So Many Anchor Charts, So Little Space

Especially when the fire marshall tells you such a small percentage of your walls can be covered in paper. I have gone back and forth with what to do with the anchor charts I produce with my class. After a while, I swear they start to mate and multiply. How do you end up with so many? And how can students continue to take advantage of those resources you worked so hard to make?

I have seen and heard some pretty brilliant ideas on Pinterest and from other teachers. Ideas such as hanging them from chart stands or clothes racks so students can flip through, taking photos of them them and putting them in binders, or hanging them on rings from the wall. I need a way to have them accessible without having them on the wall (to make Mr. Fire Marshall happy). Plus, taking up as little space as possible is always a plus.

So, this is the idea I am going to try this year: THINK SMALL! I know, it's not what is usually said. But, I have decided to think outside the box of anchor charts. Who says they have to be made on giant chart paper? Are the anchor chart gods going to smite me if I go small?

Instead of creating them on chart paper and trying to figure out what to do with it, I am going to go small and utilize technology. I will create those charts on plain 8 1/2 x 11 paper, projecting it as I create it using my Elmo. Now, I can even use different colors or patterns of paper. Oh my! The creative possibilities are endless! Of course, this only works if you have access to a document camera, which I do. If you don't have one, you might want to look into grants or other possibilities to get one. Mine has become an invaluable teaching tool in my classroom.

Now, I will have created an anchor chart just the right size to slip into a sheet protector in a binder. I can organize them into different binders, or use dividers in one binder. I can even make black and white  copies of each anchor chart to put in the same sheet protector in case multiple student need to reference the same anchor chart at once.

This year, I will be teaching three sections of fourth grade writing, plus one science/social studies, so most of my anchor charts will be writing. I plan to break them down into binders based on lesson topic, such as Writing Ideas, Grammar/Spelling, Revising Strategies, Prewriting Strategies, Editing Techniques, and Beginnings/Endings. I plan to keep the binders on a shelf alongside the mentor texts we use for each genre as well as dictionaries, thesauruses, and rhyming dictionaries. Then all the writing reference material will be in one spot.

A spin-off idea might be copying, shrinking, and laminating the charts. Then using binder rings to make a set for each table group. That would take a lot more work though. I think I will start with the create-through-projection-to-organized-binder idea, and direct students to the binders when they need resources.

DIY: Make a Cool Book Setting Sign for Your Classroom

I have been inspired by signs like this for several years and vowed to have one in my classroom.

Finally, I made my own... and one that would work with the beach theme in my classroom. Want to know how?

First, I set out to brainstorm the locations I wanted on my sign. I scoured Pinterest and then Googled until I could Google no more. I also sought out the help of my friends through Facebook. And when I got stuck, I thought of my and my students' favorite books, and if they were set in identifiable places.

Next, I went about trying to figure out what materials to use. To go with my beach theme, a pole was pretty easy. I immediately thought of bamboo, which was easy to find in the gardening section at Lowe's. But what would the signs be made of? My inspiration pictures, and actual signs like this, are made from driftwood or broken pieces of wood. That's not so easy to find, at least where I live. Finally, after walking around Lowe's for a while, I came upon shims. If you don't know (and I didn't), shims are pieces of tapered wood that carpenters use to fill in gaps or make pieces level. Anyway, they were cheap, so I thought I would try to work with them. But, I hated that they were just a light wood color. I wanted them to look weathered... like driftwood. I thought, it's wood, so why not stain? And lo and behold, there is a stain that is driftwood colored! I was all set. All the materials cost me less than $20.

My first step of actually making the sign was to stain the shims. This was a very quick and easy process. I just rubbed the stain on both sides with a cloth. Just make sure to work in a ventilated area. It took them a couple of hours to dry.

Next, I gathered up some colors of acrylic paints I just had, but you could use any sort of thick, colored paint. I would not imagine watercolors would at all. I got my children to help me paint, choosing a variety of colors and printing styles so that they looked mismatched. They took an hour or so to dry.

Finally, I nailed them to the bamboo using small finishing nails. I made sure to mount them all caddywampus (one of my favorite words) to make it look more like the inspiration. Just a word to the wise: if you do use bamboo, it is VERY difficult to nail into. That was the hardest part of the process for me. But, TA DA!!!!! I now have a totally cute sign to put in my classroom. My hope is that the students ask about settings they don't know, and that might lead them to other books to love.

Sub Binder for Life's Emergencies

I am pretty embarrassed about this confession: I haven't had a sub binder until just now. For some of you that may not seem like such a deep, dark secret, but those of you who have been following me over my blogging career, know just how earth-shattering that is. You see, I was (am still am) Sub Hub and blogged all the time about being prepared for a sub. I even sell two different lines of emergency sub plans in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. But did I use either one of them? No (hanging my head in shame). Just file that one under the "do as I say, not as I do" category.

This Spring Break, I decided to remedy that and show you all just how easy it was to get things in order. Now, I used a couple of my own products, but you can use whatever you like and works for you. The two I used were: Just Add Paper: Fourth Grade (and I have these plans for K-5) and Sub Forms for Teachers (and I only used the pages that worked for my school).

First, I filled out the Sub Forms for Teachers with information for my class this year and printed those out.

Then, I printed out multiple copies of the Daily Summary Form that is also in the Sub Forms for Teachers.

Next, I went to my gradebook and printed several copies of my class attendance list.

I also printed out the Just Add Paper: Fourth Grade Emergency Sub Plans.

Finally, I put them all in a binder with a cute cover and dividers.

This will be somewhere in my classroom that is easily accessible, so if there is an emergency, a sub will at least have some basic information and some things to get started, if not get through the whole day. All they need to add to this is a picture book (which there are numerous choices in my classroom library) and paper (which is out in a visible location in my classroom).

Of course, best case scenario is to write up sub plans continuing your scope and sequence, and I will continue to do that if at all possible (even if it's in the middle of the night). But now, I have some peace of mind that if something were to happen and I couldn't write plans in the middle of the night and email them to my awesome teammates, that my classroom and students would still be taken care of.

So now you can "do as I do" as well as "do what I say" and always be prepared for life's emergencies.

A New Twist on Literacy Stations

Don't you just love when you get to go to a conference and you are presented with so many excellent ideas, you don't even know which one to do first? Me too! It makes me feel so inspired and rejuvenated (which I know we all need this time of year).

I had the opportunity to attend the Abydos Writing Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Abydos is the Texas version of the New Jersey Writing Project. I got so many ideas (and I promise I will share others), but the one that was my true a-ha! moment of the conference, the one that is just hands-down brilliant, was the concept of the Reading and Writing Kiosk presented by super genius teachers from Donna ISD, Sylvia Vela and Maritza Park (who also credit Dr. Joyce Carroll in giving them ideas to get the ball rolling). Since these are not my ideas, copyright prevents me from just recreating blackline masters to distribute to you. However, I am happy to share photos I have taken so you can recreate them in your classroom.

A kiosk is essentially a portable, targeted, skill-based literacy station (although I see no reason you couldn't do them for math, science, and social studies as well). The presenters had theirs created on trifold poster boards, but the samples they gave us were made from two file folders glues together. I am toying with the idea of making mine on trifolds, but cut down so they are not so big and bulky to store.

So, instead of your more general literacy stations, you have kiosks that each focus on a skill you have already taught. It is important that it be something the student can practice independently or with help from a partner. The kiosk has two basic parts: the anchored reference information that students may need to remind them how to complete the practices, and the actual practice parts. Most of the kiosks we saw had two or three practices for the targeted skill.

The teacher's role is that you assign specific kiosks to specific students depending on what skills they struggle with. The possibilities for skills on kiosks are endless...you choose based on what your standards are, what you have taught, and what your students need to practice. These are three that the Donna ISD ladies shared with the attendees, and that I will share with you.

The first kiosk they shared was for Inferencing. What student at any grade level doesn't need practice with inferencing? Here are photos of the anchored reference parts (obviously this would change based on your grade level and standards and your strategies for teaching the skill):

The practice parts on the inferencing kiosk really focused on images, but you could also do passages or even something they had been reading in class. One side had them look at an image, glue it down and complete an OWI chart (as seen in the references). The other side had them look at an advertisement and complete a sheet making inferences.

The second kiosk shared was on Hexagonal Writing. Hexagonal Writing is a strategy devised by Dr. Joyce Carroll, who heads up Abydos. This strategy alone is brilliant to get students thinking more deeply about their reading...and the strategy double dips as a prewriting strategy. In this strategy, students think about six comprehension sections after reading a piece: plot summary, personal allusions, theme, analyze (for literary devices), literary allusions, and evaluation. Students can complete this after reading any material...even a short poem. Again, this should only be a kiosk AFTER you have taught students about Hexagonal Writing, explaining all the parts. Here are the anchored references in the kiosk:

The activities in this example, were based on poetry. The poem was included in the pockets, and then materials would be available for students to complete the hexagon. And as shown in the "Oranges" example, it doesn't have to be a true hexagon. It could be theme-based.

The last one the Donna ladies share was on Transitions for Writing. The writing kiosks had a slightly different format. Yes, they still had the anchored reference material, but the practices were always in three parts: Find It in My Reading, Find It in My Writing, and Revising and Editing. The Find It in My Reading was based on a reading passage, and you could have students highlight what they are looking for or even color code the different types. In Find It in My Writing, students use a piece of their own writing to look for the skills (and add it in if it is missing). And finally, in Revising and Editing, students  look at another student's piece of writing and look for the skill in their. Again, they could highlight, color code, or even cut apart the writing and put it back together using the skill practiced.

My jaw was on the floor the whole time during these presentations. My brain was spinning out of control thinking of the possibilities. The Donna ISD ladies cited that this kiosk strategy has improved their reading and writing scores tremendously... not to mention made their students better readers and writers!

I have two more weeks until Spring Break. I know over those next two weeks, I will be really honing in on what exact skills my students are missing...and then over Spring Break, I will be a kiosk-making fool!

Feeling the Love...

...that I survived this week. This time of year the drama among fourth graders is reeling out of control. Top that off with a reading benchmark test, flu running rampant through the school, Jump Rope for Heart, Valentine's Day, and a full moon, and you have nothing but pandemonium! Somehow, I made it through the madness and even had some fun along the way.

The Valentine's Day party was really my highlight. I had asked in a group of teacher-bloggers who had ideas for a class party that was meaningful, fun, and low-key, and Tonya Roller of Tonya's Treats for Teachers came to the rescue. She does a brilliant activity for Valentine's Day, and I "stole" it and put my own twist on it for my class. I call it Valentine Compliment Posters, and here is Tonya's post about how she does it with her class.

Most of what I did was very similar to her, but I did it all at school. I sent a note home to parents explaining what we would be doing so that they knew not to buy the cheap paper Valentines that get thrown away the next day. I had each student write a compliment about every other student on strips of paper. Then we organized the strips into baggies, one for each student's compliments. My school provides poster board, so we used that. And I had students donate other Valentine-themed craft supplies such as stickers, paper, foam hearts, pom poms, etc. All this was done prior to party day in spare time as students finished other work.

Yesterday afternoon, on party day, I gave each student a poster board and ANOTHER student's compliments. They could choose the craft supplies they wanted to use to create a compliment poster for a student (not themselves) in the class. The results were beautiful! I loved reading all the good things they had to say about each other, and they really worked hard on creating posters for each other.

I did have one student absent for the party, so I let early finishers work together to create his poster. And other early finishers worked together to create a lovely one for me as well. It will hang in a coveted spot on my classroom wall for as long as it lasts.

I loved this project, and the students did too. They all went home happily with a poster describing just how awesome they all are. How much more meaningful than a Spongebob Valentine?

Stay tuned soon to see how my Go For the Gold Division Facts Olympic Challenge went in my class. Here's a hint: everyone earned a medal!

Caring Classrooms Made My Monday Better

Ugh! Monday... and after we had an "ice" day on Friday. And this is South Texas. We don't get ice days. But, cities down here are built with an entirely elevated highway system, and you can't drive anywhere without getting on a highway. An eighth of an inch of ice on the overpasses was all that was needed to shut the city of San Antonio down for nearly the entire day. 

Mondays are always hard no matter who you are, so when I saw this morning that my current Donor's Choose project had been chosen to be featured on the Caring Classrooms page, I was thrilled!

I know many (if not all) of you have heard of Donor's Choose, a website to help teachers get funding for materials for their classrooms. Money in education is hard to come by at best, and this website helps so many teachers get what they need. But it can be hard to get your project noticed (and therefore funded) with so many to choose from. Cue the entrance of Laura Candler and her Caring Classrooms page!

What Laura has done is harness her power to bring teachers together in a community supporting each other. Every week, the Caring Classrooms Facebook page hosts Fund-day Sunday. All you need to do to join is like the Facebook page and donate at least $1 to one of the projects featured on the Caring Classrooms Donor's Choose page. Then you can offer up your project each Sunday to see if yours is chosen. More than $35,000! That's how much money Laura's page has raised for teachers! Simply amazing!

My project is called Literature Circles for All. I was inspired to try literature circles in my classroom, but didn't have a good selection of titles for the reading levels and interests in my classroom. I have told my students about this prospect, and they are so excited! They can't wait to improve their reading skills through high-interest chapter books, rather than basal stories or reading passages. 

So, if you have not joined the Caring Classrooms community or tried out a Donor's Choose project, now is the time! There really is nothing to lose!

A Sweet Freebie Just for You

I know. I know. I am so crazy behind on blogging. Honestly, I have so much so share with all you that I am quite overwhelmed. There are so many awesome things happening in my classroom this year! And also some new challenges that I am working my way through, which is a lot of the reason I am behind in blogging. Plus, my daughter is a freshman in high school this year and joined the cross country team. Cross country runners keep an INSANE schedule! But, now cross country season is over, and my son's soccer is in between seasons, so my hope is that I can get back on track blogging about some great ideas of activities and teaching that you could use in your classroom as well.

For now, please accept my apologies... and this SWEET freebie! I do a gingerbread theme in my classroom for December. You see, I teach the ESL fourth graders at my school, and many of them do not celebrate Christmas. I always want to do Christmas activities, while still allowing everyone to participate. My solution has been The Gingerbread Man... Christmas-ey without being specifically Christmas. I even have a freebie in my store of some gingerbread activities I do. Anyway, I was perusing Pinterest looking for gifts for my students and came across this cutie pie wrapped around a Hershey candy bar:

Well, I am always looking for ways to simplify as well. That guy was cute, but also looked like a lot of work. So, I decided to design some Gingerbread Candy Wrappers. They just need to be printed, cute, wrapped around a candy bar, and taped. And I have specifically designed them generically, so they will work for students both do and don't celebrate Christmas.

So, feel free to grab this forever freebie for your student gifts this year, or wait and use it next year.