Loving Literacy Blog Hop

 

Welcome to...

With Valentine's Day approaching, our group of reading specialists, coaches, and teacher bloggers decided it was the perfect time to share our love of literacy with you.  Each of us is passionate about helping children develop a love of reading, and what better way to love reading than through our favorite books.  Each blogger participating in this weekend's hop is sharing materials for his/her favorite book, book about friendship, or for Valentine's day.  We hope you'll enjoy using them and sharing your love of literacy with your students.

I am the oldest in my family.  It seemed that teaching just kind of happened naturally as the oldest.  Showing my sisters how to ride a bike, set up a Barbie house correctly, or dive into our grandma's pool was just what I did.  I remember spending hours in our bedroom playing "school" and I am pretty sure I was a bossy, demanding teacher.  The love for literacy did not start there.  It came later for me.

As I think about it, the love for literacy may be due to "The Babysitter's Club" series.  Does anyone else remember these books?  I don't think they were ground-breaking, award winning books; however, as a young girl, I fell in love with reading because of these books.  This love just stuck and as I started my career path in education, it was a passion that I wanted to help foster in others.  When the opportunity arose to be a Title I teacher, I jumped at it and have loved every minute.

A few years back I came across "Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch" and I fell in love with this character. Mr. Hatch is quiet, keep-to-himself kind of guy until one day when he receives a Valentine's Day gift in the mail.  This gesture of love changes his behavior in such a positive manner that the whole town notices.  It is such a great illustration of the impact that love plays in our lives.  And it is a great way to teach about how a character changes throughout a story.

Since we have been focusing on metacognition in our classroom (read more here), the focus of this pack is thinking.  The following pages are included:

This unit is available for free this weekend only and exclusively on my blog.  It will convert to a paid product after February 2nd.  I appreciate you dropping by today, and if you are new to my blog and love literacy, I hope you'll take a moment to follow my posts on Bloglovin.

Wednesday WOW--Fraction Giveaway

 Snow days and cold days (cold, Cold, COLD) have led me to have very few instructional days this month.  But it has given me time to do some thinking, planning, and creating.  I am excited to share what I have been working on for the Wednesday WOW! this week!
I hope you can link up with a WOW moment from your week (personal or professional).

Next week we begin fractions with our little firsties.  I always enjoy teaching this (probably because it is a way to discuss food---and I LOVE food!)  But I wanted to come up with some new ideas...that got me thinking, planning, and creating :)

Here's what I came up:
First up...a Powerpoint to introduce fractions.  It shows real images of where we see objects broken into parts.  There are illustrations to show what a fraction is and what the numbers mean.  There are even some problems where fractions had to be used for the solution. (Here is a sneak peek)

  

 

Second up...I needed some differentiated sorts because my students typically are at different levels of understanding.  Once I got started on this...it just kind of snowballed (no surprise, really).  I made several sorts:
whole, half
whole, half, fouths
whole, half, thirds, fourths
equal, unequal
Each sort has several different types of sorting mats, different options of what to sort (really...it snowballed)

I think it could be all the snow days and sitting on the couch...but I am super excited about this set.  I can't wait to use it next week.  Hopefully, it will prove to be as useful as I believe it will be.

Because I am so excited about it...I want to give some away!  So I thought I would throw a little giveaway!  I haven't decided on the number of winners...it will depend on how many entries there are.  The more entries, the more winners!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Just one more WOW for the week: one lost tooth!

Hope you link up your WOW!!

Writing Process FREEBIE!!!!!

The last time I wrote I told you about the Ohio Literacy Conference. While there, the same presenter Lynne Ecenbarger, talked about the writing process for her littles.  Her list went like this: 
                         1.  Think
                         2.  Draw
                         3.  Label
                         4.  Write
                         5.  Add Details

My wheels started turning (yes, music to Proud Mary playing in the background).  :)  I think that she hit the nail on the head with THINKing first.  But then.... I decided that my firsties needed to make a PLAN.  After planning, we move into the DRAW and LABEL, but after that I added in a step for TALKing.  It's important for our firsties, especially because they lack language and for some the ability to carry on a conversations, to talk with each other.  After talking with each other, students are allowed to go backward in the process or move forward with WRITING.  After writing, we will REVISE and EDIT.  Now, with your writers, you may choose to rearrange the steps, but this is what works for us.  :)

I'm not sure how to manage each class in this process since I teach four classes of firsties.  I'm thinking we will have each class write their name on the board next to the step they are on.  You could use magnets or clothespins. We have been explicitly telling our firsties they have the power to move forward or backward in the process and that's ok, so I'm hoping they choose to move freely between the steps. We really work hard on having our firsties realize they have the POWER as the author of their stories.

We hope you'll be able to use this guy in your writing class and we'd LOVE feedback from you if you do!  :)  What else do you use to monitor your kiddos writing?

OH, the best news..... This is the first item in my TPT store.  WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  Pick yourselves back up off the floor.  :)  It's true.  I have two FREE items in my store with the hopes of many more items to join them....... someday.  :) Guess Em's going to have to add a little button up there for me too, since she's the brains behind this website design.  Thanks Em!



Be curious today friends!

Love for Reading is in the Air (FREEBIE included)

February is approaching so fast and the love of reading has been on my mind. From that thinking came this:

This is a FREEBIE.  Just click on the image to grab it.

My thinking about the "love of reading" came about from a post I have been working on for this:

I was writing about how my love for reading came about. Honestly, I am not sure that I've thought about it much.  I don't quite remember learning to read.  It just kind of happened.  What I do remember is reading every book from the "Babysitter's Club" series that I could get my hands on.  This is not great literature at all (which I didn't know at the time) but I couldn't get enough of it.  I am watching the same thing happening right now with my 3 and 5 year old girls.  They have fallen in love with the "Rainbow Fairies."  Have you seen these?

Also...not great literature.  But we have read one set of 7 and now we are onto another set.  And I believe they are becoming life long readers from this.
It made me start thinking about my students.  I wonder what book/s will make them become life long readers.  Could it be the Fancy Nancy books they read in Maria's writing class?  Could it be the Frog and Toad series that Karen reads?  Or is it something that I would not think to introduce to them?  I know that the "Rainbow Fairies" and "Babysitter's Club" are not books that are probably introduced in the classroom.  I wonder how I can help them find their way.

What do you think?
 

Wednesday WOW of Shapes

 It is Wednesday again and time to share another WOW moment (professional or personal) from your week.  We had a four day weekend because of MLK day and snow.  This winter has been quite crazy in Ohio!


Our firsties have been working on 2D shapes and we will be (once the snow blows away) working on 3D shapes.  I mentioned last week that I saw this photo (click on for original source):

 I really wanted to try making a snowman like this with our students to help them understand the defining versus non-defining attributes of a triangle.  We had all the pieces ready, handed them over to them, and look what happened:

 Every single one of them looked different. (I should have taken more pictures).  It was a lot of fun to watch them try the pieces out in different places.  We will keep working these attributes and they will get it!
What was your WOW moment?  Hope you can share it with us :)

Mentor Monday Linky 1.20.14

We're so excited to be linking up with Emily at

  

for the first week of her linky! 

For the last two years to kick off our small moments unit we've read..... TA DA!!!! 

by Ian Falconer

I'm sure you're wondering "Why Olivia"?  Well, last year we were trying to make our themes run about a week or so behind what our Firstie friend Karen was doing in reading.  They happened to be reading Pig in a Wig so we were brainstorming other Pig stories.  Olivia came up in our chatting and so I investigated.  Where might you go to investigate???? The Official Olivia the Pig website!(click on the Olivia cover to go there)  :)  It's a great site that gives information about Ian Falconer, the author of the Olivia books.  If you click on "About Ian" it will take you to the back story. But... if you don't have time to do that, here is what inspired his first book. 
If you do have time to investigate..... LEAVE THIS PAGE NOW! :) 
Still here? GREAT! Ian wrote this story after first laying eyes on his newborn niece. He wanted to give her a present and thus the Olivia books were born. We do discuss this story with our firsties to kick off our unit and what a special story it is. We also read a large handful of these books because she goes on some pretty awesome adventures and in most of her adventures, we can find small moments. 

What do you read for small moments?  Why not head on over to The Reading Tutor/OG and link up! :)

 



A Little Writing FREEBIE!

Don't fall over!  But is the other "M" of "eM&M".  I know Em has been doing it all and I'm not sure how she has done it, but she makes it all look so easy.  I know you all know how creative she is, but if you could see all the stuff she does and is responsible for at school... you'd be blown away. 

Anyhoo.....  I'm going to share about a little thing I like to call.... Writing.  (hehe)  This is me.  This is what I teach.  I.LOVE.IT. kind of like I love ketchup.  I LOVE watching our firsties go from LOATHING writing to LOVING writing.  Now... I'm not talkin' bout (in my best three year old voice) handwriting (that's what some of our parents think writing is).  I'm talkin' bout actual narrative, informational, opinion (not feelin' the love for this guy yet, but I'm workin' on it), research and most recently for us... the HOW TO!

Picture this......  Ohio Literacy Conference...... presenter starts telling a story all the while sketching little pictures to go along with what she's saying.  Then, she goes back and tells the story again and labels the pictures.  I.WAS.HOOKED.  I mean.. starry eyed!  I KNEW this was something I could use IMMEDIATELY when we returned to school because we were starting our "How to be Fancy/Handsome" unit.  So, I tried it and guess what..... the heavens opened and the angels started singing!  The first time we just drew the pictures out at the top of our paper, but then I decided to make an organizer.  We are getting ready to write our "How to Catch a Gingerbread Man" and I'm going to break out these organizers. 

            

Let me talk you through how this will work.  Let's say I wanted to talk about how to draw a smiley face.  In the topic sentence box I would draw a smiley face as I say, "Have you ever drawn a smiley face?"
Now I will talk through and draw the rest of the how to.  EX...  "First, you draw a circle." (I'm drawing a circle in the box as I'm saying those words).  "Next, you add two eyes."(In the box I ONLY draw the two dot eyes, NOT the whole circle with eyes) " Then, draw a small, dot nose." (You only draw a nose)  "After that, put a smiling mouth." (You know what to draw. :)) " Finally, add a little bit of hair.  Now you know how to draw a smiley face."  (I should have take a picture... I will try to take one tomorrow to give you the full picture of how this will look.)

After we sketch, we will go back and retell the story while labeling.  Our firsties will use this guy then to help them write their how to.  :)  I'm pretty sure we will be able to use it for any writing piece we do this year.  I'm not sure if the transitional words will stay, but for now..... they stay.  :)

Thanks for sticking with me on this my first post in the new year! Be sure to click the pictures to snag your freebies!

I'm hoping to be back a little more often... Next time I'll catch you up on what we've been writing.

A Fluent Wednesday WOW

Thanks for stopping by!  This is one of my all-time favorite lessons...

My reading teammate (Karen) and I decided to start 2014 off right with some concrete metacognition lessons.  And they were so so so successful!! I wasn't expecting them to go so well.  It was a huge WOW! Actually...it is my *first* post on the Literacy Land blog.  You can check it out tomorrow HERE!
This week we wanted to really illustrate how we group our words naturally when speaking and that doing this when reading allows us to read fluently.  We wanted to also explain that fluency allows your brain to think about what you are reading (metacognition).  Karen and I had it all planned out!

Then Sunday night hit and so did an idea!  The metacognition lesson was so concrete and visual, which is why it was so successful.  I wanted the fluency lesson to be just as powerful.  Here is what I came up with:
1. Read Wolf! (one of my favorite books to illustrate fluency):

2. Then we took a sentence from the book and had the students hold up each word.

I read it aloud with space between each word (very robotic).  Then our firsties read it the same way.

3. We decided that this was not fluency.  So I pushed all the students close together, leaving no space between the words.

This time I read it super fast!  Our firsties decided this was not fluency.

4.  This time we spaced the words out just a small amount.  I explained that when we speak and read we actually group our words.  This helps us so we speak and read at a correct pace.  I showed these groups with swoops (or ribbon).

We used the ribbon to help us slide our finger along the phrase, instead of pointing at each word.

5. After this demonstration, we looked at this new learning on paper.

Students came up and used the swoops to help them slide along the phrases.  We even stood up and acted out some of the phrases and swoops by moving along with the sentence.

I look forward to doing some practice with this skill in our small groups now!  And a few more fluency tricks that I have up my sleeve ;)

Can't wait to read about your WOWs!!