The Art of Teaching: The What, How, and When

Teaching is an art! This blog post contains a hodgepodge of ideas that explore the what, how, and when of teaching. When should we teach skills to those who struggle? How can we best deliver instruction? and What do we do to maintain control? Be sure and read to the bottom of this post to grab your free file!

Interventions
Interventions are essential. One of the first skills we want our kids to master is to recognize the letters of the alphabet. Here is a easy way to tackle that skill!

Using the Alphabet Book:

• Test all of the children on their letters--capital and lower case. If they know between 20-26 of the capital and 20-26 of the lower case, don't worry. They will learn the rest just by participating in classroom activities. They do not need to make a book!
• The children who know none, or very few of the letters, need to just spend time in school.  We often try to intervene on kids before they are ready! Give these kids some time!
• The "other" children are the ones to begin with! They are the ones that are ready to learn them.
• For those children, photocopy, cut, and staple the My ABC Book.
• Invite the children to cut apart the pictures and put them in a baggie.

 

Once you get to here, now you are ready to use them.
Have the children glue the pictures in to match the letters that they already know.
Add in 3 more that they don’t know.
Each day have them “read” the book to you by naming the letter and the picture.
Skip the pages that do not have a picture. As the children learn the ones you added, add more!
They will know all the letters before you know it!

 

All of the pages and directions are in this free file. You can snag it at the bottom of this blog post.

 

Wonderful World of Words

The framework used in the workshop model of teaching as essential as the content. Here is the language and steps used in that model. Connect: “Remember yesterday when we…” First remind the children of what you did yesterday.

Teach: “Today I am going to show you how….” Teach the new concept.

Active Engagement: “Now it’s your turn.” The kids practice.

Link: “Remember today and every day good readers…” Remind them of the standard you taught.

 

This anchor chart would be 7 different mini lessons to teach reading strategies.  At the end of the unit, we made these cute little tool boxes. The kids made their own set of reading tools.  The boys love these. This fun activity is from Building Foundations. Want to read more about the workshop model of teaching? You can find it in this blog post. The blog post also includes video clips!

Making the Most of Your Math Small Group

How do you organize your math time? We start our lessons with the new learning and a time to practice. Then, we move to centers. Once our kids are working independently, we begin to pull small groups.  I plan my small groups so that I can use the same lesson with all of the children with only little tweaks to differentiate.  Here is a blog post I wrote on setting up your math workshop.

 

For this fun headbands game, here's what you do:
Differentiation:

Intervention level- Teacher will provide prompts for students who might have trouble describing a shape by its defining attributes. For example: Prompt a student by asking, “How many sides does the shape have? O.K. Tell the person wearing the headband that the shape has ___ sides.” Continue to support students in this manner until they are able to generate describing statements independently.

On-target level- Students generate describing statements without assistance from the teacher. The teacher is there to facilitate and observe.

Challenge level- The child who is wearing the headband will ask questions about the shape on his/her headband to determine what it is. Ex. “how many sides does my shape have? Does my shape have any faces, or just sides? The teacher will facilitate turn taking and observe students as they are playing the game.

Want to see more small group math activities? This resource as your entire year of small group planned and ready to go!

Writer's Workshop

 

The framework is important in all content areas. I use the same "language" during math, reading, writing, etc. This trains the brain to know what to expect next. Want to see more about using this framework in Writer's Workshop? See this blog post.

 All Eyes on You

 

Classroom management is a concern due to its impact on instruction. It is essential to find ways to monitor and manage your classroom in an effective what that doesn't distract from learning. I love this little non verbal reminder. Just put a few magnets on a cookie sheet along with the “rule” you are working on. While you are teaching your class, if someone yells out, instead of stopping and verbally correcting, just pull down on the the magnets! No words needed! It is a great way for children to have a visual reminder!  Want to read more ideas for classroom management? You can find them in this blog post.

Early Learning: Interventions, Activities, and Games

Hodgepodge Alert! This blog post is a hodgepodge of ideas that I shared at the I Teach K and I Teach 1st conferences. Each day I am going to post a little bit about what I did in each session and post a freebee. Read all the way to the bottom to find the FREE resource!

The First 30 Days

The First 30 Days is kinda like childbirth. After about Day 30, things start to settle down, the kids have the routine, and you once again love kindergarten. At the beginning of each year, you probably hear yourself say something like, “This is the lowest class I have ever had.” OR “Oh my, these kids are going to give me a run for my money.”
One way to get ahead of the game is to plan a killer Open House! We set up a scavenger hunt to keep our families busy! You can read all about the Open House in this blog post.

Phonemic Awareness

 One of my favorite ways to teach phonemic awareness is through music. I love "Vowel Bat" by Shari Sloane. You can find her music on her website, www.kidscount1234.com. I made this fun music book to go along with the song.

During the song she uses the Batman theme song to teach each vowel sound.

Reading Strategies: Comprehension

One of the easiest ways to determine if a child comprehends a story is to ask them to retell it to you.  This fun little book is for retelling The Three Pigs.  After making the booklet, attach the wolf to the booklet with a string. This strategy is great anytime a character “travels” through a story. Invite the children to draw or paste pictures to sequence the events on the pages of the booklet. Now, as they turn the pages in the pig book, the wolf is on the string to “talk” to the pigs. This resource has this idea and TONS of others for retelling stories.

Dollar Store Delights

There are literally things in the Dollar Store to teach almost any standard!  I love these divided plastic plates. The are great for number bonds. Start will all the buttons in the large section. Now have children divide it into two parts. Then, push them all back to the whole. Now divide another way. This is important for conservation of number and subitizing! Say this:

• Put all of the buttons in the large section and say, “I have 7 buttons."
• Divide the buttons into the two smaller sections and say, "I have 3 buttons and I have 4 buttons." (Point to each part.)
• Return all of the buttons to the large section and say, "I have 7 buttons.”

This free file has alphabet cards that you can use for making playdough letters.  Are you looking for more intervention activities? This resource is full of ideas to tackle the alphabet!

 

Planning an Open House to WOW Your Parents

Last week I was so focused on blogging, I blogged every day! This week, well other things seem to be the focus! Here are the three things I am working on this week: Fitness, Family, and Back to School. This post shares how Megan and I organize our Open House to be sure and WOW our parents!

 Fitness

Now to say that I love working out, would be a big lie! As a matter of fact, I kinda hate it! So… many of my blogging buddies have joined this “get healthy” life style inspired by my good friend Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants.  She has also started a fitness blog, For Blogness Sake.  They are all looking so good! Now they will tell you that they are doing this to be healthy, not skinny, but I bet none of them mind the weight loss they have seen! To be quite honest, I want to be thinner! I know healthy has to be the real goal, but I will take skinny! So….Megan and I have started. We have printed out our 12 week calendar that tells us what to do each day and we are finishing our first week. I know a week isn’t very long, but it’s a start!

Family

Of course you all know that I am crazy about my Matthew and my Brody! Megan and I keep Brody every Monday and Wednesday while Ginny is finishing her masters! One more week and she will be done! This week on Tuesday I had my 3 littlest nieces and nephews. Who knew that you could have so much fun with some old badminton racket puppets. I sat them out earlier in the week to give to Ginny to put in her Home Living Area for her prek class. It was hilarious watching the girls hide behind the trees and bushes and make their character voices. We had a little play time in the water table and a shopping relay with an old shopping cart from my classroom! They spent 30 minutes pushing the cart up and down the driveway while I told them what to go and buy. I would tell them what to go and buy. They had to push the cart to the car, “buy” the food,  push the cart back and tell me what they bought. Could they remember what I sent them for? You can tell they don’t eat Brussel sprouts at their house! When I sent them to buy those, along with a few other vegetables, they came back with “pretzel plant”! We almost died laughing!

Open House

It's never too early to start thinking about Back to School Night, Meet the Teacher, or Open House. This is your first chance to make a first impression! A good first impression will serve you well the rest of the year.  Can I get an Amen?

STATION 1: The first thing we made was an Open House Folder for each child.  In each folder we place all the information that parents need...School Rules, Daily Schedule, Lunch Menus, etc. We put each child's name on one of the folders. This way we know exactly who received their folder.

Station 2: In station 2 we put the first homework project. Each parent finds the paper with their child's name. The directions tell the parents to scrapbook the paper with photos, etc to help us to get to know their child. We bind these together into a class book! It is the most loved book in the classroom.

 STATION 3: In station 2 we placed a copy of information that the parents needed to sign THAT night. We wanted each parent to sign in, tell us how their child would go home, and if they wanted to volunteer in the classroom...the three most important things to know!

Station 4: In Station 4 the parents have the opportunity to select some tags for things they would like to donate to the classroom. If you want supplies...now is the time to ask. Ask for enough to last the whole year whenever possible!

Station 5: Station 5 is the most fun station of the night. Here the parents use the props to pose for family pictures. I  leave my phone or ipad in the center for taking the photos. They love this! I use these photos all year as a way to build a home/family connection.

Station 6: In this station the adults and the children make this fun craft.  I provide picture directions so that they can do this independently.

Station 7: In the last station, the parents pick up their gifts. It's amazing how far this simple gesture gets you. Parents see you as a giving, kind person! This make them so much more forgiving when we  make mistakes!

There is also a little gift bag for the kids.
All of these ideas, as well as many more, are from our Open House Ultimate Scavenger Hunt unit.

Easy Steps to Manage and Organize Your Class Meeting

I am a super, organized person and can drive my family, and even some of my friends...absolutely crazy! I like things put away in the right place, I like things to be cleaned up as soon as you are done, …you get the point. Now, I have tried to lighten up a little, but I still think the ability to organize and get things done, have played a big part in who I am as a teacher. This post shares one of my favorite organization tools, the carpet bag. Let's look at the things that are stored  in a carpet bag.

The first step in setting up carpet bags is to purchase the bags! I pick mine up at Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Target, etc.  The bags usually last a few years before they need replacing. I use the carpet bags to store all of the supplies that we use regularly during any large group instruction. Here are some of the things we keep in them:

Each child has their own traveling word wall. When I add the new words to the class word wall, the children add them to their traveling word walls. Don't worry about the handwriting. That's not what is important.  By inviting the children to write their own words, they develop ownership, they learn how a word wall is organized, and they become independent.

My kids also keep their unit vocabulary journals in their carpet bags. Each week we brainstorm words that are related to our science or social studies unit.

As I add them to this graphic organizer, the kids add them to their own unit vocabulary notebooks.

We also store our Academic Vocabulary journals in the carpet bag.  Each week I select a math or literacy vocabulary word that I want to develop a deeper understanding for. The kids draw a non-linguistic representation of the word as well as generating their own linguistic description of the word.

We also keep our Word Family Journals in the carpet bags. Each week I select a word family and build the words. As we build the words, the children record them in their journals.  We start with the short "a" word families and move through all of the short vowels before moving to the long vowel word families.

Each week we use our Book of Lists to....make a list!  It could be a list of shapes, number words, animals, family members, etc. I tie it into something we are learning. We stretch the words as the kids write them. I fill in the letters for the sounds they don't hear. This means all of the words are spelled correctly.

Each child also has a supply bag in their carpet bag. This holds all of the supplies we use each day. For example, if we are going to be using 2 sided counters in math, they keep them in their bag until we are finished using them.

They keep their sound cards in the carpet bag, too. We use these to play games and when we are practicing writing letters or determining the beginning sound of a word.

We keep our nursery rhyme books close by in the carpet bags! Each day, we sing the nursery rhymes using music from our favorite artists. As we sing, the kids sing and follow along with the text. This helps with fluency!

They keep their yes/no response sticks inside the bags. We use these as a way to answer questions!

Want to save a TON of time? I took all of our math mats and bound them together into a booklet. Each child has a booklet containing every math mat and graphic organizer that we use. When the kids are coming to the carpet, I can easily say, "get out your math mats and turn to the domino page." Super fast way for the kids to be ready instead of you passing everything out.

During the day, the carpet bags stay on the carpet! It can look a little messy, but ohhhh the rewards! Kids are engaged, they are ready, and there is no wasted time!

At the end of the day, the bags are returned to these baskets for overnight storage.
All of the supplies, expect for the academic vocabulary journal, are from this unit. “Pack It! Learn It!”

The Academic Vocabulary is in this unit.

So what are you Working On this week? Grab the button and link up your post on what you are doing to make for a smoother start to your year.

Me Time Monday Linky!

Today I am linking up with my friend Amanda at One Extra Degree to share how I spend my “me time.” To tell you the truth, I’m not very good at it! Probably like most of you, I am pretty much in “go mode” most of the time. Most of my life is spent working on presentations and traveling to workshops. It is sometimes hard to find that balance between work and play. I have a few distractions that are helping me find that balance—Brody and Matthew. My most favorite way to spend my “home time” is with these two boys! Yep, that’s right, TWO! Baby Brody was born just two weeks ago!  Matthew and Brody are 1 year, 3 days apart in age!  I just can’t imagine how much fun they are going to be growing up just a few miles from each other. I have baby proofed my den, kitchen and breakfast room. Andy built us a rather fancy gate in the hall to keep them in those areas. Tyler built us an awesome playscape (calling it a swing set doesn’t do it justice), the gate has been secured on the pool to keep them either in or out, picnic tables and water tables are added to the back porch, toys are organized in bins placed on a bookshelf hidden behind the sofa, books are in a basket placed on the “school table”, baby swing, changing table, bottles,  sippy cups and diapers are stocked….I am sure there are many things we will find that we need to do as they grow older but, yep I would say we are ready. Andy and I are so excited to be Gam and Pops! We can’t wait to build forts, go swimming, camping, hiking, cycling, scouts, baseball, “mud boggin”…All this fun, and we don’t have to worry about bedtimes, getting up at night, or any of the other “not so fun” things that come with being the parents.

BUT….when I  want some me time. alone time….

you will find me outside. I love being outside, especially in the spring and summer. I don’t mind being hot. Sweat doesn’t bother me. I love to dig in the dirt! It’s a perfect stress reliever. I started loving yard work after my kids were born. After a long day of parenting, when Andy would come home from work…I would hand them off and tell him I was going to mow or edge or plant something. It was quiet and peaceful. No one calling Mom, or fighting, or chattering…just me and the good ‘ol outdoors. But, it also made me fell like I had accomplished something! I am super task oriented!

I do a lot of container gardening as it is so hot and dry. Containers makes it easier to keep things watered. The pot in the bottom left is a special pot. It was made by one of my room mothers 10 years ago!

I would rather be on the back porch than inside! We are still wanting to add that outdoor kitchen, but …..$$$$$$! Someday!

Here are some pictures from my back yard.

The other day I was cleaning up this baker’s rack on my back porch. I picked up the vase to put it away when out flew a bird! I looked inside and there was a nest with 5 little blue eggs. I carefully put the vase back on the shelf. This weekend my 10 year old niece was over at the house. I told her to go and look in the vase to see the eggs. She carefully approached the vase and tried to peek inside. She said, No eggs! Could it be, did the cat or the squirrels find the nest?! I carefully picked up the vase and looked inside. And there were baby birds! So tiny, like just hatched tiny! I have loved sitting on the back porch watching the mama bird fly back and forth carrying things in her mouth back to the babies. As I was writing this post, I was thinking, how does that mama bird find any down time? She is much like “my girls” Megan and Ginny. Busy being a mom. Flying around, taking care of her babies, but still takes the time to fly to the tree, sit on a branch and sing!

Be sure and hop over to Amanda’s blog and read how she, and other bloggers, spend their “me time”!