SpOtLiGhT oN sPeEcH bUbBlEs

Everyone who knows me knows I am in love with Elephant and Piggie.  There are a dozen things to love about these books... the kid-friendly topics, the humor, the facial expressions, the readability for beginning readers... but today, I'm talking about speech bubbles.  Mo Willems, the author of the Elephant and Piggie series, isn't the only one who has figured out the magical appeal of speech bubbles. Kids love them and each year there are more and more children's books written in this style.

Do you know what kids see when they look at this page spread?  White space. And when you're an emergent reader, this calls for a sigh of relief because this book looks like something they can read.  And to them, it looks similar to the comics their older siblings are reading, so it's cool too!  

Do you know what I see when I look at this page spread?  A built-in readers' theater!!  I love the fluency and comprehension development that comes with preparing to "perform" a readers' theater.  When you look through an Elephant and Piggie book (as with many books written in speech bubbles), you'll notice one character's dialogue is a bit more challenging than the others.  In this book, for example, the text level of Elephant's dialogue is more difficult than Piggie's. And the reason that matters is because kids of varying levels can read and process the same text together.  And that's cool to me.

The kids in my class are doing more comprehension work than they sometimes realize when they're practicing their "script."  There's a lot of analysis and inferring that takes place as readers study facial expressions to understand emotions.  They also notice details in the print that would affect how their voice sounds, such as punctuation marks or large, bold words inside the speech bubbles.  And they pay attention to the plot line, tying the emotions and the print features all together so they can make decisions about how their own facial expressions should look and how their voice should sound when reading aloud.

    

If you haven't yet discovered these books, ask your media specialist or visit your local library... your kids will love them.  And there are more than a dozen, so be prepared to become obsessed.  :)  Yo!  Yes? by Chris Raschka is another speech-bubble book my children love to read over and over. (It's even simpler than Elephant and Piggie... perfect for practicing expression related to punctuation.)  Many first and second graders also like the Fly Guy books by Tedd Arnold... they are a mix of speech bubbles and narrative text, so they're perfect for adding in a "narrator."  

And, if your writing curriculum will allow for a brief detour, be prepared... your students may want to try writing their own speech-bubble-stories.  These FREE templates can be downloaded in my TPT STORE... they work well for realistic fiction and/or personal narratives... it's really up to what you're working on at the time.

Do you have a favorite speech-bubble book your kids love?  We'd love to find more to add to our list!

Have fun and happy teaching!  :)

Grab & Go: A Portable LIstening Center

Hi again, it's Robin from Class of Kinders.
I am excited to share a little of my classroom with you.
It seems like there is never quite enough space in my classroom to fit all that I want for my students. I have literacy center time for my Kinders and Firsties because it provides independent practice on skills that I have taught ...and it gives me a chance to meet with my small groups.
The problem is…centers take up space! …valuable space.
The answer for me was a few portable centers!

So,  I created a "listening center" using a shower caddy and an ipod shuffle. 

I just add a book and it is a "grab and go" listening center for my students.
Off they go to find a comfy spot to read!

 My little set up looks like this. I just hang the caddies on the wall:

I got these green and blue caddies from a seller on etsy.com:

You can find her store here at SNAPPYDOTGIFTS.

( I love the READING ROCKS message…don't you? )
You can request which ever wording you wish!

Each caddy contains one book and one shuffle and a pair of ear buds or headphones. 

But if I need more than one student to listen to a story, I can simply at a "splitter." 

It looks like this:

This little green splitter can be found at Walgreens, Walmart or even Amazon. Now, there are two headphones going into one shuffle which allows two students to

listen to one book at the same time. Perfect!

This set up is also wonderful because I can have more than one book available to my students to listen to. It use to be, one book, 4 headphones, and everyone is listening to the SAME story at the SAME time. That's ok, but this works so much better, not to mention it breathes new life into

the listening center.  

I get all of my books on CDs from Scholastic. I usually buy the packs with 4 or 5 books with CDs. These are a GREAT bargain and really good quality literature.

Once I get them from Scholastic, I pop a CD into my computer (I use a Mac), upload it to my iTunes library which saves on my computer. It prompts me each step of the way.

Once it is saved in my iTunes library I click JUST the one book I want. I ONLY put one book on each iPod shuffle…because these little devices can be tricky for little fingers to navigate since there is no window to view the audio selections. One book on the shuffle makes it easy for my students to push play and get busy listening.  And this means less interruptions during my small group time, which is exactly what I need!

Here is the FIRST tab (summary) once I connect my shuffle to my computer:

Then the SECOND tab (music):

And the THIRD tab (on this ipod):

After my students listen to a story in the listening center 

I  ask them to complete a response to the story. (I usually add this part after a while, 

once they get the hang of just using the shuffle and listening to the book.) The response

sheet usually goes with a skill/concept I am teaching.

Here are a few FREEBIES I have found on TpT for your listening center!

Listening Center Report

Listening Center Favorite Part

Listening Center: Beginning, Middle and End

I hope this inspires you to create a portable listening center for your classroom! 

…thanks for taking time out of your day to join us in Paradise. 

'till next time,

iT's FINALLY hErE!!

The loooooonnnnnggggggg awaited end of the year is finally here! Teachers be like "Whoop! Whoop! It's finally here" AND THEN it. hits. us. ALL. Our thoughts seem to change immediately to "Oh SugarHoneyIcedTea, it's here already????"! This happens to me every year.  We are chugging right along and all of a sudden its May. Now we have deadlines.  Progress Reports, Tutoring Data, Field Day letters to be sent home, Water Day letters to be sent home, Planning for "graduation", searching for cuter graduation songs than the other teachers have (You all know you do it!), Practicing for "graduation",  Testing for Report Cards, Report Cards, Profile Cards, Profile Card sorting, Cume folder checks, Summer homework prep, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Observations, PLUS all the normal stuff we do like weekly newsletters, homework packets, planning for each week, preparing for each week, the list goes on and on and on and on!! My head is spinning like the Gravitron (remember that old carnival ride? Is it still around?Huh?)
Anyways, I figured I could help out in one little area. I love writing lyrics to songs. In my class we sing to do pretty much EVERYTHING. And not boring Twinkle twinkle tunes but fun up beat pop tunes. (Parents -if your reading this-I promise they are top 10 pop hits that YOU sing with them in your car. Besides it's just the tune, I change the words) For instance, instead of saying to Line up in ABC order, we sing, "Line up like you do, l-l-l-line up like you do, A-a-aBC order we do, A-a-a BC order we do, line up like we do, l-l-line up like we do" to the tune of Love me like you do by Ellie Goulding. It is so funny how easy it is to get them to do something super quickly just by singing a tune they know and LOVE! They are constantly coming in with new tunes that they want me to make up words for them to do something to.  This is a super easy, fun thing to do with them to change it up a bit at the end of the year when everyone is feeling bogged down with ALL the testing and JUNK that we have to do!
To make my End of the year Graduation songs upbeat, up to date, and fun, I did just this.  I have two simple, fun songs that you could try at your End Of The Year graduation/celebrations.  Maybe this will take some of the End Of The Year pressure off (cause you know that's what you feel like- a pressure cooker about to BLOW).

One is to the tune of "Roar" by Katie Perry. I call it SEE ME GROW and the other is to the tune of "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen. It is called FIRST GRADE BABY.  Just click the links to see more details about each of the songs.

I hope my little tip helps things stay fun in your classroom as we all start to fall into the craziness of the end of the year!  Deep Breaths and remember, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"!!!! You are almost done!

Need Some Inspiration?

It is that time of year again... the last quarter of the year. I am tired. The kids are tired. Everyone is dragging themselves through the halls and into the classroom. It is the beginning of the end. But wait, we still have 6 more weeks!  How can we end like this?

It's time for some inspiration. Yes, I know I don't feel like putting my full energy into a new unit of study. I know I am overwhelmed with assessment, but don't I owe it to my kids and myself to end the year just right? Why, yes I do!

So I started a mystery unit in my class. So. Much. Fun! We began with a mystery KWL. I was actually surprised to see what second graders know about Mysteries. Most of them could even relate to some of their parents' favorite shows with mysteries, like Castle, and CSI. Some of them have even played Clue! My all time favorite childhood board game. Gotta love Professor Plum! I was thrilled to see they even WANTED to know some more about this lost genre study. They wanted to know how to look for clues. They were eager to determine who dun it in the first reading of our mini-mystery. They were even excited to learn new mystery words like red herring, conviction, detective, suspect, and more!

After finding out what they knew and wanted to know, I introduced a short trailer I created on Mysteries. {You can find it on TpT for free!}

Free Mystery Trailer

So the spark is ignited. For me and for them. We will answer so many questions like What is a Mystery? How do characters respond to events in a mystery? What are the elements of a mystery? How do readers use what they know to make a prediction of who dun it? And on and on...

Unit on Teaching with Mysteries

To make reading mysteries even more fun my teaching partner, Melanie Redden, chose to do a writing mysteries unit. She even created a real crime scene in her classroom. Guess who the guilty suspect was? ME! The kids love it!

Mystery Writing Unit

The kids can even get a mystery writing certificate!

Free

At the end of the unit we will celebrate with a classroom mystery. This is so much fun! The kids take all they learned while reading and writing about mysteries and they try to solve the classroom mystery. Even the guilty person doesn't know they are guilty until the end.

Classroom Mystery

I am hoping this revives our last 6 weeks of school! I know classes from the past always come to me and ask me if we have done the mystery play again. So I guess it sticks with them! Here's to hoping it sticks with your kids as well...

Earth Day Everyday

I LoVe Earth Day!  It’s a great day to celebrate our earth and discover new ways to take care of our earth.  I take great responsibility teaching my students and fellow teachers creative ways to reduce, reuse and recycle everyday in school and at home.

On a daily basis our class recycles our plastic and paper.  We have a bin for paper/cardboard and one for plastic.  This is an easy task that everyone can participate in.   I also encourage my fellow teachers at lunch to use the recycle bins that are provided in our teacher's lounge.  It’s working and I have more and more participation!  But it doesn't stop there.  I of course also collect and melt broken crayons to make new ones, use baby wipe boxes for storage, use bottle caps and dried out marker caps in our counting jars and much, much more but my favorite thing is to repurpose.  

 Here are a few of my favorite repurpose projects that have been successful in my classroom.

You can find these large cardboard squares in any warehouse grocery store.  These make great giant game boards or maps/streets for toy cars or trains.  The possibilities are endless and they are free!!!!

We have used these for our Winter Festival for a number of years.   I have collected enough for three snowmen.  

This was the BEST idea ever!!!  Our school got some new surface computers and I just couldn't pass up these boxes.
They have lasted two years in my classroom.

Free resources are my favorite.  I created some labels for the landforms and we glued them on the map.   This was a week long project and a lot of fun!!

  I hope I have inspired you to not only 

reduce, reuse and recycle but to repurpose too!

Happy Earth Day!

A Letter to My Daughter About Testing

My daughter was pale and shaking. My friend mouthed, “Is she going to cry?” I shrugged unsure of what to do. For a moment I felt like I was sending her off to a den of wolves, instead of off to her classroom to take our state's "big test". I have been teaching since 1998 and have pretty much administered one high stakes test or another every single year. I have been preparing students for testing and nurturing them through test anxiety for my entire adult life, but this was different. All the encouraging words that I have said to students and parents over the years came flooding back to me, but they seemed different now that it was my daughter. This time it was personal.

I gave her a big hug and a pep talk and sent her off on her way. I headed off to proctor the test in another classroom. All day I could not stop thinking about all the things I could have said and wanted her to know. I assumed that my laid back “you are prepared, you can do it, do your best” attitude would help her understand that while the test is important today, all the things that make her the person she is are the most important. After really searching my soul I knew I wanted to tell her more. That evening I went home and wrote this letter to give to her before testing.

To My Daughter,

      Today you are taking “the big test”. It is your day to shine and show what you know and can do! Approach it like you approach all things; opt in, rock it, and do your personal best. Please know that I believe in you.

      A few months from now we will get the results of the test. It will tell us some information about how you did this day. It might show us some areas where you excel, some areas where you are right where you need to be, and some things that you are still working to master. It will show how you did on a test, over a few days of your life this year. If your life was a scrapbook, this would be one picture in it. It tells one small part of the story of you.

     There are so many things this test can not measure. It will not measure the kindness in your heart, your leadership skills, or your ability to be a good friend. It can not possibly tell what an amazing sister, daughter, and person you are growing up to be. It will not show the soccer goals you scored, the gymnastics skills you have worked so hard to master, or the flips you can do in the swimming pool. Your test results can not possibly measure your imagination, the creative way you solve real world problems, or the epic blanket forts you make on rainy days. It will not measure your capacity to love and do good things for others, to make a difference in the world, or to dream about your future. The test results will show some things, but they do not measure the things that make you who you are, the things that make our heart swell with pride and love; the smiles, laughter, friendships, and love that you will carry in your heart on your journey towards adulthood. The things that really matter.

     The test today is important, but it is one piece in a giant puzzle. So do your best on the test, but more importantly live your best life everyday because that is the real “test”.

Love,

Mom

PiNt-SiZeD pOeMs

I love poetry and (yay!), April is National Poetry Month!  

I think most people have a deep-rooted fear of poetry and I'm guessing you're already remembering some horribly dreadful class you had in high school where you were forced to read (and harder yet, understand) a bunch of poems you couldn't have cared less about.  Been there.

And another confession... I used to think all poems had to rhyme.  Total rookie.

I actually didn't start liking poetry until I became a first grade teacher.  Now I love it and it's one of my favorite writing units to teach.  And (not lying) most of my children love it, too.  Why?  Because it's the one form of writing that's without strict rules and who doesn't love that?  The more I learned about poetry, the more I wanted to teach it.  For years, I scoured book stores finding amazing books for children that eventually became my mentor texts.  If you're a primary teacher, you need pint-sized poems for your pint-sized learners.  The children need to see poems they can understand and that look like poems they could actually write. 

There's really no sense in planning your poetry lessons until you've settled on some great mentor texts for your specific group of children.  As you consider books to use for modeling, think, Will my students like these poems?  Do these poems look like a style or level of poetry my young writers could emulate?  (TIP: Save rhyming and highly rhythmic poems for reading workshop.  They're great for developing phonemic awareness, but they're rigid in design and difficult for most primary children to write.  In my experience, they tend to keep children from writing creatively.)

Hands-down, my favorite book for introducing writers to poetry is Little Dog Poems by Kristine O'Connell George.  My first graders LOVE this book of poems. Each page is its own poem, but they work together to tell the story of a typical day in the life of this little dog. It's a super age-appropriate way to introduce my students to concepts like:

• choosing a small topic near and dear to your heart

• different forms, shapes, and lengths

• line breaks

• white space

• creative use or lack of conventions (capitalization and punctuation)

Consider beginning with this text because there's no single specific style throughout the book.  Children will see that poems can take many forms.  And because poetry is a genre that is typically shorter than personal narratives, you'll find the children are very prolific writers during this unit.  As a matter of fact, I usually start them out with blank half sheets of paper and they often produce 2-4 poems per writing session.  My struggling writers love this because the size of the paper implies the writing won't be long and labor intensive.

When you're ready to model something new, try acrostic poems.  Silver Seeds by Paul Paolilli is a great beginning choice for this type of poetry.  The common thread throughout the book is nature and each page features a new acrostic poem about something found outside... the sun, clouds, trees, leaves, hills, etc. You'll notice the nice "no rule" feature of this book is that each line doesn't have to have a certain amount of words... it's up to the author and what they're trying to say.

Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth is a collection of modern haiku and he explains how the rules of haiku are changing.  No longer does there have to be a certain number of syllables per line... and that's why I like this book as a mentor text.  This book opens up another form of poetry to young writers.  And notice how short and sweet they are.  One of these literally reads:  Eating warm cookies on a cold day is easy.  I agree.  :)

Actually, I don't care what the temperature is.  

This next one is a little bit trickier, but I know some of you have older children and they might get a kick out of these puzzly-poems.  The book is Lemonade:  And Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka. Each poem is written using only the letters in the title.  (It's kind of like a "Making Words" lesson!)  On one page, the author drafts it like a puzzle to be deciphered. On the follow-up page, the poem is written out so it can be read easily.

These are a few to get you started, but begin your own hunt.  See what appeals to you, too. If you like a book, it's easier to get your kids excited about it.  If you're starting to plan your lessons, check out our Pinterest board where we've been collecting ideas to help you teach and celebrate poetry.

Do you have a favorite book or idea you use when teaching poetry?  We'd love for you to share it with us.  If you have a minute, leave a comment below.

Happy teaching!  :)