What We've Been Up To in Room 117

It is so hard to believe that yesterday started the beginning of the 3rd 6 weeks. Where has this year gone? I managed to somehow get everything graded and my grades posted before I had to be emailed by our Registrar. That is always a good feeling! :)

This week we started our new CSCOPE unit which is focusing on Expository Text. This is something I have never really taught a whole unit on, but I am loving it so far and so are my 6th graders. We started the unit by creating an anchor chart together that helped us understand just exactly what an expository text is and we also reviewed text features. 

This is something that we will be reviewing throughout the unit. I also plan on making some more with students to demonstrate the different organizational patterns of expository text. 

In my Pre AP class, we also started reading The Wednesday Wars on Monday and my kids are already loving it! When I read it this summer, I knew I had to read it with some of my classes. What are some of your favorite novels to read in your classroom? 

I have also had a huge response about the Anchor Chart Linky Party. Be on the lookout for it to debut on December 1st!

Anchors Away!

Some people might think I am crazy, but I just love anchor charts. I think it is the elementary teacher trapped in me. It is rare that we do not make at least three of them during the course of a week in my classroom. My goal is to start sharing my anchor charts with you all on a weekly basis, but we will see how that goes. 

Last week we were focusing on plot elements and we were using a story mountain to help us. I created this chart with them that we have since put up in our classroom as a reference for us to use throughout the year. 

I just love hearing my students talk about the different elements in a story now that they understand what they all are. 

Yesterday we started to talk about theme. My student had no idea what the word theme meant, but they quickly realized that all it really is is the message or lesson that the author is trying to teach us in a story. As soon as they realized that, we quickly became theme pros. :)

If I turned this into a weekly, or biweekly, linky party, is that something that you would be interested in participating in?

Interactive Student Notebook...finally!

I finally managed to remember to snap some photos of my Interactive Students Notebook (ISN) today while I was up at school making copies and getting ready for the week. Several of you have asked questions about how I use them in my classroom, so hopefully this will answer most of them. :)

I first decided to implement Interactive Notebooks in the middle of the fall semester during my first year of teaching. I knew what I was doing was not working and I was not loving the binder that was requested on the school supply list. During one of my Saturday grad school classes last fall, we were lucky enough to have a presentation from one of the ladies that worked at the Dinah Zike Academy. (If you didn't already know, Dinah is pretty much the queen of foldables!) I know this was exactly what my 6th graders needed, so I went with it an ran. Last fall it was a big learning process, but I felt great about how my notebooks went in the spring. Now I think I finally have the hang of it and love how the ISN is evolving in my classroom. 

This school year we completely did away with a binder in 6th grade and most of our learning is placed into our ISN that lives in the classroom. The only time my students are allowed to take the ISN home is when they need to study notes or activities out of it that we are going to be tested on. I just know that if I allowed my students to keep their notebooks in their backpacks or lockers, they would not make it to class every day.

So now what you have been waiting for, pictures and details about the ISN and how it works in my classroom.

 The first thing that you will find when you open up an ISN from room 117 is the Table of Contents. It is hard to believe, but we are already on page 2 for the year. The first page is glued all the way down to the notebook page, but then each one after that is only glued down where it says Table of Contents which allows us the ability to look underneath it in the future to see what all we have done.

 Next is an individual word wall. Sorry that it is sideways. There is a box for each letter, A-Z, and this is a place in the ISN where students can write words that they misspell when we are writing.
I think it is so important for students to have a place to keep up with things like this.

The next few pages are composed of some essentials that live in our ISN all year long. These are things like a reading log, reading interest survey, a book waiting list, genre overview, writing survey, and a reading response letter format.In my classroom starting the 2nd 6 weeks, students will be expected to write a reading response letter each Friday based on their independent reading book. This is one of my favorite things that we do in our notebook because I love seeing how my students connect with their books.

 Since we do not keep a binder, we take all of our notes inside of our ISN. Here is an example of one of the first things that we did this school year. We were learning about different word parts such as root, base word, prefix, suffix, and affix. I really liked how this particular note taking strategy worked out, and we will be doing them in a table form like this many more times this school year.

These notes booklets are something new that I am trying this year and so far so great! It does not take much for notes to get boring so I have started to create my notes in the form of books that we can put together and then glue into our notebooks. I have already made some more for our plot notes as well as notes that we will be taking on questioning. I am hoping that these will be something that I can share in my TpT shop.

I am a huge fan of teaching roots, prefixes, and suffixes to my 6th graders. One way that I have been doing this is by using Teach Root Words All Year Long from Fancy Free in Fourth Grade. I have loved it and so have my kiddos. Most of the time we will use this as a warm-up, but I love placing them in our ISN so we can reference them throughout the year.

We also use lots of foldables in our notebooks. This one came from the fabulous Dinah Zike and one of her many books that she has published.

I absolutely love chunking the content for my students through the use of foldables. I have been amazed at the results I have gotten from using these.

I am hoping to start doing a weekly post that shares with you all what we did in our notebooks that week or at least blogging about that once a month. Hopefully that answered some of the questions that you all had, but if you still have one, be sure and ask it!

New Year Resolutions and Novel Studies

One of my favorite things about teaching Language Arts is all of the novels that we get to read in my classroom. I really didn't do a great job of this during my first year because the choices I had to choose from were not the best. One of the things that I really worked on this past year was finding quality novels to read with my students as well as growing my collection of novel sets of 6 for book clubs. Right now I am planning on reading The Wednesday Wars and The Giver with my Pre-AP class. I just finished TWW and loved, loved, loved it! I think my kids, especially, the boys will enjoy it too! As for my regular classes I am not quite sure what I want to read with them yet. Even though it is a little easy, I think I am going to start the school year by reading The Best School Year Ever because my kids really liked that a lot last year. I think it is the perfect book to get their feet with and it gives them a positive experience with their first novel as a middle schooler. If you teach middle school, or upper elementary, what are your favorite novels to read as a whole class? What are some novels that you have used for lit circles or book clubs? 

I am also linking up with Amanda Madden for her Back to School Resolutions linky party. Make sure you go and link up over at her blog if you choose to participate. 

One. I need to manage my time after school better. Sometimes last year I would be up there until 6 or 7p.m. This school year my goal is to be gone no later than 5:15p.m. each day. I also really want to limit the amount of work that I take home with me to complete if I can. I think part of the problem is that I am a single 20 something and do not have a family or husband at home so it makes it easy to take things home with me.

Two.Stay organized. Last year I was very organized when the school year began, but it never lasted. I had to do some serious reorganizing at the semester. I think I will do a better job of it this year because I simply know what to expect. I am hoping that I can do a better job of teaching my students procedures about keeping their things organized too in the room which I think will help me stay organized at the same time.

Three.Stay positive. Last year I think I did a good job of this the first semester, but I let others get to me during the second semester. I need to do my part with this too by bringing a positive attitude to my classroom each day and realizing that every day cannot be perfect.There were some changes made to my team as a whole for this upcoming year and I think that the freshness of some new faces will help with this too.

Four. Share what I am doing in my classroom on a weekly basis on my blog. I love seeing what you all are doing in your classroom, so I want to share more of what I am doing too. I am thinking that each Sunday I am going to reflect on what I did during the previous week and hope to share pictures of that too.

On a side note, my campus found out yesterday that we met AYP!!! I could not be more excited since we had not met it in the previous year. 

Context Clue Detectives

Today we turned into Context Clue Detectives in my classroom. We had done some things with context clues when we were reviewing for the STAAR test, but I wanted to revisit them today. 

I was so excited about the lesson turned out and I think it really clicked all the way with my 6th graders. I took an anchor chart that I pinned on Pinterest and changed it a bit to better fit the needs of my kiddos. 

Source: slide.com via Katie on Pinterest

Unfortunately, I did not think to get a picture of it and I am usually so good about that. After we completed the anchor chart and notes in our ISN (Interactive Student Notebooks) we did a few together before I let them work with a partner. They had fun working with their partners to try and solve the mystery of figuring out what the words meant. Some of my kids were so sweet while they were working with each other. 

I especially loved this last picture. I could not believe that I caught these two boys sitting in the same recliner together. They are always trying to be macho 6th graders, but deep down they are really so sweet! 

I also do not think I mentioned the results of my certification test that I took last Thursday. Well, I am glad to report that I passed. I am officially certified to teach everything PK-8th grade! This is a huge relief because it really makes me marketable when I decide to leave my current campus. 

Only 9.5 more days with my 6th graders!

Currently...

I am so grateful that it is going to be a short work week! It is really the last break that we get until Memorial Day, and the also happens to be the last week of school. :(

Today at school I thought we did a really great lesson on inferring. We had learned about this earlier in the year, but I have been reviewing some essential skills that I know will be on the dreaded STAAR test that my kiddos will take at the end of April. I am a huge fan of mentor texts and I use them at least two times a week in class. Today we used The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Pollaco and my kids absolutely loved it! They were captivated by the story and it was also a great way to tie in a bullying lesson too. I of course ordered several more of her books via Amazon during my conference period today and cannot wait for them to get her on Wednesday!!! You've got to love Amazon Prime!

I have also been doing a lot of thinking about next school year already even though I have about 8 more weeks left in this one. I know that I would love to do some more independent book projects with at least my Pre AP classes. If you are in Texas you have probably heard of the Bluebonnet and Lone Star book lists that the TLA puts out. I am thinking about having my students use Lone Star books to create their book projects. Have you ever used the Bluebonnet or Lone Star books in your classes? Even if you are not in Texas, the lists are great to check out! 

Last, but not least, I am also linking up with Farley for her April Currently. Be sure to head on over to her blog to play along with us too!

I'm Back!

Oh my goodness, Ireland was absolutely amazing! I am still a tad jet lagged and am hoping that next week gets much easier for me. Here are just a few of my favorite pictures from my week I got to spend over there. 

Even though school started back up on Monday, my kids have not seen me since before Spring Break! Monday I was still traveling back from the break and yesterday and today I helped with a STAAR Camp for our 8th grade students. We had 16 different sessions, 8 math and 8 reading, that the kids rotated through over the course of 2 days. I was leading the Author's Purpose and Point of View Workshop. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I think it is a great thing for our at risk and below level students, but our gifted and above level students were bored because the material was more geared towards the bubble kids. 

I also got great news on Tuesday! I had a contract waiting in my box for the 2012-2013 school year!!! Yeah for getting to stay on my campus and work for my amazing principal. I was not too worried, but I was not going to relax until I had seen it and signed it. Now I just have to wait and see what exactly I will be teaching next year. Fingers crossed that I will get to stay in 6th grade! 

Over the break I also finally joined the Hunger Games craze and read the first 2 on the plane. I am about halfway finished with Mockingjay, but I do not want the series to end. What am I going to read next when it is all finished??? Any good suggestions?

I have a few literacy games in the works and cannot wait to share them with you all! Be on the lookout for them early next week.

Assessing, PD, and a Linky

Now that I am integrating CAFE and the Daily 5 in my classroom, I have been searching for a good reading assessment to use with my students. When I was in my undergraduate classes, we took 2 reading courses where we actually worked with a student in an after school program for an entire semester. In this class we used DIBELS to monitor our student's fluency and their growth as they worked with us. I really liked DIBELS because it had a weekly progress monitoring that we were able to give our student. However, this is not geared towards my 6th graders at all. If I remember correctly, it only went up to 3rd grade. 

I have also had previous experience with the DRA while doing observations and subbing at the elementary level. I really like this assessment because it not only has students read aloud, but they also read silently, and there is then comprehension questions that follow as well. I also like that this assessment provides you with a reading level that can be transferred to a grade equivalent. Since we do not use AR at my school, I would at least love to have this ball park number to help with my grouping and instruction that takes place in my classroom. I was looking on the Pearson website, who is the company that publishes the DRA kit, and I was excited to see that they have a 4-8 kit. Have any of you all ever used the 4-8 kit? You can find more out about it here. I am pretty sure that I am going to go ahead and budget for it though. :)

I was also so excited to discover that The Sisters are going to be in San Antonio doing workshops on The Daily 5 and CAFE in April. I already emailed my principal to see if I can go. I would love this opportunity since not many people in my district even know what it is . You can find out all of the places that the Sisters are going in 2012 by clicking here. Have you ever seen them present? I know that it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity and I have a feeling that I would walk away with so much knowledge that will help me to implement both things in my classroom even better. 

I mentioned last week about wanting to do a linky party where we all share what it is like on a daily basis in our own classrooms. I know that I personally love finding out how others spend their time during the day. It might even provide you with a new idea for your own classroom. 

Here is how it will work. On Friday, January  13th, you will get to write a post that it is completely dedicated to telling others what a day is like in your shoes. You can share as much or as little as you would like. I will have the post go live early that morning and all you will have to do is link up. In the mean time, feel free to copy and paste the picture and tell others about the linky party by blogging about it! I hope you are as excited about this as I am!

Our Reader's Notebooks

Today we had a 6th grade Language Arts teacher planning day. I was really excited about it, but I am bummed at the lack of things we actually got planned today altogether. I wish I could have just had a whole day to plan alone because I know I could have at least gotten a 6 weeks taken care of. I was actually excited to dive into the C-SCOPE materials because I have really struggled with not having a real scope and sequence to use this year. Well, I know what I am going to be doing over the Christmas break! 

I know that I have blogged about our reader's notebooks a few other times, but I just love them. I am so glad that I decided to bite the bullet and get lots of spiral notebooks when they were on sale during back to school time. It was such a good investment! The learning that has taken place in our notebooks is just amazing!!! I think I am going to ask my students to all bring a composition book for the spring semester because they just hold up so much better. Here is a picture tour of some of the things we have been doing in our notebooks lately. 

Sorry for the bad quality, they are from the phone. For some reason, I also cannot get the ones to rotate correctly in blogger. :(

Newspapers and Observations

Yesterday, we tool our notes about Author's Purpose and practiced finding the author's purpose using a picture book. Today we once again used a picture book, but we also used newspapers too to help us identify the 4 types of Author's Purposes. I purchased Jen Runde's Author's Purpose unit from her Teachers Pay Teachers store and that is where I have gotten several of my ideas from. It is a great unit! 

I have had newspapers stacking up in my room for several weeks now, and decided that they would be perfect to use for this lesson. What I did was I created 4 big anchor charts for each of the 4 purposes. I then split my students up into groups and gave them a newspaper, scissors, and glue. They had to find articles, advertisements, pictures, etc in their paper that was an example of each author's purpose. The kids loved it because they got to make a big mess that we cleaned up, and I loved it because I could tell that the kids actually got it! I did capture some pictures today of all of the fun, mess, and learning! 

I used the video that I shared earlier this week yesterday in class and we continued with the PIES theme today to help us remember the 4 types of Author's Purpose.

The charts we made in my 1st and 2nd period class. I also went ahead and put them up in the hallway because I was so proud of their work and thought it was such a neat activity.

The charts from 3rd and 4th period.

Some of the ones from 5th and 7th period.

The other 2 from 5th and 7th period.

After we finished, I had my students answer the sentence stem on their post-it note and then stick it to the big chart. I used a different color for each class. 

Did I mention that we made a little bit of a mess with this project? I am pretty sure we took at least 10 bags of trash out today!

Some of my Pre AP kids even decided to pick up a little couponing when we were finished. :)

Today we also had our Sheltered Instruction liaison on campus as well as another lady who is helping us this year since we failed to meet AYP this past school year because of our math scores. They both came in my room together at the same time and ended up staying in there for about 45 minutes. Normally they are in our rooms for maybe 10 minutes tops when they visit. Our AYP friend even came back to my room a 2nd time. I was not really sure if that was a good or bad thing. However, when I was headed out of the 6th grade building to go and check my box during my conference, they were both outside talking to my principal. They stopped me and told me how much they loved being in my room and loved the activity I was doing with my kids today. That made me feel really good and I was pretty excited about it. It put a smile on my face for sure! 

Yeah for it almost being Friday!

December Book Picks

Even though I teach middle school, I still use picture books all of the time. I need to take a picture tomorrow of my picture book to collection to show you all. I use them all the time as mentor texts to teach my 6th graders new skills. We are actually getting ready to use The Polar Express for a big unit.

I thought I would link up with Mrs. Parker to share some of my favorite book picks for the month of December. 

What are your favorite books to teach with in the month of December?

What We Are Learning in Room 117...

 I have been so excited by the learning that has been taking place in my classroom these past few days. We ended our 2nd six weeks this past Friday and I cannot believe that we have already began the 3rd six weeks. The year is absolutely flying by!

On Monday I introduced the week's vocabulary words and also read part of our class read aloud, The Sixth-Grade Nickname Game to my kids. We also went to the computer lab to pick out our books for our first set of book clubs. I set up a Weebly website with a blog for each of my classes where they commented on a post that I made. They loved it and I loved that it was paperless. The kids seem to be really excited about using technology to learn with. Now if only I could get the other 6th grade ELA teachers on board with me. 

Yesterday I got to school and was not really sure what I was going to do. I knew that I was going to have my students act out their vocabulary words and review with them about main idea, but I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to review with them. I started to look at my stash of picture books which is quite extensive and found Duck for President. Since it was election day, I thought it would be perfect and a great way to tie in some Social Studies into our LA lesson too. I ended up reading the book to them and we talked about what a main idea is and then worked together to come up with a main idea for the book. It was perfect and the kids loved it! In my 1st and 2nd period class, we even got into supporting details. I have also become an anchor chart junkie. I am going to have to be sure and budget for some of the giant sticky pads for next school year. Here are the ones we made yesterday in my 3 classes. 

I also invested in some Sharpie Flip Chart markers and I love them! If you have never used them and you use anchor charts in your classroom, you are so missing out! 

I fell bad because I have just been throwing away my anchor charts because I do not have anywhere to store them. What do you all do with yours? I have been taking pictures of them and I am hoping to put them all in a binder that I can reference each year.

Today I assigned my kids to their book clubs and they are all asking me when we are going to start. I am so excited that they are wanting to do them. I am hoping to get a whole unit together and will be posting to my Teacher's Notebook store.

I am in search of a great writing activity for my middle schoolers that has something to do with Thanksgiving. If anyone has a great suggestion for me I would love to hear it!

It is going to be a busy one!

This coming week is going to be a crazy one for me because I have...

Progress Reports due on Monday at noon

a Manifest ARD Monday during conference period

a meeting with a potential student and parent Monday after school who want to hear about the Pre AP classes

working the middle school volleyball games at 5 and 6 Monday evening

sign painting practice for cheerleading Tuesday afternoon

my PDAS observation Thursday during 2nd period

middle school football game Thursday night

Grad school class homework

but I think that is all. :)

Teaching sure is crazy, but that is exactly what I signed up for. Even as busy as I am every day of the week, I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.

 I am super excited about the things that my students are doing in class this week. My Pre AP kids are going to begin filming their news casts for their mini research projects that correspond with our book The Giver that we just completed in class this 6 weeks. I knew I wanted to do something different with them, and the kids have loved it so far. The had to have a rough draft of their scripts to me on Friday and they were amazing! I cannot wait to see all of the finished projects next week! My 2 regular classes are going to be doing a fun spooky writing assignment this week that I cannot wait to do with them. I hope that their stories will turn out as great as I am picturing in my mind. We are also going to have several mini-lessons this week to prepare them for our book clubs that we will hopefully be starting on Halloween.

 I also got an e-mail from our school librarian about a teacher in Michigan who she worked with last year. She is wanting to do some type of project together with us and Mrs. Z picked my students and I to partner with this teacher. I am so excited about it and cannot wait to see how it turns out. Have you ever done something like this before with a teacher in another state? Any good tips for me?

This past week I also got my first donation for my Donors Choose Project. I am so excited, but I still have a long way to go. Fingers crossed that I am able to get it funded. You can find my project here.  Have you ever done a Donors Choose Project? 

Who knows when I will make it back to the blog this week, but hopefully I will be able to. I am planning on taking my camera to school this week to get some pictures of a few of the anchor charts that we have made as well as my revamped classroom library.