A Teacher's Portfolio...

So it's been no secret that I have been actively looking to transfer schools. I live an hour from where I work and I have an 8 month old that I can't wait to see at the end of the day. I needed something closer. Not wanted...needed. A year ago I wouldn't have cared about the drive but now I need to be near my baby. That means interviews. Ugh. Let me tell you that I feel like interviews are so impersonal. You talk to a principal for 30 minutes while they rattle off questions. Do they really get to know you? Probably not. I needed a way for people to know me. I'm a *bright* person. I don't just mean in smarts. I attract attention wherever I go. No joke. I wanted a way for that to transfer into my interview...but how?

I went back to my college days...make a portfolio. I did. Let me tell you...it's beautiful. No really- it's gorgeous. I'm in love with it and it's me. It's a sneak peek into my classroom. It allows the principal to see what my classroom looks like without even being there. (Insert love eye emoji)

What did I start with?

1. My resume. Honestly- I splurged and bought one from etsy. Her name is TheResumeMaker. 

2. Then I included all of the committees or clubs that I've been chair of or been involved with. Of course I put them in chronological order.

3. I put a copy of my certificate. I worked hard for my certificate so you better believe I put that in there.

4. I took pictures of my reading centers and included that. I also gave descriptions of the reading centers.

5. Also, I included my examples of math centers. I had a few pages on this in my portfolio.

6. Parent communication is so important. I had a page just of parent communication. If you're looking for the stuff in the pictures- the newsletter is from learning in wonderland, the app is from Remind 101. I have to look up the small sheet but I use them all the time!!!

7. I included all of my pieces of positive behavior. The little fuzzy ideas came from Seusstastic's Mel D. The rest were created by me.

8. This was a great way for me to show students progress without bringing a ton of stuff with me. The rainbow words are Jen Jones from Hello Litercy, and the rainbow math is from my store.

The data binder is full of all the information of my kids. I the informal reading running record is from Deanna Jump.

I am hopeful that you got some ideas for your portfolio. I posted this on TeachersPayTeachers Right here!!! I posted on a video of this on my instagram.

Let me know if you want a copy of this! 

Veteran's Week

Oh my goodness...I love November. It has such rich information throughout the entire month. It makes me so happy teaching all of these amazing social studies standards throughout the entire month. Let's start from the beginning:

The first week we do our voting and we use a lot of things in relation to voting with the governor and President. In 2016, the voting will be amazing because the kids will be able to vote for someone that they really would want to vote for. Last year I blogged about it...you can check it out here. This year, I am allowing you to download the document used to vote.

Just click here!!

For Veteran's Week, we had an amazing guest speaker come to the school. If Ms. Thompson ever reads this, know that we thank you for serving our country and teaching our kids amazing things! <3 We have the anchor chart up from last year (see below).

 This year we added a few new elements:

1. We have a poppy poem. The kids LOVED this! I found it on Pinterest. If you wrote this then thank you for writing this! 

2. We each wore a [paper] poppy and in order to wear the poppy they had to answer the question: Why do we wear poppies? The answer is to show honor and our thanks to the men and women who served our country.

3. We added a weekly brag tag. This year I have tried really hard to create all these types of brag tags based on the theme for the week. The kids love this because they are able to tell peers that they are experts on the specific topic. 

We read the book Pepper's Purple Heart.

We also created lap books (picture coming soon) from Keeping up with Mrs. Harris. I loved creating these with the kids! The kids learned so much and were able to show it in their lap book. We also read a book by Class of Kinders. 

Hopefully, you can use some of these amazing things next year!

Keep track of our blog so you can check out the Thanksgiving events! 

Off leave

I can't believe it but I start school again on Monday! I'm really excited but bummed because I'll miss my little boy! Stay tuned for bat week next week and all about the bl blends! 

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.