A Year in Writing! {FREEBIE}

Need a way to keep track of writing samples throughout the year?  Do you end up having random writing samples in piles?  How about a book for each student that is put together at the beginning of the year.  Then it can be sent home as a sort of memory book at the end of the year!

Here’s a little freebie pack that has a page for each month!  I’ve included a cover page for Kinder, 1st and 2nd grade.  The writing pages are also included in black and white or color.  There are always some kiddos who want to write more, so I included a page that you can print off for them that is simply a page of lined paper.

Click the picture above or HERE to head over and download it for free!  If you enjoy it please leave some feedback! 

Happy weekend!

Welcome Stephanie from Falling into First: Illustration Rubric!

Hey all!! This is Stephanie from Falling Into First and I'm super excited to be guest blogging today!!

I heart Lacey's blog and I know you all do too, so we all already have that in common :)

Today I want to share with you all something new I will be implementing in my classroom this year! It's the first of many self assessment writing rubrics I will be teaching my first graders how to use. I'm on the curriculum committee at my school and one of our big goals for next year is to improve writing at all grade levels K-8. As part of this process, something we would like to see happen is to have teachers post exemplar writing pieces in their classrooms to show students what our expectations are for great writing. We also want to promote the habit of self assessment.

The more we talked about it the more I thought wow, why haven't I thought of this before?! Hollar if you're a visual learner!! I know I am. I know most of my kids are too. So why not give them clear visuals that show them exactly what it is I'm asking them to do?!

As with anything, the concept of self assessment and rating their own work is going to have to be introduced slowly with lots of modeling on my end. So to start off the year I created this. Meet my Illustration Rubric.

Yep, I'm the budding artist of these three masterpieces :)

The first quarter of first grade is NOT the best time to try and teach my kiddos how to evaluate their own writing. We're too busy learning the basics: writing from left to right, using proper spacing, using nice hand writing, and learning the pieces of a complete sentence. But from day one regardless of if a student is willing to write one word or 40 words,  I have them add illustrations to their writing. They illustrate all year however, I still have kids trying to turn in pencil colored bare bone illustrations in May. {This. Drives. Me. Loco.} But hopefully, this year will be different!

Here are some close ups of each exemplar on my Illustration Rubric. 

           (1- Scribble city! Look familiar?)

(2- This one is on the right track...)

           (3- And this is what I'm looking for!!)

I also made this to help teach my kids HOW to draw people.

As the year goes on I will begin to introduce samples of 1, 2, 3, and 4 pieces of writing . By the time we get there I think my kids will have a firm grasp on how to use a rubric to check their work. I also think the Illustration Rubric will be a great way to begin conversations about adding details and defining what details are.

If you think you can use either of these tools in your classroom then you can download the templates for free HERE in my TPT shop. 

I would love to hear how you use self assessment strategies in your classroom or what your thoughts are on it!

Thanks to all of you for checking out my guest spot today!  I hope you will remember to come by and visit me sometime. And a big thank you again to Miss. Lacey for letting me fill in!!

Technology Tuesday: Build Your Wild Self and Switcharoo Zoo

Have you been teaching about animals?  Need a fun end of the year activity?
Well, New York Zoos and Aquarium and Switchzoo.com have some neat technology tools that would be a lot of fun in the classroom!

The first one is from New York Zoos and Aquarium and is called Build Your Wild Self. {Click the title to go to the site.}  Once there, click “start” on the right hand side.  You’ll come to a screen that looks like this:

From there you can create your own “wild self!”  You can choose all sorts of different appendages! Ha!  There are butterfly wings, seahorse tail, and many many more!  Here is one I created:

Then if you click the red “I’m Done” button underneath your creation it will take you to a page that looks like this:

It gives you info about the different animals whose parts you used on the right.  Then you can send it to a friend or print it!  So…print it out and then they can write about it!!!!  I created a little writing page for this! You can print the “wild self” and glue it on the picture area.  Or, just keep the printout of the “wild self” in one piece and attach the full page writing paper! Click the pictures below to download the files!

Another site you should check out is Switcheroo Zoo.  Click the picture below to check it out!

Enjoy!

Freebie Friday!-End of Year Class Book

So the end of the year is drawing very, very near!  And I wanted to share something that I love to do at the end of the school year!!!!
Do you find yourself talking with your kiddos about their favorite days of the school year?  Or overhear them talking about them?  Well, I’ve got a great class book idea for you!!

Our Favorite Days of…  Students can write about their very favorite day of kindergarten (or whatever grade you teach)!  Now, I suggest a little brainstorming and discussion so that kiddos don’t struggle to decide on a favorite, but they love love writing about it!  Then we all shared ours (I even wrote one ).  I did this my first year of teaching and it may have been my favorite thing from the end of the year.   I haven’t even told you my favorite part!  I saved their writing and compiled it into a class book.  Then, the first couple of days of the next year (with my new class) I read the class book!  My new kinders loved getting to hear about the fun things they might get to do, and it was a great discussion too about the writers they would become by the end of the year! They ATE IT UP!  And, I loved going back and reading and reminiscing…so everyone wins, right!?
I’ve created a little freebie pack for you all!  It includes cover pages and writing pages for K-5 plus one that uses just “school” instead of a grade level so that multi-grade classes and special ed classes could also utilize it.  I included a half page with picture space and a full page of writing paper for you to choose from!

Get it here!

Enjoy!!! I would love to hear about how you use it in your classroom!!

Mother’s Day Freebie!

There are SOOO many different ways to celebrate Mother’s Day and I’ve seen lots of different bloggers talking about how they do it in their classroom!
One of my favorite things is having the kiddos write about their moms.  You get such honest responses from kinders and firsties and having them talk about why they love their moms and how they help them is too cute.   I also LOVE me some acrostic poems and it’s fun for the moms to read acrostic poems about themselves! So, I created a little writing freebie pack for Mother’s Day

This pack includes the two writing activities seen below.
               
I’m working on a few different projects that I can’t wait to share!
And don’t forget, everything in my TPT store is on sale until midnight!!

Technology Tuesday-Pin it!, Number Rack and Scholastic Sale!

Okay.  This is going to be a long one!  I’ve got a few different things to share.

First off…I figured out how to put a “pin it” button on each blog post!  I googled it and found this site: http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/2012/03/pinterest-pin-it-button-blogger.html

There are step by step instructions on how to add it.  The only change I had to make was adding a “break” after the code so that the button didn’t overlap with my post text.  To do this you just have to add <br/>.  Let me know if it works for you or if you have questions!

Next is a technology activity that can be used in the classroom and to share with parents!  It’s a number rack.  It looks something like this:

It is available for iPad, iPhone and there is a web app that can be used in the classroom.  And, it’s free!  It would be great for subitzing (seeing numbers quickly), addition or subtraction.  It would also be a great visual manipulative to use with story problems.  There is a resizeable “shade” to hide beads too. You can read more about it, access the web app, and download a free activity book here: http://catalog.mathlearningcenter.org/apps.

On to other things!  We all know about Scholastic…but they are having a SALE on their downloadable professional resources!  I think it ends today or tomorrow so be sure to check it out!

Here are three things I bought!  I had the hard copies of one of them but wanted them in a digital format.

   

I LOVE these things and so did my kiddos!  I put them in my writing center and kiddos could pull them while writing.  For example, if a kiddo was writing about school, they could choose the school file folder and use the words to help them with their writing.  I love the idea of a portable word wall for different subjects/themes.  The books above also include story starters and book links for each letter/theme/word family!

For each subject/theme there is a word list included.  I typed these up, printed them and put them inside of the folders before laminating. I’m sharing them for free via Google Docs.  Click on the pictures below to download and use with yours!

   

I’m also linking this up with The Lesson Plan Diva’s Word Wall Linky!  Go check out the great ideas being linked up!

Okay…I think that’s all!  Be looking for an announcement about a birthday sale…that’s right, I said birthday sale!  Here’s a hint…my birthday is this weekend.    I may just feel like spreading the love with a sale

Daily News!!

If you are a teacher then without question you have had those students that walk in EVERY DAY with a fun story to tell you and all their friends.  :)  And as much as you want to hear the story, if you stopped to listen to all 20 something kiddos tell you a story you'd get nothing taught!

This year my team and I were introduced to something called Daily News.  It is a form of morning message, etc. but the kiddos take ownership of it.  Basically you gather the kiddos around a piece of chart paper and call on different students to share one sentence of exciting news.  It can be from last year, last month, yesterday or tomorrow. :)  When you start this, especially with kinders, you have to MODEL MODEL MODEL what a complete sentence looks and sounds like.  But they catch on, and FAST! After the student shares their sentence, the class repeats the sentence.  I have my kiddos count with their fingers how many words are in the sentence when we repeat it.  Then, you write the sentence on the chart paper.  The kiddos always are involved in the writing.  Now, at the beginning I always wrote the sentence but the kiddos are telling me what to do.  Some things you might hear kiddos say would be: No, that should be a capital because it's a name, You forgot your period, etc.  As we move on I let the student who said the sentence write sight words (ex: the, to) to make it more interactive writing.  After the sentence is written we always count the words again to make sure we didn't forget any!  Then I take a different colored marker and ask the student who said the sentence to tell me any sight words they see.  As they identify them I circle them.  Next comes the magic. :) I ask the class "What else do you see in this sentence?"  I usually take 3-5 students to identify other things they notice.   If there are things in the sentence that I noticed and want to do a quick mini-lesson on then I do this now.  For example, if the student's sentence was: "I went to John's birthday party last weekend"  I might use this as an opportunity to introduce compound words using "birthday."  Some of the things I focus on during this time are:
         -Parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
         -Compound Words
         -Verb Tenses: Past, present, future
         -Plural words
         -capitals & lowercases
         -Punctuation: exclamation points, question marks, commas, quotation marks
         -Hidden Sight Words: they LOVE LOVE this one...basically finding sight words in other words
          (ex: "to" in tomorrow)
         -and the list could go ON and ON. :)
Now we only get about 3-5 students done each day depending on our time.  I make sure that I get to each kiddo before giving another student another turn.  In fact, once each student has shared, I post our "Daily News" in the hallway.  The kiddos LOVE it!  Then when I take it down, I cut apart the sentences and each student gets to take their sentence home.  They take such ownership in this!

I will say that this is one of my FAVORITE things.  It models writing, gives a chance for meaningful mini-lessons, reinforces sight words, sentence structure, letter sounds, etc, and gives the kiddos a chance to share their exciting stories!  Some days they even ask if we can do more! :)  You can also have them do it in the mornings when they come in...that way they know what they are sharing.

Here's a picture of one of ours from last semester posted in the hallway:

Also...my FAVORITE markers of all time:

I love Mr. Sketch too...but these are SO bright and rich!

PS.  Don't forget to add your ideas to my dice game post for a {FREEBIE}!