Saturday, August 20, 2022

THROW BACK: Genre Graphs in the Classroom!



This is a major THROW BACK!

I used to always have a genre graph in my classroom. Now, this was before the days of my school district having any kind of curriculum. I take that back. We technically had some boxed program, but I started using it and it wasn't meeting the needs of my students, so I asked my principal what my options were and she literally told me to teach the standards however I saw fit. So....I did my own thing!

Now, this genre graph helped me a lot. As we worked through texts in fourth grade, We would add the title and author on a sentence strip and put it on the graph above the genre it fit with. This was beneficial is a variety of ways:

1. We were working on graphing. Who doesn't love cross curricular displays?

2. We were reviewing the genres and discussing them as we placed each text.

3. We were practicing how to cite texts when we wrote them on the sentence strip. And yes, I had kids write them. Get those kids involved in your classroom displays!

4. It held me accountable. I have favorite genres. I have favorite texts. Does that mean I can teach just that genre all year. No. I need to hit them all at some point. So, when I saw my kids' scores on a benchmark and they were rocking nonfiction questions and then I realized we had read 13 nonfiction texts and only 2 fiction texts so far....well, that made sense. And it helped me adjust what I was doing.

*Also, those genre posters were a freebie. Just a plain old google search.



Monday, August 15, 2022

Welcome to Open House!



Do you feel completely bombarded by tons of families, all trying to meet you like you're some kind of celebrity at Open House? Me too.

So, a few years ago, I made this photo booth. I downloaded some free photo props, laminated them and left them on a chair outside my classroom. It was a good stopping point for families before they got into my classroom to meet me, or a fun activity as they were leaving. And it gave them just another thing to do while they were waiting to get a few words with the teacher!

Bonus? My administration is trying to get Twitter and Instagram and Facebook going at our school, so some families sent the pictures to them or used hashtags so that made me look pretty good! :)