Back to School!

I am joining Schroeder's Stars and other bloggers in a Back to School Linky Party!  We are sharing tips for going back to school, the first day, etc.

Here is my favorite back to school activity:
I take the students outside to the cement pad on the playground.  I pair students up and pass out chalk to each group.  One student in the group lies down and their partner traces him or her.  The students switch places.  After they are done tracing, they get to use the chalk to decorate themselves.  I love this activity because it is fun, lets me see my students' creative sides, and has them working together from day 1.

To see other back to school ideas from our linky party, click on the picture below!

What is your favorite first day activity?  Let me know in the comments!

Guided Reading and Literacy Centers

I said in a previous post that I would describe my guided reading and literacy centers.  As the beginning of school is getting closer, I thought this would be a good time to do so, as well as to explain some of my organizational tools.  After all, I would go crazy without good organization in my classroom!
I have five different reading groups in my classroom.  They do change frequently and are organized based on reading level or reading skills that different students need to work on.  I meet with four groups a day.  I see the red an orange groups every day, while the yellow, green, and blue groups meet with me 2 out of 3 days.  The red and orange groups are usually my struggling readers, although if I have a group reading a chapter book, they will often be in the orange group so that there is less disruption to the book.  While I am meeting with my guided reading groups, the rest of the class is in literacy stations.  I have a variety of different stations, from journals, to reading to self, to listening, word work, or spelling practice.  They also have some seat work that makes one of their daily stations.  My students have a pocket chart they use to figure out which station to go to next.

My students use the Spelling City program on the computer for their spelling work.  I have a separate tables in my classroom for the listening and word work stations.  Students do seat work and journals at their desks.  I have several comfy spots in my classroom for them to use for reading.  Each student has a bag of books to use during this time.  The books are at the appropriate level for each student.  Students do have some choice.  Each group has a drawer of books to choose from.  When they finish a book, they can pick another one from their drawer.

 Since I meet with four guided reading groups a day, I have to keep myself organized.  I have two ways of doing this.  I have an organizer by my guided reading table.  I have one basket for each group and one basket for the items I use for every group (white boards, paper, etc.).  I keep my guided reading binders on top.

Finally, I need a way to keep my guided reading books organized.  While I keep chapter books separately, I use Reading A-Z for much of my guided reading texts.  I keep them in bins organized by level (or decodables).  I do not keep these in my classroom but in the Title I room so that the Title I teacher can easily review books with students.  

Of course, I could talk forever about my literacy block, but, alas, that would be too much for a blog post.

How do you keep your reading groups organized?  Let me know in the comments. 

Primary Writing

As I have mentioned before, reading and literacy are passions of mine.  So is writing.  I admit, I get frustrated when I see various writing statistics.  While prepping for a session on writing workshop I was leading at a teachers' conference, I discovered that my local school district had fewer than 20% of students meet or exceed the standard in writing.  While I wish I could track progress since then, the state has gotten rid of the writing assessment portion of the standardized tests.  Now, I know that a standardized test is probably not the most accurate assessment of student writing, but it is the assessment we had.  More and more college students are needing to take a remedial writing class so that they can simply write at a collegiate level.  When I was working on my Master's degree, some of my classes involved critiquing my classmates' papers.  While some were well written, some made me wonder how they managed to even graduate college with their writing skills.  (If you are in a master's program, you should be able to write a thesis statement.)

How do we solve this problem?  Teachers, we NEED to spend time teaching writing in the classroom.  I also believe that we need to teach writing in a variety of different ways.  Because I teach a multi-grade classroom in which I have several mandatory curriculum (one of which is an English curriculum that has a poor writing component), I am not able to do writing workshop every day, although I would love to.  However, I ditch the English twice a week (and skip all of the writing units) for writing workshop.  My writing workshop time consists or three main parts: minilesson, writing/conferencing time, and sharing.  I don't have students share every day because they do not have finished pieces every day, but we do share often.  My minilessons are very focused on what my students need and are based on the Six Traits of writing. Conferencing time with individual students, both formal and informal, is the most valuable part of writing workshop.  While we do work on conventions some, more time is spent on the other 5 traits (ideas, organization, word choice, voice, and sentence fluency).  

In writing workshop, students work on more formal writing.  However, I think it is also important for students to have informal writing opportunities.  As part of my literacy centers, students have journals.  Some days they respond to a prompt and other days they have an opportunity to freewrite about anything they like. The only rule is that they have to write the entire time.  My students love their journals.  They give students a chance to express themselves and simply write.  The best way to develop writers is to let them write.  I don't grade these or conference over these, but I do check them occasionally to make sure students are writing.  I have seen writing proficiency increase greatly with the combination of formal and informal writing.

If you want a copy of my writing journals (which can be edited to meet the needs of your own classroom), click on the picture below:

  

How do you teach writing in your classroom?  What has worked for you?

Lessons from Summer Camp

This weekend I will be at summer camp.  Yep, I am going to camp!  Actually, I will be attending a staff reunion at the summer camp I both attended as a kid and worked at for four years while in college.  Besides the fact that I LOVE camp, what better job is there for a preservice teacher than working with kids all summer?
As I have been getting ready for this weekend I have been checking the schedule so I know what to pack and looking through the old photo albums I plan on bringing.  All of this has led to some reminiscing.  Why am I writing about this here, on my teaching blog?  Well, I learned lots of lessons as a camp counselor that have prepared me for the classroom.  Here are just a few:

1) Brain breaks - This is a hot topic in education right now.  If you look at Pinterest, you find all sorts of brain break videos for the classroom.  At summer camp we had brain breaks all of the time!  Plus, I learned so many different brain breaks I can use in my classroom.  One of my favorites is six-count.  It is hard to describe, but, basically, your right and left arms are doing different things while you count to six.  It is challenging, but it is a great way to help my kids focus!

2) Check for understanding - Every time we played a new game, directions had to be given.  Usually we were playing the game with a variety of different age groups.  If the kids don't understand the rules, there is chaos.  We ALWAYS checked for understanding before beginning a game by asking questions and encouraging the kids to ask questions as well.  While there was always at least one camper who was confused (isn't there always?), for the most part, games were able to run smoothly.

3) PATIENCE! - Unlike in a classroom, a camp counselor is with her kids 24 hours a day, with maybe a 45 minute break.  Nerves get raw very easily.  I had a different batch of kids each week (or even twice a week, as the youngest campers would only stay 2 nights).  This meant that I needed to go over the camp and cabin rules every week.  I needed to explain the game I explained last week all over again.  I need to reteach kids how to do KP (kitchen patrol) duty every week.  By the fourth or fifth week of camp, this can get quite old.  Add in the fact that I was perpetually sleep deprived, and it is very easy to lose patience with a camper or my cabin as a whole.  Patience was tested and developed at camp.

4) Differentiated instruction - Although the goal was to have campers of the same age together in a cabin, due to numbers and requests to be in the same cabin with others, often cabin groups could be of diverse ages.  I had groups that had fourth through seventh grades in the same group.  In every cabin there are campers who have never been to camp before, as well as those who come back year after year.  This meant that I had to differentiate instruction.  After all, someone who did archery last summer,  and someone who has never touched a bow and arrow before are going to need different instruction!  The camp I worked at was a Christian camp, so we also had Bible study every day.  While the lesson plans were set for the entire summer, I had to greatly modify them based on the particular campers I had that week.  I would have some that knew how to use their Bibles well and some that may never have even seen a Bible.  I had to think on my feet, modify as I went along, and try to help every camper understand.  This is a skill I use in my classroom every day.

There are too many lessons I learned as a camp counselor to list here.  However, I think these were certainly some valuable ones.  If you know any preservice teachers (or are one yourself), encourage them to work at a summer camp.  It was one of the best experiences I could have ever had to prepare me for the classroom.

Have any of you worked at a summer camp?  What did you learn?  Let me know in the comments!

Balanced Literacy

I am passionate about literacy. One of my favorite parts of teaching first and second grade is getting to teach reading. I believe very strongly in a balanced literacy approach. Phonics is important and is an integral part of learning to read. It is not the only part of learning to read, however. There seem to be three main camps on the teaching of reading and the viewpoint of the general teaching population have (and will continue) to move between these three different camps throughout time.
The first camp is what I call the "Phonics First" approach. Now, while there are people out there that believe that phonics instruction is the only part of reading instruction, they are few and far between. The more widely held view in this camp is that phonics skills need to be taught first and comprehension can come later. In other words, teachers should not worry if their students can understand what they are reading, as long as they can sound out the words on the page. Understanding comes in second or third grade after students get the phonetic basics down. A teacher who takes this approach will have her students reading "The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat" stories and nothing else. Systematic phonics instruction is important, but I don't believe that this is the best approach.
I refer to the second camp as the "Just Read Literature" camp. This camp believes that students need high quality literature and will just pick up the phonics skills as they go along if they are read to and read themselves. Reading comprehension is emphasized here, and phonics instruction is generally looked down on. A teacher who takes this approach would read a lot of books to the class while asking comprehension questions, but would generally not have give students stories they could read on their own without teacher assistance, at least in the younger grades. (They may give a child a book that the teacher has read several times to the class, however.) Using high quality literature and helping students comprehend is important, but I don't believe this is the best approach either.
I believe in the third camp, which is a balanced literacy, or "The Best of Both Worlds" set. Students do need phonics instruction for at least two years. This has been backed up by countless research. This does mean that occasionally a student will read "The Fat Cat Sat on the Mat." However, this needs to be combined with read literature that students love to read. This may mean that there are words in the story a student cannot sound out and will have to use context clues or other strategies to figure out. And, yes, there are some phonics skills that a teacher can try to teach but students will not remember unless they have plenty of opportunities to read. In my classroom, students have a chance to work on phonics skills, comprehension skills, and simply have time to enjoy reading. I have five reading groups for my first and second graders. These are flexible and are occasionally grouped by certain skills students need to work on, but are most often grouped by reading level. In each lesson, I focus on a phonics skill, we read a story, and we work on comprehension. With my lower level readers I spend a bit more time on the phonics portion and with my higher readers I spend very little. But, no matter what, we cover both phonics and comprehension every time they meet with me. Both phonics and comprehension skills are addressed during their literacy centers as well, but I will save that discussion for another post.
Before I meet with my reading groups, I meet with the whole class, where we work on a class-wide phonics skill as well as vocabulary. I try to make this fun and memorable and use lots of songs and poems. I have several wonderful flip-charts with songs in them (one for the alphabet and one for other phonics sounds). In my phonics song flip-chart, I have a "Bossy R" song, but it does try to address all of the r-controlled vowel sounds in one song. I decided that I needed songs for each song, so, I wrote some of my own. You can get them for free by clicking on the picture:

If you would like my entire packet that included the songs and worksheets to go along with each song, please click this picture:

How do you approach reading instruction in your own classroom?  Let me know in the comments!

The Small School

I teach at a small, parochial school.  For the most part, I love my job.  I have taught in the public schools, but, frankly, I love my small school.  There is such a sense of family.  My kiddos aren't just my kiddos, but are really the kids of the entire faculty.  I love seeing the eighth graders helping a first grader read the Psalm during our devotion time.  I love how the older kids will often play with the younger ones during recess.  I love the fact that after teaching there for four years I have had most of the kids in the school in my class.  I love that the faculty is a family and tries to problem solve together.  I love the fact that I actually know who the parents are, not just for my own students, but for all of them.
Teaching at a small school also has its disadvantages, however.  I am one of only 2 truly full time teachers.  (We have a teacher on 3/4 time who is basically there all day and two teachers that are half time, although one also works as our Title I teacher, so is there basically all day as well.)  This means that before school, I have all of the PK-2nd grade students in my room.  I don't get a plan time.  I don't get a lunch break.  In fact, I have to help serve lunch.  I do my own recess duty.  Besides my five reading groups and other activities during my literacy center time, I have to prep 2 math lessons a day, 2 English lessons a day, 2 handwriting lessons (3 times a week), plus science, social studies, and all of my own specials (PE, music, and art).  There is never enough time in the day to do everything.  There is never enough time to prep everything.  While I know every teacher works over the summer, if I want to create anything innovative, I HAVE to do it over the summer as there is simply no time during the school year.
I admit, I get upset when I see teachers teaching a single grade say that they don't have time to do basic, important things, like handwriting.  If I can manage to fit it in three times a week, you should be able to get 5 or 10 minutes a day without a problem.  Yes, I know that there are many things you are required to do and that handwriting is not in the Common Core standards, but would you neglect teaching a child to make a better choice because it isn't in the standards?  Would you simply tie a shoe for a child over and over because shoe tying isn't in the standards?  When I see teachers complaining that their planning time got cut from 300 hours to 225 hours a week, I almost want to cry.  What I wouldn't do for 100 hours a week of planning time!  (I am not saying teachers with planning time are evil.  I taught in a public school.  I really enjoyed having my planning time.  However, I have a lot more perspective now than I did then now that I teach in a small school and am making only 2/3 of the salary I made in my first year of teaching.)  Okay, my rant is over now.
Multi-grade teachers - how do you manage your time?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

Sentence Scrambles

Okay, I admit it.  I am a bit of a grammar nerd.  (I can blame both my mother and my tenth grade English teacher for that.  Thank you, Mr. Russell.)  So, while I love teaching my first and second graders, listening to poor grammar while they speak and reading their writing with below-grade level grammar really gets to me.  The best way to help our students improve their grammar is by having them read A LOT and by using correct grammar around them.  However, what do you do when this is not enough?  I teach in a very rural area.  As are most rural areas, it is a relatively high poverty area as well.  People have their own grammatical dialect.  This is the grammar that my students have heard since birth, and just using grammar correctly myself will not teach conventional English well enough.  While I do not look down on this dialect, it is important that our students understand and are able to use conventional English, as this is what is used in academia and most of the workforce.  We have all seen the Facebook postings of poor grammar on job applications that make you assume the person never got the job.
One area in which my students really struggle in their writing is with sentence structure, capitalization, and punctuation.  We spend far more time on this than I would like, but, unfortunately, I occasionally still get second graders who can't seem to remember to start a sentence with a capital letter and end it with a punctuation mark.  I have tried  many different things.  My school uses Shurley English as our main grammar curriculum.  (It also included writing, which I do not use.  I use a writing workshop model instead.)  Its main focus in the early grades is capitalization, punctuation, and parts of speech.  It is very repetitive (which can be good), but it is not at all kinesthetic and uses the same strategy all of the time.  I find that I need to supplement it to help students understand the concepts.
One activity I use in my classroom are sentence scrambles.  Each student gets a word (or punctuation mark) in the sentence.  They need to work together to put themselves in the correct order to make the sentence.  This activity is fun, cooperatiive, and helps students see sentence order better.  It is easy to pick out the first word in the sentence because it begins with a capital letter.  However, as they do the activity, I hear them say over and over again, "That word is first.  It starts with a capital."  This helps them form the connection in their brain that sentences begin with capitals.
I have created 10 scrambled sentences that are easy enough for my first graders to read.  The sentences are of various complexities, and include sentences with subjects, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, and simple prepositional phrases.  I color-coded the parts of speech in each sentence so that I can also use them to discuss parts of speech with my students.
If you would like a copy of this activity for yourself, you can get it by clicking on the picture below:

What do you do in your classroom to help students understand sentence structure?  Let me know in the comments section!

Educating Parents

One of my biggest joys and challenges in teaching is helping students love to read.  However, while I know that I have a lot of influence and can make a big difference, my students still trust their parents most of all.  As any teacher knows, parental involvement is so important to helping students learn and grow.  I have found that many parents do really want to help their child, but just don't really know what to do or where to start.  So, every year, I send home some suggestions for parents.  (As a note, I require my students to read 20 minutes at home every night.)
Here is a copy of the handout I send home during parent-teacher conferences in the fall.  (My school does not do a traditional open house, or I might pass it out then.)  I send home enough papers home at the very beginning of the year, that I am afraid if I sent it home too soon it would just get lost in all of the other paperwork.  To get it for free, click this link:

Reading Parent Note

What do you do to help educate parents?  Let me know in the comments.

Welcome!

In this blog, I plan on sharing both the joys and struggles of teaching in a multi-grade setting, as well as provide ideas and resources that have helped me.  I am also interested in hearing your ideas!  
I currently teach a first and second grade combined classroom.  I teach at a small, rural, parochial school that has multi-grades because of school size.  However, in the past, I have also taught Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 6th and 7th grade Language Arts.  I will be beginning my 10th year of teaching this fall.  I graduated with my BA in Language Arts and Elementary Education from Hope College.  I have an MS in Early Childhood Education from Capella University and hope to begin working on my Ed.D. in Reading and Literacy in the coming year.  I am passionate about teaching and student development.  While I love teaching every subject, my biggest passion in literacy and helping ever child read, write, and love doing so.
I am excited to have you join me!