Nice try, but...

     So I have this kid this year who really does not like to tell his mom when he gets into trouble; he's not a bad kid, just your typical third-grader who occasionally cuts up a little and has it noted in his take-home folder.  So, he was in trouble twice this week, and after the first day, he scribbled over the note in his folder and gave himself a happy face.  Day two, I write another note, and explain that if it is not signed, I will be calling home.
      He comes to school the next day, and I don't get around to checking folders until right before time to leave, and when I look at his folder, the note has been cut off of his calendar.  I call him over and explain that as soon as I'm done with dismissal, I will call mom.
    Tears begin, and he tells me that he cut off the paper so he could show mom, really, he did.  I say, then it won't be a problem when I call; she'll already know about it.
    Kid:  "No, wait, Ms. Haines.  I didn't really tell her.  But you see (tears streaming down his face and a catch in his throat), I did it for you.  I really wanted to earn five dollars so I could get you a present because I love you."

I called home anyway.  No word yet on whether I'll be getting my gift.  : )

Gooaaaalllll!!!!!!!!

      As a school, we are working on setting goals for each kid in reading and math.  So far, I've only been working with my students on reading goals, and today, three of my kids met their goals and I AM SO PROUD!!!!  They were the first three in the whole school.

    One child has been fascinated with the Titanic since school started, and he kept asking about it and looking at this book I have on it.  However, the text was really dense and really dry, and very over his head, so when I was at the bookstore a couple of weeks ago, I found an easier read called Titanic, Lost..and Found.  It was one of those little Ready to Read book...a Level 4 one, which fit with this kid well because he's a fairly proficient reader.  So, we made his goal to read the whole book and then give a little presentation to the class.  And it was SO GREAT!!!  He's one of my most wiggly children and I've had a lot of trouble getting him to stay on task during Reading Workshop, but all of a sudden he was self-motivated to work on his book every day, and I didn't have to say a word.  It took him three days to finish all the way, and then yesterday, he came up and told me all about it...how the captain wouldn't leave his ship and what happened with the iceberg and everything.  So then I let him do it for the class, and it was so funny because when he did it for them, he would tell a little bit and then say, "Chapter 2" and then tell a little bit and then "Chapter 3," which I found hilarious.

    My other two kids both had to practice an at level book and read it with smoothly and with at least 95 percent accuracy for the one kid and 90 percent for the other.  I monitored them to make sure they read the book repeatedly, and then I tested them today by just giving a running record over a random page I flipped to.  And they succeeded with 96 and 95 percent accuracy and nice, smooth reading! 

     They all got to go see the principal, and since we were having grade-level meetings, all the third-grade teachers and coaches were in there too, and everybody cheered them on, and then they got to have stickers saying they'd met their goals and treats from the principal's treasure chest and their name on the announcements for the whole school to hear about how they'd been the first ones to meet goals.

     They were so proud of themselves, and smiling and happy...and it was extra special because school hasn't exactly been a success story so far for any of them.  It was today.

   
   

Remembering September 11th

  
     On the first anniversary of September 11th, I worked with a bunch of kids at my college and we placed more than 3,000 flags on the campus lawn, one for each victim of 9/11.  It was just a little thing, but it felt good to do something to honor the victims and heroes who died that day.
   
      One of the greatest privileges I have as a teacher is getting the chance to honor those heroes again every year, to honor them by keeping the memory of their sacrifice alive in the minds of children, many of whom have no idea what Patriot's Day is all about.  In fact, the vast majority of the kids I've taught over the years haven't ever even heard of September 11th and have no idea what it is or why it's important.  But if they didn't before, they do now.

     I start off by reading The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

 

     This is a great book about a guy who (illegally) walked on a tightrope between the towers when they were first built in the 1970s.  The book ends with "Now the towers are gone" and a picture of the empty skyline.  This always begs the question, "What happened to the towers?"  This year, many of my students already had some idea because homework last night was to ask their parents about September 11th.  So I let them share what they knew.  Then I had them watch a short Scholastic video that I really like because it shows the towers being hit without being overly graphic for young kids.  After that, I just talk them through the events using a nonfiction book full of pictures as we go along and making sure to point out the 343 firefighters who died, the Pentagon being hit, and Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.  I let them listen to a phone call from a mom to her son on Flight 93 at the  9/11 timeline.  This is the only clip I use from there, but for older kids it would be a great resource to look through more.  The phone call is heartbreaking enough.  This year I also had the satisfaction of letting them listen to a clip of the president inform the country that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

     We spent the rest of the morning drawing and writing about what we'd learned so far.  I got so caught up in the moment that my whole class was late to switch for intervention time.  Here's some of their work:

     I always find this project so interesting partially it's one of the few writing projects we do with no revision or editing and very little assistance from me.  I put words they want spelled up on the board and then let them at it.

     Later on in the day, we focused more on the heroes of September 11th.  I got this idea from the 9/11 memorial, which as far as I can tell, has the very best plans out there.  If you just Google 9/11 plans, most of what you find is about tolerance or cultures, both of which are important, but it's nice to actually learn about what happened on 9/11 at some point too, and the memorial's website has some wonderful ideas; someday, my class is going to spend a whole week on 9/11 and we will cover lots more of those plans.

     But anyway, we read Fireboat, which made me tear up a little.  It's about this old fireboat that these people had bought and refurbished just for fun, but then on 9/11 they actually needed it to hook up the firetrucks to get water from.  I also talked with them about the guide dog that led a blind man down the stairs and about the man who stayed with his friend in the wheelchair rather than leave him behind.  Then we brainstormed character traits of a hero, and I asked them to fill out a paper telling about a 9/11 hero and his/her character traits.  Here's what they came up with:

 Mark is the name of the son of the woman whose phone call to Flight 93 we listened to.

     At the end of the day, I read 14 Cows for America, about a tribe in Kenya who sent 14 cows as a way to help America heal. We talked a tiny bit about how little acts of kindness add up and make a difference in the world, and I made homework tonight to find a way to be a hero at home.

No spiders, Thank You!

So we are outside at recess:

Kid: Ms. Haines, that spider's about to get on you.
Gigantic huge big spider-ish looking thing with long legs appears on picnic table in front of me.
Me (getting up quickly): Kill it, kill it, kill it.
Child one: I got it Ms. Haines
Child two: No, Ms. Haines, those have thin little legs, that means that kind is ok.
Spider flees across picnic table in desperate attempt to get away
Me: I don't care.  It's big and scary looking and I don't want it on me.
Child one climbs onto picnic table to stomp on it.  Spider jumps off table and onto ground.
Child two: Really Ms. Haines, those kind are ok.
Me: Kill it, kill it, kill it.  I want it dead.
Child one (finally managing to step on it): There!  Don't you mess with my teacher, spider.
Kids run off to play.

It really was a big, scary looking thing.  I didn't like it.  Just to show that I'm not all anti-insect and arachnid though, here we all are later on watching the inchworm walk.  I even made sure we returned it to the ground so it could get food or whatever.  It really was cute, it kept standing up and looking at us and it crawls so cute.  (I'm letting a kid use my camera phone, so you can hear me directing the whole time in this).

 

Fluency Practice

     After we finished our week studying the genre of fables, we spent the next week working on Reader's Theaters of different fables.  I broke my class into three groups and gave each group one fable to rehearse.  We worked for about 20 minutes for three days.  I used one of those books that differentiate the roles so that my higher readers could have more complex parts.  During whole group instruction, we read "The Strongest One" from our reading book.  It's a fable written as a play.  We worked as a class on reading with expression and reading smoothly. 

     It was awesome to see them perform for each other on Friday.  For one thing, they were so supportive of each other.  One of my students this year absolutely hates reading, and he can barely read anything at all, so he only had two very short lines and he grumbled about that all week, but when he got up and performed at the end of the week, two or three of the other boys came and gave him a huge hug when he finished.  They were all hugging applauding and just had a great attitude about the whole thing.

     Here is the audio for the group that performed Chicken Little.  It's hard to hear in some parts, but you can tell that they have really worked on reading together in unison and putting some expression into it.  I'm so proud.

Pinteresty

     So, you have to understand, I have serious anchor chart envy issues.  I mean, when it comes right down to it, being cute does not equal good teaching, and a lot of the stuff I see that is "cute" is not necessarily good for kids.  And I don't think it really matters what your anchor chart or whatever looks like as long as its effective and the information on it is co-constructed knowledge put together with the kids.
     But there's this awesome, addictive little thing called pinterest, and other people's stuff is just so stinkin' cute and I AM JEALOUS.  So I decided to get all pinterest-y when I made my exit ticket board this year.  Here's what I came up with:

The question for this one was: What would change if the setting for The Three Little Pigs was the jungle?

Isn't it cute?!

And I really think it's a useful tool too.  One of the things I always have trouble with is closing out the day calmly and efficiently without wasting teaching time.  So, I write the exit ticket question on the little board at the end of the day, and then as the kids are getting backpacks and homework and cleaning up, they write their answer on a post-it note and then stick it on the board on their way out.  So far, the afternoon is still a little hectic, but it has helped; and it keeps the kids busy and thinking right up until the end of the day and also lets me see who understands what.  Plus, it lets me ask higher order thinking questions if I want, or we can write behavior goals or whatever I want.

Here's the chart that I got the idea from off of pinterest.  I would attach the link to the website or blog or whatever, but it just links to the picture so I don't know where the original source is:

Fables Mini-Unit

     This week our class learned about fables.  We focused on two main Common Core standards, one where you determine the moral and provide evidence and the other where you describe character traits in the story (RL3.2 and RL3.3). 
     To introduce fables, I showed a Pixar video, which the kids absolutely loved.  It's one of their animated shorts and it's about bullying.  

 

     After the video, we talked about the character traits of the two different birds and we discussed the lesson in the story.  I introduced the word moral and really worked on getting kids to provide evidence from the video for their thinking.  We also talked about how the character's didn't have names and how in fables the name of the animal is their name.  One kid even called out at the end of the video, "Hey, that was way too short!" which I used as a teachable moment to add in that fables are almost always short stories.   (I'm not sure this video actually counts as a fable because it's modern and I think fables have to have an oral tradition first, but at the end I got across the point that fables are short stories with animals and they have a moral, so it worked for me.)

     Then, I had students fill in the blanks on a quick little info sheet on fables and glue that into the Genres section of their Reading is Thinking journals. 

 

     The next day, I read Fables by Arnold Lobel.

 

     This is a Caldecott winner, and I like it because he wrote all the fables himself, so unless the kids have read this exact book, the stories are all new.  I read aloud one of the stories and modeled for the students how to identify character traits and how to find the moral.  Again, I focused a LOT on providing evidence from the text for my thinking, because that meets the standard.  Then I read another of the fables aloud and had the students turn and talk to find the character traits and moral.

     The next day, I read The Little Red Hen by Lucinda McQueen.  

     This is my favorite Little Red Hen story because I like to do all the voices.  We had enough of these in the bookroom at school for each kid to have his or her own copy.  After we read the story, I gave the students my graphic organizer for this and we worked together to complete it.  I ended up only using the first page, because the second page wasn't as critical to the standards I was trying to meet.  You can see the entire organizer here. 

 

     Thursday we hit a little snafu because I was ready for the little people to try this on their own, but they weren't.  I gave them they graphic organizer and a short, easy-to-read copy of The Grasshopper and the Ant.  Some of them did an ok job, but they weren't really writing in sentences, and they weren't really coming up with great character traits and a few kids didn't understand that the moral had to apply to them.  I had a few "The moral is that you should gather food before fall."   But, as my best friend tells me A LOT, "teaching is all about being recursive and reflective," so I was.  We went over their papers on Friday, and I highlighted where students had done well because a lot of them had gotten the character trait and not the moral or had the trait but no evidence or whatever.  Then I told them I wanted that kind of work on the whole paper, not just part of it.  We read a couple more fables out loud and practiced talking in sentences so that we could write in sentences.  "The __________ is ___________ because _____."  We practiced making the moral all about us. Then we tried again.  And SUCCESS!!  Sentences!  Character traits!  Morals! See:

 In case you can't see: Mouse: man of his word.  Evidence: When the Lion got him on his toes and the mouse said "I will repay you if you let me free."  Lion: doesn't believe  "When the Lion got caught in the hunter's net, he thought that no one would come to save him."  (corrected for spelling/grammar)

jineriss=generous

     Now, I have a couple of students who used nice and mean as their character trait words, but that's mostly a vocabulary issue, and I am working on that.  (More about that another day).  Also, we will all still need to work on forming sentences.  But that will come with more practice and discussion.  

     Next week, I will work with a small group for those students who still are having trouble generalizing a moral.  The whole class will be taking some Reader's Theater scripts of fables and preparing performances.  We will continue to read and discuss fables, but our focus will switch to reading foundational skills: fluency, expression, etc.

      So what do you think?  Suggestions?  Ways to improve?  Also, if you have other lessons on fables or great read aloud suggestions, put them in the comments box.

 

    



    

Little Moments and a Positive Attitude

     This week was LONG; there's just no two ways around that.  The beginning of the year always is, and no matter how many hours I work in a day, there is more to do, and the more to do is ALL imperative, necessary, need to do ASAP why is that not done already? kind of stuff.  Which, frankly, combined with the fact that I'm still putting classroom routines into place, can leave you a little tiny bit cranky, exhausted, and overwhelmed.  But my biggest, most important goal for this year is to have a positive attitude because last year I DID NOT.  And last year stunk.  And I truly believe that if I stay upbeat and focus on the positive, I can make this the best and most successful year of teaching I've ever had.  So here are my little moments of bliss in a very long week:

• "I don't want to go to P.E., Ms. Haines.  I have to finish writing."
• I used my Italian voice teaching math this week and the kids absolutely loved it.
• The principal came in and got down on the floor and chit-chatted with my kids about what they were doing, which they loved.  (We were working in partners on completing a graphic organizer.)
• One little boy took his writing notebook all around school and then wrote a "seed story stretched out" about everything he did.
• These kids LOVE to be read aloud to.  They are begging me to read Sideways Stories from Wayside School in the afternoon, and they are so into anything I'm reading. (Last year's kids so did not appreciate my read aloud skills.)
• We built up to 12 minutes of Read to Self time.

Small Successes

      So, I've been envisioning starting this blog for a few months now, and I have to say, when I've been planning out how it will go, I figured I'd start off talking about some cool thing I implemented or showing some pictures of my little pinterest projects that I've tried.  But we've been in school for a week and a half now, and do you know what I'm most excited about?  This quiz over addition properties (commutative, associative, and identity) that my kids took yesterday.
     Now, you have to understand that this little group of third-graders this year did not come in with a wealth of mathematical understanding.  All of third-grade gave a little pretest of math skills--very basic stuff like adding numbers to twenty and place value to the hundreds place and comparing numbers--and my very highest grade was a 73.  And when we've been doing math and I've been asking them how they added a number, looking to discuss some mental addition strategies, I haven't found a single kid who can go beyond "I counted in my head."
     So, as I was saying, we've got a lot of work ahead of us in math.  But here's the thing.  I gave this quiz, and all but one student made at least a C!  I had three 100s and a whole bunch of As.  I taught...and they LEARNED!
     Which I guess is the whole point of this blog.  I mean, I didn't do anything exceptional to teach this.  We used counters to practice commutative and associative properties, and I let them use Twizzlers to make the parentheses for associative.  Then we did a couple of word problems and talked together about what property the word problem showed.  I put them in partners and let them do a few more of those on their own while I pulled about 6 kids who still didn't get it and worked with them in a small group.  Then I gave them the quiz.  And they ROCKED it!  And I LOVED it!   It just felt so great to be successful at what I was teaching, to have what I work so hard at add up into something good.  It might not have been anything spectacular, but it worked.
     I put their graded quizzes into their homework folders to take home today.  One little girl came up to me and said, "Ms. Haines, I did so good on that quiz!  It was so EASY!"  What makes that so great is that she's one of my most struggling math kids.  And what a few days ago she had no idea about, is now way easy.