Thematic Units

I'm finally back in the teaching world. I had baby W. He just melts my heart!

Now I feel ready to get back to tell you all about what's been going on. I came back to work on October 12 and I hit the ground running! This year has been a little different because I'm implementing a theme every single week along with a blend each week. I started to create units based on what we are teaching each week and honestly, I feel like my students have made major gains. 

Why do thematic units?

Imagine a kids brain is like a computer. In the old days if you wanted to switch programs you would have to shut the computer down. It was a 10-15 minute project. That would be 10-15 minutes of learning time what we would lose. By the end of the year, it could be an entire weeks of learning that you've lost.

How do you do themes?

I choose a theme based on the book for the week. I will use the week of Halloween as an example for our themed week.

Theme: Witches

Blends/digraph- ch [ I have 1-2 a week]

Math-we were working on matching tens and numbers together so the game had a boiling pot with the base tens, and then a witch for the number. It literally just had the cute fun game with a witch on it.

Writing- we wrote a "how to" book on several things. 1- how to make your own stew [or potion] (if you were a witch, of course). 2- how to put a spell on someone 3-(not a how to but still works) how to be the best witch of them all. They were a lot of fun to write and we enjoyed reading what everyone's stew (or potion) would do to people.

Reading- during reading we read Piggie Pie. Have you read it? It's so cute! That was for our interactive read a loud. Then for shared I wrote a book called something witchy and we read that several times along with identifying the ch on each page. The kids love these little books because they add them to their "paper" Baggie and are able to read from there anytime they want. We then read a poem called Witches. I wrote it and we read it everyday and then we were able to place it on our poetry journal. 

Themed weeks are such a huge hit! At the end of each week, the students get a brag tag that they can add to their necklace that says they are an expert on that topic. All my kids get one because they all worked equally hard to learn about the topic.

October themes:

Bats, spiders, fire safety, witches

November themes:

Voting, Veterans Day, thanksgiving 

Come back monthly to check out our new themes!

Do you do themes in your classroom?What are they and what do they look like?

K-2 Conference Guides

I use to be the worst at conferencing. Honestly... I didn't like it. It was a struggle because I never knew what to do. So instead of actually pulling conferences and guiding students, I would pull small strategy groups or work on something else. I realized that the students were never finding out if the things they were doing were correct. I came up with this conference form and hopefully this will help your writing instruction as much as it helped mine.

 When should you conference?

Honestly… it will be very difficult at first.

I struggle with pulling conferences at first,

but once I get into the groove- then I am good. You should be able to pull 3-5 students PER DAY. That way over a week you will see each student at least once. Are you going to do this as soon as you start the school year? NO! I had to put timers on my phone to help me stay on track. The first week, I got through 8 of my 20 students. The second week was 10, then 14, then finally I got through all 18 in one week. It took me four weeks to get my rhythm. I did keep track of which students I saw and made sure the following week that I targeted the students that I missed.  

 How do you conference?

It is so easy to say “fix this- and this-

and this.” As teachers, we need to get out

of this terrible habit. Okay-so what do you do?

First- Always welcome and say hi to them.

Ask if you can read their story. Don’t just take

their story. This is special moments to them

and it’s not your place to be rude about

their stories.

Second- Give them something to compliment

 them on. Don’t worry there is a page in

the file that has a list of things you can

compliment them on.

Third- Now tell them what they need to work 

on. Only give them one item to fix. The reason

why??-because they can’t remember everything! One thing will be sure to get done. When they come back to you, you will be able to see if they completed the task. Now, you are probably going to see 20 things that they need to work on. If you are OCD like me you can write errors on a sticky note and refer back to that later.

Last- Write it down!!!! My first year I made the 

mistake of never writing it down. I kept repeating 

myself to the kids on everything they needed to work on.

I had no way of monitoring their growth or to

check back to see if they completed the last task.

On the document, you will see that there is a section for compliments. You can keep track of the last compliment that you gave them so you don't repeat yourself. The next line is the teaching point. What did you just teach them to do? It's kind of like a reteach but in writing. The last line is the next step. I always ask them what they are going to be working on next. Then I fill it in. For my students who are strugglers, I will have them sign it because then they feel like they are being held accountable and they HAVE to do what they signed.  I hope this helped you with conferencing notes & guiding the conferences. If you want to purchase the K-2 conference guide you can click :here.

Keep Track of Data

One of the hardest things as a teacher is to keep track of all the data that is thrown your way. You have all of the math tests, science tests, text dependent questions, reading response, writing conferences... what did I miss? I bet I missed like ten different things, but you get the point. One of the things that I must have is a very well organized binder. I want to have all student's information in one place. This is how my data binder was born.

There was several things that I needed to have in my binder. Some of them I did not take pictures of because it had too much important information on it.

1. Way to keep their Reading Running Records information on one page

2. Any informal Reading Running Records

3. Any test scores

4. A way to track their Report Card information (Math, Reading, and Writing)

5. Rainbow Words

6. Rainbow Math

7. Student Information

8. Transportation form (it's a legal document in our county)

9. Any other pertinent data that shouldn't go in the student portfolio.

This is the front cover of the binder. I bought this from 1st Grade is WienerFUL. One of the things that happened this year was that in the state of Florida, we don't use CCSS. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to utilize the entire pack, BUT it's AMAZING!!

Once you open the binder, there is a list of all the students. I bought this from Office Depot and this is how I kept track of all the students. Each student has a tab and it is based on their letter (or number). 

 This is one of my favorite things in the binder. Before I have the students tabs (but after the label sheet). It is a master sheet that keeps ALL of my students information on their Reading Running Records {RRR}. This is every single student in my classroom. 

*How does this work? It's really simple. You place the students name at the top of the page. On the left side, you will see the information from the RRR book, AND what is the mastery level. Then you will fill in each box under the student's name and across from whatever they mastered. As you can see, some of them are in pink. The reason why they are in pink is because they mastered that specific section of the RRR. At the bottom of the page is the levels that the student currently reads at. I write the letter that they read on and then directly underneath the letter is the number that they answered the questions.

This is the individual student tracker page. I mark in this every time I work with the student and their RRR. I like to use this because then I have one for each individual student. As you can see there is a pink box which is for Trimester 1 and then the blue box is for the final trimester. On the left side I highlighted everything that was mastered. That way I don't go back and repeat anything that he already mastered. As you can see this is helpful as well because you can see how much he progressed over the ENTIRE school year. The first two things filled in are the scores and dates when they walked into my classroom. 

***If you want to purchase this document, you can do so in my store for $2.00. It's also a little different with nice borders and prettier font. Editable RRR is perfect for you!***

 This is not my product but I LOVE it! This is from Mrs. Jump's Class. I used this document all the time. There were other things that were very helpful in this file. I used this informal record all of the time. I tried to complete one per day. It became my goal. Once I got really good at tracking the students I was able to bump it up to 2-3 a day. I did this about 2-3 weeks after their latest RRR. I highly recommend using this!

I doubt you will have this, but I wanted to show you how I kept track of the math scores. The  way that we do this is all through the computer. We enter in all of our data to show what questions the students answered incorrectly. Then We print out the form to show what questions were answered incorrectly. Then I am able to highlight the standards that the students did not master. Now when I go back and do a re-teach, I am able to hone in on the specific skill they need help with. I currently use this tracker to keep track of what needs to be retaught. Unfortunately, it's only for first grade and it's LAFS & MAFS from the state of Florida. I have been thinking that I will create a CCSS for K-5. You may have to give me time though...Sorry!!

This is what I use to track what I entered on the student's report card. Each part of the report card is broken up by a specific benchmark which has 2 -3 standards in it.  I use the X or # to mark if the student mastered it or not. I use a bright purple highlighter to mark off which standards were not assessed. At the end of the year, I make a copy of the standards and send it home to the parents. I can show this during conferences and make notes on the page if I need to. I have one for Math, Reading, and Writing.

If you want a copy of this, just leave a comment below so I can email it to you.

The next part is from Jen Jones and it is called Rainbow Words. I love this!!! If you are working with kids on their sight words then you have to get this! I keep the tracker in their binder section and every Monday when I check sight words, I just open to their file for rainbow words and begin testing the students on their words.

 I know this is a super long post, but I appreciate you sticking around and reading all about my data binder! 

Summer Slide

Hello everyone!

I hope your end of the year events are going well. We ended our school year on June 4th and being 33 weeks pregnant- I COULDN'T WAIT! Not only did I end my school year but we also moved into our new house the week before school got out. It's been very crazy over here and now since school is out- I am getting the nursery ready. Although my personal life has so much going on... it doesn't mean my babies don't have work as well. I created a summer packet for my kids and this was awesome because it targeted everything we had learned this year. 

I bought gallon ziplock bags and put all of their little goodies inside of it. 

What was inside the bag?

- Addition & Subtraction Fluency Set

- Week 1

- Week 2

- Week 3

- Week 4

- Week 5

-Week 6

- A parent packet with websites and tips & tricks for reading & math

- A page for passwords

- A pencil

- A list of books to read for summer 

- Dolch sight words

The underlined items are things I found online and are not in the summer slide packet. 

So what is inside the Week's 1-6? Well each front cover is made to be printed one sided only. On the front is a cute little cover where they can write their name. On the back is a reading log. I made every two weeks the same color and then I switched to a different color. Once you open the packet there is different activities to do. For example each week has some type of writing exercise. [Don't mind my ugly nails.]

There are also math activities to do. [Sorry- I can't find out how to rotate it back.]

There are coins, ten frames, tally marks and many other activities based on the first grade curriculum. 

There are also two stories in each packet. One story is a fiction story. There are questions that go along with it. There is also a non fiction story-mainly about animals- and there are of course questions to go along with that.

Each week also has math word problems and if you need more word problems you can stop by my store and purchase word problems based on the months. There are also fill in the blanks for the correct verb tenses.

There are also some character traits pages and each packet has a sight word list. Then the students are to make sentences using the sight words listed above.

Hopefully this was super helpful to you and that you want to help your kids become even more successful! I can't wait to hear your comments below!

Writing Conferences

Two weeks ago, I went to a week long writing conference. It was a Lucy Calkin's conference and I learned so much. One of the main things that I realized, was that when I have to confer with my students, I do not have a starting point. Now... I DO!!! I really wanted to be able to document what my students have done for every conference and I focused on the 4 subjects that our school focuses on. Focus, Organization, Support, and Convention.

This can be used for many other grades but it is geared for 4th grade. You can get this document for $1.00 at my {TeachersNotebook} store. If you need me to change anything (the grade) or anything else, or even add to one of the boxes, then please email me and I can have it to you with your changed documents.

Happy shopping and Happy Pinning.