Where's my blog design????

Ahhh!  What happened to my beautiful blog design?  To all my new friends from the Southern California Kindergarten Conference, this is not what my blog is supposed to look like!  This blog feels just like my first graders sometimes - I can't turn my back on you for more than seven seconds without something going awry!  Time to call in the big guns at the Cutest Blog on the Block to see if they can fix it . . .

UPDATE: The Cutest Blog on the Block website seems to be having the same problem as mine!  That can't be a coincidence.  (Unfortunately I know nothing about writing code for blog designs, so I have no idea how the two events could be connected.)  Hopefully when they fix theirs, however, it will (positively) affect mine as well.  

53 Ways to Check for Understanding

Here is a link to an amazing list of strategies for checking for understanding from Edutopia.  Before today I had only been reading Edutopia articles as they popped up in my Twitter feed, but just now I finally registered to go onto the site and explore all of their resources/articles.  (I don't know why websites like this make you "register" just to read their articles.  Especially when all I did was enter my name and email, check the box that says "teacher," and create a password.  Imagine me making my annoyed face here.)  Petty annoyances aside, there are a lot of great resources on Edutopia that I look forward to reading - if I can just remember which of my passwords I chose when I registered.

Telling Time Printables: Now Updated!

Hi, friends!  I've updated my Telling Time Printables!  I've added 25 more pages, which includes several math journal prompts, and additional practice pages for each skill: telling time to the hour, to the half-hour, to the quarter-hour, and to five-minute intervals.  Go to Teachers Pay Teachers here to download my preview freebie!  Each page includes the Common Core standard(s) it addresses in the top right corner.  

(Any of these pages can be used in your students' math journals.  If you're using composition books, just print the page you want to use at 75% before copying, and it should fit perfectly!)  

Telling Time

Well folks, being sick and in bed has some advantages!  I finished my Telling Time Printables Pack this weekend!  It's a total of 55 pages right now, but I'd like to add additional prompts for use in our math journals. 

I think getting kids to write about math is so, so important!  It forces them to articulate their thinking, and trains them to put abstract concepts into concrete explanations. I know it's a tall order for firsties, but with modeling and support I think they can do it!

I found these adorable little clocks at my Dollar Tree, and since they were so cheap (4 for a dollar!) I bought enough for the entire class to have one while we're learning to tell time.  

And to top if off, today we made our own clocks!  A post on our clocks project will be coming soon!

Collecting Box Tops

My school is collecting box tops, and there's a contest among the classes to try to bring in the most.  First grade has been lagging behind (we're not even in the top three!), so I came up with something that has really incentivized my students to bring in box tops.  And that thing is . . .  

a PIGGY BANK!  I told my kids that whoever brings in box tops gets to put them in our piggy bank.  (They asked me what our pig's name was, so I had to name him on the spot.  I decided to call him Wilbur, although none of the kids got the reference!)  I got this piggy bank a few years ago at Target, for no other reason than that I thought it was adorable. I think Target still sells them, although maybe not in this color anymore.  (I've seen fantastically cute piggy banks at Home Goods as well.)  

Anyways, my kids are DYING to drop box tops into Wilbur, and since I came up with the idea on Monday, four kids have brought in entire sandwich bags of boxtops.  (I know four kids doesn't sound like that many, but it's a huge jump from ZERO, which is where we were before.  I had been subsidizing our class's box top contribution thus far.)  True, it's a little bit more work using the piggy bank, because then I need to pry the cover off the hole in the bottom, take a few moments to get out all the box tops (some of them have been surprisingly difficult to pull out), and then squeeze the cover back over the opening before putting all the box tops in the envelope they're supposed to be turned in with.  But it's either that or being the class that isn't contributing, so I do it!

Learn from me, however: you need to trim the edges of the larger box tops (or those that haven't really been trimmed at all) before the kids drop them in, otherwise they're difficult to get out through the hole in the bottom.  

If we're going to win this thing though, I'm going to have to figure out something else to get those box tops in.  Maybe I'll give kids a trip to the treasure box for every ten box tops they bring in?  Something to think about . . .

Reading Fluency Resources

I don't know about you, but the reading program my school (Imagine It! by SRA) doesn't really have a good reading fluency assessment system that I like.  SO, I've been looking around the internet for other resources that I can use to track my firsties' fluency.  Now, I know they say you shouldn't test for fluency until at least the winter of first grade, but I start testing fluency from the first week of school.  I always have at least a handful of kids who can read when they enter first grade, and I like being able to track their growth over the first few months of school (instead of waiting until December or January).

Here's a link to the passages I'm using this year to test my kids' fluency:
http://rti.dadeschools.net/pdfs/ORF-OPM_grs1-5.pdf

Just download the pdf file, and then you have everything you need for grades first through fifth in one file.  (Very handy.)  Now that the whole class is reading (albeit at widely differing levels), I'm testing my students' fluency every other week.  It's a lot of work, but it really gives me a good quantitative measure of how they're improving, as well as giving me some hard data to use during conferences with parents who believe their first grader is ready to read Chaucer.  (I'm only slightly exaggerating.)  

I keep all my fluency assessment sheets in a two-inch binder, with numbered dividers to keep each student's assessments separated.  (If you haven't already assigned each student a number, I highly recommend doing so.)  Last year I only had 28 students, so I was able to buy the dividers with tabs numbered 1-31 (which presumably are meant to be used for the days of the month), but now I have 35 students, so kiddos 31-35 are just separated by paperclips.  I'm pretty sure Staples has dividers that are numbered through 50, but I just keep forgetting to stop on my way home from school -- and when I do happen to remember, I tell myself I'll stop in another day, because getting home and into sweatpants trumps any need I may have to organize this binder.  

Here are a few more links that have good resources for reading assessment:
https://dibels.uoregon.edu/market/assessment/materialdownload?agree=true

http://www.comprehensivereadingsolutions.com/category/grades-k-5/

http://www.louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/teacher-support-toolbox-library

Rubrics for Reading Fluency: 
http://books.heinemann.com/comprehending/pdfs/ScaleForAssessingFluency.pdf

http://www.cdl.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/Hasbrouck-Tindal-Table.jpg

It's a lot of work to get through 35 students every two weeks, but I use my guided reading time during literacy centers every other Monday morning. The worst is when a student is absent, and then I have to find time to make up their Running Records assessment.  But quite honestly, I often times leave their score blank for that week, and just test them in two more weeks with the rest of the class's next round of fluency testing. 

I'd love to hear about the systems you use to test and track your students' fluency! 

Word Walls

I'm embarrassed to say that I am just now putting up a word wall.  I've been using pocket charts to show the words we're currently working on, and the kids have their Word Journals (new post on Word Journals coming soon!) in their desks to use when writing, but I realize it's not the same as seeing the words on display. 

I ordered the entire set of Really Good Stuff sight word rings to use for my Word Wall (see below), but I'm worrying now that the colors just don't look that good when they're all so close together. But I paid a fortune for these suckers, so I'm making them work! 

I put contact paper over the cabinet doors after I taped the words up so I could slide the doors open without destroying everything. It's getting bubbles underneath though, which is annoying me.  If anyone has any tips for using contact paper, let me know!! More pictures to come as soon as I finish. Hopefully by Monday evening I'll have everything complete!

Substitute Teacher Binder - New Freebie!

I recently decided to make my substitute binder a freebie in my TPT store!  

Here are a few of the pages that are included:

 

Please leave feedback in my TPT store.  Enjoy!