, we just added our categories and items and started our Flex Friday recently.  The students love it, and did a great job of being on task.  

 

We are starting small, with only a few options.  But this will obviously grow.  The stars are for tougher challenges, so that our board suits all needs.  These items are laminated so that we can use dry-erase to change the options easily.  The categories will stay.  My favorite item (and the students) to share are the partner plays I learned about from another blog.  90 different partner plays, grouped by themes, that are quick 1 page, front and back, for students to use to practice fluency.

by Deb Hansen

This really is made-it 2 and 3, but I also made some center items for my Friday Flex.  They align to two skills we've covered, compound sentences and text features.

Please see my "Wednesday" blog post to learn more about our compound sentences.

My product on TpT

Here is a picture of a group of students working with the different sets last Friday:

The other center is for text structures.  Even though most students do well with this, after I gave the assessment, I let certain students know that they should fit this matching activity into their Flex time.

My product on TpT

Here is a picture of a student using these matching cards.  They are self-checking, so she is checking to make sure that each set (feature name, description, picture) has the same letter on the back when she flips them over.

So that's it for now.  Have a great Monday, I'm looking forward to checking out everyone's Monday Made-It links later today!

Wednesday - Focus on Language

Before I begin on my Wednesday routine, I have to get something off my chest....

I started on TpT earlier this year, and felt strange about it.  This summer I started this blog, and felt weird about it.  I tried to be a closet TpTer and Blogger, but word got out.  While I realize that there is nothing wrong with either of these things, it's easier to put yourself out there when you DON'T know your audience.  Just recently, I discovered that teachers from the other two primary schools in our district were purchasing things from my store.  I reached out to let them know that I would be happy to share with my district colleagues, and all were gracious to say that they knew I worked hard and were happy to pay for my items.  I have very mixed emotions on this.  I'd love for anyone to share similar feelings to mine, so I know I'm not alone.  But really, I guess I just needed to say it.  So, I know my district colleagues are aware of my store, but if any of them are also following this blog, I just want to say "Thanks!".  And not for their purchases, but for their support.  I'm very lucky to work where I do!

Now, on to my Wednesday routine:

Instead of breaking up language into 5-10 minute per day fragments, which Wonders suggests, we just give it a day.  Well, minus our 10-minute writing and any finish-up work from our Tuesday skill.  This pretty much is like Tuesday's reading focus.  If it's a new skill, which it will be most of the time, we add a page to our DIY Resource Book (aka Interactive Notebook).  But first, I try to find some kind of springboard to lead into the lesson, or other activity.  

For last Tuesday, we learned about compound sentences.  I started by giving them 14 simple sentences that they had to pair up by related topic in a small group.  Then we discussed being able to combine them with a special word (later to be named conjunction).  I wrote FANBOYS on the board and wrote out the conjunction for each.  We put in the easy ones to start, and then I guided them through the tougher ones.  I wrote "because" on the board next to "for" and we discussed it being an old-fashioned word.  I also use a British accent when I read a sentence that uses "for".  Not sure why I relate British accents to old-fashioned words, but I do, and it helps the students.  Finally, we add the commas.  I like these separate because many students put these in AFTER the conjunction.  I try to stress that they belong where the pause goes when we combine.

 

Then we make our DIY page.  This allows for more practice opportunities.  

I feel that spending a quality day (or most of a day) teaching and practicing a language skill is a much better practice than super short fragmented parts.

My Wednesday night's homework is to read the weekly selection from the anthology book.  And no, we won't reread this in class...GASP!  I love the close reads in the anthology and workshop for in class reading practice (although we admittedly haven't done much of these yet with our slow speed start), but I can't justify spending as much time as would be needed reading aloud this story each week.  Especially since I tend to spend way too much time getting off track and going in depth when we read together.  

So next up is Thursday.  We do a little with the homework story, but then focus more in depth on writing.  Hope you come back for Thursday's post, and please leave some feedback on your thoughts about my "daily" posts.  This blog is a two way street.  I'm not here to suggest that what I do is best for all, I want to hear how others are making Wonders fit into their weeks.

In closing, my kids and I went to the local corn maze today.  It was a beautiful day.  I'm happy that I was able to get a decent photo of us (Kate - this was taken so that I can give you a family fall pic for our school's board!).

 

This year's maze's theme is "Frozen".  There are 4 different mazes that would total over 6 miles if you walked them all.  It is less than two miles from my house, and I'm ASHAMED to admit that this was my first time there, but not my last!

 

Have a wonderful week everyone!