It's my birthday!!!

YAY!! It's my birthday. Look at my gifts!

Am I really THAT predictable???


yikes!

Good Morning!

Just before school started, I read an article on the 2 Sister's website about how adults needed to come in to work, socialize a bit, connect with their fellow workers and then they could settle down and get to work.

They related that to their young students and how many teachers have been taking Harry Wong's advice and having "Bell Work" available for students to get started on right away in silence. There is some validity to having students engage in academics right away, I agree. The students are fresh and able focus quickly.

But I also know for myself, I am better able to focus on my work when I've had the chance to visit with my friends. So this year, I put aside my "Bell Work" and I now encourage the students to come into the classroom straightaway instead of sitting in the hall while I do last minute tasks. I must say that after 6 weeks, I see a difference in both my students' social development and the number of interruptions I get when we do get down to work.

When students come in, it is very unstructured. I am in there to supervise (and yes, I know, this lengthens my workday-- I am well aware that I am the source of most of my extra "work") but I am still getting those things done, that I need to. At the same time, I am also able to listen to "exciting" news from home, "Mrs. Klein, guess what?" "Ms. Klein, last night me and my..." etc. I am able to watch and listen to conversations around the room that clue me into things that I need to know about or how someone's day has started off on the wrong foot.

But mostly we just hang out and do our thing as we chat and learn more about each other. Learning is a social activity and it's a very good thing when we have such good friends to share it with.

Read with a Buddy

We've been doing our Daily 5 everyday and it's come time to add our second component called, "Read with a Buddy". Reading with a buddy has it's own set of rules. Partners should be able to sit side by side and pretty close together so that as each person takes turns reading, they don't have to speak loudly to be heard. We have an acronym for it: EEKK. Elbow to elbow; knee to knee. Another rule is that when someone asks you to read with them, the answer is always "Yes." If I decide to choose partners (which I do upon occasion), they must smile and be kind. That means no groaning or sniggering if boy/girl pairs are called out. (When I assign partners, I pull two name sticks at a time. It's the luck of the draw.) Students should take turns reading a page or paragraph to each other. They are also supposed to be checking for understanding but although I've mentioned it, I'm not enforcing that bit just yet, as all the other parts are still somewhat troublesome. ;) It's coming along well and it seems that this group enjoys reading with a buddy far more than my class last year who just preferred to read alone. At any rate, here's some photos to show you what Reading with a Buddy looks like:

They're doing a very good job of follwoing the rules, aren't they!

The Burning Time

I went out to Bastrop this weekend to drop off the first load of donated supplies from my class' Toy and Book Drive. My sister, who lives in Bastrop, is the PTO President for Emile Elementary School, one of two schools hardest hit by the Labor Day fires. We went to drop off the donations at the school and after we had unloaded everything, my sister asked if I wanted to drive by Lost Pines State Park. It looked like this at one time...

(This shot is of the opposite side of the highway where the fire did not jump...)

"No", I said, honestly. I am not one who likes to look at devastation or roadside accidents. My imagination is far too vivid... but my sister with pain in her voice begged me to witness what has happened to her beloved park. We still couldn't drive through the park itself, even after two weeks, because there were still fires popping up and they wanted no one to be hurt so she drove around the outskirts of Lost Pines and on the highway. I guess I thought that there would be nothing left, just charred earth laid flat by the fires.

But instead there were blackened skeletons of leafless trees lifting their fire ravaged arms into the sky.

Seeing this beautiful state park where we once laughed and enjoyed the beauty of many Texas summer days look like this was painful. My chest constricted and I worked hard to keep the tears out of my voice, but in the end there was nothing we could do but cry as we drove on.

Helping our Neighbors

Over the Labor Day weekend, Texas was "fired" up. And I'm not talking about football this time... There were literally 4 fires blazing in various areas around the state. One devastating fire was in Bastrop, about an hour's drive southeast of us. On Tuesday morning when the students came in, all they could talk about were the fires. While I managed to distract them for a while throughout the day, their minds were clearly on the fear that a fire can engender. So we decided to do something about it... we decided to have a toy and book drive for the students just like us in Bastrop. Many of whom didn't even know if they had a home yet.

(I'm sorry that I can't seem to turn it right side up...)

The students felt better after we wrote this letter together during Shared writing and sent it out to our WPS families. But we weren't prepared for all the donations that poured in...

This was just one load. There were 3 other loads of toys, books, school supplies and clothing that were donated throughout the week.

While the students did not seem very impressed with all they had brought in with their letter, I found myself continously amazed at the generosity of our quiet community.


Thank you. Thank you all so much.

Grandparent's Day at WPS

We always encourage families to come into school and see what their children are doing. But, once a year, we especially invite grandparents to visit and eat lunch with their grandkids. Friday was the big day. The thing is, I can't go to eat lunch with my grandchildren-- one set lives out in El Paso and the other two live in North Carolina-- and I work. I know that other grandparents are in the same position. Kids might know this, but it doesn't feel any less lonely when some people have guests and others don't. With this in mind, I make it very clear that the invitation is extended to ANY family members and they are all welcomed in to visit. Some grandparents could come, some parents could come but there were still a few who were not able to have anyone come in. Since it was a special day, I wanted to do do something special for everyone, so everyone was invited to eat out in the gazebo. Children who had visitors could choose to eat in the cafeteria, in the classroom, or they could join us to eat outside. What a fun lunch! Here are a few pics from the day.

There are a few guests that I did not get photos of but, I'd like to thank all of those who could come and remind everyone that we have an open door policy. You are welcome to come in anytime! We'd LOVE to have you join us for a day or even an hour. I hope to ee you again, soon!

Lightbulb Lab

One of the things that we are looking for when we read to and with children is if they are connecting with the story. We can connect by having one story remind us of another story we read which has a similar plot or characters. This is called a text-to-text connection. Another way to connect is that a story reminds us of an event in our own life. This is called a text-to-self connection. And lastly, we can connect with a story by relating the story to learning something new about the world. We call that a text-to-world connection.

We have just completed a rather haphazard author study on Kevin Henkes. In each story we read, we looked for ways the stories connected with us. By far the most popular story was 'Lily and the Purple Plastic Purse'. We all love Mr. Slinger, Lily's teacher. We love Lily and we ALL understand how she does something so terrible to someone she loves. But what we all love the most is how at the end, she is forgiven and a valuable lesson is learned. Even weeks after reading the story when someone says "WOW!", someone else will chime, "and that's all he could say." (A line from the book that is repeated several times.)

In honor of our love for Mr. Slinger and Lily, we have created a Lightbulb Lab in our classroom.

Here is our new writing center. Thank you, Mr. Henkes, for such wonderful stories that help us connect to literature!

Writing Our Stories

Since the start of the year, we have been talking and writing about our lives. Sometimes, students think that their lives are not exciting enough to write about. They want all the action and excitement of a Nickelodean cartoon in the own lives so they feel that they have something "worth" writing about. We spend a lot of time talking about the everyday moments in our lives and coming to realize that it is those very same small moments that make our lives so very interesting and make each of us a most amazing person with a story to tell.

Over the past week, we have been working on our story puzzles. In each corner, students were asked to think about a specific topic and find the stories that they could write about when their writing "well" becomes dry. They were to draw those ideas so that when they needed to... "I have nothing to write about..." they could stand in front of their puzzle and remember a story and begin to write. Now, we haven't yet been taught how to access those stories from our drawings yet,

but in the meantime. We have some beautiful artwork displayed in our room. Drop by to see it sometime...

More fun than Play-Do???

Wanna know what's more fun than play-do in the morning?

Hand lenses during science!! Holy Optical Enhancers, Batman! These students were A-M-A-Z-E-D by the power in a magnifying lens!

(I gotta tell you, I was so grateful to be in that room with them at that moment in space and time... The learning was just ELECTRIC! I live for those moments!) They looked at E. V. E. R. Y. T. H. I. N. G!

And everything was "brand new" --like they'd never seen dinosaur poop before...

okay...well, maybe they hadn't... but still.

The carpet held treasures to be discovered, the hair on our arms was breathtaking, even the print in our books was a wonder to behold.

It's a beautiful thing when the world is new when you're 6.

I am so honored to be a part of that.

Spelling

Last week was our first week of spelling. We had the word family -an. I asked the students to tell me all the words they could think of that rhymed with -an. We brainstormed and thought and wrote. Only words that ended in -an were written, even the nonsense words, because when we take the DiBELS test next week, there is a whole LIST of words that are nonsense words and students need to be able to use their knowledge of word families and letter sounds to figure out those "words". We wrote those on the side. Then out of our brainstormed list, I selected 10 words for our very first Spelling Test on Friday. We read poems that used our word family and did a few activities throughout the week using our word family. We got our Spelling Notebooks to write our weekly list into. The students even had a Challenge Word. My name. It was spelled and chanted correctly and put up on the Word Wall. Despite my name being in full view of the entire class, only half were able to spell my name correctly. What does that tell me? That we need to practice using our Word Wall. It will be a wonderful assistant when we are trying to write and edit so that people may easily read our our stories.

In just four days, most of the class was able to achieve a 100% on the Spelling Test and half of the class earned extra points for getting my name correct. For a first test, this was remarkable. I am so looking forward to working with this incredible group of students. They are just SO SMART!

School Fundraiser

WPS has one major fundraiser every year. We stick to just one because we are acutely aware that while our families may support us wholeheartedly, their budgets may not. Our annual fundraiser is the Cookie Dough sale that was kicked off on Wednesday, August 31st. Mr. Cookie Dough (seen in the photo above) came to our school with his flashing lighted glove and showed us all of the cool prizes we could earn. We also learned that students are NOT to go door to door selling the cookie dough. We would prefer that parents ask their neighbors and family for their support. (It's safer for our young population.) We learned that if everyone in the school is able to sell just 3 items, the entire school will have a day in the spring when a bunch of jumping balloons will be set up and each class will have a 15 minute time slot to enjoy them!

The money from the cookie dough sales supports many of the things that we do in the school including purchasing more books for our Literacy Lab (those are the books students take home to read each night), providing money for field trips, and many other other purchases as well. Our school budget has been dramatically cut this year and things that we have taken for granted are now available on a more limited basis. The cookie dough makes delicious cookies and we've had many favorable comments about the quality. Your help and participation in our fundraiser is even more important this year and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support of all we do.

Chester's Way

Last week we read a book called "Chester's Way" by Kevin Henkes. Ms. Klein read the book everyday for the whole week. We talked about different things in the book each day and by the end of the week, we knew a lot about Chester's Way. We would say parts of the story with Ms. Klein and now when we talk about our friends, sometimes we say, "Chester and Wilson. Wilson and Chester. That's just the way it is." (Except we put our friends' names in place of Chester and Wilson.) And everyone tries to double knot their shoelaces like Chester, Wilson and Lilly.

On Friday, Ms. Klein brought in her toaster and a loaf of bread and we tried making toast like Lilly with cookie cutters instead of cutting on the diagonal like Wilson and Chester. We had a lot of fun. See?