After watching this TED talk about this teacher in the South Bronx doing amazing things and truly making an impact, it reminded me of the dream that I have to start my own school one day. Dreams to start a school where students can nurture and grow their creativity. Dreams to start a school where students can follow their passions. Dreams to start a school where students can become agents of change.

What are your dreams and hopes as an educator?

One interesting aspect about this unit was seeing how they naturally formed writing groups and partnerships. There were groups that wanted to write in a specific genre or write about the same topic. I had a few students wanting to write in partnerships. I did tell them that they could work together, but they had to be responsible to each write their own chapter or section. I saw students bouncing ideas, possible plots and characters with each other. I saw some groups form, and then disband once they realized their group would not work.

I gave my students choice in how they wanted to publish their writing piece as well. I had many students using ibooks author program to create booklets. My students really enjoyed making ibooks for our fantasy stories in the last unit. Then, they were able to put their ibook into flipsnack in order to post it on their blog! Here is a picture of a student’s ibook put online via flipsnack book. On the blog, you can actually flip through the pages of the book.

One great book I recommend that you read is Independent Writing by Colleen Cruz. This is a great resource on how to teach students to be independent with their writing and she gives good outlines on how to teach an independent writing unit.

Even though we had a limited amount of time for this unit (about 3 weeks), my students were able to produce solid pieces from varying genres. More importantly, they were really engaged and excited to work on their writing.

Again, these are their word for word responses:

• Because we can then write words
• To get smart
• To be a strong reader
• So we can learn more words
• And we could learn more how to write stuff when we are writing our stories
• Because God might tell us to be an author/reader
• To be good at writing
• When someone is sad we can read them a funny book
• We read to understand the story by using the pictures (“Yes, that is very important!” youngest boy chimes in)
• Because when we get to second grade we can read cursive in books
• We need to understand words
• We need to learn all by ourselves
• So we can read to Ms. Welton

I love listening to my students. Their responses always surprise and impress me. Why do YOU read?

This diagram was floating around Facebook last week. I thought it was interesting. I want my students to grow up to be successful!

These were their responses (in order, and almost word for word):

• We write to practice writing books, because God might tell us to be an author
• We write to learn
• We write so we don’t look at what other people write
• So we can write what we are thinking
• We write to learn our letters
• If a person is sad, we can cheer them up by writing a funny story
• So they can learn more and so that when we write we don’t try peaking (at what others write)
• If we grow up  and we don’t know how to write we won’t know what to do (at this my youngest boy said, “Yes, that makes sense, I think!” It was so cute)
• If we don’t know how to write the word we think with our head and write
• Sometimes, if we want to write a letter to God and we don’t know how to write we can’t do that

The kinders have spoken. What do you think? Why do we write?

Stories for the Classroom

Our favorite book so far: The Fire Station

I also love this handwriting website because we don’t have these worksheets in our curriculum. This website is great because I can generate my own handwriting sheets in whatever style I want and I can choose what I want the students to be working on.

Handwriting the way YOU WANT IT!

Do you know that if you sign up for Teachers pay Teachers (TpT) newsletters they send you a weekly e-mail with 10 free downloads across all grade-levels, and they are always freebies that relate to the month/timing in curriculum as well? Thank you for that TpT!

Jee Young has shared this website before, but it is one that I L-O-V-E, because it has GREAT bulletin board ideas. Can’t wait to have a bulletin board again.

Bulletin Board Ideas

I always, always, always, love free things. These are two of my favorites because they compile freebies from a multitude of awesome teachers:

Classroom Freebies

Freebielicious

A website I just found and will now be exploring during my lunch break:

Open Culture: The best free cultural and educational media on the web (according to them)

Well, just wanted to shoot a few websites your way!

What are your favorite sites for resources?

Since I end school the first week of June, the countdown has definitely started. Here are a few tips and ideas I’ve had swirling around my head these past few weeks as I’ve been pondering the end of my first year here in Singapore. I will admit that the last two months of school are usually pretty crazy. Here are a few things I’m going to try to do in order to make it to the end successfully!

1. Plan out the end of the year. Like the UBD model, do some backwards design and make sure you have enough time to cover what you need before the end of the year! Make sure to factor in all of the end of the year field trips and assemblies.

2. Start early on report cards and projects that need to get done in the last weeks of school. The last two months of school are always super hectic, with last minute things popping up. So get a head start on those things you know you have to get done at the end, so you are a little bit less stressed, if that’s possible!

3. Delegate the work. One of the projects I like to do is creating a short video clip of my students from the year that I can show my students at the end of the school year. Creating these videos can get pretty time consuming, so I try to start it EARLY! This year, I’m going to try to get some of my students to help me on this big project and try to delegate some of the work.

4. Make time for friends. I know this sounds obvious, but for international school teachers, the end of the school year can be pretty emotional as there are always teachers leaving the school and country. Make sure to carve out time to spend with those close friends that are leaving and giving them their proper farewell. I know I was pretty emotional when I had to leave Korea after four years. I’m glad I got to spend a lot of time with my friends that my time so memorable in my last weeks.

5. Overplan for the last few weeks. Even if your grades and report cards are due a week or two before the school year ends, keep your students working! I’ve always found it a lot easier to manage when students have projects they are doing in the last week of school instead of a lot of free time (obviously). The end of the year is a great time for them to reflect on their learning from the year and be able to show their learning whether through presentations or projects.

6. Start planning for next year. This is a great time to start reflecting on what you want to do next year. I know for me, there are a lot of changes and tweaks I want to make. If there are a few projects that I can get started on now or at least write down, to remind myself when I get back after the summer, I know it will be helpful.

Here’s a fun comic I found on Chris Pierce’s blog, called teachable moments, that I just discovered. Thanks Chris for letting us use your comic!

What are some tips you have for the end of the school year?

He asked them various questions about what makes someone a friend, popularity and how they feel about their parents asking about their social lives. It was an interactive assembly  and the students were engaged and trying very hard to get chosen to share. That’s not an easy task for any speaker when you have over 200 fifth grade students at the end of the school day as your audience. It was interesting to hear students’ thought on what makes a friend and what makes someone popular. The students had a difficult time actually describing clearly what makes someone popular as they went around in circles with their responses.

Dr. Thompson also shared about how often teachers ask him, what can they do about those 1 or 2 students in their class that don’t have any friends at all.  He also challenged those students that were “popular” to use it for leadership in a positive way. It would have been nice to hear him give some more practical tips and suggestions to teachers, but this was a session for the students! He did a few other talks as well with other grade levels, teachers and parents about various topics. I definitely recommend checking out his webpage or books if you are interested in learning more.

Here is video clip I found from a session he did at a school on the pressured child.

This week’s guest post comes from Mr. Mat Wachtor, who has had the pleasure of working with both myself and Jee Young. He is currently the lead Middle and High School English teacher at an international school in Seoul. Mat is passionate and dedicated to the teaching profession and seems to be leading a seminar every other day (according to my facebook newsfeed)! He was kind enough to give us a post on how he integrates student blogs into his teaching.

“This semester we are getting rid of paper journals, and moving online.”  This is how I started my high school English language arts classes on the first day of the Spring 2012 semester.  When I came to my current international school, I instituted a journal writing program into all of the high school classes (easy to do since I was the only high school ELA teacher at the time).  My rationale was to get students writing and engaging with various topics: creative, personal, school, and classroom topics.  However, after having piles and piles of student notebooks each Friday I quickly desired change.  Thus, the idea to get students’ blogging was born.

Personally, I have gone through quite a few of the blogging phases: Xanga, Myspace, Facebook Notes, Blogspot, and now Tumblr.  One day as I was searching the education hashtag on Tumblr, I came across an article about how the benefits of student blogging.  I began imagining what it would look like if I implemented a student blogging into my course.  It would simplify collecting journals, and would also allow for greater student responsibility on their part to do their homework.

I chose Tumblr because of its features: following blogs, news feeds, comments, and customization.  Students would be able to see my post in their blog feed when they logged in, and then write their own responses for me to see.  I customized my Tumblr page to have various sections for keeping up with homework, Youtube resources, and school announcements.  I tried to make it as much of an all in one stop for a student as possible.

Students were also able to customize their blogs as well, and follow each other.  This allowed for students to comment positively (yes, I monitored the comments) on each others journal posts.  This also helped with EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students as it gave them samples for how to respond to the questions.

Each Monday I would start off class by explaining the journal topic for the week, which I actually posted on Sunday mornings for those who were eager to do their homework.  Students would then have until Friday 5pm to post their responses.  Responses were assessed based on the length and how accurately they responded to the question.  In order for students to know that I graded their journal assignment I “liked” their post, and would occasionally post feedback by commenting.  This system also helped keep my records in order!

Since the nature of blogs are social, I encouraged various extra credit assignments that required photos or videos.  My goal was not only to educate students on how to use the internet as a form of communication, but also to have them understand how to positively use social networks.  One of these extra credit assignments was to post pictures from your spring break.  Before leaving for break I announced that I would be traveling to Chicago to visit family, and the could follow different parts of my trip on my blog.  Thus, they would receive extra credit for posting a picture with a quick thirty word explanation.

Blogging as a class can be very exciting and fun!  Remember to set rules for the students to follow so that the community is safe and free to express themselves.  Happy blogging^^

Tips for Successful Reading Buddies

Students teaching Students

Reading Buddy Activity for Poetry

End of the Year Book Buddy Activity

This year I am coordinating the reading buddy activities for the whole elementary school, since our school is small we all have reading buddies at the same time— and with each other! As I am trying to find reading activities that fit ages ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade I am realizing more and more that reading buddies are so much more than just reading together. My younger students look forward to it every week, a chance to hang out (in a class like setting) with the older students, who wouldn’t want that?

This year we have been able to not only read together, but they’ve been able to do art projects together, they have played games together, they  co-authored a math story book, they have colored, they have laughed, they have learned how to communicate with people outside their age group.

I readily admit though, that watching these students read to each other and with each other, and ask each other questions— that is my absolute favorite part of reading buddies!

I just typed in “reading buddies” into pinterest to check out how many boards there are, I am about to have a field day! I love that new things are always popping up there.

What are some great activities you do with reading buddies?

]]> http://twoapplesaday.org/2013/03/20/reading-buddies-not-just-for-reading/feed/ 0 spitonthestreet banagrams math signature http://twoapplesaday.org/2013/03/15/guest-blog-post-art-with-children-during-fallas-oh-my/ http://twoapplesaday.org/2013/03/15/guest-blog-post-art-with-children-during-fallas-oh-my/#comments Fri, 15 Mar 2013 07:57:04 +0000 melody http://twoapplesaday.org/?p=2543 ]]>

I am thrilled to introduce you to this week’s guest blogger: Sarah! She hails from my home state, Michigan, and is currently teaching at an international school in Valencia, Spain. After reading this post, I want to apply to teach in Spain immediately and enjoy Las Fallas. Is there an opening at your school Sarah?!

Living in Valencia, Spain in early springtime is exciting.  The weather starts to change, restaurant terraces are open, orange trees start to blossom and there is a lingering scent of Las Fallas in the air.  Hard to believe a holiday has a scent but this one does!  Not most people outside of Spain or Europe know about this holiday but let me tell you, it’s a big deal.  As an annual celebration, only in the Valencian province, beginning March 12^th until March 19^th, Las Fallas honors the carpenter Saint Joseph.  For people who live and work in the city, it’s a holiday that you either love or hate.  But for a schoolteacher who works in Valencia, it’s a holiday you have to recognize.

This is my second year working at a private school here in Valencia and as part of the curriculum; we study Las Fallas.  We study it in Spanish, Music, and Art.  Think about the last one: Art.  That’s right.  As part of the celebration in the school, every class must make a small “falla” based on the year’s theme.  Now, being a first-second grade teacher, this is a complicated task (It would be for any year group!), but I’m lucky enough to have the little ones of the school so my falla planning has to be well thought-out and organized.

For the year’s theme, we choose languages and countries.  At my school the children study five different languages – FIVE!  So we teachers thought it would be a good idea to have the children learn more about the countries, rather than just the languages.  Every year group was assigned a different country and told to construct a monument, landmark, or something large-scaled, that could represent the country.

My year group was lucky enough to have the United States (helped me in terms of planning!) but we also have teachers from Australia, England, China, Spain and France at the school.  As I said, every year group took a country and designed a falla to contribute.  You can use whatever materials you want, cardboard, paper-mache, wood, paper, ect., the only requisite is that it needs to be big.

With my kids and the United States, I decided to do a California theme.  I have three classes at this school and with the three classes I decided to have them build something together to contribute and make a big California falla.  One class took San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, I assigned another class the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, and finally I gave one class the beaches of Southern California (think San Diego).  It’s taken us nearly 5 weeks to make these large-scale models but it’s been really fun and enlightening!

     Art can be amazing with little ones.  I use to dread art classes with them because I thought they weren’t capable of doing such great things, but I’m wrong.  They’re so eager to help you set things up, prepare things, try new ideas, they don’t really mind if the project doesn’t turn out exactly how you wanted it to be.  Although it might be overwhelming to work with twenty seven-year olds at one time to make a huge installation, it’s definitely worth it if you are well-organized and have all the right materials.  After Fallas, I’m thinking about doing some big art installations to make to decorate the classroom.  They just love collaborating making things together, which is a theme I never stop talking about in class.  It’s something they can all be proud of when the product is finished and can look at it and say, “I made part of that!”  I’ll tell you, it’s quite impressive to see what these little ones can do together when they’re excited about something!