More Spring Cleaning, and a Freebie!

Hi Friends,

Well, I am settling into my new blog design, and feeling the need to clear out, declutter, and simplify my life.  Are you with me? 

How do you do all of this?  Well, you start by clearing out that 10 page long TPT Wishlist, of course!  So, to make that process a bit easier, over 140 great sellers are throwing a 3 day Spring Cleaning Sale!

Some people are starting their sales today!  Learn more about where you can find great sales at the end of this post!

My sale will be going from Saturday, the 29th, to Monday, the 31st! Everything in my store will be 20% off!  Here are some things you might want to check out! 

Click on the links below to learn more: 

1) Super Strategic Readers:  I just finished updating this super-sized file!  It has adorable kid graphics from Melonheadz, Reading Strategy posters, Thinking Stems, and Response Sheets that work with any book, and are differentiated for readers at various levels!  This pack is a must have to get your kids to think strategically when reading, so that they can be successful with the Common Core!

2) Space Themed Differentiated Cards:  End of the year behavior management blues?  Focus on the positive with these differentiated behavior cards. This is just the tool to get your students motivated again, and back on task.  This pack has 7 different card versions, 3 whole class behavior card posters, and all cards are now EDITABLE so you can customize the goals for each individual student, or your whole class!  These are a true lifesaver for me!  My students LOVE them!

3) Count Down to Summer Writing Journal:  I don't know about you, buy my mind is already turning to the End of the Year.  Plan ahead with this great journal that will have your kids happily writing for the whole last month of school.  It has a fillable table of contents, primary and intermediate lines, graphic organizers, a word bank, and fun writing prompts that your kids will love!

4) Counting Coins Made Easy:  Recently revised as well!  I have expanded the content of this popular pack.  This pack is the "ultimate" coin counting resource.  I have been using these materials for over 8 years, and my students are so successful with counting coins that it has become my favorite math unit to teach!  In this pack, I share with you my tips and tricks that make my students coin counting experts.  Also, the new update includes 20 CCSS aligned word problems!  Perfection!

5) Packing Up My Year Memory Books:  I told you I had end-of-the-year-itis!  This ultra-popular end of the year craftivity is available in Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade versions! You, your kids, and their parents will love this fun, sweet momento of their school year!

Here's a little Spring freebie (from something I am working on right now) for making it to the end of this post!

Have a great Friday!

As promised, a list of great stores on sale!

An InLinkz Link-up

Gave it a Whirl Wednesday - Organization

Yay!  It's Gave it a Whirl Wednesday, the Organization Edition!  

So, I am doing a lot of reading conferences and informal observations, and keeping track of all of my notes and transferring them into my assessment binder (a 3 1/2 inch binder) has been a big hassle.  So, I know I have seen this idea on the internet, and I scoured through my Pinterest boards, but I cannot find the original poster.  If you know who it is, please let me know so I can credit them properly.  Anyway, I tried this just yesterday.  The idea is to write your conference/observation notes on a post-it that is organized into a file folder.  I think the original idea used mini post-its, because I was only able to fit 12 post its in my folder.  But, I think that I might just stick with this size, because I usually end up writing quite a bit.

So, today I used this to do an informal assessment on how my students are coming along with the inferring strategy we have been working on this week. We have practiced inferring emotions, pictures, and short pieces of text as a whole class.  But, today the kids were put into groups, and I put a short piece of text acquired from the FCRR site (Florida Center for Reading Research) at 6 different stations. Below is what I downloaded from the site.  Click on the image to get your copy.

Then, I gave them this response sheet.  You could easily just have kids fold a piece of white paper to make six boxes.  I like this one because it has sentence stems to help my students organize their thinking.

Then, the groups rotated from station to station.  At each station students were expected to 1) Read:  I asked the groups to read chorally because I have a few struggling readers, and wanted them to to have access to the text so they could do the thinking with the rest of their group.  2) Talking:  Students had to share their inference with their group using the following sentence frame.  "I can infer that______ because I see ___________, and I know _________.  The idea here is to enforce that inferences are made by using clues from the text, and our schema.  3) Write:  Students wrote their thinking in one of the boxes on their response sheet.  Here is an example of what a few of my 1st and 2nd graders were able to do.

The kids did a lot of good thinking today.  As for me,  I just roamed around the room and jotted down what students were saying.  Student #8 (below) was able to make a good inference, but I had to intervene (I) because she went straight to her background knowledge instead of using the text to verify her inference.  I made a note on the bottom to pull her for more work on using evidence from the text. (Excuse my chicken scratch.)

What I really like about the sticky notes is that I can easily group students with like needs by grouping post-its.

Also, with this system I can easily see trends within the classroom.  For example, today I noticed that several of my students were trying to infer things that were already explicitly stated in the text.  It was just really nice to see everything laid out on a single plane, so that I could get a feel for the group as a whole.  This will help guide my instruction in the days to come. 

Finally, these notes can easily be placed into my assessment binder on individual student pages as evidence of where students are with this strategy.  (This post-it above doesn't show it, but I did date each note.)  

I am going to keep up with this system and see how it goes.  I definitely liked it better than what I was doing before.  How do you keep track of your conference/observations?

Want to link up?  I am keeping the guidelines super simple:

1)  Pick one great idea that you have been wanting to try.  Maybe one shared from the Bright Ideas Blog Hop.  Click the image to get started.

2) Try it in your classroom and write a blog post about your experience.  Make sure you give credit, and a link back to the original poster of the idea!

3) Link back to this post. 

4)  Link up below.  

Can't wait to see what you all have been up to!

See ya,

Nicole

An InLinkz Link-up

Gave it a Whirl Wednesday

If you all were like me, you absolutely loved the recent Bright Ideas Blog Hop.  I love seeing what others are doing in their classrooms, and freshening up my bag of teaching tricks.  But, what I usually do is see something (or in this case, great idea after great idea), get overwhelmed, and forget to try any of them.  

So, I am super inspired to start trying new things and share them with you.  So, there you have it.  The very first "Gave it a Whirl Wednesday" Linky Party.

I'm just going to pick one simple idea and "give it a whirl," and on Wednesdays (or maybe every other Wednesday - just being honest. LOL), I will share how I tweaked it and made it work for my students and me. Sounds fun.  Yes?

Even better, I invite all of you to try a Bright Idea, and link up!  See guidelines at the end of this post.

Alright the first idea I tried last week comes from Lori over at Conversations in Literacy.  As someone who is passionate about teaching kids about reading strategies, and reading for meaning, this post really spoke to me.  Her idea was "Tabletop Twitter."  Head over to her post to check out how she uses this with her 3rd grade class, and then pop back over here to see how I modified it for my 1st/2nd grade students. 

Alright, now that you are all caught up to speed, and super interested in this great idea, I will tell you what I did.

I have a 1/2 grade combo this year, so I dropped the Twitter reference to make it easier for them because I have never "tweeted" in my life. We have been working on a Heroes unit, and have already spent considerable time studying MLK.  I wanted to introduce a new piece of text on another hero, Rosa Parks.  We used this text to do our closed readings for the week.  

But, before I gave them the text.  I posted some images that I thought would allow them to use some critical reading strategies that good readers use: Making Connections and Questioning.  I used Google images to find photos that I thought were thought provoking, and would allow students to dig into their background knowledge and connect to some big ideas that we have been learning about.  

I also included one quote from Rosa Parks that I thought would bring about an interesting discussion.

We did a carousel, meaning that students rotated from one poster to another in groups.  First, students were given time to think about the image, and discuss it with their small group.  Then, they were asked to write 1) a question, 2) a comment, or 3) a connection.  For accountability, I asked students to put their student number after their writing.

So this is a sampling of what I got from my little smarties.  

Love this connection to previous learning!

While the kids were writing, I went around and put a star next to my favorites.  This really encouraged my kids to do their best thinking. But, you will have to use it with caution.  I stressed to my students that I would only give stars to original thoughts.  So that took care of any ideas some kids might have had, to copy a comment that was already starred.

This comment sparked a great discussion about how Rosa wasn't just tired of giving up her seat, but of all the ways she and African Americans were being treated unfairly.

Some other great pics I used.

After the carousel, all the posters were pinned up in our meeting area. The kids referred back to them often as we did each reading of the text.  I am so proud of my students!

The next step for us was, now that we have finished reading the text, I had the kids go back and add new questions, comments, and connections.  I gave the kids colored pencils to do this, so that I can distinguish their thinking before reading and after reading.  I was hoping to see richer more complex thinking, and that kids were really getting the big ideas.  

And I really did see a lot of good info on the posters.

The problem was that most of my kids already knew many of the big ideas contained in this text, so there wasn't enough new info to see a big difference from before and after.  Text choice is key here.

In summary:  This lesson would work especially great if used at the beginning of a unit on a topic the kids did not have a lot of schema about. Ah, live and learn. I saw a great quote posted by a friend this week. "There are no mistakes.  Only lessons."  Lesson learned.

I hope you got some new ideas about how to use Lori's great "Tabletop Twitter" idea, and will come back next "Gave it a Whirl Wednesday."

Want to link up?  I am keeping the guidelines super simple:

1)  Pick one great idea that you have been wanting to try.  Maybe one shared from the Bright Ideas Blog Hop.  Click the image to get started.

2) Try it in your classroom and write a blog post about your experience.  Make sure you give credit, and a link back to the original poster of the idea!

3) Link back to this post. 

4)  Link up below.  

Can't wait to see what you all have been up to!

See ya,

Nicole

An InLinkz Link-up