I moved to a smaller classroom. Time to get creative with the furniture. This is an old microwave cart. My husband helped me make it into a storage and display cabinet on one side and a pocket chart and chart paper holder on the other. The cabinet is on wheels. I like keeping my classroom simple and uncluttered. With this multipurpose cabinet I don’t have to make all these things visible at once.
I found this free activity that I made for students that struggle with speech and language but I think it would be a great activity for a class or small group at the beginning of the year. Click here.
I was just making a poster for using highlighters and thought I’d share. I will colour, or have my students colour, the code they want. For example, blue highlighter for “important / main ideas”, pink highlighter for “ask” and yellow highlighter for “look up / find more info”.
I also made a blank poster for using when doing a research essay. I have my students cut and paste lots of notes. Then, when reading through the notes, students use different colour highlighters to show the different points they will make in their essay. For example an essay about the danger of microwave popcorn could use blue highlighting for points related to the nutrition of microwave popcorn, pink highlighting for the chemicals in microwave popcorn, and yellow highlighting for the chemicals in the packaging of microwave popcorn. Once this highlighting is done in the notes, students can easily write a rough copy, compiling the same colour ideas and putting them into their own words.
At the end of the year I had my middleschool students each reading a novel independently and then writing in a literature journal. I created the literature journals with key words and questions for each chapter. I tried to stay three chapters ahead of each student so that I could record vocabulary words (each child had to read the vocabulary words to me before reading each chapter so I could ensure that key words would be read and understood) and questions that would help each student make connections to his experiences. I used ORCA Current books. They are books that have content for older readers but vocabulary and sentence length for struggling readers. Here is what the ORCA website has to say:
Orca Currents are short high-interest novels with contemporary themes, written expressly for middle-school students reading below grade level.
I also made tea or hot chocolate for the students and let them lounge. Some teachers may think I am soft but I wanted students to see how others enjoy reading. The best comments for me were the complaining words from the kids when it was time to put the books away.
For summer reading ask for “high interest, low vocabulary” books or check out the ORCA books (there are different series like ORCA SPORT books, ORCA ECHOES for younger readers and RAPID READS).
Also for summer, try audiobooks from iTunes or a website like audible.com or your ebooks from the library. Listening to books will build your child’s vocabulary, develop a love of story, and increase his understanding of stories. Make that iPod a learning tool!
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I used this handout,Reforming Sentences, to try and review grammar in a way that demonstrates the purpose of grammar to my students. I have told them that I want their simple sentences to look more like middle schooler sentences and that grammar is the way to achieve better sentences.
This sheet’s instructions can be a little confusing at first, so do some with your students. On the second row, the instruction is “circle the nouns”. They need to circle the nouns of the sentence before then rewrite the sentence with adjectives added. The third row says “box the verb” – they do this to the sentence in the second row then rewrite the sentence with adverbs.
It was fun at the conclusion of this activity to have everyone read aloud his best sentence.
I am just completing 8 sessions of Salvaging Sisterhood with the grade seven girls of our school. What a privilege to have a chance like this to get to know these girls in a time spent away from math and reading. The lit candles were our candles of confidentiality (battery operated) and the box contains affirmation sentences that the girls take with them after each session to help them battle the negative things they may tell themselves.
It has been busy, but well worth the time. Highly recommend this curriculum.
One of the most exciting things to see in my job is watching a young learner start to read and write. Amazing.
Here we counted the phonemes in the word “rabbit”; we count the sounds we hear when we say the word slowly. We put a different block down for each sound. Once a student can do this oral blending (see previous blog entry “Turtle Talk”) we talk about what letter to write to match each sound. I point to each of the separate blocks as we write the letters to help children think about separate sounds. Later I will add things like two letters making one sound (like th, sh, ch). Today was one of those amazing times.
I felt weary today…. then I found this on my desk, just what I needed.
I made a relaxing jar and it really works! I adjusted the contents so that when the jar is shaken it takes approximately 3 minutes to settle. Our kindergarten teacher made one too. It can be used to diffuse a temper or distract a child that is upset. I have students that find it very soothing. Thank you to my colleague that sent me the link.
We were learning about the features of nonfiction text. We put these flip books in our interactive notebook. It was free at the TPT store. Check it out here.
After this, we took iPads to the library, took pictures of different features and the students made a shadow puppet, emailing the final product to me.
Check out this one (see if you can find the one misake):
The Resourceful Resource Teacher 