Glow Day Reading Reward

We are big fans of flashlight Friday!  Typically speaking if my students stay engaged in their reading work and work silently during silent reading time, we get to switch things up by reading with flashlight on Fridays.  We get the flashlights from our science kits.  Students who don't meet the criteria go to a neighboring classroom to read while we use the flashlights.  I love Flashlight Friday because it's engaging, it's free and students get excited about reading! What's not to love?

Even better than Flashlight Reading is Glow Day Reading! A few times a year we set reading goals.  If students make those goals we have an extra special Friday with glow sticks.  For Glow Day I bring in a couple of my camping lanterns too.  We also use our flashlights.  Students can use the sticks as fluency trackers, light sources or just for fun while they read!  This takes place during our normal reading block so no extra time is used.  Students work so hard to earn this day.  It's engaging and the best part is students are so excited to read! I buy the glow sticks at the dollar store.  It usually costs me just over $3.  If you haven't figured out by now, my plan is usually to engage students, help them learn to their full potential and save as much money as possible.  Feel free to email me at amylabrasciano@yahoo.com if you have any questions!

Spring Fluency Practice

Nothing makes us happier then spring! It's time to brush up on our fluency. In order to do this we make fluency tappers out of spoons. It's quick, easy and my personal favorite, cheap! We use the tapper to tap out poems whole group to different rhythms.  We do repeated readings of the poems throughout the month in order to increase our fluency.  Students use the tappers individually to point to words while they do independent timed readings of poetry.  This keeps the classroom quiet during guided reading.  There are two different insects that we have made.  For one spoon we make a bee.  You can see it on our Poet Tree up top. 

You'll need: paper plates, spoons, yellow paint, black sharpie, glue and wax paper.

1.  For bell work students paint the spoon yellow on the paper plate.  When they are done they paint the whole plate yellow.  We let the spoon dry on top of the plate over night.

2.  The next morning students use black sharpie to draw lines, eyes and a stinger on the bee.

3.  The students cut wings out of wax paper and glue them to the top of the spoon.

4.  Students then cut the plate into a flower shape and add pollen to the middle.

5.  The teacher cuts a small slit in the plate so that the spoon can be stored on the flower.

When we are finished practicing with the tapper, it is put on display in the shape of a Poet Tree.  We place our poems from writing around the tree.  You can see my poetry unit down below.

Ladybug tappers are a personal favorite! They are used the same way as the bees above.

You'll need:  clear spoons, red sharpies, black sharpies

1.  Students color the spoon with the red sharpie during bell work.  I use bell work for a lot of our creative projects that might not please everyone during instructional time.  We allow the spoon to dry over night.

2.  The next morning students use the black sharpie to add the wings, dots and face to their ladybug.  Once it dries they are ready to start having fun while they read!

While we are practicing our fluency in reading, we practice our poetry writing during our writing block.  You can see the unit that I developed by tapping on the picture below.

Teaching Elementary Students About Native American History

Do you have the honor of teaching your students about the Native American Nations?  It's always one of my students' favorite social studies units.  Along with the honor of teaching students about indigenous people also comes a great responsibility.  It's very important as educators that we are always in touch with our bias and misconceptions about different cultures when we plan and teach. In this post we will discuss what and how I teach about indigenous people of the United States.

Here are a few things to consider while lesson planning:

1.  Use terms like indigenous people, First Americans, Native Americans.
2.  Indigenous people span a large variety of nations and areas.  Discuss and explain to students that they are all vastly different and cannot be grouped together.
3. DON'T dress your students up! It's not o.k. and we should all know better by now.
4.  Don't speak of Native Americans in exclusively past tense form.  We always discuss our local communities and some examples of how Native Americans in the area currently live.  If we have any families in the class that come from the culture of topic, they are invited in to teach us about their culture.  This is a practice we use when learning about all cultures.

First American nations are vastly different and diverse.  Due to this, my Native American Unit is my longest social studies unit of the year.  We touch on this unit during Thanksgiving when we read and learn about the true story of Thanksgiving.  We discuss this during our immigration unit when we learn who the first immigrants to the United States were and we have a month long unit in the spring when we learn about some of the different regions of indigenous nations.

In order to fit this unit into our packed schedule, we align the unit to our reading and writing standards.  I live in Florida which has adapted common core standards.

For shared reading we spend about two weeks reading about some of the different North American regions.  I align the lessons to these standards:

STANDARDS

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.2
Identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.3
Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.

In writing we spend an entire month creating informative pieces.  I align the lessons to these standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.2
Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.5
With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.7
Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).

The main regions that we focus on are:
REGIONS
1. Northwest
2. Northeast (Eastern Woodlands)
3. Southwest
4. Southeast
5. Plains

We discuss the areas and the natural resources that each habitat had to offer the people who lived in the region.  We learn the names of different groups who resided in the area.  We also learn about one nation from the region.

While learning about the natural resources we focus on these:
AREAS TO COVER
1.  Food
2.  Clothing
3.  Shelter
4.  Practices
5.  Art

While reading and writing, students gather information in order to answer writing prompts that I've given them so that they can compose a book from the region of their choice.  In the book, all on level and above level students write 7 paragraphs with support from me.  The task is shortened for below level students according to their needs.  The writing pieces  have the introduction, the five areas mentioned above, each with it's own paragraph and the conclusion.  Depending on the student, some of these paragraphs are shorter than others.  We start the reading unit one week before we start the writing unit so that students have had a chance to learn a little about the different areas and can then make their choice of what to write about.  Each student is given the opportunity to choose  their region of choice because it makes them more invested in the task and they take it more serious.

When students are done with their writing piece they get to choose a piece of art from their region to create.  They must learn about the significance of the piece that they are making before they get to make it.  Because we are on a strict budget, we use what materials we have on hand. I will show you the art below with the region.  Just click on the pictures when you are done reading this post to go to a more detailed post about the art work.

Southwest Rock Drawings

Plains & Southeast Animal Hides

Northwest Dream Catcher

Northeast Jewelry

This social studies unit takes a lot of resources to teach.  In order to meet all of the students' needs, I wrote two different social studies units to teach with.  I have a Native American Unit that includes passages from each region listed above, writing books and task cards.  The passages each focus on all the information listed in the post.  I also have a unit on specific Native American nations.  The nations are: Cherokee, Sioux, Wampanoag, Pueblo and Comanche. You can find these units by clicking below.  Feel free to leave any comments with lessons that worked for your class.  We always learn and teach better together.  Feel free to email me any questions that you may have. Happy teaching!

How To Improve Your Student 's Handwriting

How is your student's handwriting doing? If it's anything like I've seen we have a lot of work to do.  Over the years I've noticed that the more students are on hand held devices and inside, the worse their handwriting gets.  I think it's because they don't increase their fine motor skills the way they would if they were outside, doing arts and crafts and working out their entire hand versus just their thumbs.  

I've see improvement with students every year when I do the following.

1.  Set expectations.  Tell them you expect that their work is written neatly and hand it back when it's not.  You don't want to badger or stress students out, but you do want to encourage them to work towards a goal of better penmanship by improving on assignments.

2.  Spend a couple weeks going over lessons on how to properly form letters. If students have forgotten or don't know how, they will need your help.  I know you don't have time to do this, either do I.  However, a couple of weeks now will save a year's worth of headaches from trying to figure out chicken scratch.  

3.  Implement a routine where you consistently praise students for good penmanship and hand back work for improvement.  We implement a handwriting hall of fame in my classroom.  Once students work is continuously legible, they get to sign the hall of fame poster and receive a special pencil.  If their handwriting falls short after wards they are taken out of the hall of fame.  Everyone still in the hall of fame at the end of the years receives another pencil.  It really isn't time consuming.  Just two rewards for the entire year.  The poster stays up all year.  Every day when we share our writing, I give a quick compliment to those with nice penmanship and congratulate them for staying in the hall of fame.  If writing becomes illegible again, I speak to the student privately and tell them to work at it more.  It's very important that you understand I'm not expecting perfect writing.  I just want to be able to read it. You do not want to stress children out.  Just encourage them to do better.

I have a specific lesson plan that I follow when I launch my expectations for penmanship.  The first thing I do is explain the chart below to students.  I tell them expectations for letters touching lines and provide them with a nameplate on their desk with the alphabet to reference.  

Once we go over letter expectations we practice forming our letters with nice clean lines.  I used sheets from A Is For Apples to practice forming letters with clean lines.  I show the students the anchor chart header below and ask them to read it with me.  Of course they can't read it and we have a conversation about why good handwriting is important while we have a few laughs.  When we were done, we cut up our letters and sorted them into categories as seen below.  This way students took part in making an anchor chart that they felt confident about.  It also put the responsibility of assessing their work on them.

Once students have practiced their letters, we implement handwriting bell work.  I got these write and wipe sheets from Adventures Beyond Kinder.  Students grab the sheets when they are done with their  morning procedures and practice handwriting.  They can also grab them when they finish work early. Students can earn mini erasers for exceptional work.  This practice helps to build their hand muscles and skills.

Once we are done discussing letter formation, we move on to the bottom of the chart listed first on this post and discuss spaces between words and no spaces between the letters within the words.  As the year progresses we move on to capital letters at the start of sentences as well as proper nouns.  It would be way too much for young students grade k-2 to discuss this all at once.  When this time comes, I introduce students to our writing offices.  The writing office has charts to help students with capitalization, spelling and reference.  You can find my writing office below.

Building Engagement and Diversity Within The Reading Block

Diversity comes in many forms.  We will focus on forms of marginalization in:  race, class, gender, sexual orientation and religion.  This marginalization can come from our bias.  We all have our biases.  It's our job as educators to explore our bias and fix it before it affects our students.  It's especially important for us to challenge this bias because students may perceive that they don't belong in our classrooms.  This leads to decreased participation, withdrawal and/or outbursts.  If you aren't sure where your bias lays, you can check out a quiz that Harvard came out with to help you see where you stand on a lot of topics.

Let's look at some statistics:
We currently have 37% of people of color in the U.S.
11% of children's books contain multicultural themes or people.
Less than 6% of children's authors are:  black, latino or native.
I wasn't able to find statistics on diverse family structures, sexual orientation, etc,  but any teacher can tell you the percentage isn't very high.
40% of books about native Americans were written by Native American authors.
61% of books about Latinos were written by Latino people.
89% of books about Asian people were written by Asian authors.
25.5% of books about African American people were written by African American authors.

The most promising statistic that I could find is that since 2013 diverse children's books have risen from 14% to 28% closing in the gap.  This information was found at blog.leeandlow.com.

Filling our classrooms with diverse books makes all children feel included.  Books that represent our students and their lives are important in helping to teach children to explore their own bias.  You can discuss these feelings during classroom discussion while being careful not to interject with your beliefs.  We should also have books that teach children about diverse backgrounds and cultures.   In order to do this you can feature:  different races, religions, countries, abilities, and familial structures.

When choosing books you will look at two kinds:
One kind represents a student in your class. (internal)
The other kind allows students to look at people and cultures different from them. (external)
Most of the time, one book will mean different things to the children in your classroom.

Below you will find several resources to help you find different diverse book titles for your classroom.  Rob Sanders has included two teaching companions to help guide your instruction with two of his book.  I have pictured some of my favorites in the boxes below.  Lately my students have been drawn to the World Series by Oladoyin Oladapo.  She writes the most amazing books from dozens of countries around the world.  They are realistic fiction and teach students about different cultures in an engaging way.

Some of the ways that you can get diverse books into your classroom are:
-local library
-write grants (check your school district for availability)
-Donors Choose
-Garage Sales
-Good will
-Thrift Store
-Used on Amazon

Once you have the books, incorporating them into your reading block is relatively simple.  If your district sets out plans for you to follow, considering swapping out some book titles for more diverse ones while following the plans.  For example, we could compare "Pride" to a magazine article about Harvey Milk.  Compare and contrast the different formats while following standards and including student interest.  If you are left to your own plans, even better!  Make sure to keep track of what books you are teaching so that you can have a visual to help guide your choices.

To find a list of LGBTQ+ friendly book for the classroom click here.

It's also relatively simple to bring social studies into the classroom through reading and writing with informational text.  We hold a culture fair every year that allows students to explore several different cultures.  Parents are invited to come speak to the students about their cultures.  We do this during our reading and writing block and no instructional time is lost.  You can find information on the culture fair below.

A quick recap of take aways that you can implement immediately:

-quiz yourself to find your bias

-find diverse books

-easily use your old lessons or district guidelines while just swapping out titles for more diverse ones

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email me.

Lesson Planning Made Simple

Does lesson planning overwhelm you? Hopefully I can help you out with a few strategies and ideas that will simplify the process. Read below.

First things first.  You need to know what it is you are accountable for teaching. Make sure to have your standards printed.  Most states have either adopted common core or they have standards that are almost the same as common core but they changed the name so parents would stop complaining.  Whomever thought of that was a genius because it worked!

Before we go on, it's important for me to note that none of the resources listed here are affiliates or pay me to discuss them.  I've just used them for years in my classroom and I think they might have something you might be interested in.  The next thing I can't live without is my Common Core Companion.  It comes in handy when I need to differentiate, find questions to ask students or just need to understand what the authors had in mind. Most questions that I receive about lessons come from teachers who think the standard means something totally different than someone else because their district trained them differently or so forth.  It's a no brainer when you pull out a resource that explains five different ways exactly what the common core author's had in mind when they wrote it.

The next resource I use is my teacher planner from A Modern Teacher.  This helps me to sketch out a quick yearly plans as well as detailed plans.  There is a lot of value and research that supports thematic teaching.  I use the planner to plug in what themes I want as well as when to teach standards. It's nice that you can use almost any topic to teach standards in reading and writing.

When it comes to teaching standards look them over and start with the ones the students had more access to in the year prior or that aren't as difficult.  You can check the Common Core Companion to see the standards from the year before.  If you aren't sure where to start, seek the help of a coworker.  In one hour you could sketch out the whole year.  Your goal isn't to have detailed plans, but rather an overview that makes sure you will teach the standards to mastery. I like to start the year with Asking and Answering Questions in both literature and informational. It's an important skill for all learners to fill comfortable with. We move on quickly to retelling and finding key details.  Just remember that you have the whole year to teach these standards.  Take them apart and teach a small bit at a time.  I explain with more detail on my video.

Once I have the year quickly sketched out, I start to plan my more detailed lessons in my AMT planner.    Here's some unsolicited advice... Teachers have this habit of buying different planners year after year because we hope that the next planner will be the key to writing the plans itself.  O.k. so I'm being a bit dramatic, but I was guilty of buying a million different planners instead of just fine tuning my planning. Once you find a planner that you like, stick with it and fine tune the small things that don't work.  When you start over with a new format every year, you add to your workload of figuring things out.  For example, I started with a digital planner from AMT.  I loved that I could customize everything, the format was perfect for writing plans,  but I'm not so particular that I feel the need to print my own.  So the next year I bought a spiral bound pre-printed lesson planner.  It was the same format that I was used to because it was from the same publisher.  Now I fixed the problem of doing all the printing myself,   BUT I had resources that I wanted to add and they were falling out of the planner. The next year I bought a pre-printed binder from AMT.  This my friends was the honey pot that I had been looking for.  The format was familiar and everything that I had been using was included, I didn't have to print it myself and now I could just open the binder and add my resources so that I could use them the next year.  PERFECTION!

So now it's all about the details.  Once you know what standards you will be teaching, you can plan day to day.  Consider sticking with a standard for at least a week or so.  This is especially important in the beginning of the year.  As the year goes on, you can add multiple standards to the same lesson and grow in rigor this way.  You want to state:  What the student will learn, how they will learn it, and how you will hold them accountable.  For example:  The students will read "Grizzly Bears" whole group while the teacher charts the questions and answers they are discussing.  The students will work with a partner to record 3 questions and answers with accuracy in their reading notebooks.  (If you check out my store, I have more lesson ideas that are coupled with print and teach materials.)  When I first start teaching new standards or change grades, I try to write out one lesson from each subject in long format.  That means I type out word for word what I'm teaching, saying and what the kids are doing.  I write the questions for every lesson on a separate paper to keep with me.  This helps me to keep lesson planning shorter, but my teaching more effective.

Hopefully you have found a couple of tricks here to make your lesson planning a little more effortless.  All of my lesson plans are published on this blog from the previous year.  If you are a second or third grade teacher you can use what I published to sketch out all of your lesson plans.  This blog post will kick off another year of lesson plans and hopefully I'll be able to add more anchor charts and visuals for you now that I have the lesson planning portion done.  If you haven't subscribed to my e-mail, I would recommend you do because e -mail subscribers receive resources that are exclusive to them and support my lesson plans. If you don't get the e-mail pop-up, you can email me at:  amylabrasciano@yahoo.com and I will add you to the list.

Click below to find the first of last year's lesson plans.

Helping Children With Anxiety in School with Splat the Cat

Anxiety among children is on the rise.  We, as teachers, don't need a study to tell us this because we see it every day in the classroom.  Splat the Cat is a great book to start a conversation about how we can handle anxiety.  Watch the video below to see how to tie this book into standards.  Be sure to  check out my post on teacher anxiety if you think it will help.

If you are experiencing teacher anxiety, check out this post.