A Holiday Challenge

Krista Wallden over at Creative Clips gave us all a challenge today.

I am still working on my letters. I bought the person behind me at McDonalds their lunch today and I have my post it notes placed in special places I need to think about the free choice. Thanks Krista for doing this. It is a great idea. 

Here is my freebie over at tpt:

.http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Snow-Compound-Words-A-FREEBIE-1579908

125 Products!

I am celebrating posting 125 products on tpt. It has been so much fun creating these products. I think part of the "greatness" of tpt is sharing...so here is another freebie for all of you!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sort-ai-and-ay-Words-A-FREEBIE-1568817

Just A Quick Freebie

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Addition-Holiday-Trees-1565114

Classrooms, Classrooms, Classrooms

Oh dear, posting on this blog is a bit difficult for me, but I will conquer it.  Student teaching is coming to an end and I have seen really great things in many classrooms. I did take a lot of pictures and I want to share just a little bit of an ABC Center in Ms. Secrest's classroom:

Every activity at the center had an I CAN statement. I CAN statements are focusing the learning so that the children know what they are learning.  I love them.

All the doors are decorated in the early grades in the schools I am working in and one really caught my eye.

I want to share a quick Thanksgiving product that you might like:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Open-and-Closed-Syllable-Turkeys-1513350

I will be back soon!

September Learnings

September flew by! wow, I can't believe it is over. It is a difficult month for student teachers. They are not used to the hours and hours that it takes to get a classroom up and running, but they learn very quickly. The student teachers that i am working with this semester are in grades k to 4. Lucky me, I get to visit the classrooms and learn from so many children, cooperating teachers and student teachers.
The beginning of the each school year starts with assessments. Assessments are the solid foundation on which we build all of our instruction. The teachers gave many assessments (sometimes I think too many - would it be better to study and go deeper into a few really helpful ones than spend too much teaching time giving more and more assessments) but they learned so much about where to start teaching and the need to differentiate their instruction. When I found this picture on pinterest I added a pen and gave one to each student teacher,

next, we had our first seminar and I wanted to make some fall baskets full of teacher goodies and try to make some fall cupcakes...well I tried!

Now, the student teachers (under the close modeling and guidance of their Cooperating Teachers) have begun to take over some subjects and they are doing so well. Here is a student teachers who is working with first graders on the beginning reading process -a daunting experience. This was delightful to watch!

                                                                                                                                                                                                             Another cooperating teacher shared her work with writing I CAN and WE CAN statements which are posted each day in the classroom. So important that the new teachers learn who to put goals and objectives in kid friendly terms!

All of the teachers are learning to begin their lessons with the standard in kid friendly terms and to review what they have learned at the end of the lesson with the same kid friendly standard.

A special thank- you to a great K teacher, Ms. Diaz, for sharing these with us.






I am so thrilled to see this cut up sentence work in the halls. Being a Reading Recovery Teacher Leader, I value this work so much and think it is critical to developing the concepts of print.

I love being with children and the new to profession teachers. It is so exciting to see the children grow and so exciting to see the teachers grow!!!
I will be back soon to share our journey with you!

Staff Development

I finally did get to work with a district on their opening staff development days on Comprehension. It was so much fun! We read lots and lots of Cinderella Books and then compared and contrasted the characters and made inferences about them. There are over 400 versions of Cinderella --well that is what I read--but we worked with about 10 of them. Here is some of the character analysis work that we did.

and here is some more

One important thing I learned from this work is...if you want to give your state test scores a bump, get everyone working on character analysis beginning with their read aloud work in kinder. If the children hear the same language and the same prompts surrounding character development as they are growing as readers, they will understanding the process and be able to answer all those types of questions on the state tests!

My student teachers met their classroom teachers and their new students last Friday. This is a really exciting time! It is an awesome experience to watch a student turn into a teacher right before my eyes.

Have a great new school year!

Comprehension

It is that time of year again. I am currently finishing up a staff development presentation on Comprehension - Going Deeper. There is a spotlight on comprehension right now - as there should be! I have spent lots of time working with teachers on beginning reading and I think we have all done a great job on teaching strategies for getting into words and using a constructionist viewpoint on following the child on his path of learning to read and now we need to go back (as we so often do in education) with a stronger emphasis on understanding. Children need more conversations with others about the text, and interactions with the text and reflections on their readings. As we start our new year you may be interested in some of these books:
I just finished a couple of tpt products to help children with retelling.




http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Retelling-a-Story-With-Jabber-the-Reteller-1370729
graphic from Scrappin Doodle