Five For Friday

It has been awhile since I linked up with Five for Friday at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

1) There's no excuse for me not to link up - I am sitting at home on my second snow day, technically "cold day" of the week. With temperatures below -20 degrees, school has been closed the past two days. I was expecting to have yesterday off after checking the forecast, but today was a complete surprise!

Frigid...brrr

2) This student's warning at the top of his reader's response letter: "spoilers after dotted line" cracked me up. It's little things like this about middle schoolers that make me smile.

3) I was feeling very lazy on my day off yesterday until I found this muffin recipe. These sounded easy, plus I had all the ingredients. There was no way I was going to the store in this freezing weather! I've been experimenting a lot lately with "breakfast" baking...lots of different combinations of oatmeal bars, breakfast cookies, baked oatmeal...well these are definitely at the top of my list! The greek yogurt makes them so moist. I liked that it was a "one bowl" recipe in that I just had to throw everything in the food processor.
Clik the picture to see the recipe over at "Running with Spoons"

4) Of course I've been on Pinterest quite a bit with all of this extra time off. I've been looking at lots of decorating ideas lately. Now, I'm not actually re-decorating...more like "window shopping" on Pinterest :)

However, I found this great roundup of 50 budget decorating ideas that I would love to try out someday.

5) Last but not least, a big thing for me this week has been creating a new TpT product. I just blogged about it yesterday, so all of the details are in that post. I'd love for you to check out my Sensory Detail Poetry Stations - five leveled poems and three differentiated worksheets! Woohoo!

Stay warm! Any else with a "snow" or "cold" day today? :)

Sensory Detail Poetry Stations

I needed a way to use leveled poems and differentiate my poetry instruction - so Sensory Detail Poetry Stations were born!

I don't know how many times I googled "poems with sensory details" before deciding that I needed to make this product :) The five leveled poems are all great examples of poems with sensory details.

There are three very basic poems for students still struggling with identifying sensory details. The on-level poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" involves a higher comprehension level. The most challenging poem, "Where I'm From", by George Ella Lyon, involves a more challenging historical context.

After reading the poems, students track sensory details on one of three differentiated recording sheets. 

This middle-school activity goes beyond students simply knowing what a sensory detail is and has students share the effect on the poem.

The three worksheets included involve varying levels of tracking sensory details. All worksheets require students to list examples from the poem.
The first worksheet, meant to be easier for struggling students, has the opportunity for students to sketch the sensory details as well as list examples.
The “middle” worksheet, for on-level students, involves listing examples as well as explaining the effect on the poem.
The third worksheet, for more advanced learners, has students not only listing examples of sensory detail and explaining the effect, but also thinking about why the author would include the sensory detail.

I am so happy with how it turned out! I'm really hoping that this product can be of use to other teachers who need access to sensory detail poetry and want to differentiate!

Click here to find this product in my TpT store.

Do you teach sensory details in your classroom?

Coordinate Adjective Fun

Okay, so I wouldn't have thought to put "coordinate adjective" and "fun" in a sentence together until today. As an ELA teacher, I am more easily excited about grammar than most people, but sometimes it can be..........boring. I said it!

Realistically, every single grammar lesson cannot be fun and games. However, I do try to incorporate some sort of activity or game into our grammar learning to prevent my students (and myself, honestly) from becoming bored.

In our current unit, we are working on coordinate adjectives. Just in case you are too, here are a few resources I used:

1) this quick intro video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA0a5H-P9Co


2) This worksheet (I projected it for students to use as independent practice)

http://www.k12reader.com/punctuation/commas_and_coordinating_adjectives.pdf

 And this activity:

I gave each student an index card and gave them one minute to draw something. I timed it to add a little to the excitement and make the drawings a little more difficult to interpret.

I had to tease some of the students that it took them one whole minute to draw some of these masterpieces ;)

After one minute, I collected the index cards and then distributed them randomly.

Students then had to write a coordinate adjective sentence describing the picture.

I projected different examples under my Elmo when the students were done - they laughed seeing what people had come up with for their picture, and there were some pretty funny interpretations.

I can see myself doing something like this for other objectives...maybe having students draw a picture and then having someone else write a sentence using figurative language (we are working on that standard too!)

Would you use this acitivity in your classroom? Have you done something similar?

Wordless Wednesday - Mint to Succeed!

 Because this mountain of tests in no fun for anyone...

My students needed a little motivation last week.

They loved them!

Download an assortment of testing motivation notes from GingerSnaps here:

(I used a screenshot of the note I wanted, pasted a page of notes into PowerPoint, and printed on mint paper. The notes come in adorable colors but of course the color printer wasn't working that day. I think that being flexible is one the main lessons I've learned from my first year teaching!)

RACE Writing Response (freebie on a snowday!)

There's no excuse not to blog - I am sitting at home on a snow day :) I was called with the cancellation yesterday just before 5:00...it was so nice to know early!

I've been thinking about what I could share on this blog, and pondering what has really worked in my ELA classroom. I realized after my students took their first "Common Assessment" test created by the district that I could not just tell them to "write a complete short answer". I had to teach them how to do it by breaking down each step and setting expectations.

This is not my original idea, but if I've learned anything as a first-year teacher it's to not reinvent the wheel!

The acronym, RACE, stands for each part of a complete constructed response. There are a few versions out there, but I like this one best:

R - restate the answer
A - answer all parts of the question
C - cite evidence
E - explain how your evidence supports your answer.

We've practiced this by writing responses to whole-class texts, stand-alone prompts, and even questions like "what was the best part of your weekend?"
Of course, the "citing" would have to be examples from the weekend instead of text evidence.

Now that my students know how to use the RACE response, I can just say "don't forget the RACE method!" when we are taking a test :) I have seen such an improvement in their responses from the beginning of the year.It makes me so happy to see my students scrawl "RACE" at the top of their answer page, or even to see them planning out their response with each letter before they write it.

There are a few products I've used for this that have been really successful:

These strategy cards are great for responding to any prompt! Each part of the response is broken down for the students. I think this would be great to use when you are first introducing this strategy.

Here is a free writing response that has students responding to a Henry Ford quote using the RACE method. We did this activity shortly after I introduced the acronym.

Here is a great explanation of the strategy (complete with a rubric) from Mrs. Sol's classroom.

I love this resource for the visual of setting up a notebook page!

Oh, and I've had a few students tell me that they've used this short-answer method in other classes, too! Yay for cross-curricular connections!

Because I love things to match, I've created a version that you can use in your own classroom to match some of the neon chalkboard items I've made.

Click on the picture to get this FREE download at my TpT store.


Do you use a constructed-response format in your classroom?

Wordless Wednesday: Book Fair!

I LOVE the Book Fair...I told my students that it feels like Christmas to me :) I was able to buy some new books with Scholastic Money, and some fabulous students of mine also donated to our classroom from my wish list.

It made my heart SO happy. What made me even happier was seeing the excitement about these new books!
I kept them up on the board for one day to build some suspense ;) and the next day I allowed students to check them out. There are only a few left now!

Have you read any of these books? Which ones did you love?

 

I'm linking up with Miss DeCarbo for Wordless Wednesday!

Table Hopping: Task Cards, Group Work, and Instant Formative Assessment

Whew! That was a long title...but there are a lot of things going on in this post. I tried something new today in the classroom and I'm really excited about how it works!

I love using task cards, but I've found that with some recording sheets it's hard to really gauge what students understand and what they need help with. Also, I'm always looking for ideas to get students collaborating and moving around! Enter: table hopping!

I came across this idea in the shower, the morning of the lesson...why is it that the best ideas come at the strangest, last-minute time?

I am sure I'm not the first person to think of this, but it worked...so here we go.

Anyways, I started off with six different task cards, because I have six different table groups. We are working on Author's Purpose this week, so I used these. Since these task cards need to be the appropriate level of difficulty for a group discussion, it's best to use longer or more complex ones. However, you don't just need to use task cards for this...you could really use any sort of problem/short answer you want students to do!

I numbered the task cards 1-6 and put one at each table group. There's #5 in the picture below...

The set up: six cards, six clipboards (with six sticky notes each!) whew!

Then, I had each group use a clipboard with six sticky notes labeled 1-6.
Depending on the task card, they needed to write the answer on the corresponding numbered card (ex: the answer for task card #5 is written on sticky note #5)

Each group was also color coded because:
a) It made me happy
b) It looked pretty
c) I was able to tell which groups needed extra support
d) all of the above :)

(answer: D!)

The groups started "solving" the task card that was at their current table. They had to write the multiple choice letter (A-D) and WHY.

When I could tell that most groups were done (or when I asked them to give me a thumbs-up), I would say "switch!" and they rotated (along with their clipboard) to the next table group.

Here's the final work! Task cards with six answers from each of the six groups!

When they were done, we compared answers! Under the ELMO projector, I put a task card and asked the table leaders to come up with the corresponding sticky note. The majority of students agreed with each other, but we had some great discussions when there were discrepancies.

Example of compared answers

I loved that this activity involved collaboration, movement, and an easy check for me to see who was getting it! Oh, and lovely color-coded sticky notes ;)

Do you have any interactive response activities up your sleeve, or ways to use task cards? I'd love to learn more?