Sunday, May 10, 2015
10,000 Hits
A couple of days ago my blog's hits totaled 10,000. Kind of crazy, I think. Thanks to everyone for visiting!
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Aaaaand, They're Off!
As the end of the school year grows near, I often reflect on how much my students have grown. First grade is a year of tremendous growth across all developmental domains. I was looking at some of the pictures on my iPad that I've taken throughout the year, and remembered this set from a bulletin board that we made in our March study of Dr. Seuss. Everyone chose a place to read in the school.
We made a bulletin board of all the places they could choose to read to reinforce that they can choose to read anywhere, at any time.
They are all reading a Dr. Seuss book of their choice. It is just amazing to see how far they've come. It's the best thing about first grade - they become readers!
We made a bulletin board of all the places they could choose to read to reinforce that they can choose to read anywhere, at any time.
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| The Science Center |
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| The Classroom Library |
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| The Computer Lab |
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| The Computer Lab |
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| The Music Room |
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| The School Library |
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| The School Library |
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| The Gym |
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| The Gym |
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| The Art Room |
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| The Art Room |
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| The Cafeteria |
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| Below The Stage |
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| Outside in the Snow |
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| At My Desk in My Classroom |
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Congratulations to All of Us!
Dike Newell School was recognized in the Bangor Daily News for all of our hard work in making our four, five, six, seven, and eight year old children better readers, writers, and mathematicians.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Dr. Seuss and Essential Questions
In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday on March 2, we did an in depth author study of Dr. Seuss. Our study was guided by the essential question, "How do we recognize a book by Dr. Seuss without reading the author's name on the cover?"
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue, in their quintessential book, Understanding by Design (1998) (UbD) propose that every student be able to answer an essential question at the end of a unit of study. The question should be written so that students have the opportunity to demonstrate multiple layers of understanding in their answers. The unit is designed in a backwards fashion - that means that the question guides the unit of study. Essential questions should be broad, but paradoxically, they also focus the study. When I design a question, I look at the outcome I desire prior to designing the question. In a well-designed study, students are actively involved in finding the answer to the question.
In order to answer our essential question, "How do we recognize a book by Dr. Seuss without reading the author's name on the cover?", students studied the writing and illustrations of a wide selection of Dr. Seuss books.
They read Dr. Seuss books extensively in small group, individually, in pairs, during reading and writer's workshop, and during shared reading. They needed opportunities to discover what made Dr. Seuss books different from many of the other books they read, and they needed to be able to back up their claims with evidence from a Dr. Seuss book.
Here is some of our shared writing that documented students' answers to our essential questions:
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue, in their quintessential book, Understanding by Design (1998) (UbD) propose that every student be able to answer an essential question at the end of a unit of study. The question should be written so that students have the opportunity to demonstrate multiple layers of understanding in their answers. The unit is designed in a backwards fashion - that means that the question guides the unit of study. Essential questions should be broad, but paradoxically, they also focus the study. When I design a question, I look at the outcome I desire prior to designing the question. In a well-designed study, students are actively involved in finding the answer to the question.
In order to answer our essential question, "How do we recognize a book by Dr. Seuss without reading the author's name on the cover?", students studied the writing and illustrations of a wide selection of Dr. Seuss books.
Here is some of our shared writing that documented students' answers to our essential questions:
This is the written text of our shared writing:
The settings are made up. The houses have slanted and unusual shapes. Some of the tops of the trees are puffy and some are pointy.
Everything is pretend like there is a green sun in Wacky Wednesday and the table has animal feet in There's a Wocket in My Pocket.
Some of the characters have fuzzy, furry collars like Sam-I-Am.
There's a lot of rhyming words. In Horton Hears a Who!, on the first page, there's "sound" and "around" and "yelp" and "help."
Dr. Seuss uses the same words over and over again. In Green Eggs and Ham on page 33, the words are, "A train! A train! A train! A train!". In The Foot Book it says, "Left Foot, Left Foot, Left Foot, Right!"
The settings are made up. The houses have slanted and unusual shapes. Some of the tops of the trees are puffy and some are pointy.
Everything is pretend like there is a green sun in Wacky Wednesday and the table has animal feet in There's a Wocket in My Pocket.
Some of the characters have fuzzy, furry collars like Sam-I-Am.
There's a lot of rhyming words. In Horton Hears a Who!, on the first page, there's "sound" and "around" and "yelp" and "help."
Dr. Seuss uses the same words over and over again. In Green Eggs and Ham on page 33, the words are, "A train! A train! A train! A train!". In The Foot Book it says, "Left Foot, Left Foot, Left Foot, Right!"
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Garden 2015
If you find my post way back on September 16, 2013, which had time lapse photos of the garden surrounding my school, you can see the original photos of the overgrowth surrounding the school before I started the Garden Project. Over the past couple of years, I've had some donations of bulbs and plants that the students at my school have planted.
I was in school this past weekend getting the paper work ready for parent teacher conferences and couldn't resist taking pictures of the Crocus chrysanthus that we planted last fall. This is the variety that usually blooms first, sometimes through snow.
Spring is finally here.
I was in school this past weekend getting the paper work ready for parent teacher conferences and couldn't resist taking pictures of the Crocus chrysanthus that we planted last fall. This is the variety that usually blooms first, sometimes through snow.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Meet Rosie!
We have Box Top challenges at my school. Families send in Box Tops and classrooms compete to collect the most Box Tops. We won the second Box Top challenge of the school year and the prize was $50 to be used for materials for my classroom. We had a class discussion which concluded with a vote and the outcome was that we would spend the prize money on a pet hamster for our classroom.
Because teachers need permission from their principals to have a class pet in our district, I asked our current principal if she would let us have a hamster, and she agreed. If you would like to read about the many benefits of having a class pet, the Pet Care Trust has a website that discusses the benefits of children having a pet.
Although $50 is a generous amount, I could not purchase all that is needed to keep a hamster for that amount, and so I invited the families of my students to donate. Two days later, I had collected another $130.49 from the families of my students, which is a very generous donation. So, I ordered the cage and extras needed from Amazon, and last weekend I visited the area pet stores to find the store that offered the greatest variety of dwarf hamsters.
Because I wanted to include my students in the process of picking out the hamster as much as possible, I sent a note home inviting families to meet me at a local Petco (who had eight dwarf hamsters in stock) on Wednesday, March 11, at 5 p.m. The evidence of my students' engagement and investment in school became obvious because 50% of my class arrived at Petco at the designated date and time to help pick out our hamster. Here are some pictures of my first graders (and their siblings!) viewing the cages and deciding which hamster they wanted.
Because the donations were so generous, I was able to purchase quite a souped-up cage for our hamster. It has two levels including a balcony, three nesting places, two slides, a sand bath, and a wheel.
Finally, this is a picture of Rosie, our hamster. Rosie's name was selected by my students, and she is named after one of the main characters in the Bella and Rosie series of guided reading books published by Pioneer Valley books. The Bella and Rosie series contains multiple books at multiple levels. All of my students, no matter their current guided reading level, have independently read Bella and Rosie books. Their choice of Rosie as a name is indicative of the high priority they place on reading in their lives, as well as their ability and desire to connect what they read to other parts of life.
Thank you to all of the families of my students for your support throughout this process. Please know that Rosie is happy at school in her new cage. She has seventeen "owners" who think, as one of them so eloquently stated, she is, "just the best little critter there ever was."
Because teachers need permission from their principals to have a class pet in our district, I asked our current principal if she would let us have a hamster, and she agreed. If you would like to read about the many benefits of having a class pet, the Pet Care Trust has a website that discusses the benefits of children having a pet.
Although $50 is a generous amount, I could not purchase all that is needed to keep a hamster for that amount, and so I invited the families of my students to donate. Two days later, I had collected another $130.49 from the families of my students, which is a very generous donation. So, I ordered the cage and extras needed from Amazon, and last weekend I visited the area pet stores to find the store that offered the greatest variety of dwarf hamsters.
Because I wanted to include my students in the process of picking out the hamster as much as possible, I sent a note home inviting families to meet me at a local Petco (who had eight dwarf hamsters in stock) on Wednesday, March 11, at 5 p.m. The evidence of my students' engagement and investment in school became obvious because 50% of my class arrived at Petco at the designated date and time to help pick out our hamster. Here are some pictures of my first graders (and their siblings!) viewing the cages and deciding which hamster they wanted.
This is Mardi, the wonderful salesperson at Petco who helped us pick out our hamster. She was knowledgeable, patient, and kind to all of my students.
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| This is Rosie. She is about 10 weeks old in this picture. |
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Fairy Godfathers and Fairy Godmothers
Through the years I have been so fortunate to have had the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with the parents and grandparents of my students. They have supported my class in uncountable ways; I have received donations of time, money, and materials. This year, a Fairy Godfather (who wished to remain anonymous) donated Valentine's Day goodies to add to the Valentine's Day cards that my students exchanged. I took some pictures of my students during our Valentine's Day celebration. As I look at their pictures, it is impossible to not recognize how much they are enjoying themselves!
Thank you to the the mom who came in on a Friday morning and decorated Valentine's Day bags with each student. You can seem them in the background of the picture below.
Thank you, also, to the parent who came in to help during the celebration. You were a great help!
Thank you to the the mom who came in on a Friday morning and decorated Valentine's Day bags with each student. You can seem them in the background of the picture below.
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