Workshop Wednesday: Biographies

 

A beautiful Wednesday afternoon. Short week of school. Two days of blogging in a row. Whoa! This hasn't happened in awhile. I'm so happy to be joining with my BBB Jivey for her Workshop Wednesday!

Before spring break, we worked on our biographies. This is the first major research project for my students, so I wanted to keep it simple and organized. We covered the basics of reliable resources. How to keep track of information. Then, how to take that information and put it into a cohesive paper. Small, simple feat. Right?

It is a time consuming process, but the process was helped greatly with Erin's biography lessons from her interactive writing packs. We worked through an example together on Dav Pilkey and enjoyed some extension activities with creating our own comics. {See more on this project here.}

What I love about Erin's interactive project, is how step by step and organized it was. After having completed an example together, tied with our new knowledge on proper research, the kiddos were off and running. I had students start by choosing from one of the biographies in their reading range. One day of research was strictly from books. As students found information, they added it to their notes (which we later ordered and grouped together to help with our outlines). The following days of research included online resources as well.

From information gathering, we moved to creating outlines. Final drafts (typed straight to computer for editing due to how rapidly spring break approached) followed soon after. I was so proud of my student's 'mini-biographies'. Each student wrote about a page worth of information, but did so fabulously!

How do you do biographies in your classroom? Be sure to link up with Jivey and check out the other ideas in this link up too!
 

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Baloney: A Post of Sunday Randomness

There has been so much going on the last few days that I feel the need to link up with Sunday Smorgasbord as well as share a great mentor text for language arts: Baloney.

First up, there is a HUGE giveaway going on where EVERYONE wins! A summer planning linky with packs for lessons and decor. The packs are divided into K-2 and 3+ so you can pick and choose which pack fits your needs/wants the best. You can sign up to win more than one pack. All you have to do is follow the scavenger hunt from blogs to TPT or Facebook, find all the secret words for the pack and your golden! To get started visit I'm Lovin' Lit's page!

 

Second, my 300 follower giveaway is still going on! Chance to win $25 TPT gift certificate and items from my store. 3 prizes two ways to win! Click the picture below to learn more! 

 

Third, I'm loving all of the link ups each week for my summer linky and I'd love for you to join in to! It's a summer recipe swap of sorts. Link up your favorite recipe, a recipe from Pinterest, a restaurant recommendation {basically, anything food related!} You don't have to take pictures if you don't want to either. I post a new link up that is open all week each Monday, all summer long! Be ready to pin, there have been some really great meal ideas/desserts and drinks posted!

Fourth, one of my good blogging buddies is celebrating her birthday and bloggiversary with a chance to win $50 gift certificate your choice to either TPT or Amazon! Click the picture to enter.

Last, and certainly not least... the linky that is the reason I want to win that $50 Amazon gift certificate: The Collaboration Cuties Mentor Text Linky! If you haven't been following along, this linky is chock full of amazing texts that you can use to teach from. {My amazon wishlist grows exponentially each Sunday!}

Here is a quick pitch from my friends at Amazon:

Henry P. Baloney needs to come up with a very good, very believable excuse for being late to szkola yet again--or he's in big trouble with his teacher Miss Bugscuffle. But never fear! Henry has a doozy of a story. You see, it all started when he misplaced his trusty yellow no. zz zimulis. One thing led to another, and before he knew it, he was on a razzo blasting off into space, where he eventually landed on the planet Astrosus. All went well there, as the intrepid explorer entertained the Astro guys with his funny piksas--until they decided Henry and his piksas would be entertaining to eat. Things go on in this vein until somehow, miraculously, Henry P. Baloney ends up back in his classroom, a mere seven minutes late--but still one writing utensil short!

Trust the ultracreative author/illustrator pair, Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, the Time Warp Trio series, and more), to mastermind a plot this bizarre and yet somehow familiar to any school kid. Sure, Henry P. Baloney is a cute, saucer-eyed, green alien, but he has problems just like you and me--such as the threat of Permanent Lifelong Detention. Remarkably, as Scieszka reports in his afterword, when he received and decoded the transmission of this story (directly from deep space, mind you), it was written in a combination of many Earth languages, including Finnish, Swahili, Latvian, Esperanto, and Inuktitut (decoder included). Go figure.

Last year, one of the classes wrote their own frindle stories, and after reading this book I thought the same could happen. With our MTSS/RTI activities, I thought I could restrict students to come up with a nonsense word that fit patters that they are working on (long vowel pattern, r-control, etc.) {Nonsense words/word attack skills are a challenge for many of my students.} The story filled with excuses for Henry being late, provides a bit of humor as well as a chance for students to use context clues to figure out what Henry is talking about.

A fun book, I'm wanting to try later this school year. What mentor texts do you use to teach language arts skills? Be sure to link up!!

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Writing Workshop & 300 Follower Giveaway!

This month, in Jivey's Workshop Wednesday, it's all about how to set up the various workshops for the year. This year will be my first year teaching reading/communications for 4th grade. I'm not sure that everything in my departmentalized classes will follow the workshops completely due to time constraints, but I will be implementing various workshop techniques as I can.  Today, I am focusing on writing workshop.

I've blogged about it several times, but I intend on utilizing mentor sentences next year, (thank you to Jivey & the Collaboration Cuties!). The concept makes complete sense. As a special education teacher, I quickly realized how visual many of my students were. I also learned that my students followed models very well. However, finding mistakes and knowing why they were mistakes was very hard for my students. By having good models to emulate, hopefully, all of my students will be able to understand the concepts better as well as become better writers.

When I jump into something, I really like to dive in. I want to know the ends and outs. What to expect. Why programs are the way they are. As such, I bought three really great books from Jeff Anderson the mastermind behind the mentor sentence method. Mechanically Inclined was the first book I read. I started it around 9 or so at night when my husband went to bed. I then stayed up till midnight to finish it. Shortly there after, I thought to myself, who am I? I've never stayed up to read about grammar and enjoy it. The book was so crazy good and inspiring I just couldn't keep my mind from spinning all sorts of ideas for this coming year!

Some of my suggestions would be to read Mechanically Inclined, Everyday Editing, or 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know all are by Jeff Anderson.

For a couple of other ideas I plan to implement that aren't so "behind the scenes":

• Writing notebooks, composition books as suggested in the books above
• Various colored pens. Last year students would go crazy to use one of my colored pens. I plan on letting students use these from time to time to help motivate them.

I'm sure there are other ideas I'll add to the mix along the way.

Be sure to share your workshop ideas every Wednesday this month!

Now for something else... With the BIG shuffle over to Bloglovin' my little blog met another milestone! 300 Followers on Bloglovin'!! I figure, that with this switch, even though followers via Google Friend Connect aren't quite to 300 yet, it's still a milestone worth celebrating. So I'm celebrating! {You have a week to enter!}

There are 2 Ways to Win!

1.  Fill out the raffle copter and try to win a $25 TPT gift certificate (great for all of that back to school shopping!)
2. Leave a blog post comment with your best back to school ideas: setup, read aloud, ice breaker; any idea will work. I will randomly pick 2 comments to win an item from my TPT store!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So incredibly thankful for you all! What a wonderful network of people and friends to learn from and with! :)
 

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First Wedding Anniversary & Mentor Text Linky

I love Sundays for the Collaboration Cuties mentor text linky... and if you'd like to read about that scroll downward. This next bit is nothing teacher related, so if you don't want to read about it I understand. :)

A year ago today I married my best. My wedding day has been the best day of my life, so far. We were engaged forever (599 days!) Time seemed to drag until we were able to say "I do", but this last year has flown by. I guess time really does fly when your having fun!

 We had a problem with our decoration plan. This didn't come to light until 10 days before the wedding. Luckily, wheat harvest was early last year and we were able to incorporate wheat in many aspects of our wedding. 

 Song of Solomon 3:4 "I have found the one my heart loves." 

 I am an only child, and "daddy's girl". Tony & I had a traditional wedding, so I had my first look with my Dad before the wedding took place. I love the photos from this moment.

I usually just wear  boots. But I survived in 3 in heels for the day. (Joanne, I have no idea how you teach in heels everyday!)

 More wheat. I was digging wheat out of my hair for awhile that night!

 I love this man so much! 

 One of my favorite pictures of the day!

We've had a wonderful weekend spending time with each other and celebrating. Complete with some off-road adventuring through the flint hills this afternoon. I love Tony so much; I'm looking forward to all of the adventures God has in store for us for years to come :)

*All photos taken by the AMAZING Laura Foote from Captured in His Image photography. She will be relocating to Florida. So if you are looking for an amazing photographer or want to seem more of her amazing work please visit her webite!!* {Truly a sweet, lovely lady with God-given talent!}

Back to more teacher related things: Mentor Text Linky!!

This is a wonderful book that sums up some of life's lessons in a sweet way through making and eating cookies.

The book starts with: COOPERATE means, How about you add the chips while I stir? and continues with one definition per page. Definitions continue throughout each page with beautiful illustrations. Other definitions include: REGRET means, I really wish I didn't eat so many cookies; and CONTENT means sitting on the steps just you, me, and a couple of cookies.

Using cookies or another shared activity, this book could be used as an example for students to create their own life-lessons learned through a fun medium. A great way to start the year! 

Lastly, tomorrow I'm starting a recipe exchange of sorts. If there is a recipe you love, one you've tried (or want to try) from Pinterest or a great restaurant you'd like to recommend please link up.

I fully intend on participating with Monday Made It throughout the summer too... and I figure "making" good eats, treats and drinks kinda jives with that theme if your wanting to link up with both posts :)

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Mentor Text: Word After Word

 

Yay for Sunday-Fun Day & the mentor text linky is one of the highlights of my week.. my wishlist is growing exponentially due to all of the wonderful books shared. A big thank you goes out to Amanda & Stacia for this wonderful linky!

 

This week's topic is back to language arts books. I'm going to share one that I hadn't read until about a year ago. Word After Word After Word by Patricia MacLachlan was a reading assignment for an upper elementary language arts class I was in and I loved it. 

The book follows a group of children who have a writer visit their classroom for a period of time. Throughout Ms. Mirabel's stay, the children learn to understand the power of written word. Throughout the book, there are so many noteworthy passages and quotes to ponder and cherish. A part of the reading assignment I had in college was to collect quotes throughout the book and that wasn't hard at all. Here is just one quote from this book:

"I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever."

This past spring I shared this book with a young lady who had been struggling with reading. I got a kick out of her trips across the hall to my room several times a day to share pieces of the book that spoke to her. The book is a quick read, large print and small pages. I attribute the drive of this student to continue to pursue "bigger books" and her "want" to read attitude as stemming from reading this wonderful book!

Just reminder, only a few hours until my 200 follower giveaway closes and one of the prizes is a TPT gift card. Which is great timing considering all of the big sales coming up! If you'd like a chance to enter just click below!

In case you haven't heard... TPT will be having a sale May 7th & 8th... and Teacher's Notebook started their big sale yesterday. In my TN store items will be 35% off, so you should check that out through May 11th... just sayin' :)

Happy reading and happy shopping! I know I've been anxiously awaiting a big sale to help clear out my wishlists!

 

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Graphic Organizers on the iPad

I'm linking up with the marvelous Jivey for her Workshop Wednesday. This week's topic is graphic organizers, and I've decided to put a bit of a technological spin on things to showcase a couple of apps we are using in our Written Communication's classes.

 

I love working with iPads. Had I touched one before the school year? Nope. Am I still learning along with the kids. Yep. {In fact, I think I learn more from than about the in's and outs of this technology; crazy!}

The first app is a paid app ($1) Tools4Students.

This is an app that is strictly graphic organizers. Tons and tons and tons of graphic organizers. That save as students type. It's a pretty sweet app, that we've used from time to time. Students can choose one that suits them (or that they are directed to) and type the information in. Typed information is saved automatically.

Here are a few screen shots (via iTunes)

 Story Kit is an app that lets you write your own book or story. It has features to add pictures, text, sound, or drawings via a paint function. When we used this, students were given a couple of minutes to draw a specific character from Because of Winn Dixie. Then, students were given a few minutes to type out character traits to surround their illustration. This process was continued for the rest of the main characters.

Right now we are starting the book, Tales of the Bronx I've never heard of it before, but it's been a great read and the kids are loving it {it's not too often that they ask to continue reading for multiple chapters.} The book starts by introducing the 7 main characters on the block. We've been using Pic Collage & Strip Design to create pictures about each chapter after they've been read, but Story Kit could have been easily used too. With all of the detail given about the children, a student could have drawn or added an image to symbolize the characters and then added details about the character around that image.

(Again pictures via iTunes)

Last, but not least, since Jivey is contribuiting too, I wanted to share my giveaway with all of you. K-2 & 3-5 prize packs. Click the picture and enter! :)

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Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom!

Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom... A project from a Kindergarten classroom!

I've always enjoyed this particular alphabet book, and in my years working with toddlers it was always a big hit with the kiddos. I couldn't help sharing a project I noticed this week that incorporated this book! I'm not sure if this is Pinterest inspired or how this project got to rolling, but I had to share.

The teacher has a massive alphabet tree outside her room. Her class is corresponding with classrooms allover the country who send letters telling about their class as well as sending a letter for the tree as well. How cool is that?

If you would like more information on this project just comment and I'll get the details from this Kindergarten teacher. What a fun way to review the alphabet throughout the year and a little bit of social studies too!

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