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:

Place Value

How do you teach place value?

 Do you give it much thought or is it just part of your textbook curriculum?  I ask because until this year I really didn’t give it much thought either.

Like many I spent part of my summer reading Guided Math  by Laney Sammons and have set some goals (hopefully attainable) for myself this academic year.  One of these goals was to use Math Journals with more forethought and execution. With this goal in mind I took the whole first week of instruction and focused on place value and a review of base 10 with my kids.

We did some hands on work with manipulative, some group work and partner work and some great activities with my favorite place value tool…the Arrow Cards.

 For our Math Journals we worked together with sets of base 10 problems. We cut them out, glued them in and answered our investigation questions using them. It was a great review for all of 3rd grade.

 Next I split the class into small groups and gave them each a mixed set of arrow cards. I made sure not to give them the same exact set.  I asked them to find the largest and smallest value they could find. 

 We then had each group present their largest and smallest number to the rest of the class.  The kids really enjoyed this activity and helped them to understand the vocabulary that we were using as well.

Because Arrow Cards are not readily available for all my kids I created my own set and two fun activities to go with them. 

You can find them here: Arrow Cards & Activities

Let me know how you teach place value. We are off to estimation and rounding and I'll be sharing my lessons next week. =)

Happy Teaching!!

Fantastic Reading Log

I've posted about this reading log before but I just wanted to repeat it. I've received such amazing positive feedback from teachers using this log.

My student's parents really love this log because it allows them to work with their child to practice these  reading strategies.

The 5 weeks worth of logs include the following topics:
Main Idea and Details
Visualizing
Inferencing
Sequencing
Cause and Effect
Making Connections
Vocabulary
Fiction and Non-fiction
Story Map
Grammar
Prediction
Talking back to books

Give them a try...you won't be disappointed!

Click on the link below the picture to be taken to my TpT store to get your set. 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Reading-Logs-for-Comprehension

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!

Happy Freebie Friday!

Good Morning Everyone and happy Freebie Friday!

I’m off to Germany today to get a mani/pedi with one of my closest friends. She and her husband are moving away from Switzerland in a few short weeks and I am trying to get as much time with them as possible. We go to Germany for our pampering because it’s 60% cheaper and as a teacher we all  need to save every penny (or in my case rappen) that we can.

I am busy, busy getting ready for the new year to start in two weeks. I have unloaded one of the two pallets in my room and am making good progress. Here are the before shots and I’ll be sure to post all the after pics once I’m done.

I’ve also included a picture of our new staircase. It looks a bit treacherous right now but I’m hoping that with the rails installed it will look much safer.

I wanted to make some new supply labels for the kids drawers. So that’s my Freebie Friday today. But take a look back and you’ll see three other freebies this week.

Have a great weekend and take some time to pamper yourself as well!