I'm back! I totally apologize to all my readers for disappearing for the last couple of months. I took my first real grad class this fall and had no time to breathe. Something had to give and unfortunately it was my blog. But, the class is over and I am back! I have so much to tell you but instead of one long post, be looking for short posts over the next week or so to catch you up! The class I took was TONS of work but also very rewarding. In Massachusetts, if you have even one student in your class who is and English Language Learner, you need to take a class called Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It's basically an intro to ELL and walks you through tried and true activities that helps ELLs succeed in the classroom. Being my second year in district, I found the class to be EXTREMELY helpful and my biggest takeaway is direct vocabulary instruction. I have always felt that vocabulary is such an important part of teaching social studies and last year I just knew I wasn't cutting it. My students were just understanding vocabulary on the most superficial of levels and I knew it was because I was teaching a population I had never really experienced before. In the class they taught us a vocabulary activity called the Seven Steps to preteach vocabulary. Here is a fabulous example of Seven Steps from an elementary teacher: I knew this was exactly what I needed but I decided to tweak it for my class. Now, almost every day, my kiddos walk in and we preteach a word or term they are going to need in order to understand the upcoming content (Tier 2 and Tier 3 Words). We do it in the same order every day: Introduce word and have them pronounce it twice. Ask if they know anything about the word and identify and prefixes, suffixes, and/or base words. Have them write down a student friendly definition. Tell them how we are going to use it in content. I also like to tell them how it is used in other contexts (for the word "convention" this week, we talked about the Constitutional Convention but we also talked about ComicCon). I show the kids a YouTube video that better illustrates the word or a visual. Lastly, the students are given a sentence stem that they need to finish with the students in their table groups. We then share out as a class. This method has truly revolutionized my class! Not only are the kids truly understanding the vocabulary, it has allowed me to frontload my teaching. As an example, I taught the term Articles of Confederation three days before we really learned about the Articles of Confederation. The kids absolutely love it and have been acing their vocab quizzes like champs. They can use the words weeks later in a sentence and I really feel like it has helped me make bigger connections in my content. I showed two different videos with this term. The first clip, I explained to them, is how the British knew how to fight and the second video was how the Americans learned to fight from the native Americans. We were able to compare and contrast the two styles and this whole lesson took less than ten minutes of my class. If you're interested, I have started to gather together these vocab lessons and have made them available on Teachers Pay Teachers. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mesopotamia-and-First-Civilizations-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1675580 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/American-Revolution-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1672787 Head on over to TPT to check these out and look for more as I progress in the year!
Cheeky children have put their teachers in their place - from reminding them that 'not everyone has two legs' in a maths puzzle, to calling the science of classifying living things 'racism'.
Itto teaches only the priorities for the first day at elementary school #GenshinImpact #ittorou #itto #gorou
Looking for games to play with a classroom? This list of English games in the classroom is exactly what you need to engage students!
A redox reaction involves both oxidation (loss of electrons) and reduction (gain of electrons). Learn how to identify whether a reaction is redox or not.
For those of you born after 1985: This is how you found books in the library before everything went online. This is a digital rendition of a 35mm transparency scanned with an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner. Some colour restoration has been applied.
The perfect Babies Run Drag Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.
This is gonna be a looong post because there are SO many neat and sweet things you can send your long distance other half to remind them of your love. *deep breath* here goes! 1. This is one of my …
Learn to speak German with these basic and advanced grammar and vocabulary lessons, quizzes, study tips, and articles about German culture.
Read Вся грамматика английского языка в таблицах by Ирина Еремина on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!
A mom divulges one of the biggest kept secrets of all time.
Aloha! I want to thank everyone for stopping by and taking a virtual vacation with me. It really is fun to share my little part of the world with you. Today I am taking a break from the sun and happily joining in on Chapter 1 of the Daily 5 book study, hosted by Mel D. at Suesstastic Classroom Inspirations and Nicole at Teaching With Style. I found out about the Daily 5 from everything I was seeing on Pinterest. I was curious and it led me to so many great blogs and ideas, that I ordered it immediately. It has been an amazing resource for me and I am so happy to be able to share out some ideas and find out what everyone else is doing in their classrooms. I actually started my Daily 5 journey back in January when I discovered the book. I read it quickly and then reread it. Such simple ideas to make my teaching easier and more productive. I couldn't wait to get started. Chapter 1 takes us through the evolution of our teaching style. The authors discuss how they went from full teacher control of the classroom to giving more choices to their students and releasing some of that power. I know this sounds scary. How many of you want to give your kids all those choices? I envision mass chaos in the classroom doing this! I fully admit to being a Control Freak! But as you read on and begin to implement these ideas you really do see children taking ownership and becoming more responsible for themselves and their peers! These are some excellent questions to help you get started on your journey: 1. On pages 4-6 the author's present 2 different pictures for their classrooms. In thinking about and reflecting on you own practice, how would you characterize your literacy block? Does it look more like the 1st or 2nd scenario, or is it somewhere in between? How will you change it? In my classroom I use centers during my main literacy block. Each child rotates through a set schedule while I meet with a particular group. I was in full control of this. I had a scheduling map, certain centers, and who was in each group. Again, control freak. The kids loved most of the centers, but I was always getting up and talking to someone or answering questions, or helping with the computer or..... I was maybe getting in a quality 10 minutes with my guided reading group. Sounds like the first scenario in the book. Okay so I want to give my students more control, but how? A phrase you will learn in this book is-"Building Stamina". Building stamina is giving your students time to practice and add a little more each time. The sisters take you step by step on how to give your students that control and let you work more efficiently. "Work smarter, not harder!" I am so excited to begin my year slowly building stamina with my students and teaching them explicitly how they should be working in the classroom during our literacy time. This takes time, and you need to go through the process for this to work, but it pays off in the end! 2. The typical teacher is very busy having students do lots of different activities. How is what you are having students do now in your classroom creating quality readers and writers? This is such a powerful question to make you reflect on what is happening in your classroom. I know I have all these cute centers set up and it looks wonderful, but what are they really gaining from these activities? Is filling out that worksheet helping them to become indpendent learners or did they just copy from their partner? If Johnny is really engaged in reading why did he just get up to go to the bathroom for the 3rd time? I had to really look hard at my class and be honest with myself. Some of my students were fully engaged and many of them were off task...alot! How do I get them to stay on task and engaged when I am not hovering? The next few chapters will get more into this:) 3. What sets the Daily 5 structure apart from what you are doing in your classroom? I think the main thing again for me is the independence of your students. The more control you have in your classroom, the less independence children develop. If you want your students to take control of their learning, you have to give them some choices. What's great about the Daily 5 is that it gives choices within limits. Daily 5 Structure: Read To Yourself Read To Someone Work on Writing Listen to Reading Spelling/ Word Work In my literacy block I usually had 6-8 centers going at once. Students were all over the place. They couldn't remember what each center was and they spent so much time transitioning, that their time for reading and writing was greatly diminished. By setting up, teaching the structure and giving your students time to practice these skills, the on task time will greatly increase. There is so much to explore and I look forward to delving into the next chapters for more in depth ideas and ways to get started. If you would like to link up and share out your ideas or your reservations sign up below:)
LibriVox recording of THE BALLAD OF ST. BARBARA AND OTHER VERSES, by G.K. CHESTERTON. This book of poetry by G.K. Chesterton, originally published in 1922, ...
By Shannon Loh ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “About Medieval Knights” Medieval k…
Go over the German alphabet with your kid, learning together how to pronounce each letter.
Behaviour is a form of communication not an indication of bad children or people #children #families #support #adults #socialwork ❤💜🧡💛💚💙
photo credit: Pinterest
We may not be an artist, but we can all doodle - The life of a story is in the detail, so tell your story with a few doodle pictures and see it come to life
I can't find the original, so* I'll embed this screencap of a ?newspaper article for a quick summary. More details are available in the...
