Happy Holidays

Hi everyone, just wanted wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving this week. If you are celebrating away from home here's hoping for safe travels and returns. I know I'm going to use this break to relax and recharge a little bit. Feel free to post on the blog over the break. If you have any holiday projects coming up that you'd like to share we'd love to hear about it.

Thanks

Hi again. I just wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to Laura O'Brien for taking the time to create all those Word docs with sample math problems. Not just problems for each standard, but specific problems for each indicator of each standard. Wow. I can't imagine how long that took to do. It is much appreciated.

Sticking with the math theme. I've had two students in the last week pass their final multiplication facts timed test. They have to pass 100 problems in four minutes. And there is another group of students poised to join them in the next couple of weeks.

Thanksgiving Link

Hi everyone. If you are looking to supplement your Reading with some Thanksgiving stories this week I found a pretty good website to check out. It has short Thanksgiving themed stories that you can print out. Check it out if you want.

Click here for the Thanksgiving link

New iCats Site

Laura, thanks for sharing that on peer editing. It sounds like a great idea.

the iCATS have redone their website, and our blog is featured on the site. they have a section for blogs and wikis (not sure what a wiki is), and there is a link to our blog so other schools can check out what we have going on here.

If you don't frequent the iCATS site, it might be worth your time. I have it set as my default website when I open up my teacher computer, because they have links to a lot of log ins that I use like RDS, the Intranet, and Acuity. Their Resources section is chock full of great links.

Click resources then iCATS Favorite Links and I bet you find something useful.

click here to go to the iCATS website

Peer Editing

Hey guys! I got some ideas for Peer Editing from the workshop I attended. The presenter suggested that we just concentrate on one convention at a time. Let's say you wanted to start with capitalization. That week all you would look for is capitalization. The next week you could do capitalization then say punctuation.
I was thinking about a variation of this concept. I'm going to try it out in my room and will let you know how it goes. I'm going to have a 2-3 students at different "stations" around the room. One of the teams will check the papers for punctuation. The next for capitalization and so on. When the kids have been through the rotation them the kids who were the "capitalization experts or punctuation experts, etc." could go around to the different stations and the kids who have had their papers checked could then be the experts.

Proactive Classroom Behavior

Hey everyone. I want to say thanks to everyone who helped with the faculty meeting presentations on Wednesday afternoon. It was well organized and informative. I wanted to post on the blog to see if anyone is using a proactive behavior in their classroom. I use a behavior card system in my room. Students flip cards during the week if their behavior gets out of line.

It is a reactive system as opposed to a proactive system. When a student flips a card they owe recess that day, and if they flip several cards during the week if could result in an office referral. It works pretty well, I don't have that many students flipping cards this year. On the other hand, it is basically the same students who flip a card each week. The meeting on Wednesday made me wonder if using a system like that is a good idea.

Is anyone doing anything different that is more proactive rather than reactive?

Cardstock & Print

I was wondering if anyone else was having this problem... When I use the copier and copy things onto card stock the print rubs off. Is this just me? I was wondering if anyone had any luck with a certain type of card stock that this didn't happen.

Thanks!

Keep Up the Good Work

I just wanted to give a shout out to our friends in K-3 and Title who are working with Reading First. You guys really have a lot on your plate. I am taking the Voyager U. course with Kimber for license renewal this year, and I really admire the work that all of you are doing for Reading First. I am just getting a small glimpse into all the lingo, stations, and other work that you all do on top of what we do anyway for our other core subjects. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed just doing inclusion in 5th grade, but it's not really anything compared to what you all are doing in K-3. Hats off to you all.

Pair and Share Cont.

The Pair and Share project sounds great. And I love the idea of having some kids going to other grade levels for other projects besides paired reading. Maybe some of our older students could go to some primary classrooms to play some math games with the students or even show them some simple science demonstrations.

Also, I know some primary grades might be doing some Thanksgiving Reader's Theater projects coming up. If you're into traveling performances I know my class would get a kick out of seeing your class perform. Just a thought.

Pair & Share

This afternoon my class went to read to the kindergartners. We paired 2-3 kindergartners with 2 of my kids. It was a great way for my 5th graders to work on their fluency and it was a lot of fun! I was thinking that sharing time between grade levels could work in a lot of different ways besides reading. For example, maybe one day my 5th graders could go to a different level and share a project. If anyone is interested let me know!

Thanks!

ITRI

Hey Everybody!

I don't know if everyone discussed it in their meeting today, but I know that we spent some time talking about materials that are called "ITRI-Informational Text Reading Inventory." I haven't had a chance to look through it all, but here is the link if you are interested. I thought it might save you the time and trouble of searching for it, I know it took me a while to find it. :)
http://www.cia.indiana.edu/curriculum_ITRI_5.htm

Thanks

Ok Ok, I appreciate any and all nice words posted towards me for the blog. First, let's not forget it was Missy McCutchan's idea at our faculty meeting to have a blog in the first place. All I did was sign up for a Google account and get it going.

So I'll post a question now to everyone. Does anyone use peer editing in Language Arts with any success? I really struggle with this, because a lot of my students consistently don't give useful feedback to their partner. On the positive side I guess it is good practice for fluency, because I have them read their papers aloud to their partner.

I have done countless mini lessons on how to tell if a paper is off topic, a character needs developing, etc. Still too often students say their partner said their paper was fine, no meaningful suggestions. I think so many of our kids need help with their writing that it is hard for them to recognize areas of improvement in another student's writing.

Sometimes it can be useful, because the kids can help each other with their spelling. But truthfully I probably only have 4 or 5 students who have the skill to be a productive peer editor, and laying everyone on them would overload them and be unfair. I still find it is easier to have the students working independently while I find time to personally conference with each one.

We've been told for so long how important peer editing is, but I find it hard to make it useful outside of fluency practice. What are any of you all doing with peer editing that is working? Any suggestions?

Great job Mr. Steele

This is my first BLOG posting and I am proud to say it is to your BlOG. The enthusiasm and intitiative you have shown is great.
As Delaware moves forward refocusing on student engagement and increased achievement, technology will be an asset.
Just some considerations to think about:
When is the technology only the "novelty" part of the lesson?
Does the technology enable 100% active engagement? (that is our ultimate goal)
Maybe we need to interview the students and find out what they think about using the whiteboard, et.al. How would they suggest we use technology to make the lesson and learning stronger? I bet they would have some suggestions that would give us all a couple of "ah ha's".
Too often we leave the kids out of the equation. We assume that we know what drives them and what interests them, when infact, we are creating unappealing lessons because they are based on our experiences as students and our interests as individuals.
Just something to ponder.

Thanksgiving Site

Hey everyone. With Thanksgiving coming up this month I wanted to put up a link to DLTK's Thanksgiving section. DLTK is a great website with a lot of activities for our kids. A lot of us I'm sure are familiar with it, but if you're not then here's your chance to explore it. There are a lot of printables, games, crafts, etc. for holidays and for other themes.

Click here to go to DLTK Thanksgiving site

You can navigate the rest of the site from the Thanksgiving section, or just go to

DLTK Homepage

Way to go Delaware!

You are doing a great job. I enjoy using a blog to share ideas and information. Here is a possible link for you to check out: Games and Templates.

Congratulations Nathan and Delaware

I am seeing more and more high school teachers add threaded discussions to their class activities. To my knowledge, this is the first EVSC elementary school to start a blog. I'm not sure any other school, elementary, middle or high, is doing it for the whole school. What I have seen so far is individual teachers using it in their classes.

Congratulations for paving the way.

Congratulations Mr. Steele!!
You are doing a wonderful job of encouraging your partner teachers to include technology
in his/her daily teaching. It is great that you are sharing ideas and lessons. If any of
your partners need help in incorporating technology, please encourage them to contact
the iCATS. We would be glad to help out.

Hey everybody. Alright, this is a post that has nothing to do with technology. I wanted to share a game with everyone that could be used as a center as well. It's called Scoop and Spell, and all you need is a an ice cream scoop, a bunch of letter tiles, and an empty gallon ice cream bucket. I got my letters in the stationary department at Wal Mart I think.

Students use the scoop to scoop out some letters from the bucket. They record the letters they scoop out and then start building words with their letters. As they build words they record them on their score sheet, and then they write sentences at the bottom of their sheet using the words they built.

I found this game on the Internet a couple years ago when I was in my Title position and working upstairs in the penthouse with 3rd grade.

The links below are to the sheets that go with the game. Just click, download, and print.

Click here for the Scoop and Spell Directions

Click here for the Scoop and Spell Sorting Mat

Click here for the Scoop and Spell Recording Page

I think when you click the link it automatically downloads each one as a PDF file.

Computer Lab Update

Hey everyone. After the Acuity window closes this week the computer lab will be available full time again. Mr. Gish has installed the Math Blaster game on each computer to be able to play without having the CD in. There should be a link to Math Blaster on the desktop of each machine. I know a lot of you like to take your class to the lab as reward time, so that should make it easy for them to have something to play right away.

Other great websites to use if you take your class to the lab are:

funbrain.com
-this is a great site with lots of games in all subject areas spanning all ability levels.

kids.discovery.com
-this is the discovery channel's kids website with some video to watch and games to play.

Digital Camera/Photostory ideas

Ok, you all knew it wouldn't be too long before I got on here with an idea for using technology. I've heard some people using the Photostory program on the Dells to add pictures to our kids' stories to make them come alive. Here's another idea for Photostory. Take pictures that show/represent your vocabulary words for that week. Load them into Photostory and narrate the pictures, relating them to the vocabulary words. The kids especially love to see pictures of us acting out or portraying our vocab. words.

If photostory isn't your thing, you can take digital pictures and load them into powerpoint or another picture viewer on your computer and let the kids see it as a slide show.

If you don't have time to take your own digital pictures, search the internet for existing pictures and save them to your computer.

To do this in Google, go to www.google.com to bring up the traditional web search. Then look in the upper left corner of your browser and click on image. Doing this will have Google search the web for images, not websites.

Primary teachers, below is a link to a website that has some amazing pictures of alphabet letters occurring in nature.

http://www.rockdale.k12.ga.us/personal/mholbrook/dig_photos/default.aspx

Every grade level has a digital camera, and all of our kids respond to visual learning. I know we can't compete with their video games, but using the cameras regularly can really hook them in to what we're already doing.

Blog Guidelines

Ok everyone, let's lay down a few guidelines to keep the blog professional and on track with what it's supposed to be.

The goal of the blog is for us to have a central place to communicate as a staff. Email is ok, but I think if we use this blog to collaborate that great things can happen.

This is a good place to share lesson ideas, how you're teaching the standards, behavior management techniques, new ways to use technology, and successes in your classroom.

It's also a place to ask for advice on any of the above topics as well as a place to go when you just need a little support and a kind word.

Please keep the following guidelines in mind when making a post on the blog.

1. Let's keep student names out of the blog. Even if it's an uplifting success story, I think our students' privacy should be a top priority of the blog. I think simply saying "A student in my class..." will be good enough.

2. Let's keep it positive. Evan if we're posting about a struggle we're having in class in a certain subject or with behavior management, let's try to put a positive spin on things.

3. Let's keep personal conversations out of the blog. Try to stay on topic, and if you find yourselves just talking back and forth it might be good to do that on email, instant message, text message, or just use the teacher's lounge.

Welcome to Delaware's blog

Hello Delaware!! Let's give this blog idea a shot, what do you say? This blog is for positive, uplifting posts as well as for exchanging of lesson ideas among the staff. If you don't want to be an author and make posts on the blog, that's fine, you can still just read it to keep up with what's going on. This my first time being administrator of a blog as well, so be patient with me, I'm learning as I go.