Miss B., Busy Bee

Monday, October 17, 2011

San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge

The week before school started, I finally made it to my first of the Seven Wonders of the World! Of course, I was going to California to visit friends and check out baseball in Los Angeles and San Francisco too! Since my class just finished reading Pop's Bridge (a great story about honesty and pride) in our Journeys reading series, I promised to upload my pictures and video of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my trip!

me at the Golden Gate Bridge...it's much colder and windier there than most of California...this picture was taken in August and I have a winter jacket on!

the bridge is covered by fog on most days

video of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge (it's very windy on top of a double decker bus so TURN YOUR SOUND DOWN!!!!)

360 degree view from the side of the Golden Gate Bridge

seals in the bay

2,866 miles to Cooperstown!

fog rolling in off the mountains at night at AT&T Park

Preview the book Pop's Bridge here.

Check out Pop's Bridge and videos with the author here.

Practice spelling words from the story here.

Find vocabulary games for the story here.

Read the story online here. (Requires password)

Some great paired reads with Pop's Bridge are:

You Wouldn't Want to Be a Worker on the Statue of Liberty!

A First Book of Bridge Problems

The First Book of Bridges

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Songs for teaching kids

I just have to say that every day that I play music in the classroom, we're all in a better mood and the day goes much more quickly. I realized the power of music for teaching when I had to teach Spanish to my third graders. It was on their report card and we didn't have a Spanish class or materials, so I felt obligated to teach them something meaningful if I was going to grade them on it. Luckily I had taken three years of Spanish in high school. I also taught students who spoke mostly Spanish as a first language when I student taught and in my first two years in second grade.
However, I had a very challenging class that year in third grade - 12 of my 22 students received a special service - from Resource Room with an IEP (4 students) to a 504 for ADHD (2 students) to OT (4 students) to Pt (1 student) to ESL (1 student) to speech (1 student) to basic skills (4 students)... As you could probably tell, some students received multiple services. I didn't include pull outs for gifted and talented or instrumental music in that either! Needless to say, I hustled up and finished my Masters degree in Special Education that year!
So anyway, back to the music....one of my students who had an IEP for a specific learning disability sat there during the Spanish test on colors and stared into space. His mom assured me they had studied, and that he should be okay since they spoke Spanish at home. I had taught the students little strategies, like rosa = red roses and verde = very green and we listened to a song about the colors over and over. It wasn't until I hummed the tune of the song that he started to work very quickly...and ended up scoring 100%!

I'll keep updating my Pinterest with more songs and videos...but for now, here are a few of my favorite cds / song resource pages...do you have any to recommend?

Spanish-Book-Twin-Sisters-Productions

http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com/memory-boosting-mnemonic-songs-for-content-area-learning
The cool thing is you can preview a lot of it before buying...the bad thing is there isn't a cd, so you have to figure out the pacing (they give you the tune and tell you the song it was modeled from) AND you have to sing out loud with the kids! (My old roommate even used some of these for her HS history classes - the kids got a kick out of the presidents song!)
Stuck in my head:
"Noun names person, place or thing
office, doctor, school, or ring
school or ring, place or thing
ohohohoho!"

http://www.songsforteaching.com/index.html

Monday, October 10, 2011

Organizing Teacher's Edition and Classwork Materials

First and foremost, a disclaimer: Please forgive me for my well-worn materials....even though they aren't that old, they are dragged around everywhere with me between my classroom, the faculty room, the copy machine, to the airport, and they even come with me when I get an oil change...cause to be honest, there's never enough time to get everything done!

Here's what I do to organize my Journey's reading teacher's edition book. It's like most basal-based reading programs, so there is one book for each unit (5 stories each), and 6 units for the year.

The top of each lesson has a post it on it that shows where each lesson planner is. Journeys is really cool because it's a new program so it includes the Common Core Standards and makes lesson planning easier.

I used a black and white scroll sticky tab to show where our vocabulary word cards are in the book.

I used a pink and white polka dot sticky tab to show where the beginning of each story is.

I used a yellow and white polka dot sticky tab to show where the spelling words and sentences for the pretest and test are.

For each day of the week, I use a certain color folder to hold that day's materials.

I keep homework, tests, and other materials on the left and classwork (which tends to be the bulkiest) on the right side.

I can get a week or more ahead with copying because I have it down to a routine and I have several sets of folders that are the same color as the ones I use for the current week.

I keep a binder with all of my originals. Post-Its with the lesson number and story name help me figure out what is where.

For guided reading, I use these folder pocket charts from Really Good Stuff. Students keep their guided reading books and worksheets in a Ziploc bag inside the pocket. They can easily put the bag in their homework folder and bring it to and from school!

See my other post on guided reading organization here.

What do you do to keep reading materials organized?

Monday, October 3, 2011

National Baseball Hall of Fame

I visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this weekend. It was a perfect way to get ready for the postseason (Let's Go Yankees!) and to collect some pictures for our upcoming Journey's reading story, Roberto Clemente, Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I often use baseball adages with my students, such as the fact that a player who gets 3 hits in every 10 at bats is considered a success! My students have also been blown away by the story of one handed pitcher Jim Abbott and struggle of Jackie Robinson. Here are some notable pictures from my trip:

Doubleday Field, site of the Hall of Fame Game

Built in 1920, and site of the reunion game scene from A League of Their Own

Women's Professional Baseball League uniforms circa World War II - Rockford Peaches!

National Baseball Hall of Fame

"Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the earth..." -Lou Gehrig, dying of ALS

The Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig's uniform

Ruth and Gehrig struck out back to back by a 17 year old girl!

Record for most stolen bases in a season, 201, held by a woman.... the bases may have been closer in women's baseball, but she had to hit, run, and slide in a skirt! The closest male player had 138.