School-wide Writer's Gallery

Our school started an initiative this year to CELEBRATE writing! We are all writers and we have begun implementing a Writer's Workshop daily for 40 minutes. In the hallway outside of our cafeteria we have a bulletin board for teachers to post writing across the grade levels. 

It shows the span from UPK writing to fourth grade writing.

Hi there! I'll be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday today. So, let's get started! :)

I've been experimenting with new ways to incorporate our secret agents day into the year. My second graders had a blast with this room transformation last year! I created secret agents days focused on area, multiplication, addition, subtraction, and time to make this year memorable for my third graders!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Secret-Agents-Day-AREA-2989107

Have you ever made a deep dish pizza in a crock pot? It really works! Just use Pillsbury pizza dough and layer your toppings! It was DELICIOUS!

Yet again, the Valentines science kits I found on TPT were a hit with my students as a Valentines day gift! And so easy! I bought the materials for less than $15 and packaged them in an hour!

I became a Seesaw ambassador recently! Seesaw has transformed my parent communication and I LOVE IT! Email me for more information. I also have a Seesaw ambassador code to get you some free Seesaw Plus, which is an amazing formative assessment tool.

http://web.seesaw.me

I started a new bulletin board in my classroom recently. I began pulling mentor sentences and paragraphs from my students' writing journals and posting them on the bulletin board as inspiration for the class. The kids love reading each other's writing and using this variation of a mentor text.

How To Writing

Our third grade class used Amy Lemons and Hope King's Write On unit to help us through procedural writing. The kiddos LOVED  making Pie In a Cup! We discussed the materials, made it ourselves, used sequence words to write a paragraph, and saw our writing through to publishing! It was a lot of fun and something different. All third graders have done How To Writing before, but none of them had made Pie In a Cup before!

Book Raffles

Have you tried using book raffles to motivate your kiddos to branch out and read different genres? I tried this recently and it was GREAT! I ordered 10 brand new books from Scholastic. Normally, I introduce the books and just hand them out, but this week I introduced them and then laid them out for the kids to check out throughout the week. I also printed special book raffle tickets to hand out to the kiddos throughout the week. I gave the book raffle tickets out for ANY positive behaviors related to reading or writing. By Friday they had accumulated quite the haul of tickets! They were given time during Daily Five to read the book summaries and check out the books to be raffled and then were allowed to put their tickets in any bins they would like. Some dumped them all in one cup while others spread the wealth. Amazingly, no one student's name was pulled more than once! It was a great success and they kids who won promised they would pass the books along as soon as they were done!

Writing Narratives

Our class revisited our old anchor charts about personal narratives this week because we are starting narratives! We are writing descriptions of our own personal Neverland as we read the novel, Peter Pan.

Our third graders are LOVING the book, Peter Pan, which is part of the EngageNY English Language Arts Modules that our school district is using.  Last week we warmed up our brains to the idea of writing about our own Neverland. I demonstrated writing with a timer. The class put a 3 minute timer on me and I wrote about my own Neverland in front of them. I didn't stop writing AT ALL. Then, the class got a five minute timer and had to write about their own Neverland for five minutes WITHOUT STOPPING. It was really amazing how much they got done...much more writing than a laid back writer's workshop day!

Check out the anchor charts we revisited this week:

Seesaw Ambassador!

Hello, everyone! I am now a proud Seesaw Ambassador! I started using Seesaw in my classroom this year and really love it.  There are all different ways to use Seesaw in your classroom. For me, I do not have much technology, so I downloaded the app on my phone and iPad. I am the only person who takes pictures of students, snapshots of work, videos of them publishing their writing or reading, etc. I then upload it to the app and tag only those students in the pictures, so only their family members see it. I also use Seesaw to take pictures of our anchor charts, read aloud texts, and classroom to upload for EVERYONE to see. Parents love being involved in the minute to minute happenings in our classroom and knowing exactly what their child did at school.

Some teachers use Seesaw for more formative assessment. Since you can see this digital portfolio and even tag certain skills (and assess those skills using Seesaw Plus!), it is easy to use to monitor progress on a daily basis. Parents can even print their child's Seesaw portfolio at the end of the school year.

Sign up today using my link and we’ll both get an extra month of their premium features for free!

https://app.seesaw.me/invite/?code=vL10gDRetzL7BkX-iIg2SgKprVuf_GQIrY9dtWZaSvBS_1uzC6WGgMXKY9M_5pP6PHU0r56gT54Wkq0meuEV9g%3D%3D&type=REF

Let me know if you need help getting going - I think you'll love it!

Secret Agents Day

Last year we had so much fun transforming our second grade classroom. I used white string and went crazy taping it all over to make the lasers. I bought black lights from Party City on sale. Each child had "spy" glasses. I also printed secret agents badges and put them on string to make necklaces. I had four tasks throughout the day, each in a manila envelope. The tasks in second grade focused on each subject area. We had a close reading, Oregon Trail writing, math activities, and synonyms/antonyms. 

This year I plan on doing four tasks ALL ABOUT AREA. My third graders have been struggling with area so I created four tasks to practice this skill before our state assessments. It's going to be a lot of fun!

WE HAD A BLAST LAST YEAR! 

And I am so excited to bring this to my third grade class this year.

Check out the product on TpT if you're interested:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Secret-Agents-Day-AREA-2989107

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Secret-Agents-2350119