Friday Focus -Snow Day edition

Believe it or not, I've taken full advantage of these 2 snow days to relax and have fun with my boys. I hope you've enjoyed them too.

This is just a quick Friday Memo to let you know that there are no important events the week we come back (other than making up your class holiday parties).

I hope you all enjoy  the holiday vacation with your families!

Here's a little teacher humor for you...

Reading Resolutions

Some of you asked about Reading Resolutions after the staff meeting...here are the answers. If you don't want to think about it until closer to January, then save this to read later. :)

Image from BOTNS

In yesterday's staff meeting we talked about school-wide ideas to continue building a culture of readers.  We already have great literacy practices, but now we want to go further to help out students develop the habits of lifelong readers/learners.

One of the ideas I asked all of you to do is start out January creating "Reading Resolutions" with your students.  This would start with you creating your own Reading Resolutions.  I haven't written mine yet (there are still 14 days to read for 2012), however, I did write a blog post in June in which I reflected on my reading half-way through the year: HERE is the post.  In that post I noted how last year I read 20 non-fiction and only 6 fiction books and that I needed to read more fiction or I would become a really boring person!  I do not at all expect anyone to write something as long as I did for a reading resolution, but I just wanted to share that with you.

HERE is a post that Donalyn Miller wrote last year on her Reading Resolutions.

HERE is a post with some actual reading resolutions from students. HERE is another one.

I don't want to tell each of you how to do this with your class, you have to do what works for you.  I'm sure that several of you will also come up with some cutesy little form for students to fill out (and others can steal from them) and others (if it were me) might just use index cards or old-school paper.  I would share with students my own personal reflections on my reading for the year and then show them an example of what format they should write their's in (showing your own resolutions).

Thank you for all your hard work and for sharing your reading lives with students!

An idea found on Pinterest--maybe usable for 5K students?

Monday Musings - Week of December 17th

As I think about the horrific events of Newtown, Connecticut, I am thankful that each and every one of you will be in front of our students on Monday morning.  Our children need each of you more on Monday than you can even fathom.  Our students will have questions on Monday, and my hope is that the blog post linked below will help you with the questions that our students will have:

There Is No Lesson Plan For Tragedy - Teachers YOU Know What To Do  via @AngelaMaiers

We may never understand why this tragedy occurred, but we can still discuss it with all of our kids, whether they are students or relatives, and let them know that we are here for them to protect them, to love them, and to reassure them that we will do all that we can to keep them safe.

Friday Focus - Dec. 14

Great things I noticed this week:

• 2 students quietly used "rock, paper, scissors" to decide who would read first for "read to someone" during Daily 5.
• Singing/dancing while practicing properties of a square to the "Square Song"  The Have Fun Teaching YouTube channel has a ton of great songs to use in the classroom (great for educational brain breaks). 
• During math time I heard a first grader say, "Uh oh, I have an error." (I never would have though I'd hear a 6 yr old say that!)
• Students wearing a sticker that said "Ask me about what I read..."

Events Next Week:
Monday  - Elementary PD meeting at 3:05 in the Media Center
Tuesday - College shirt day
  I will be out of the building Tuesday afternoon at CESA 6
  K/2/4th grade Music Concert at 6:30 pm
Friday - wear Red and Green (instead of Dodgeland attire) for the holidays
Have a Wonderful Holiday vacation with your families :)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes

• Monday's Staff meeting will include: school-wide ideas to continue building culture of literacy, few notes on observations, volunteers/visitors, and a little fun. 
• We've already seen students starting to have a difficult time focusing on school with Christmas coming up...next week is only getting closer!  Keep in mind that the more you stray from "normal" the more the students will too.  As you're planning classroom holiday parties, make sure they are just a party and not a whole day event. ;) 

You don't want your students to turn into this ;)

• *Planning ahead for the New Year: Upon our return from Christmas break please keep in mind that you  will need to spend at least 2 weeks reteaching/retraining your students.  Please be ready to go over all your classroom routines and procedures and retrain your students
• Re-build/work on stamina in Daily 5
• Hallway behavior – We have all become very relaxed with enforcing Short, Straight, Silent.
• Transitions within the classroom – Be sure to have a transition routine from activity/subject to subject.

Blogs, Pins and Tweets...Oh My!

• Great article from Donalyn Miller: Keep Students Reading Over Winter Break
•  ‏@WonderPhillips
  Can't wait to share & discuss this @Wonderopolis, 'Is It Really Better To Give Than To Receive?' http://bit.ly/YWlxfo  #1stchat #2ndchat   
  If you haven't seen Wonderopolis, it is a really neat site with something new to learn everyday: 

Read the blog post HERE for this lesson

Monday Musings - Week of Dec. 10th

I see the school year as a marathon, not a sprint. There are long stretches at the beginning and end, then those long days where winter’s cold temperatures (even though it has been unseasonably warm….we’ll TAKE IT!) and lack of sunlight drain us. When viewed within the scope of an entire school year, 10 days isn’t really that many. However, 10  is the exact number of days that we have with our students before Winter Break.

• For some of our students who will say “it’s almost break” and lack motivation, it is time to push them & keep them excited and eager to learn.
• For our students who come from challenging circumstances at home and are feeling anxiety about not being at Dodgeland for break (and acting out because of it), it is time to show them how much you care & make the most of these next 10 days.
• For our students that just keep smiling & working hard each day, it is time to pull them aside and tell them how much you appreciate them.

In these 10 days, we have a lot of work to do & lots of wonderful learning experiences to provide our students.  We’ll continue to persevere as the professionals that we are! No matter what your title is, what grade you work with, or what you do, please look at these next 10 days as times to deliver the highest quality service to our students, parents & community.

Be proud of what we’ve accomplished with our students so far this year, but please keep the focus on learning in your classrooms. In addition, I’d encourage you to:

• Take a second and tell a colleague that you’ve noticed how hard they are working and that you appreciate them working so hard.
• Make time to reflect on some of the positives that we’ve had this year that may have been overlooked as we have overcome the challenges of not having enough time.
• Set a tone for your students that regardless of how much time is left before a long break that all of us will work hard and make the most of our school days.
• Celebrate being a member of our Dodgeland School Family.

Friday Focus - Dec. 7

Great Things I Noticed This Week:

• Lesson on Visualization as a comprehension strategy: students were all given a copied page from the teacher's read-aloud book to read and draw a picture on the back of what they visualized.  They then had the chance to discuss with partners. 
• Visual of a tube of toothpaste used to teach summarizing: "squeeze out just what you need and leave the rest."
• Integration of the current math unit skills into the science unit. This is what helps students make connections and see the relevance of the math problems they are learning to solve. 

I know you're all doing amazing things in your classrooms each day and glad all of my training days are done so I can get into your classrooms more!!

Events Next Week (I'm here ALL week!)

Monday - Student Christmas Gift Donations due to Marie

   Documentation Log training at 3:05 in the Media Center (if you didn't attend this week)

Tuesday - Grade Level Meetings (see notes below on our focus)

Friday - Staff Social Lunch

  Mid-Quarter (Yes, Already!!!)  Please send mid-quarter progress reports home

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:

• Tuesday's Grade Level meetings will be literacy focused.  Please bring your class reading profile charts (that list your students' F&P Benchmark levels) so we can discuss how you are meeting the needs of the variety of reading levels in your classroom.  You will also find an additional handout in your mailboxes today to read prior to the meeting.  As you read this, please think about how can we continue to create a culture of readers at Dodgeland? 
• On Tuesday Joyce, Jenny and Sandy and I all attended a literacy workshop at CESA 6 on Creating Classrooms Where Readers Flourish, presented by Donalyn Miller.  Miller is the author of The Book Whisperer, which I wrote about in this post.  If you've read The Book Whisperer,then you know she is already amazing and full of great ideas to promote literacy.  In real life, she was even better!! Here were Jenny's notes from the workshop if you would like to read them: Jenny's Notes  You don't have to read them, but if you do and have any questions, feel free to ask any of us (but we might get really excited and talk at great length!)

Blogs, Pins, & Tweets...Oh My!

• Do you have students struggling with summarizing? Get some great ideas HERE in a podcast (the webpage also has the transcript to read) from Emily Kissner. 1 easy idea she shares is to give students pre-made cards with ideas from the text. First have students put them in sequential order from the text and then have them sort them by importance so they can practice weeding out less important ideas from a text.
• "If we have data let’s look at the data. If all we have is opinions, let’s go with mine" 

  @Joesanfelippofc  

• 
  

and just for a laugh:

Monday Musings - Week of December 3

I recently read the blog post What the Kardashians Taught me About Reading (No, For Real)  written by Chris Lehman, co-author (with Lucy Calkins) of Pathways to the Common Core. To be honest, I love reading everything written by Chris, but I saw this tweeted several times and ignored it, because I couldn't care less about the Kardashians. I'm not sure what got me to finally read it, but when I did I read it several times through.  Please take a few moments to read the article HERE which is actually on Donalyn Miller's blog at Edweek (the author of The Book Whisperer that I raved about last year).








OK, you read it now, right?
Here is what stood out to me, that I'm still thinking about...

Brand Yourself as a Reader, So Your Students Will Emulate

Lehmann writes about using the Kardashians as a metaphor for how we can see our instruction in a new light.  He says, "we need to take a lesson from Ms. K and brand ourselves as readers just as carefully so our students have that vision to aspire to."

Are you known as a reader to your students?  Do your colleagues know they can ask you for a book recommendation or share with you a book they just finished reading?  

This has me wondering if you all think of me as a reader? I have certainly tried to by sharing my Shelfari account bookshelf on my blog and sharing my reflections of what I'm reading and learning about.  Do students think of me as a reader?  After reading this article (which I have actually read several times) I want to start my own little bulletin board in the media center to post a picture of what childrens' book I am currently reading to model for our students. 

There were several other great ideas shared in the comments section of the blog post that made me wonder if any of you would be willing to share your ideas on this in the comments of this blog post?  If you've never gone from the emailed post to the blog, go to johnsonmemo.blogspot.com and scroll to the bottom of the post and click where it says No Comments. This will open up a box for you to add your comment of ideas to share with the rest of us. 

Oops!!

I accidentally published a blog post "Too Little Time?" in this blogger account instead of my other one! My apologies to teachers for this cluttering your email...it was not intended for you!