Assess Me! A Get To Know Me Linky

I am so excited to be linking up with The Tattooed Teacher for her Linky Party, Assess Me! A Get To Know Me Linky!!! I love Linky Parties! This is when we meet so many amazing teachers around the country!!!

So Here goes nothing!

I always talk to myself. I am very Superstitious. Cracking knuckles is nasty! I am never hungry! I am watching LMN! I have my wisdom teeth. I showered. I have been to Disney. I sometimes wear my glasses. I live in Delaware but I was born and raised in Massachusetts.

Click below to learn about some other awesome teachers!!!

Daily 5 Book Study Chapter 9

I can not believe that the book is over! I have enjoyed reading this book by the 2 Sisters! They have another book that I think I am going to dive in to soon.

I love the quote the Sisters started the chapter with! 

Chapter 9 deals with Daily 5 being used in "Special " Circumstances!

The Sisters discuss using Daily 5 in several different circumstances! Here are my outtakes from the chapter!

Barometer Students:

We all have a barometer student in our class. These are what the sisters refer to as the challenging students! We must remember that if we help these students and give them the tools they need they will be successful!!!

But we also have to do the following:

1. Stay out of their way! This is hard for me! but I will be working on this this year!

2. Make sure we teach the 10 steps to Independence. Remember there are 10 of these, we do not skip them or decide to pick and choose which ones to teach. There are 10 and we need to teach all 10.

3. If they are misbehaving, have them stay in at recess for a little while to practice appropriate behaviors.

4. If this does not work, you mat need to have a special spot for them to sit, a timer to help with their stamina, whatever tools you feel will help these students be successful!

5. Make sure they pick Good Fit Books!!!

Substitute Teachers:

We all know how crazy it is to get ready for a substitute! We worry if our plans are done and how our students were going to behave or folow our routines. It is very important for us to make sure the routines are kept as normal as possible. It should be like you are there. But we need to make sure that we write detailed plans. These should be specific Daily 5 plans that can be used with every substitute.this provides consistence for the students!

New Students:

AS the school year goes on, we all get a new student here or there. We need to kep in mind that not all teachers do Daily 5. So when the new students arrive, review the I Charts and the 10 steps. This is a great time for review for the entire class! Another great plan to have in place is to have students be the buddies for the new students. They can teach them the ropes!

Parents:

Open Communication is necessary for this to be successful. Explain all procedures and routines to the parents. Send home Daily 5 information. Keep them informed. This will insure that all those involved understand the Daily 5 process!

We must remember that we must trust our kids! I know this is hard at times but we must loosen the ropes and allow them to choose. In order for this be done successfully, we must teach all 10 steps of independence! You can do it! 

Well this is the last post of our Daily 5 Book Study! Check out TPT, there are so many resources available! Also, we have had several free resources throughout our book study!

Here are the links to my previous posts:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

An InLinkz Link-up

Back to School Book Favorite and Freebie!!

I am very excited to be linking up with Brenda from Primary Inspired for her linky on our favorite Back to school Book!

I love books!! I have soooo many books I love to read when we go back to school that it took me a while to choose the one I wanted to share today! I read the books that the other awesome educators who linked up with this awesome linky shared so make sure you check out their books to get even more great ideas!

Any ways, The book I absolutely love to read to my kiddos when we go back to school is Too Much Glue written by Jason Lefebvre. 

How many of you have had the lovely words screamed out in class, Mrs or Mr. ________ I have too much glue! How many have said remember boys and girls just a drop not a lot!

This book is about a young man who loves glue. This book takes place in the art room, where just like many classroom teachers, the art teacher has given the warning of using too much glue. Well, Matty loves glue and he did not listen to her warning. The results are hilarious. The kids love reading and seeing what happens to Matty!

Here is a you tube reading of the book:

Here are some freebies for your class room! Here is the glue poem I read to my kids and post in my room and here is my label for my glue buckets! Please feel free to download and use them!!!

Click on the book worm below to go see what these other awesome educators love to read for Back to School!

Flipped Reading Book Study Chapters 5 and 6

Hi, everyone!

I can not believe that we are already on chapters 5 and 6. This book study seems to be flying by! I have really enjoyed reading this book and learning more about the flipped classroom!

So let's begin.........

Chapter 5 is focusing on book clubs in the classroom and how we can use these to promote online discussions and therefore creating an online community through book clubs. I love this idea. The students can communicate about the books they read in class and carry this discussion over to their homes and families. 

Book Clubs sound amazing as the chapter goes on and they are something that with a little differentiation and adaptation that any grade level can integrate into their classrooms.

I have dabbled in Blend Space and have a few lessons in the Blended Learning Format. My goal is to create a few lessons in the Flipped format and then go from there. I am planning on doing a history lesson in flipped format and do a few writing and sight word lessons in the flipped format.

I love the idea of writing skeletons instead of writing prompts. These are guides and conversation starters. I love the open endedness of them. So I will incorporate more of these in my writing in the beginning of the year and then as the students learn what is expected with different genres and skills I will begin to wean them off depending on their skill level. This of course will be differentiated in my room. 

I do not have them implemented indepthly. I am definitely adding this feature to my classroom and will be using it to crate an online community and increase their love for literacy. Hopefully, this will involve the parents more! The wheels in my brain are already turning! Looks like this may be a blogpost of it's own soon!

Chapter 6 is discussing the use of posts as a form of assessment. I really never thought about it but I found the author made some valid reasons on why it would be a good source to use. 

I think that using the posts as a form of formative assessment is a great idea. We will be able to see thier understanding through their communication of the skills through their posts. We will be able to see what points they understood, where do they need assistance, what needs to be focused on. If they are able to communicate it then they know it and understand it. I like the idea of sing them as a FORMATIVE assessment. Great resource to use to tailor and differentiate assignments.

I have my students share and talk about their books and we do short plays. They also write in their journals but I feel I need to do more. I am definitely going to implement book clubs and I am also going to have more reader response activities as well as a monthly book review board.  I am in the process of figuring out and planning my book review wall so once I have it ready I will blog and share it!!!

I loved these chapters and I am loving this book. Although it was written for upper elementary, there are so many ideas and things that we as lower elementary educators can implement in our rooms with just a little differentiation and adaptation!

Please check out the blog posts of my teaching buddies on these chapters!!!

Maggie from Maggie's Kinder Corner

Kristen from Kristen's Kindergarten

Jonna from The Primary Life

A Flipped Reading Book Study Giveaway!

Hello all!!!!

We have been doing a book study on the book:

We are loving it! So in honor of this awesome book, we have a giveaway for one lucky blogger!!! Just enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win a selfie stick! Our post on chapters 5 and 6 will be posted on Wednesday, July 29!

Good Luck From:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Daily 5 Chapter 8 Math Daily 3

I am linking up for chapter 8 in our Daily 5 Book Study. I can not believe that we only have one more chapter left! I have learned so much from this book and I can not wait to get into my classroom and implement the Daily 5!

This chapter is about The math Daily 3. The previous chapters have been focused on ELA. I have to say I love The Math Daily 3. I implemented this last year in my classroom. I teach First Grade and I was team teaching. So all I had to teach all day was math and Science. I wanted to teach it in a different way then the traditional way so I researched and I combined The Math Daily 3 with Guided math and I have top tell ya, my kids soared!

When launching these components, we launch Math By Myself first. The focus will be on building stamina woking independently with math games. Stamina is being built. I Charts are created. 

Next component launched is Math Writing. Focus is on expressing themselves mathematically using pictures, words, and equations. This is done similar to work on writing in Daily 5. Allow them to choose a comfortable area. Great for Math Journals.

Then we launch Math With Someone. The focus is working with someone else collaboratively and appropriately.

All of the components have I Charts Just like the components of Daily 5 do. I have created I Charts for the Daily 3 and posters if you would like them click on them below to download.

We only have one  more post left in our book study! In case you missed my other posts, here are the links:

Chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

An InLinkz Link-up

Learn Like A Pirate Chapter 8

I am blogging about Chapter 8 in this amazing book about Student Led Classrooms written by Paul Solarz. If you do not have this book, click on the book below and it will bring you to Amazon! Buy this book, I promise you, you won't be disappointed!!!

Paul Solarz is discussing the importance of empowerment! The importance of Passion! It al starts with the classroom environment! Be honest with kids. Create an environment where they are safe, safe physically, emotionally and safe to take risks!

So what is Passion Time? Passion Time is when the kids can work on a research project or something that they feel passionate about. Paul mentions Maker Spaces and I couldn't agree more. Maker Spaces are amazing. These allow the students to create and explore! These spaces are what puts grins and excitement back into education.  Paul had an after school club for maker Space but since I teach First Grade and really can not have an after school club, I will be having a Maker Space area in my classroom where they can explore on Fridays!!!

What does passion ignite in kids? 

I have created a sign that I will be hanging on my door for those who enter during Passion Time. Feel free to download it if you would like!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post! This is a book that I recommend all educators read at some point during their career! I absolutely loved it! It has provided this 22 year veteran teacher some awesome ideas to implement into my classroom!!!

Have You Heard about GoNoodle?!!!

OMG! Have you heard? Have you seen?  It is absolutely amazing! I am so psyched, aren't you!!! So I am sure right about now you are thinking, what is she talking about or you may even be thinking that I have lost my mind! 

Well, I am talking about the amazing GONOODLE!!!!!! Loooook what they now have!!!!!!!

They now have all you need to make your classroom GoNoodle Crazy!!!! They have supply labels, blank label, banner, name tags, coloring sheets and so on! They are AWESOME!!!

I love Freckles and look at what they have!!!

Aren' t  these incredibly cute?

The ideas are endless for the use of these materials!!!! I can not wait to see what you all create! I am already downloading and creating!!!!

Remember they have an art pack on the blog that you can download to use the avatars in your classroom!!! These are awesome for math manipulatives, story starters, labeling, etc. Click on Tangy to go to the Share page, scroll down and there is the art pack, Just click and download!!!!

Did you know they also have a store???!! Yes, they do, I am serious and this store is wonderful! What chid wouldn't want GoNoodle swag!!!! They have pencils, wrist bands, head bands, cups, lanyards, stickers, tattoos, pens, etc.. I love buying this for my kiddos. I put the smaller items in my Class Dojo store. What an incentive for being on their best behavior!!!

Click on Freckles (My favorite besides Bart) to go to the GoNoodle Store!!!

And one final thing, i was a guest blogger on the GoNoodle blog!!! I shared the different ways I use GoNoodle in the classroom. Please click on McPufferson to see my post!!!!

So there it is, a  bunch of GoNoodle love!!! 

What better way to go back to school then to GoNoodle your way into a great school Year!!!!!!!!!!!!

Teaching With Intention Chapter 7

I am so sad that tis book is coming to end soon! I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this and learning from the amazing Debbie Miller!

The hosts for this week's post are Famous  in First and Luv My Kinders. They are two amazing bloggers! Check out their posts.

So here we go.......

This is a short but powerful chapter. It is about that dreaded word. You know the one that we all stress out when we hear it!! That's right, this chapter is about Assessment!

In my room, I do two types of assessing. I use formative assessments that I have created in order to insure the instruction I am providing my students is differentiated and meaningful. Then there is the summative assessments that are district made that I have to give. 

I love how Debbie Miller provides us a list of various ways for Formative assessments! 

The chapter ends with a discussion on Reflection! By looking over your formative assessments and reflecting on what you have taught, ow you have taught and what they have understood, the next thing to do is what she calls A Next Step Lesson. this is when we use what we learned through the various ways of assessing and teach using this new found knowledge!

Once again an amazing chapter!!

Click the pic below to see what some other amazing educators thought abut this chapter!

Do you Dojo???

So, do you Dojo??? Do you use this amazing classroom management tool in your classroom? Raise your hand high if you do and if you don't run to your device and get started!!!!!! 

I love Class Dojo! This has made such a difference in my classroom! The kids love it and they work hard to get those dojo points!

Today, my focus for this post is the new feature that is being developed and will be available to all users soon! This is an unbelievable feature.  Are you ready? Wait for it........

hmmmmmmm.....

OK, Let's talk about....

How awesome is this!!!  To be able to reward whole groups for their collaboration and cooperation!!! I have so many ideas in my head on how I am going to use this awesome new feature! 

One way I am going to use this is by creating groups for our GoNoodle Dance Parties. Their class reward when they reach their Dojo goal as a class is a GoNoodle Dance Party. Well, the group with the most points gets to compete first. They love dancing against each other like Dancing with the Stars!!

I will set up small groups for both ELA and Math. I will also do table groups, RTI groups and project groups. These are just a few of the ideas I have. More and more keep popping up because the possibilities are endless. Be creative!!!!!

This is a great way to reward research groups, small groups, table groups, and so on. This will definitely increase collaboration and cooperation amongst the students. Students will not just learn from each other, they will push each other to become the best they can be. This is great to make sure everyone takes on a role. 

Another important feature of the groups is that you will be able to provide that group with feedback. I know right.. Amazing, helpful, needed, etc! Being able to provide the group with immediate and positive or constructive feedback will definitely increase their success in the classroom with both academics and behavior.

This feature is extremely beneficial to us since the are skills Dojo Groups are focusing on and implementing are the 21st century skills. These are the skills that we need to be teaching to our students as well as content. 

Collaboration, cooperation, brainstorming, immediate feedback, these are all 21st century skills and this feature includes them all!! 

And yes, parents can see these points as well so they can also discuss teamwork at home! 

So here is a review of Dojo Groups.........

and when is this available you ask?......

I can not even tell you how excited I am that they have created this feature for us to use! The possibilities are endless. 21st century skills, parent communication, ease, and helps us work smarter not harder are just a few of the features of Dojo Groups!

All I can say is...........

So check out this feature on the 21st and let me know what you think! 

Oh and there are other features coming out so be on the look out for more blog posts so you can get the inside scoop before they are out to the public!