Teaching Adjectives and a Six Trait lesson all in one

Happy Fall Everyone!

The weather here in Switzerland is turning colder and I am definitely enjoying my favorite season of the year. We have just finished our first five weeks of school and the kids are really starting to settle and get used to all our routines. 

If you've read this blog before you might know that I am a huge fan of centers. I have had such great success with them and so naturally we are using them again this year. I try and teach one grammar, one writing and one handwriting mini lesson a week so that I can then let the kids get to work in their centers. This past week I combined the Grammar and Writing lesson into one and it turned out fantastic.

I use the Six Traits for my writing lessons and we started the year by learning about IDEAS.  Before I prepared the mini lesson for our writing I taught a quick review of Adjectives for the grammar lesson that week. 

We started by working together to come up with examples to fill in on our Anchor Chart. (I got this idea from Pinterest).

We then read the story Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. I asked the kids to listen for the many ideas that the author had and for adjectives that they hear in the story. After reading it we discussed the pattern that Judith Viorst used when she repeated the same line every couple of pages.  The kids discussed with an elbow partner why they thought that helped the story move along.

Our next step was to do a shared writing in the same style about our own experiences with a bad day. The ideas came from the kids and they had a blast discussing them together. 

The kids really enjoyed this lesson and did a great job using their creative ideas and smashing adjectives in their own stories.

Here is an example:

So happy to be back to school and classroom photos.

Back to School!

What a fantastic first week.  I love my students already and am so excited for the challenge they will bring me this year. 

My focus this first week was to find out how my new bunch does with directions and how independent they are. As I use both guided reading and guided math it is essential that my students be able to work independently or with small groups.

I started the year with an activity the very first day. The students were given written directions and a check list of stations they had to visit inside the classroom.  They had an activity to complete at each station. It was a great way for me to observe how independent and capable my third graders are.

Here are a few of the stations:

Students picked two pencils and sharpened them for our classroom set.

Say Cheese! Great way to get a picture of each student in class. 

We can't wait to see how much they grow by the end of third grade. 

Estimating is part of our Maths curriculum in 3rd grade. This helped me see who understands that concept. And who doesn't love peanut m&m's. =0)

I asked students to sign there name to our anchor chart. 

At this station students wrote their birthday next to their name. Of course this gave me some insights into who understands how to write a date in dd.mm.yy format.

The kids had such a great time with this activity. It took less than 30 minutes and I was able to see strengths an ears of needed improvement in my students. And of course the m&m activity was LOVED!!

The winner of the estimation was off by only 6 and received his own little goodie bag of m&m's as a prize.

I've also included pictures of my completed classroom. I should say completed for now. It changes all the time as most learning spaces do.  I am not big into classroom themes. I think they can shift the focus from student centered environment to a teacher's decoration project.  Having said that, I do choose a simple color theme each year. This year I chose primary colors and I like how bright the classroom is looking.  
Enjoy the pictures and see you soon!

Free is Good!

I haven’t been the best blogger recently but I can say that I’ve been a pretty good teacher. I feel like a juggler all the time and I can’t keep all the balls in the air at once. So while I’ve been working hard at school, I haven’t been working very hard at blogging. I am setting a goal for myself to do better at both (Doesn’t help that I have two other blogs and contribute to a third).

It is Sunday night at 9:40 and I just finished making a quick read to self-summary worksheet. I like to have my kids use different methods for talking about the books that they read during our center time. Sometimes it’s a verbal activity and sometimes it’s written. This week it’s written.

I decided just to put this on google docs for now because I can’t be bothered to put it in my TPT store tonight. If you think you can use it…great!

Click here

Have a great week ya'll and happy teaching and learning!

Miss Pam

Talking Back! The Good Kind

My students have been doing a whole bunch of talking back. Talking back to books, that is. I love Beth Newingham and have followed her work for several years now. She put together a fabulous Readers Notebook that she uses in her literacy program.  While I don’t use the whole notebook I do use her post it note tracker sheet.

I teach my kids how to talk back to their books while reading. I model this during read alouds and guided reading and teach a mini lesson at the beginning of the school year.  As part of our Centers the kids Read to Self. Every couple of weeks I ask them to use the post it note trackers sheet and “talk back” to their books.  My students really like this because they get to use post it notes (something a little special) and I like it because I get to see their thought process as they read to themselves.

 The "talking back" form is available on Beth's website and is free.  Try it out with your students...they will love Talking Back!!

Freebie Friday!!!

It is my first Freebie Friday and I am so excited!! =

I’ve mentioned my listening center previously and I thought I would put together some of my favorite worksheets that I made for my kids to use in response to listening during center time. I rotate these from week to week so my kids have a different comprehension or story element to focus on rather than always using the same response sheet.

I have primarily fiction books in my L.C. and as such these are primarily for fiction books.

You can download these forms from my TpT store here. Please take a minute to follow me on TPT and to leave me some feedback.  

Have a great Freebie Friday and enjoy!

Miss Pam