Day 37 1-2-3 Teach With Me and the Most Amazing Pencil Sharpener

1-2-3 Teach With Me is created by the very talented Tammy Ferrell.  She is a classroom teacher who currently is a stay at home mom helping at least one of her children prepare for kindergarten.  Not only does she have amazing primary lessons and resources from her primary teaching experience, but she has started a series of posts on how to get your child ready for kindergarten which is very useful to a lot of moms out there.

One of the other hobbies she has is creating digital art.  She has another blog that features that work, but you will have to wait until tomorrow for that one :)

If you are a 2nd grade teacher and your school or district is looking for some well made assessments for tracking common core math standards per quarter...Tammy has some great resources she's in the progress of posting and she is selling them on Teacher's Pay Teachers.  I wish she would have the 1st grade version!

On to another subject....

Pencil Sharpeners

I hate the darn things.

There is nothing worse than one of my kids saying: "Mrs. C, the pencil cup is empty."

That means I have to stop what I'm doing and try to quickly sharpen a few which inevitably turns into a dozen because as soon as you sharpen one...half of your class will discover that their pencil is broken or just too dull to write with any longer!

This is supposed to be the teacher's savior:

The legend of this pencil sharpener has been floating around out there in the blogosphere for awhile now.  My teaching partner last year bought one and just loves it.  I need to just buy one of the darn things...but in the mean time maybe I can win one...or so can you.  Go to Classroom Friendly Supplies and sign up for their giveaway or just get a group of you together and buy one.  They are $24.99 a piece or buy 3 for $53.97.  Get a jump start on your Christmas shopping and buy them now! (just don't forget where you put them like I do!)

Day 35 Common Core Classrooms

Today I am continuing with the theme of Common Core.  I found Common Core Classrooms.  This is a collaborative blog that brings you Common Core resources from other teachers and resources.  Their 'goal is to provide educators with classroom tested resources and ideas by grade level and subject that apply directly to the new standards.'

It's a cool idea.  I don't think the grade level links at the top work...or at least not the way I thought they would.  If they are only for comments at your grade level...it works.  But I thought it would be for looking up grade level resources...for that it doesn't work yet.

Instead, if you go to the right column and choose from Blog Archive you can see older posts.  You can also go to the Labels listing and look up a standard and find resources that way, which is helpful.

There are lots of freebie resources linked to this blog.  So that is always fun.  I found a contraction link with lots of resources.  Next week is a contraction week for spelling, so that would be awesome to have.

I already do this with my 1st graders....

And I already do a word sort. But this one is nicely formatted and in a nice clean font for them to read...although I'm not sure why all the words start with a capital letter.

Now this was the new twist that I love, love, love!  I look for ways to make my 1st graders accountable for their work all the time!  This will be very useful next week.

Happy contracting everyone!  

See you tomorrow...35 down and 330 more to go!  

Day 33 Common Core Saves the Day!

Today's post is not really about an actual teacher blog.  This one is a link to some Common Core 'blogs' that are a helping teachers and probably some administrators keep up with the dialog about Common Core.

The district I have been working in has been very tied to the adopted curriculum for many, many years.  Fidelity is the word that came up all the time.  Now that would be awesome if the developers of the curriculum we are using were actually people who taught in classrooms.

But there have been holes in the curriculum and children who have been falling in these holes.   It's a bummer that these developers haven't sat in a 1st grade classroom and haven't sat and watched the eyes of a 1st grader haze over as you read the scripted language they have provided in the teacher's manual.

The kids look at you and think and sometimes have actually said..."you don't sound like yourself teacher."  No, I sound just like the robot that I try to not have you be when you read to me! lol

Granted, the scripted material is very helpful when you have an inexperienced teacher as a sub, but for the real world teacher? not so much!

I stuck to the text for awhile....a short while. But with Saxon and Houghton Mifflin's Reading Street...they just don't include the terms, expression and just downright fun that I know I can add to teaching the skills.

So...I swayed from the manuals.  Sometimes a little and sometimes a whole lot.  And you know what happened?  My students learned!  I felt like I had to do it undercover and I felt like I had to fib a little.  Perhaps many of us fibbed and that is why the fidelity word stuck for so long.  Everyone was afraid to admit that they actually used their ability and skill as a teacher to teach their students rather than doing the scripted lesson in the book.

But with the adoption of Common Core, we have been given more liberties with how we fill the academic holes in our students' knowledge.  It's a lot of work to tie everything to the new standards...especially in a state where these standards are increasing what our kids need to know in a year.  For me I have already been teaching at that level because I have worked in another state where we were already there...saves me some learning curve time.  But for some, it's going to take a bit longer to catch up.

I think Common Core is a good thing and I'm glad it came into our state and our district.  It will only benefit our students.  Now, one thing I do believe is that there will be a second wave to this tsunami.  I think that once we get comfortable with Common Core, my district, and eventually our state will think the next step is to come up with our own power standards to fill in where the Common Core is kind of loose.  I think we will have more standards that address what wasn't addressed by Common Core...for first grade it will be things like; actual words read per minute, perhaps specific fiction books, and more details in what a first grade writer looks like...to name just a couple.

The question is...will we be allowed to get comfortable with the first changes before our state or districts throw the next step at us?

Here are some Common Core Blogs I've found.  There are some interesting articles and debates on some of them.  These are not classroom teacher blogs...but blogs with lots of research, resources, strategies, and some debate.  I particularly like #5....if for no other reason but its subtitle! :-)

1.  Core Knowledge

2.  Common Core 360

3.  Common Core

4.  Tools for the Common Core Standards

5.  Teaching the Core (subtitled: How to not freak out about teaching the core)

6.  All Things Common Core

Math Coach's Corner Blog

So I am always on the lookout for someone else who has already created what I am looking for...saves time that way.  I don't know about you, but I have to admit I purchase more on TpT than I have ever made in actual sales.

So when I find cool things that are free...I am in teacher heaven!  And my husband is happier too :)

As I swim, barely keeping afloat, through my school year,  I am trying hard to make Saxon fit in with our math standards with the Common Core.  I feel like I am doing more filling in with materials I make or find, than actually doing the lesson they include each day.

Our district is on a shoe string again this year, but if you had the money, then this is what every school needs...a Math Coach...and I just found an awesome one this morning.  Her name is +Donna Boucher and she has lots of amazing fun stuff on her blog:

I found a post on her blog that lists all her free stuff on TpT!  I have already downloaded three of them to use with my 1st graders!  Visit and see what you can find for your class :)

November Snuck Up On Me!!

I don't know how it happened, but it is already November.  My first quarter at a new school site is completed.  Do I feel caught up now?  No!  I still feel disjointed and worse even -- disorganized!  it's amazing to see that  even in the same district, things are not done exactly the same in each elementary school.

Although we use the same curriculum, all our assessments are not exactly the same.  It has been a struggle to pull it all together...and now that I need to be filling out report cards, I feel that I don't have all the assessments completed to do my report cards.

Now, that is not to say that I don't know what each child can and can't do, but I just don't have a summative assessment in hand to back me up.  It's more anecdotal and formative type assessments that give me my information.

Why do I not have what I need?  Well...long story short...we have Scot Foresman as our reading series.  We also have a transition going on toward the Common Core.  Our report cards are standards based.  The standards that are on the report card sort of jive with what we are trying to do with the Common Core...but our assessments are in limbo because they are from a curriculum that we now only partly use.  Our district is trying to create stand alone assessments to measure our students growth in achieving the standards in the Common Core, but they are a long way off from accomplishing that mighty goal.

We are a district that was curriculum driven for a very long time and now are trying to switch to being Standards driven.  This is what I am used to doing all along (from working in other states and other school districts)  The thought of relying solely on a publisher to tell me what and when to teach things to my student was alien to me.  Also, having assessments tied to a curriculum always seemed biased to me.  Stand alone assessments not only 'test' your students, but it 'tests' the ability of the curriculum to meet their needs.

So I am trying to find a clear path between assessments and standards and teaching.  I know there is one there.  It's just a matter of finding the time when you are mired in it all to rise above it and figure out the path I need and how to organize my direction to meet all my students' needs!

If anyone has some good advice or resources, I would love to hear it!

O.K.  back to my report cards!

Discovering Pinterest

I have just figured out this Pinterest thing.  It is the current rage!  For each holiday or season or topic I have a Pinterest Board and I'm posting fun stuff on it that I find on the internet.  I figured this could be a useful way to find a lot of things quickly, plus it's a better way for me to keep track of what I found online and where.

I don't know about you, but I get so lost blog hopping and I have no idea where I started and where I'm trying to go.  Then I find some really cool idea and I can't find it again!  So Pinterest is helping me out...hope it helps you too!

Here is my Pinterest Board:  Life in Idaho