Workshop Frenzy!!!!

With common core making an appearance next year, every teacher I know is already gearing up for the transition. My team is no exception. Last week we had the privilege of visiting another school in our state that is already doing common core based lessons and see how we can begin moving into that type of teaching.

We have always had a reading anthology that we were expected to instruct our students from. You know the type, everyone reads the same boring story and you do activities based on the story. BORING!!!! We have had the same reading text book for over 6 years and the stories in there are in much need of a rest. For the past 5 years I have been using the reading workshop model for teaching reading skills and meeting with my guided reading groups. I love the workshop approach and wouldn't give it up for anything. After spending a little over an hour in reading workshop I would then subject my students to 45 minutes of the reading text book. In my classroom we have been spending around 2 hours on reading!!! There isn't anything wrong with that if they were already good at all other subjects, but sadly they need to have instruction in those areas too!

After the school visit, my team and I decided to approach our principal about ditching the reading text book and teaching core reading skills within the reading workshop approach. She was all for this. Now that we have an extra hour of instructional time in our day by dumping our reading text, we are also adding in Writing Workshop. I have always loved this approach to teaching writing, but have never had the time in the day to do it correctly. I am now in the planning phases for both of these workshops and the excitement is contagious! I am so excited about this new phase of instruction and can't wait to see what kind of growth my students are going to make from now until the end of the year.

Our first minilesson for our "new" reading workshop is going to be on stamina. We are going to expect our students to eventually read silently for 40 minutes. I know what your thinking, "your crazy! My kids can't read that long!" I don't know about your state end of year assessments, but here in NC, our kids are expected to read 8 passages in about 2 1/2 hours. I feel that if I don't get them practicing this early on, I am failing them as a teacher. Check back next week for the progress on our stamina lessons and on how the writing workshop is going.

Check out this stamina poster I created to use to introduce this during our minilesson

Visit my Teachers pay teacher store to pick up a free poster!

First Week of Investigations Is In the Books!!!

Our county adopted the Envision mathematics series about 3 years ago with the hopes that we would move into Investigations by this point. Too bad that we are STILL working with Envision!!!! And here's a shocker... it sucks! I am not a great mathematician by any means, but I have NEVER had such low test scores as I have had with Envision. The questioning is weird and the overall approach doesn't match with the way kids think.

We got new instructional specialists this school year (who are AMAZING!) who came and met with our 3-5 teachers back in September and suggested that we make a move to doing only Investigations. No other school in our county is doing this. We had always been told to use 2 of the units and the rest was covered in Envision. We have been creating our curriculum map to plan out the rest of the year, gathering countless manipulatives to construct our math toolkits, and copying games and flashcards.

Well our planning and hard work is paying off! This week was our first full week of Investigations and while it is hard work and a different way of thinking and teaching math, my kids love it! They call our math block "fun math" now! I see their little lightbulbs going off everyday. I will keep you posted on what happens as we move through the other units, but for now, its great and we love "fun math"!!!!!

Photo Card

I know I usually post "teaching" stuff, but I HAD to post this awesome Christmas card I made to pass out this year. If you follow my blog, you know I have twin girls who are the light of my life. They are already 10 months and while last Christmas was technically their first (their bday is the 22nd) we are pretending that this is the first. We had minimal decorations last year with labor expected any day and we both knew neither of us would feel like taking down a whole bunch of stuff with newborn twins here.

Neadless to say, we have all survived the first year (almost!) and are all alive and doing well. My whole family is looking forward to celebrating Christmas and their 1st birthday this year and I'm sure that my house will look like ToysRUs threw up in my living room! I'm sure as I take more holiday pics, I'll post here. Who would mind looking at 2 cuties though!?!?!?!?

Candy Canes Frame Christmas

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Election Day = AWESOME!

I am the student council adviser at my school and we decided it would be neat to have our student council election on the actual election day. For the past few weeks I have had students creating posters and speeches and "getting their name out". Today was the culmination of all their hard work. I videotaped each candidate and loaded them on our school webpage and then the voting began.

Over the weekend, my teammate found on Pinterest (isn't it everyone's new fav?) the sweet voting booth. As soon as I saw it, I had to have it! We called our local Lowe's Hardware and requested a freezer box. We covered it with bulletin board paper and cut a door in it. I had a cute ballot box from a previous unit that we used inside our booth. I knew my third graders would love it but I was very surprised at how many fifth graders kept getting inside my booth.

While the voting booth wasn't necessary, it definitely helped increase their excitement!! Overall, I feel that my students have a better understanding of what an election is and how much hard work it takes to be a candidate. They also really thought about which candidates would do the most for the student body.

Look for the Voting Booth to making another appearance during my government unit in a few months!

My students and I in front of our voting booth

Making sure she voted for the best candidate!

When You Wish Upon A Star

My third graders have been learning all about the Sun, Moon, and Earth this 9 weeks. I absolutely LOVE this science unit and always look forward to teaching it each year. This year I added some new activities that my students loved! We began
our unit with a trip to the Catawba Science Center with a viewing of a sweet planetarium show all about the sun, moon, and Earth. ( what a perfect tie in, right!) Then while still in the planetarium, they were each given a moon ball (Styrofoam ball on a wooden dowel). The lights were turned down low and a lamp was turned on in the middle of the room symbolizing the sun. My students were able to turn their bodies and see each phase of the moon. I was awesome to

see their wheels begin to turn as they were able to identify the different phases.

Nothing is better than connecting food into our learning. I love creating edible lessons. To continue our unit on the phases of the moon, we created each of the phases using Oreos. My kids loved making these and loved eating them even more! We also created flip charts of each phase. They might be in 3rd grade, but they still enjoy coloring, gluing and cutting to make crafts.

Yet another edible science activity was making constellation models using mini-marshmallows. They loved creating these and were very precise about putting them together. We wrapped up this unit by making constellation tubes using Pringles cans. Overall, it was a great unit and more importantly my students learned way more then if we had just read from a text book!

Where do we live???? I know...Gastonia!!!!!

The past month my students have been exploring our continent, our country, our state, our county and our city. Usually when my third graders study this, they can't ever remember the difference in a country and a city. When I ask them what state we live in they say "Gastonia!" and I sigh in disbelief that they haven't learned the difference between city and state all year. This year I decided to take a different approach to see if it would make a difference.

We spent a week really studying our country and breaking down North America and made sure that my students really understood our country. We then spent the next weeks learning about our state, county and finally our city. I wanted to end the unit with a project for students to complete at home. I came up with a neighborhood map project. I asked each student to create a map of their neighborhood to share with the class. I was so suprised with what was brought in! Some of my students created 3-D maps that took up an entire poster board, while others made smaller, drawn, flat maps that were just as impressive.

This group has continued to impress me and I can't wait to see what they will bring in for our next project!!

1 Month Down, 9 More to Go!

I can't believe that we have already been in school for 1 month! Where has the time gone? My class this year just might be one of the best I have had in my 8 year teaching career. They seem to be bright and eager to learn as well as mostly well behaved. This year I have decided to tackle the subject of Social Studies and attempt to make it more interesting to my students. Each year we get out the textbook, read, answers questions and at the end of the unit take a test. BORING!!!! As a student I loved learning about Social Studies and now as an adult, I love to go see historical sites and learn about history. I want to make it come alive for my students and see their faces light up with excitement about what they are learning.






The first unit we started with was geography talking about continents, our country, our state, our county, and our town. We studied all about the seven continents using interactive lessons and projects instead of cracking open our book. Our third grade team planned a 7 continent tour that took one whole afternoon in our multipurpose room. The students had a passport and loaded a "plane" to visit the continents. Our principal was our flight attendant and we videoed her telling the students where we would travel next, what the temp would be there, and what time it was there. We showed a quick in-flight video of each continent as we "flew" there. Upon arrival, each student created a craft that was associated with each continent.

My students loved the unit and it was much more successful at having them remember that we live in the state of North Carolina, rather than the saying our state is USA!




Using Heiroglyphics to write our names

Our next unit is mapping! Look for more to come on this :)