Lego "Fowdashun"

:)

I LOVE my students.  They are the most sweet and thoughtful bunch.  I appreciate them so much!

Here is a sweet story...

I have wanted to buy Legos for my students since I began teaching.  They cost so darn much!  I spends thousands of dollars each year on items but won't buy legos because they are JUST a recess toy.  I always do a drive by at garage sales trying to find them but never any luck.  :(
I told my students when we had enough all positive days that I would buy some Legos.  When it happened I just bought one tub and told my students that I am going to buy more but am going to look around for a deal because they are so expensive.



Lo and behold... a darling little girl in my class brought me 2 typed up signs the next day.

Lego Fowdashun

 

Lets by Legos for are class!  Bring extra money to school and we will by more Legos!

 

 

 

 

It was ADORABLE!  :)  There was much more to it but I left it at school.  I'm going to save it forever!  :)

 

I thanked her it and explained that it was an excellent idea but I really wanted to buy them for the class myself because they are such great kids.  :)

 

 

I just love the sweet little things that they do.

  Have a great Tuesday!

 

 



 

 

FREE Addition and Subtraction Assessments and Graphs

The PTO at my school is awesome and has sponsored a "kings club".  Grade levels 1-4 have assigned facts that they need to answer fluently.  Grade 1 has to answer addition and subtraction facts to 10.  If they complete it- their picture is taken, given a crown and they are given candy as well as are featured on the morning announcements.   

I made these for my fantastic first grade teammates and I to use. 

 

There are 3 different versions of the addition and subtraction assessments.

 

 

 

There are graphing choices for students to record their progress after each assessment.

 

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I also am sending home addition and subtraction homework flashcards with each of my students as well.  :)


Click the cover pages to go to the products in my TPT store.  :)  Have a great weekend!  :)

Red Words Intervention

These words are the "irregular" sight words.  These follow the common core standard that is boxed in red.

 

 

I am completing this intervention based off of the Student Word Assessment 1 that I gave my students. 

 

 

Click on the image to go to it on TPT.

 

 

 

 

There are generic 3 day plans.

Students are given a sight word card.  One side has the word in isolation and the other side has the word in context.

 

 

 

 

Each of the 21 red words includes a sight word poem or story, 2 days of lesson pages and 2 independent practice worksheets.

 

I have about 3/4 of my yellow words intervention plans finished.  They definitely take A LOT longer to complete because there are so many rules and word chunks!  :)

Green Words Intervention

This is designed to use with my Student Word Assessment 1. From the assessment- if students struggle with the "green" or words that can be sounded out- students work on letter sound knowledge and then applying the knowledge to nonsense words. 

The green words follow the common core standard that is boxed in green. 

Included are generic lesson plans that can be used for 9 weeks.

Students start with reviewing the alphabet chant. 

Nonsense words introduce one vowel sound at a time then every other week reviews the vowel sounds that have been introduced. 

Students also practice applying the skill/ sounds that they learned by listening, segmenting and then writing simple words.

You can get a copy of the Green Words Intervention here.

YAY for finally being able to upload images on blogger again!!! :)

I also have been trying to change the license for all of my TPT items.  I felt that it was silly that I was selling things for only one classroom use.  Seriously what was I thinking?!?!? 

Even if I haven't changed the wording on it- all of my items are good for one school. (not district)  I hope that you share with your teammates!  So if you haven't already- please share away!  :)  Hopefully this doesn't come to bite me in the rear end but I think that it is a good thing to share with your peers.  :) 

If you feel like buying more than one for your school still- I'm fine with that too!  Especially is it is not out of YOUR pockets!  lol...   ;)

Student Word Assessment 1

This is a continuation of research that I conducted while completing my masters.  This is a portion of a year long action research project that I worked on identifying why students struggled with reading.  Through my research I found Orton Gillingham Strategies, using context clues and multiple intelligences to help students master sight words.

With this Student Word Assessment, I am attempting to take my research a step further and to identify specifically which type of words students need to practice.  The words on this assessment have taken multiple hours to decide.  I have included words with word chunks, words that you can sound out, words that you need to know a rule to figure out and irregular words. 

Depending on how students score on the assessment I have interventions for the green, yellow and red words. 

 

Here is a peak at the assessment:

Sorry I still cannot upload images!  Thank goodness for Blogger phone app! 

I need my super smart hubby to figure out what is wrong!  :)

 Students read off of a copy with words in rows.  Many of my students always lose their place and I was hoping that this would help keep them on track.  ;)

  

 This is what my copy looks like.  I borrowed this format from my district.  I love how they have multiple columns next to each other so that you can easily compare words correct on different dates.

Next to each word in parenthesis are either a (G), (YC), (YR) or (R).  Those tell you what type of word that it is. 

 

After the student takes the assessment- you record how many of each word type that they missed on this sheet.  (You can see it on the cover sheet)

 

You can find the Student Word Assessment here.

We had a surprise 2 hour delay this morning so it gave me time to finish my grade cards and blog!  For such a short week- I sure feel like I have accomplished a lot!  :)

Class Dojo and Power Teaching!

Do you ever try to find something or a solution to something that is just staring at you in the face?!?!?!

After months and months of trying to creatively use class dojo-but not having the luxury of using my hubby's iPad this year- and not liking having to pause students from using the projector or pull down something we are working on to assign points-

I finally realized- "Um- I HAVE a class dojo app!" My phone is like a mini iPad- I can just use class dojo from there!!!

Isn't my dog cute?  :)

I only used class dojo for 1-2 months last year but it was easy to use because I used it on the iPad so it didn't interrupt what we were doing. We even have cool smart slates this year that work like a wireless remote where I can pull up the website... And it worked but I wasn't happy with how much time I was wasting. Sometimes we would be watching a video and I couldn't assign points until after it was over. It worked- but knowing how well it worked with an iPad just made me want to find a better way to use it.

I decided this round to try to incorporate it with power teaching.

 I created an avatar for oh yeah points and one for mighty groan. Right now I'm just using their cute monster avatars but I'd like to change it to something more creative soon. A staff member uploaded Justin Beiber photos and other fun avatars to his. I bet his kids love it! Ill have to think of something fun as well. :-). Maybe ill take their photo with happy faces and or with frowny faces??? :-)

Here is a screen shot from my phone:

 

The trick to using this with Power Teaching's Scoreboard is that you only give positive points to the Oh Yeah and only give negative points to the Mighty Groan. (You get to select your own awards.  These are just the awards that I use.) 

FYI- What and Why is something new that I'm trying.  I will randomly ask, "What are we doing and why are we doing it?"  If a student can answer it and apply it to real world items- they earn a point.  :)




















This is absolutely great.  When you give a positive point it makes a "Chiching!" sound.  The students know exactly what they earned and they can get right back to work.  When you give a negative point it makes a deep, "Babaaaa!" sound.  lol.  Watching their expressions when they hear the sound is priceless!!!!  :)

One of the coolest features is that it will create a pie graph with the amount of positive or negative awards that you have earned.  You can use that information to have a behavior boot camp in your class or celebrate their success!

I think using class dojo mixed with power teaching should work well! :-)  I'm VERY excited to use this!

I have NO. IDEA why it didn't dawn on me to use my phone! I wish I had an iPad (hint hint hubby) to use instead!:-)

If you haven't checked out class dojo-here is a link to a blog post that I wrote last year. It is FREE and the kids love it! :-)

OR go direct to the website yourself ---> http://www.classdojo.com/


Side note- I've been Doing a little blogging roulette and have found some amazing blogs! If you are working on grade cards like me- it is a great distraction! :-)

Table Token Economy

For math- my grade level assesses students every 3 weeks or so to determine appropriate grouping of students in the grade level.  From my most recent assessment- I determined that my group needs more practice with coin identification and counting money.  We practice coins whole group often but it just was not enough.  I decided to make it more "real" for the students.

My "homeroom" class has a token economy system based on their daily behavior color.  Once a month I have a fabulous parent set up a class store and they spend the money that they earn.

I only have my math group for 1 hour a day so I had to come up with something that could work with them.


This is what I came up with:

I used clear plastic cups, velcro, a marker and a ruler to make token economy cups. I am making one of these for each table.

 

 

 I used a ruler to stabilize the cups and attached velcro to the ruler and the bottom of the cups.

 

 

 

Then I wrote the type of coin on the top inside of the cup and how many coins you needed to exchange to the next value on the outside. For example: Once they have 5 or more pennies, they will exchange 5 pennies and put one nickel in the next cup.

 

Students will this in during the last 5-7 minutes of class each day.

 

 

 

I am going to use the version on the left.  At the end of the week, if they don't spend everything- they can carry the money over to the next week. 

 

You can download the documents for FREE here.

 

****I am still having trouble uploading images into blogger so sorry for the bad iphone pictures!****