Say Hello to my new classroom!

I am so excited to say that I will be teaching
3rd grade at Highland Elementary School in Waterloo
this fall!

I was lucky to get a peak into my room between the new teacher meetings this last week.

I have so many ideas for organization and set-up!

The school is only 4 years old, and it has been seeing growth.  The rooms are up-to-date and full of technology.

I am excited to begin working with my fellow 3rd grade teachers as we collaboratively plan lessons and creatively problem-solve issues that come up with any of our kids.

In the meantime, I will continue to post images of the room and lessons we do!

Birthday Treats

 

One of the fun things about school is bringing treats for your birthday.  It is something that I have done several times since I began teaching.  Because my birthday is in mid May, towards the end of the academic year, I have often been swamped by the many other end of the year projects that seem to somehow squeeze into the already packed week.   However, it is always fun to spread a little joy through cookies (which are quick to make) now and then.

This year I brought treats to my two classes that hosted me through my student teaching.  One class received the dice (Dise) bars, featured in a previous post, so both classes have now received these fun treats.  Though they are not exactly a healthy snack, they are fun and I think "OK" if you only have them once in a while.  I followed the recipe on my earlier post and even took my recommendations for piping in the dough through a zipper-lock bag (worked well) and placing simpler numbers by the edges (also an improvement).

The other class received applesauce monsters.  The applesauce monsters were inspired by a student from the first placement who brought this kind of treat for his birthday.  It was a total hoot to draw the eyes - moving their gaze for different effects.  Though the part that was even better was drawing the eyebrows!  Everyone knows (whether they realize it or not) that the eyebrows make the face, so once I had several sets of gazes (4 looking left, 4 looking right, etc.), I changed the eyebrows to add the expression! 

What a fun (and healthy) way to make a day special!

Dice (DISE) Bars!

Here is the recipe for the amazing, the delicious, the outstanding, the ooey-gooey

Di c se Bars! 

Makes 48 square bars

 (T = Tablespoons, t = teaspoons, c = cups, oz. = ounces)  
Ingredients:
3 1/2 c. flour
3 1/2 t.  baking powder
1/2 t. salt
5 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 1/4 c. butter or margarine, softened
3 c. brown sugar
1 12oz. bag of regular chocolate chips (milk-chocolate or semi-sweet work well)
part of a bag of mini-chocolate chips (it should take 168, but extras may be needed)
*If you want to make a pan of regular chocolate-chip bars, use an 18oz. bag of chocolate chips and do not divide the dough in step 2.

All ready to be baked!  Note how the scoring helped guide the dot-pattern placement.

You can mix the dough ahead of time, but be sure it is room-temperature to spread into the pan!

Preheat oven to 350
1) Mix all the ingredients except chocolate chips in a bowl.
2) Divide the dough in half; mix one bag of regular chocolate chips (or your favorite chip) into one half.  Leave the other portion of dough plain. The dough can be refrigerated at this point for several days.
3) Spray a jelly-roll pan with cooking spray.  If you use parchment paper or aluminum foil to line the pan, you can use a pastry bag to pipe the dough without pushing the the paper or foil around the pan.
-- A quick and simple form of "pastry bag" is a zipper-lock bag with one corner cut at 1/4 inch.  Then squeeze the dough out by squeezing the bag like a toothpaste tube: from the back to the front.
Spread the dough with chocolate chips first, and then place the plain dough on top.
4) Score the squares by drawing a toothpick or wooden skewer across the top of the dough, helping you see where to place the dots.  Then follow the pattern of dots on dice (or dominoes) in each square by placing mini-chocolate chips, point-down, in each square.  This takes patience!
-- Be aware that the bars will expand during cooking, contract during cooling, which creates a ridge by the edge.  I recommend placing the "1" and "2" pattern by the edges to reduce the other patterns becoming contorted.  The "1" and "2" will expand more than the "5" and "6" patterns because they have fewer dots holding them down.
5) Bake the bars at 350 degrees for 20-40 minutes.  Aluminum pans will take longer, dark pans will take less time.  Using the convection setting will reduce the time.  Bake for less time to get softer bars.  You may wish to rotate the pan 180 degrees part-way through baking for even browning.
6) Allow the bars to cool completely before cutting.  You may wish to cut them ahead of time in the pan, to make for easier serving later.

Baked: notice the funky dots on the "4"... I would not place "4" by the edge next time!

 Note: Do Not freeze these bars - they will become very hard and tough.

These came out very gooey, and after a day in the fridge they firmed up into perfect, chewy bars!

That's Just Ducky

Have you ever heard a phrase that would actually be quite silly if taken literally?  I want you to tell the truth now; don't pull my leg!

Studying language is so much more than learning nouns and verbs.  When our turns of phrases are learned, it makes language so much more interesting and fun - it's a real hoot!

This week is my last week of teaching fully in the classroom; next week I begin to phase out and let my cooperating teacher take over again.   Because the school year is wrapping up, it is also nearing the end of the time for "Word Journeys," a word study and spelling time for students.  This program has students organizing words by spelling patterns, which has been shown to be much more effective for students to learn to spell words correctly than just "memorizing" them.  The more connections we can make in our learning of words, the better we can remember how to spell them and how to spell other words that fall into the same patterns!

On a slightly different note, this morning I had my second duck sighting here at school.  I had to take a crack at getting its cute mug!  Lucky for me, I carry my camera!  I hope you have a day that is just ducky too!

Now Hear This!

Last week, our reading lessons had to do with reading aloud.  Readers' Theater is a fun and effective way to work on fluency.  On Monday, students were assigned one of four scripts, the parts assigned to best match students' needs.  However, I must point out that in every script, there are smaller and larger parts.  While the students with the smaller parts were able to commit most (or all their lines) to memory, everybody followed their fellow readers' lines.  The ability to read along as others read aloud is also valuable!

The scripts included: The Three Wishes, traditional; Red Riding Hood, retold by Jomes Marshall, adapted by Chris Murphy; The Fourth Little Pig, by Teresa Celsi, adapted by Bonnie Walters; and The Frog Prince, Continued, retold by Jon Scieska, adapted by Merrilee Betts.  These were all traditional fairy tales, or spin-offs of traditional tales.  For instance, in The Fourth Little Pig, it is the fourth pig, the sister pig, who huffs, and puffs, and blows down the house!

Students practiced their lines in groups with me and with pairs or trios within each group during reading time every day.  Students worked on vocabulary words such as custard, immensely, profession, and black pudding so we could understand the sometimes less-familiar words from the traditional tales.  We also worked on character development so the narrators sounded more like story-tellers, the grandmother could sound more angry at having her reading interrupted, and the wizards could sound more conniving.  Though we were restricted to a week of preparation time on these scripts, we were able to touch on some stage direction, too.  Turning to face away from or toward the audience or away makes a reading more understandable to the listeners.

Mostly, however we worked on fluency.  Also called prosody, fluency is reading with flow that matches the task.  For instance, you read a letter from Grandma differently than you read a thrilling mystery novel, which is also read differently than instructions on using your new dremel tool!  Reading these scripts with a flow that matched their character and the story was important for conveying the meaning of the story to the audience.  It was fun to listen to the prince ask the wizards to help turn him into a frog when he sounded more needy than if the words rushed out.  It sounded more suspenseful to hear the woodcutter wish he had a black pudding right that instance rather than waiting for an hour for his dinner (knowing that he had just used the word, "wish")!

Fluent reading is more than just reading quickly.  Few of us would like to hear everything read like the "fine print" speakers at the ends of commercials.  We want to be entranced in the story!  The students did a great job over just one week learning to read fluently their traditional and spin-off fairy tale scripts!  Bravo! 

Math = feeling square?

The latest topics in math have been finding perimeter and area.  As students have moved from studying perimeter to area, some have had a tough time distinguishing the two.  I made this prezi to help students identify which is which!

Mrs. Dise's Prezi to show perimeter and area

I also introduced the perimeter unit with a book by Marilyn Burns called Spaghetti and Meatballs for All, a mathematical story.

The students have been using grid paper and even notebook paper to visualize the shapes' lengths and widths.  Sometimes students just use numbers.  I like to have students use a variety of modes to work through a problem.  Often, I will draw a shape on the board to help students visualize what an equation is saying. 

Above all though, I emphasize that the method of finding the answer  to the question at hand is more important than the answer itself.

March (Reading) Madness

I was a little shocked during the morning announcements that first week at my new student teaching placement.  I thought I misheard the librarian when she was talking about the brackets, but it turned out to be exactly what she had said.  Now to be clear, it wasn't the college basketball brackets that are so ubiquitous this time of year, but a book bracket.  Instead of favorite teams, the students throughout the school were voting on their favorite books! 

Grades pre-K through 6th were grouped so students could select books they had probably read (the initial list was from books that were popular among students in each grade range).

It was fun to listen to the students' reactions to the daily winners and the growing excitement when their top pics ended up winning, eventually facing each other in the final round!

The students occasionally heard book titles unfamiliar to them.  Usually other students would reply to a question like, "What's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane?" by saying, "Oh, Mrs. so-and-so read it to us last year," or, "I just read that one!" making each title a little more enticing.

I think this kind of school-wide activity is great for getting students to think of reading in a fun and exciting way - their favorite book might win!  But it also just puts reading right out there and makes having a favorite book normal, common, expected... even advantageous!  Though arguing for your favorite book was not allowed in the classroom, I think it still brought books into the spotlight in a good way!

I know I still have a lot of reading to go to become better acquainted with the huge assortment of literature students are reading. I guess I have some brackets full of suggestions now!

Character Counts!

There are a lot of classroom management techniques that teachers use every day.  Some are protocols of responses - these series of consequences would be clearly laid out for the students at the beginning of the year or before beginning a new protocol.  Others are more like teacher attitudes towards infractions or hurtful behaviors.  The schools in my district use two overarching philosophies.  One comes from in Sean Covey's Leader In Me system (learn more here) and the other from Michael Josephson's Character Counts! initiative, which is based on six pillars of character (learn more here). 

My current school uses Character Counts!, and you can see it in action every day.  The students are reminded of behavioral choices they are making, which is tied into the pillar of character the student is not demonstrating when appropriate.  There is also the student planner or agenda, which is filled with Character Counts! tips, reminders, vignettes, and images.  Every morning, after the pledge of allegiance and announcements, my class stands in a large, room-sized circle, looks each other in the eye and recites their "Character Counts Pledge," see image above. It goes:

Character Counts Pledge

I pledge to be a kid of character.  

I will be worthy of trust.  

I will be respectful and responsible, 

doing what I must.  

I will always act with fairness. 

I will show that I care.  

I will be a good citizen, 

and always do my share.

The last school I student taught in used the Leader In Me system.  This was also a school-wide initiative and was incorporated into many levels of the school day.  This relatively new philosophy of student leadership-building was fun for me to learn (which happened two years before student teaching at a workshop at my university)!  I found myself incorporating the language of the system into my everyday life.  I still do.

Seven Habits of Happy Kids: 

1. Be Proactive 
2. Begin with The End in Mind 
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw

So far, the first week in 3rd grade has been super.  I am excited to begin the second week, begin to take on more curricular responsibilities, such as spelling and writing.  I think one of the things that makes this placement so well-suited for me is that my cooperating teacher and I have very similar philosophies on classroom management.  Though I have years of experience teaching, I still love watching my CT work with her class and learning from her actions.  I believe in being a life-long learner, and I am thoroughly enjoying learning new teaching and management techniques!

Student Teaching Part 2: 3rd GRADE!

Happy New Placement!

I feel like it is a holiday because I have begun a new placement in my semester of Student Teaching.  This time I am in a 3rd grade classroom.  As you may know from reading my bio or previous posts, I am a veteran teacher.  However, I have not spent as much time teaching 3rd grade and lower during my years of teaching.  I have always taught older students.  I have to admit, I was a little nervous to begin a student teaching placement with this age!

But fear not!  I jumped in with both feet and think 3rd grade ROCKS!  I am very happy to be working with such a fine group of students.  I am also happy to be working with a cooperating teacher who knows her plans like the back of her hand, has a sixth sense when it comes to what her students are doing, and has a huge heart!  I am excited to have such a great example to learn from.

My new placement also has a new desk and I think it looks lovely.  I will be posting pictures and descriptions of the activities and projects the students are working on and completing as time goes by during the next seven weeks.  Stay tuned for the latest!

Final Pages: Writing

Now for my summary post on the big writing project I was able to teach with the 5th grade class!

The lesson plan was based on Corbett Harrison's lesson: Giving and Taking Hands.  Of course, Mr. Harrison's lessons are amazing and wonderfully described with plenty of room to tailor them to your needs.  He also provides PDFs of his plans and visual images of his and his students' work so you can get a feel for what to expect, on his website, Always Write.  This lesson was intended for middle school writing, so the classroom teacher and I modified it for our situation.

The students were to use synonyms for give and take, and then explore those synonyms through seven lenses - like mathematics, or music lyrics, always finishing up with the writing of two complex sentences in that theme.  The final project took the students to the next level by asking them to write 10 complex sentences (5 for give and 5 for take), using synonyms and then constructing a poster around a central theme from their sentences.  There were a lot of layers of creativity involved!

I think one of the most interesting parts for me, personally was thinking of giving and taking through a wider and wider lens.  I appreciated using synonyms for these words because it made you think of them in new ways.

I think the most unexpected part of the lesson was when we learned a bit of pig-Latin.  Ink-oay.

I enjoy writing, and this was a fun exercise for me too!

However, I have to say that the best part of all was when the students presented their work to the class and pointed out their illustrations / themes / and creative ideas for incorporating giving and taking in their final product!

 The Students created a wall of Giving Hands and Taking Hands!

Here are some close-ups!

 Shamrock Shake... Mmmmm.....

 Water Park!  What a slide!

The sentences are like the music!  

(Scientists will appreciate the Take hand is blue and the Give hand is red!)

Many stories on this page!

I get positive vibes off this!

Flying Basketball!

The hands are showing the mirrored acts of give/take!

The scene grew out of the sentence birds.

Don't fall on the ice!

Mrs. Haren enjoyed the project also!

There were so many good posters - I am sorry I did not get them all photographed up-close!

Final Pages: Social Studies

Read on for the Social Studies installation!

 This bulletin board was progressively filled with correlating information for the major themes per region: Geography, People, Civics, and Economics.

Color code: Blue = New England Colonies, Yellow = Middle Colonies, Red = Southern Colonies.

The bulletin board was designed to be interactive; students could flip the fact scrolls to review prior regions' info.

And The colonies were progressively labeled (students connected the label to the sketched location (cartographers and knit-pickers, please be kind to my approximation)!

 The final aspect to this bulletin board I really liked was the guiding question posed as a thought bubble: (especially useful for studying for the final test)!

Overall, the board was a visual organization of the design of the unit.  The progressive completion and reference to the board during lessons helped make connections from prior knowledge and from lesson to lesson.

The Final Pages of My First Student Teaching Placement

I can testify to the truth of the saying, "time flies when you're having fun."

Friday was my final day student teaching with an absolutely outstanding fifth grade class!  I have spent the week popping into classrooms in the 3rd - 6th grade range to view the varying methods teachers here use to teach everything from gist statements to comprehension.  I have been so fortunate to have been able to work in such a great school!  In particular, as the prezis on a previous post can attest, many students in my classroom have shown a high level of energy and creative thought.  Some have even been able to put those characteristics together to produce some excellent work!

So Friday I said good-bye to the class, teacher, and others I have grown to know.  I was touched by the numerous cards, pictures and letters students made for me!  I was sure to write them a note of thanks as well.  I feel extremely lucky to have been able to teach and work with them for these eight weeks.

 

I'll miss them too!

My final posts for this student teaching placement will include some images from my Social Studies bulletin board for the 13 Colonies.

Stay tuned!

Study Questions for the Social Studies Topic Test!

The 13 Colonies topic test is tomorrow!  Are you ready?  

If you know this, you've got it!

13 Colonies Topic Test Organization:

• Part 1: Geography Identify the colonies
• -- Can you identify what was one of the original 13 colonies and what was not?
• Part 2: Geography Describe the regions
• -- Can you identify the geographic (terrain, location) features of the 3 regions (New England / Middle / Southern)?
• Part 2: People
• -- Can you identify how people dealt with religious conflict?
• Part 2: Civics
• -- Can you identify how governments were organized?
• -- Do you know who could vote in each region?
• Part 2: Economy
• -- Can you identify what industries were in each region?
• -- Can you use your logic to know what industries were not in a region?
• Part 3: Short Answer Essay:  Write and Support your answer:
• -- Essay 1: "Explain the role RELIGION and RELIGIOUS CONFLICT had on the New England and Middle Colonists."  
• ---- Write your analysis of this conflict and the result below.  Use evidence about the region and its people to support your statements.  Write 3-5 sentences.
• -- Essay 2: "Compare and Contrast the government of the Middle Colony - Pennsylvania to the U.S. government." 
• ---- Write your analysis of these governments below.  Use evidence about the region and their civic (government) development to support your statements.  Write 2 sentences about the similarities, 1 sentence about the differences.
• -- Essay 3: "Explain why the major industries in the Southern Colonies were located there rather than in other regions."
• ---- Write your analysis of the location below.  Use evidence about the region and its geography to support your statements.  Write 3-5 sentences.
• Map Part
• -- Can you label a map of the 13 colonies?
• -- Can you shade the map by region?

The 13 Colonies - Presented by...

Here are the amazing student-created Prezi presentations on the 13 colonies!

Click the Name of the Colony/ies to link to the prezi.  

Or use the QR code

1) Virginia 

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2) New Jersey

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3) New York

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4) Rhode Island

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5) Pennsylvania

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6) Georgia

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7 & 8) North and South Carolina

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9) New Hampshire

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10) Connecticut

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11) Delaware

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12) Maryland

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13) Massachusetts