Five for Fraturday

Hi, friends!

I hope your Sunday morning is as beautiful as ours is here in DC!  It's the first truly cold morning of the fall, but I'm almost done with my first cup of coffee, I have a load of laundry in, the sun is streaming through our kitchen/living room windows, and all the boys (hubs included) are taking a nap, so I'm the boss of myself for the next 45-ish minutes.  Since I'm already 24 hours late, let's just get right down to it, shall we?

I live in DC, but I grew up in Cincinnati.  I love, love, LOVE Cincinnati, in a way that I don't think most people love their hometown.  I am also a fan of all Cincinnati teams, including the Bearcats.  Both of my parents went to UC, so we were raised as Bearcat fans.  The biggest struggle about living in DC is out of market games (thank you, DirectTV for NFL Sunday Ticket), so last night I was super stoked to watch UC play USF.  I thought it would be a close, competitive game, but that UC would win. Whomp, whomp, whomp.  Was I ever wrong!  They were down 21 in the first quarter, and it didn't really get any better at all ever.  Finally, at halftime, I had to give up.  The hubs and I watched shows off the DVR instead.  It was bad, y'all.  The final score was 65-27.  Yowza.  But, on the upside, I unloaded the dishwasher, did all the dishes, and did two loads of baby laundry because the game was so bad.  Everything has a silver lining, right? 

Can you BELIEVE Thanksgiving is next week?!  I'm sure those of you who are in the classroom can, and feel like it can't come soon enough, but I feel like it's sneaking up on me out of nowhere.  We still don't even have a plan for Thanksgiving.  We used to always do Friendsgiving, but most of our friends we did that with have moved back to The Good Land.  Last year, we went to North Carolina to have Thanksgiving with my cousin and her family, which was really nice, but we still haven't committed to anything for this year.  It feels like Thanksgiving is still 3 weeks away.

True confession:  I am on day 11 (eleven!?) of the 21 Day Fix, and I STILL want to eat crap all the time.  I mean, I'm not because of said Fix, but whoever said that you just stop craving things is a liar.  Or, in my true soul, I'm just a fat kid.  I'd honestly say both are equally probable.  I used to think the hardest part about dieting would be giving up the booze, but since I was pregnant last year that's not enough it.  It's the delicious, but terrible for you food, like burgers and nachos.  

Based on some Scopes that I've rewatched recently (because I can't catch a darn thing live.  Babies.), it seems like people are interested in planning materials.  It's my goal to have a Scope up by Thanksgiving on how I plan (#crossyourfingers), but I'll add my materials as freebies to my TpT store regardless by the end of the weekend.  To answer some base questions, no, I didn't have to turn in plans, no, we didn't use a reading series, and no, I didn't plan with my team.  We planned units together, but our daily plans we did on our own.  Here's a shot of what a week of plans looked like.  N

Normally, there's more typing and less handwriting, but this is just a general glance.  Time of day goes down the side, Day across the top, and I usually put in the teaching point and any important reminders in the box for that day.  

One last true confession for y'all.  For about two weeks now, I have been working my tail off to NOT listen to holiday music.  And, at the same time, Pandora has been working so hard to get me to listen.  They suggested a Michael Buble Holiday station to me (which I should probably create), and they keep telling me about how they've added new content to my already existing holiday stations.  I also realize that I might have too many holiday radio stations.  Is that a thing?  Can you have too many?

This time next weekend I will certainly be listening to at least one of those stations.  =)

Have a great weekend, and a happy Thanksgiving!

xoxo

Parent Communication Binder--Try it FREE for 24 hours!

Hi, y'all

This is going to be short and sweet; I'll elaborate more tomorrow, but for 24 hours (so until bedtime tomorrow) I'm going to have my parent communication packet up on Google Drive for free.  (After that it will be available in my TpT store for just a few bucks.)  If I understand the Googles at all, you should be able to download it here.  It's a really detailed form and I'll share tomorrow about how I used it in my classroom.  Please let me know if you try to download it and CAN'T.  And if you do download it and you wish that there was something more in said packet let me know; I can add it before I put it up on TpT.

Have a great night!
xoxo

What? Thanksgiving is NEXT WEEK?!

Holy moly.  I can't believe this is the last week of school before Thanksgiving.  That means November is basically over, y'all.  I can't even handle it.  I've been cooking up this post for a while, and I finally feel semi-organized before 9:00pm on a Sunday so I'm here to share some ideas with you today.

First, before I forget I wanted to let you know that I just made some table points trackers, if that's a thing you're into.  You can snag them for a measly $1.50 right here.  My littles this year are having a hard time seeing the big picture.  They keep getting caught up on fussing at each other, and if we're being completely honest it's driving me NUTS!  I'm a teacher, not a referee, yo!  So I'm hoping that this will be helpful to us.  I'll make sure to let you know how it all shakes out.

I also wanted to get in on the work station posts that everyone does.  When I started this blogging experiment I talked a lot about how I teach math in my classroom, but I wanted to take a break from that and talk about how guided reading and work stations looks in my classroom.  First, they look REALLY different from last year for several reasons.  1.) My kids last year had a crazy high stamina and were great at working together, so I frequently did 3-4 guided reading groups in one day.  And 2) my distract revamped their expectations for guided reading and literacy work stations (LWS), so I'm trying to fall in line like to good little worker bee that I envision myself to be.  =)  Basically, the way that we're doing work stations this year is that we have 5 different work stations--fluency, word work, independent reading, writing, and inquiry and investigation (otherwise known as the work station that keeps me up at night).  The activities in each work station are up to you, but you should have all 5 of them up and running and kids should cycle through them each week.  The big change that's been giving me the 1-2 punch this year is that we're only supposed to pull 2 groups each day.  That's right.  Just 2.  I've also been having a hard time balancing that because I also have a Fundations Double Dose group right now that's supposed to meet 3 times a week (M, W, F).

I will say one thing that has really helped keep us on track this year is a visual work station rotation board.  I always kind of scoffed at them and had never used one before, but I have to say that I really am on board for it now.  So helpful.  It's also really helped me shift responsibility to my little nuggets.  Plus, it's great for kids who transition back into the classroom during work stations.  They just get their folder, check the board, and then go to meet their group.  The other tool that I'm in LOVE with is our Scholastic guided reading library.  DC bought it for all their elementary schools last year and it is amaze-balls.  It has reading behaviors to teach at each level, and it has a matrix that lists each book, the level of the book, and what the book is designed to teach for word work and comprehension.  It makes planning for guided reading a snap.

How many groups do you pull in a day?  What resources do you use to plan?
Happy Football-watching!  (Who-dey!)
xoxo
Rachel

APTT & The *@!%$ Shutdown

Hey, y'all!  I hope you're as jazzed as I am that fall has finally come.  Here in DC today was the first cool, rainy fall day.  It really made me want to drink tea and spend the day curled on the couch ready.  That's pretty mutually exclusive with actual teaching, though.  =)

I wanted to share a few ideas with you, and promise you that I'm still chugging way on items for my TpT store.  The first thing I wanted to tell you about is APTT.  Say whaaat?!  APTT stands for Academic Parent Teacher Teams, and it's a really data driven version of parent teacher conferences.  (You can read an interview with the creator of this model here.  It's less lame than I just made it sound.)  It was created to be more meaningful in schools with high populations of low(er) income families to share data in a meaningful way, despite the education level of the parents involved.  If we're being 100% honest the first year I did APTT I HATED it.  (In retrospect, I think that's because I was putting a TON of time into the conferences, but not getting the return back.)  However, I'm now in my third year of using this conference model, and I absolutely L-O-V-E it.  Now, I want to be honest with you, it's the same amount of work as it was the first year, but now I'm working with other teachers to put on the meeting, so it's divided among a team, AND the turn out is so much better.  Let me tell you a few reasons I love APTT.  First, it only focuses on academic data.  (I know what you're thinking, but honestly, I find conferences to be so much more positive when we don't discuss behavior.) The basic gist of APTT is that as a teacher, you select one long term goal for the year in reading and one in math and then basically you measure each student's progress toward that goal every 60 days throughout the year.  The other thing that I really like about APTT is that these are group conferences and we share all the kids' data, with all the parents, but we share the data anonymously.  It's really powerful, because it give parents a clear idea of a) exactly where their kids are, b) where all the other kids in the class/grade are performing, and c) what the current expectation is, and if their child is above or below it.  One last thing--APTT was originally created to share data with parents in lower income schools/districts, but I don't think that's the only environment in which this model would be successful.  That's basically the quick and dirty version of APTT.  If you have any questions I'm happy to answer them.

In other news I have to take about 45 seconds of your time to rage about this stupid federal shutdown.  It's so crazy; I mean, really I can't even talk about it.  I mean, it's so ridiculous that yesterday our principal had to send an email out that we can't order any more supplies/materials until the shutdown ends/budget is passed, so we all have ONE PACK of copy paper until whenever it is that the shutdown ends. Whether that's 2 days or 2 weeks.  Also, after next Friday schools will (likely) have to shut down because DC's rainy day fund will be dry and there won't be money to run the physical buildings.  The whole thing is such a mess.  Not to mention that federal employees (like the hubs) aren't getting paid at all right now.  Okay.  I have to move on.

Last, I'm hoping to glean some knowledge from y'all.  So I have a group of about 7 boys this year who are really struggling to get on the classroom community train.  They're just garnering a lot of negative attention, and slowing down the learning of the entire class.  Two of them are currently on a behavior plan that, honestly, seems at times to be extremely helpful and at times a huge time suck.  I think I'm going to launch table points on Tuesday, but does anyone else have (relatively easy) any ideas to help them settle/simmer and successfully participate in the class?

That's it.  Thanks so much for sticking with me!

Just Another Manic Monday?

Hi, friends

This is a super short it's past my bedtime, but I really want to share post.

First, I'm SO jazzed!  We finally were able to squeeze in yoga today for the first time this school year!  Two  years ago I wrote a Donors Choose project to get 25 yoga mats to teach my class yoga to help them self-regulate.  Plus, it's a really great way to expose them to an organized activity that isn't aggressive like football.  (Or deathball, as I sometimes like to call the recess version of football.)

And second, I wanted to share this brand spankin' new product with you.  I'm really having a hard time building my nuggets' number sense this year, so I felt like I needed to take a step back and teach them how to extend the counting sequence using tools.  I taught this lesson today and got really concrete, usable data back.  I'm feeling really happy about it.  Also, if you checked out my store yesterday you'll notice that I knocked 50 cents off the price so now this lesson is only $1.50.  I think that's pretty reasonable.

Have a great night!
xoxo,
Rachel

Mid-Day Update

Friends!  Are you totally LOSING your mind getting ready for back to school, or is that just me??

I finally yesterday put every last stinking book into a book bin and I honestly think at this point if I find another unsorted book I might just throw it away.  That was such a never ending project! I'm 100% making that a kid's job during the school year.  Handling it from the end of the school year over the summer was plenty for me. That is one job I will happily pass off to a kid.  Now I'm just feeling nervous because my room is covered with random mess and we're in teacher meetings all week and I'm heading out of town this weekend.  Yipes!

My lunch break is over and our afternoon session is starting, so I just wanted to let you all know that I finished my guided reading planning templates.  You link directly to my store here to check them out.

Keep on keepin' on, friends!  =)

Skipping Town

Y'all.  The back to school pressure is REAL!  My to-do list grows every day, and I'm not really sure I'm making any forward progress.  It's literally keeping me up at night.

However, said pressure is not stopping me from leaving my lovely husband behind for the next few days in DC while I hightail it up to PA to meet my parents and aunt.  I mean, really it's only 3 days.  And I promise to work on the train.  And I'll go into my classroom on Friday.  So this will be fine, right?

I don't really have a specific plan in mind today, but I did want to share 3 things with you.
1.

  I don't know if your Target will have the same deals as mine, but I got these binders for 99 cents EACH!  True confession:  sometimes, when I find really great teacher deals I turn into a bit of a hoarder.  Do I have any idea what I'm doing with 5 brand new binders?  Heck no.  But I hate when I feel like I'm a binder down in the middle of the year and people want me to pay them $4 for it.  So I'm preemptively striking this year.

2.

Last Friday was a BEAUTIFUL day out here in DC.  I mean, practically perfect--sun shining, low humidity, just a few puffy clouds in the sky.  And all I wanted was to go to the pool.  But instead, I powered through and loosely planned my ENTIRE first week of school.  I definitely feel like I need to go back and script out a few lessons to make sure my timing is right, especially for the first few days.  But it does feel pretty liberating to know that I have the majority of my first week back planned.  One thing I definitely need are crafts to introduce some new materials--I would like to find something where my kids are painting, cutting, and gluing all in one craft, but I have no idea what the one craft will be.  To the pins!  I'm sure I'll be able to find something on Pinterest.  Right?!  

3.  And here's the last thing I wanted to share with you.  This very interesting infographic from my adorable baby brother who works for an educational publishing company.  (They mostly target higher ed companies, so no freebies for this girl, but it definitely gives him a super interesting perspective on the pace/trajectory of education.)  I'm not 100% sure I share this vision for the future of education, but it's definitely an interesting picture that they paint.  I have a lot of reservations, but like I said it's very interesting food for thought.  

I'm going to finish this laundry and get to packing for my last mini-vacation of the summer!  Enjoy the waning days of summer break!  How many days do you have left?