I am entering my last week with my amazing student teacher, and I feel like I am going to be absolutely lost without her. We have had such an incredible dynamic that it felt like a true co-teaching experience. I was so fortunate to get paired with someone so like me in both personality, lifestyle, and philosophy. I expect we'll be friends for long to come. Today was her final evaluation with her faculty supervisor. When she conferenced with us after the lesson she told us how obvious it was that we enjoyed working together and what a great experience it had been for both of us. She then proceeded to tell us about the other student she is supervising who is having a terrible experience - the teacher has no passion for the profession, has little to offer her in terms of philosophies or advice, and essentially has the students doing worksheets all day. This leaves the student teacher with little time or ability to interact or to form relationships with the students. It angers and disappoints me on behalf of all teachers who get a bad rap because of the ones like this. This person is "mentoring" a future educator? The profession will be lucky if this girl doesn't run the other way after her experience. Luckily, it sounds as if she is taking it as a learning experience and is looking at this situation as a way she does not want her classroom to be run. Learning comes in all forms I guess, and she is taking what she can from the experience. What a responsibility it it to introduce someone brand new to the classroom to this incredible world that we all get to live in every day. It is so important that we instill in new teachers the survival skills that they will need in the classroom, and the very basic principal that is not taught enough in their own colleges - learning cannot occur without a safe, supportive and relationship driven classroom. You can read every textbook there is, but if you cannot build meaningful relationships with your students which then gain trust and earn motivation, then no true learning is going to occur inside your classroom walls. I hope if nothing else, that I have been a living example of that to my incredible student teacher so that I am setting her up with all the tools she will need to be successful as she begins her own amazing journey into the magical world of education. :)
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
New Items at TPT - Dragons!
After spending the last week with more free time and quiet than usual (My husband was able to pick the boys up almost every day) I found myself with some very rare free and quiet time. I used it to get caught up on some planning, to organize things that I needed for my student teacher, and to complete my latest TPT unit. This one is a dragon theme using math, literacy and writing to emphasize adding descriptive words to stories, bridging to 10 and number facts, true and false fact checking about Dragons, ABC order using words that describe dragons, and lots and lots of writing activities, along with a premade book activity for students to complete using their own imaginations and descriptions of their dragons (flashbacks to the amount of times I watched Pete's Dragon as a child). I also included an extensive list of books that can be used with the unit, and a self written story that introduces the idea of what dragons are and what words describe them in a cute fictional way. It sells for $5.00 for 65 pages of pure dragon-rificness. I would love any feedback that you have for me! Hope everyone had a great weekend. We are gearing up for the 60's and 70's over here on the east side. And an outdoor field trip Monday with warm temps. That is unheard of!
Check it out here at my TPT Store:
Dragon Theme Literacy, Math, and Writing Unit
Friday, February 15, 2013
Out of the mouths of first graders...
Walking through the lunch line one of my little girls paused at the hanging rack of lunch cards with student's names written on them. She turned to me and said -"Mrs. Norton - at first I thought that name was is.is. Then I realized it was Isis!". Check that word wall word off the list!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
It's been a long time...
I started this blog with the full intention of updating it weekly. Unfortunately, that has not occurred with my chaotic life. I have been held hostage by Crohn's Disease for most of this year and m just returning to school after a two month surgical absence. I am feeling much better now and am hoping to get back into the swing of things quickly. One added incentive to getting myself organized is that I have a student teacher starting on Monday!
Before I got too sick, I was surprised in my classroom one morning in the midst of teaching by my two little boys carrying in bouquets of balloons, and several other people, many unknown to me, entering my classroom. My principal thn informed both me and my class that I had been selected by Office Max as a winner of A Day Made Better campaign that recognized outstanding teachers. I was awarded boxes full of school and office supplies, a brand new leather desk chair, and best of all, all of my kids got supply boxes to take home. So desperately needed in our community. It was an amazing and overwhelming experience, and I am so grateful to be recognized for doing something that I love so much.
Thank you again to Office Max, and to my co-workers and administrators who nominated me for this incredible event!
Sunday, June 10, 2012
To Loop or Not to Loop...
Well here it is on Sunday morning and I just opened my school email to find the answer to the question that I have been anxiously awaiting...am I going to loop with my class to second grade. The answer was no. I was very late in expressing to my principal that I would like to do this, mainly because I LOVE first grade, and my team. Since discovering teaching blogs a few months back I have also spent an incredible amount of time purchasing units off of Teachers Pay Teachers, and making my own, so I am well stocked and organized to begin next year in first. Mostly though, I love my team. In eight years of teaching I have never worked with a group so amazing, and we truly make each other better teachers everyday. So, the only thing that I am truly sad about is my incredible kiddos. This class was very special, a true team in every sense of the word, and I am so very sad that I will not be able to spend another year watching them grow. Especially my new speakers who came in without a word of English and are leaving meeting benchmarks that I never thought they would achieve in such a short time. So, it was a bittersweet email. Now, I can continue packing my room away in the most organized fashion possible so that all of the time and effort that I spent this year will be at my fingertips when I need it next year. Fingers crossed that part of the magic was my Responsive Classroom background and ability to build relationships with my kids. If that is the case, maybe next years group will be even better. :)
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
The Three Little Pigs
This week began tales of three pigs and B.B. Wolf . Being a short week with the Memorial Day holiday, and having been ahead already on Science and Social Studies, I stole some of that time and did two blocks each day for fairy tales. We began with James Marshall's version of the story, and as usual our story element four square. In the afternoon I read Steven Kellogg's version, and had the students complete their own four square. I used it as a comprehension grade, and at this point in the year I am thankful for any graded pieces I can find!
For Wednesday we began our writing piece, "What would you use to build your house if you were the pig?". I started by reading The Three Little Pigs (An Architectural Tale). We added to our element chart, and then we brainstormed different materials that would be smart to use to build a house, and some that might not make the best choices. The kids then went on to write about what they would use to build and why. They then created their own illustration of their house to go along with the writing. Here is the prompt page that I created.
Here is what it looked like with our houses all assembled.
Next, we read my favorite version by Jon Scieszka "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs". We then voted on who thought the Wolf was guilty or innocent (overwhelmingly guilty!) and then became newspaper reporters as we completed an activity from a cute packet from Amanda Terhune of http://mrsterhune.blogspot.com. You can purchase the packet here. Fairy Tale Unit.
We filled in the who, what, when ,where, why and how boxes with the information we wanted to be part of our article. The kids had some very creative ideas of where they thought we should say the crime was committed, but they really enjoyed it. Here is the end result. (We also did the WANTED poster for the pig bad wolf from her unit)
Friday was our final day on this great Tale, and we spent it reading The Three Little Tamales AND the Three Little Javelinas. My ESOl kiddos loved these, and my class immediately connected the Tamales to The Runaway Tortilla which we read this winter with our Gingerbread Man unit (yeah!). We ended the unit writing a letter to the Wolf from the one of the pigs and creating our own pigs to go along with it.
It was a great week, and we had lots of fun with the Three Little Pigs. Next week it is on to Goldilocks, and our last fairy tale before school ends. :(
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Cinderelly...
This week we spent our phonics and whole group reading blocks on the magic of Cinderella. The girls loved it, the boys put up with it (unfortunately my library transfer request for Cinder Fella didn't come in). I promised them that I would make it up to them by dedicating the last week of school to a true modern day fairy tale...Shrek. This did the trick.
As usual, we began our week with a four square organizer with the major story elements that we are studying - character, setting, problem and solution. This time we broke the character column into two sections, good characters and evil characters. This really only became a problem when deciding where to put Cinderella's father, since in every version we read he was mentioned but never elaborated on. We began with an original version, Cinderella by Kinuko Craft. Some of the wording was a bit difficult and since I teach an ESOL class I had to explain a bit of vocabulary, but overall they enjoyed the story and the beautiful illustrations.
For writing this week, I created a "How To" writing activity about how to get Cinder_____(enter student's first name) to the ball. We first reviewed the sequence of events that occurred after Cinderella met her fairy godmother who then helped her transform ordinary objects into magical ones. From there we had a mini-lesson review on how-to writing, which we have done a bit of this year. I modeled using some elements that were true to the story, and some that I changed. I then set the kids free to brainstorm their own objects to transform into magical elements. We had pizzas, crayons, and dogs that were turned into various objects to help CinderCarlos (ex.) to the ball. Funny how many students wound up with a batmobile like finale. Here are the writing pages that I created for this activity.
We worked on the writing all week and it came out really great. We didn't have much time to create an art activity to go with it, so we created a Reward Poster for our missing shoes to go along with the unit. The version I created is here.
I did create a template for creating our own carriage which I ran out of time to use, but I am including it here.
We continued reading various versions of the story throughout the week. Not as diverse as I had hoped, but our school library was a bit limited. I am hoping my wish list materials will be here in time for next year's unit. We worked on our writing daily, and I purchased a great unit from First Grade Fabulous Fish. I purchased the unit on Teachers Pay Teachers at:
We wrote about what we would wish for from our Fairy Godmothers and also used her ABC order to practice our alphabet skills. The kids loved the colorful vocabulary cards as well. I used them in my classroom writing center. I also purchased her entire Fairy Tale unit as well at:
which was WONDERFUL. Great activities for literacy stations and especially templates for the Writing center. Here is our version of her Fairy Godmother writing.
Finally, after a busy, action packed well in Cinderella-land, we wrapped up with our hallway display.
Not quite as fancy as our Jack and the Beanstalk unit, but still not so bad. :) Next week, on to the Three Little Pigs!
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