Professional Books I’m Reading

I love to read!  I always have.  The only time in my life that I really didn’t like to read was when I was in college and I was reading for school – not pleasure.  I think that’s where my dislike for any kind of reading other than reading for pleasure started.  I hated my college textbooks.  The language was dry,  academic and could put me to sleep within 5 minutes. 

That college experience with textbooks has kept me from reading books that would help me in my profession.  I distinctly remember a conversation I had a few years ago with an Instrucrtional Specialist I greatly admire.  She was telling me about several of the professional books she was reading and how the information in those books were really helping her help other teachers.  At the time I thought “Yuck!  Why would you want to spend your free time reading books about teaching ?!?”  And as usually happens, those became famous last words.

That next summer, I stumbled upon the most wonderful book, The Daily Five, which opened a whole new world of professional literature for me.  Everytime I  “one-click” a book from Amazon.com, I think, “That’s it!  There can’t possibly be another book I need.”  But there is always another one – always. 

I wanted to share wtih you the latest books I’m reading – you’ll no doubt see them listed as resources on my lesson plans.

Crunchtime:  Lessons to help students blow the roof off writing tests and become better writers in the process by Getchen s. Bernabei, Jayne Hover and Cynthia Candler

Writing Circles by Jim Vopat

The  Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks

Revisiting the Writing Workshop by Marybeth Alley and Barbara Orehovec

Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of reading over the holidays.

There’s More Than One Way to Publish Student’s Writing

One of the things I’m learning this year is that publishing is more than just writing a perfect copy of your revised and edited draft.  It’s just November and my students already have several written published pieces as well as digitally published pieces, recordings and now we have videos. 

We chose 4 pieces of writing to tape in the style of the In Plain English video series.  I showed one of these videos to my students so they would have a visual of what I wanted them to do.  With the help of my husband, the Technology Director, we decided what pictures students needed to draw that would best illustrate the story.  We outlined the pictures  in black and cut them out. 

Once we had our pictures,  it was time for rehearsal.  We positioned ourselves around the table and rehearsed moving the pictures in and out of the shot of the video camera.  It took a total of about  45 minutes of rehearsal over two days for the students to get the timing down.  Once we were ready, Mr. Wilson came in to record and then worked his magic in Movie Maker on the project.

Click here to see our finished product.

The students loved this project so much that I think we’ll keep creating them.

Pass It On

One of my favorite pastimes is to search the internet for new ideas about teaching.  In my searches, I’ve run across all kinds of ideas to use in the classroom.   I’ve always been grateful for the educators who have been willing to put their ideas out there for whoever wants to use them.  

So, this weekend,  I was once again searching the internet for ideas on preparing my 2-5 graders for the UIL Creative Writing and Ready Writing Contests.  And guess what.  I found a jewel.   Teaching That Makes Sense  has so much  information on it  about teaching reading and writing that it’s going to take me a couple of weeks to get through it all.  It’s such a good website that I couldn’t keep it to myself, so I’m passing it on.

You do the same – pass it on to the teachers you know who could benefit from this great website!

The Beginning Of Our Writing Journey

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this journey in the small, rural school district called Guthrie.  After all, this would be my first time teaching all grade levels, my first time teaching just writing and my first time teaching in an elementary school whose total student enrollment falls just shy of 60. 

Let’s just say that I haven’t been disappointed.  Every day these kids surprise me, impress me and make me laugh.  Their writing is authentic and their stories are rooted in their everyday lives – just as they should be.  They have thoroughly enjoyed introducing me to life on a ranch and I have thoroughly enjoyed helping them craft their stories.  They’ve come so far as writers this first six weeks.  It’s exciting knowing that we have 8 more months of working together.  

Our published writing is on our blog, so be sure to check out the “podcast” page to hear the stories the students at Guthrie Elementary school wrote.   We also published our writing digitally and you can view those on each grade level’s published work page. 

If you are so inclined, we would love to hear your comments about our writing.  You can write a comment on either the podcast page or the publication page.  All comments go to a “holding” area for me to approve, so it may take 24 hours to appear on the blog.

A Time of Transition

 You may have noticed that my last post was more than a year ago.  Last fall, I stepped away from the classroom and took a position as an Instructional Coach for grades k-2.  I really enjoyed working with teachers and helping them be more effective in the classroom.   This year, however, I’m back in the classroom.

But not in Irving.  We decided to move closer to family in west Texas and are now living in Guthrie.  It is a much smaller community than where we were, but we have settled in very well and are enjoying the peace and serenity of country life. 

My husband is the technology director for the school here and I will be teaching writing for K-5 and conducting a science lab once a week for K-3.  I have a full plate, but I am looking forward to the challenge.

I have been playing around with ideas of how I can use this blog in my classroom and I think I have finally decided on what to do.  You’ll notice on the sidebar that I have pages for the science labs that I will be conducting.  These science labs are focusing on key vocabulary words for each grade level.  So when you go to those pages, you will see definitions and examples of the vocabulary words we have been exploring.

I’m very excited about how I am going to be incorportating technology into my writing class.  Each six weeks, my students will be using different forms of publishing to create a final draft of their writing.  Of course we will use the traditional pencil/paper.  :)  We will also be publishing right here on the blog.  You can find those pieces of writing on the page called “Publications”.    Some of the publications may simply be a blog post, while others will be documents that we have uploaded to the blog.   The final way we will be publishing our writing is through podcasting.  Student podcasts can be found on the “podcasts” page.

The home page of my blog will be more for teachers.  I will be using it to share new ideas on literacy in the classroom – digital and otherwise.

I’m excited about all the new learning that will be taking place and that my students will have a worldwide audience to share their stories with.

This is going to be a great year!

Murphey’s Law

Murphey has been following me this past week.  Almost everything that could go wrong has.  And we all have had experiences like that from time to time.  But they seem to happen quite often when we are working with technology. 

Google Murphey’s Law and select a Law that you think pertains to technology or computers, and submit it as a comment to this post.  Happy Hunting!

Look What We Did!

 Here are some of the things we did with technology this year.

Soil Kit:  Plants That We Eat

Water Cycle Kit:  condensation    precipitation   evaporation    collection

Water Cycle - This Science Vocabulary Poster won First Place in our District’s Media Fair in the K-2 Division of Desktop Publishing.  It then went on to state competition and took Second Place. 

 

 

I’ll always remember…….

Your second grade year is almost over and you’ve  learned so much!  What are some of the things you will always remember about 2nd grade?

Plants that we eat

Tell me what pictures you found to put in your power point slide.

How do worms help soil?

Today we looked at our compost samples.  How did the compost sample with worms look different than the one without worms?  What can you conclude about how worms help soil?