Holiday Curriculum

Normally, I avoid the controversial topic of Christmas in the classroom this time of year.  School just isn't what it was when we were kids and I know that we must be sensitive to all faiths this time of year.  But as a kid, I always LOVED the holidays and learning about Santa and singing all the Christmas standards.  But none-the-less, I haven't felt comfortable doing anything red and green (if you know what I mean).

Well, this year I am excited to share that I have taken a risk and written a Christmas literature unit and am teaching the folklore behind many of the familiar Christmas traditions like Santa, reindeer, etc ~ and my 5th grade kids are loving it!  They have been eating up the folklore and have so many questions about the history.

I would encourage you to pull out some of your favorite lessons and share them with your class.  It's fun and your kids will thank you for what you do.  But what ever you do, have FUN with it!

Teachers pay Teachers Sale

I am very excited to announce that TpT is hosting a HUGE sale for Cyber Monday and Tuesday!  I will be throwing my own sale too to help you save even more.  With the exclusive promo code you can save up to 28% on my (and others) already deeply discounted materials!  This is HUGE!!

As a little extra surprise, I am putting up some new products on my store just in time for this wonderful event.  You can see some of those items now at my TpT Easy Lit Units store.

Be sure to visit my store and see what is being offered for sale on Monday, November 26th and Tuesday November 27.  You certainly don't want to miss out on this amazing savings opportunity.  So, shop your hearts out on Black Friday (I know I will), but remember to hold back a little extra for your self on Monday & Tuesday.

Hope to "see" you there.  I know you will find some Fun Stuff for your BIG KID Monsters!

Common Core

I was having a discussion with my principal recently about Common Core.  The topic centered around making the transition between State Content Standards to the new Common Core.  It got me to thinking about how different schools/districts are planning on handling this transition.  Are you planning to take a year or more to transition or are you expected to just jump straight into the fire. 

While my school doesn't plan to "transition" until we are required, I have been playing in the Common Core pool for a couple of years now and finding that I really like the Common Core.  I am looking forward to the complete change and hope that the madness isn't too insane.  I am in California, and our state has elected to add 15% to the standards.  From what I can tell thus far, it makes a minimal impact 5th grade.  Our biggest change for ELA appears to be the addition of Informational Texts to the reading standards. 

I am looking forward to some collaborative time with other teachers to really dig deeper into the Common Core.  In the meantime, I plan to keep having fun!

Classroom Books

Classroom Books are a favorite of mine.  I have so many now that I am running out of space to store them.  I absolutely LOVE to use them as a teaching tool in my classroom.  It was fairly recently that I discovered how amazing they are to use for the Big Kid Monsters.  I created my first one on a grammar skill thinking that it would be too babyish for them - boy was I mistaken.  They couldn't get enough of them.  Now I use them for all subject areas and I try to make at least one a month.  My latest book done for American History as part of my Jamestown unit.  Students made a Pseudo-primary source from the 1600's and I bound those together into the classroom book.  My students thoroughly enjoy checking the book out from my classroom library to read.  The one I am working on now is also for American History and the kids can hardly wait to finish their pages for display.  One of my favorite parts of all my books is having them all on display for Open House in the spring.  Kids enjoy showing off their pages to their parents and truly feel like the contributed to something that gives them a legacy.

Let me know what you think about classroom books for the Big Kid Monsters.  And until next time, Have Fun!

NEW Novel Unit Now Available

I am quite happy to announce that I posted my 3rd Novel Unit on TeachersPayTeachers.com!   It contains over 120 pages of content suitable for 4th to 6th grade students and is California CCS aligned.  It has been in the works for over 2 years and is finally completed.  I must say I got goosebumps when it went live.  Teachers and students will appreciate the variety of activities and chapter by chapter study guides.

A couple of titles that are in the works with the expectation of completion before December 2012 are The Giver and Phantom Tollbooth.  I am also in the process of writing my first complete American History unit on Jamestown.  This unit is the culmination of the training I received through Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute.  The unit will contain amazing hands-on experiential activities for the students and provides them with a kid-friendly reading resource for each lesson and is complete with teacher background.  My very favorite feature of the unit is that it is fully based on Primary Source research - which meets National and State standards not to mention CCS.

I will also be adding various folder games on the site.  I designed various games addressing a variety of reading strategies.  I am excited about sharing all of them.  Be on the look-out for these and keep checking back as I will be offering Freebies from time to time exclusively to my followers. 

So, check my store on TpT and let me know what you think.  If there are other titles you would like to see for novel units or if you have the need for other materials, drop me a note.

In the meantime, keep it FUN!

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Wow! Has time flown.  Next week I start my Parent-Teacher conferences.  I can hardly believe that we are at that place.  I am not sure how class sizes are at your school, but where I teach, class sizes are bursting at the seams.  I have 37 Big Kid Monsters in my class and my site partners are about the same.  This is hands-down the largest class I've had yet - and new kids enroll on campus each week.  I expect the number of monsters will only increase throughout the year.

I share this now, not as I am complaining (because I adore all of my monsters), but because at this time of year the management logistics can become problematic.  We have early release for the week, which essentially means the students get out 1 hour earlier.  In the time our district has allowed for Parent-Teacher conferences, I calculated that if I meet about each student, I can schedule time for about 10 minutes per family.  Now, I don't know about you, but I find that 10 minutes allows for a very superficial conversation about a student's overall progress.  It does little to create meaning for those academically and behaviorally needy Big Kid Monsters.

So, I thought about this situation long and hard and I came to a difficult conclusion.  I weighed meaning over volume and concluded that I will schedule 20 minute blocks of time and request meetings on only the 25 most needy students.  My feeling was that the remaining 10+ kids who are nearest proficient and do not pose severe behavior difficulties can either bypass meeting me or will have the option to meet after the Parent-Teacher conference week.  So, this year I sent home 2 letters: 1) requesting a meeting, and 2) requesting no meeting with attached progress report.

I think this was an excellent solution to managing class sizes and still communicating with parents.  I've already receive positive feed back from parents and staff who are asking for copies of my letters to do the same.  Time will tell next week if this strategy was fully successful, but I have faith that it will work!

In the meantime, as always, have Fun and Teach with your whole heart.  Those Big Kids Monsters need it - even if they out number you 37 to 1!

Ramblings About RTI

Up until last year, my children had always attended school in the same district where I worked.  I didn’t realize until we moved and my children started attending school in a new district how lucky I was to have personal relationships with all of their teachers.  I worked at the same school with many of the wonderful professionals who taught my children.  I always acknowledged that my children we challenging to teach.  So much so that I wouldn’t have wanted them in my own class because I worried about my own ability to educate them when I couldn’t even get them to do homework. (I say that with a smile because being a parent is far harder than being a teacher any day of the week.

As I said, last year we moved.  At which time I went from colleague to being an ordinary parent who walked in off the street.  I found it shocking how differently my children were treated at the new school compared to their previous.  To cut to the chase, I spent a great deal of time advocating for my kiddos educational rights last year.  And because there was such as huge disconnect between what I was asking the school to do for my children and what they were willing to do, I realized that if I was going to get this school to see things from my perspective as mom, then I would need to do more than say “at their previous school the teacher___” or “at my school we ___”. 

Being the person that I am, I started reaching out to people who knew me well and asked for advice.  What I came to discover very early on in my journey was that I needed to have a deep and profound understanding of a facet of 2 areas within education that I had avoided knowing for years – 1) The Special Education System & 2) The Education and IDEA laws.  In the past, these two areas of education belonged to the special education/resource teacher and the principal.  In my mind, it wasn’t my responsibility to understand any of it.  It was a foreign and strange world best left for the experts.  My role as the teacher was to “refer” to SST if I thought the kid might be eligible for testing and that was where my responsibility ended.  I am embarrassed to say now that I do not recall ever reading any student’s IEP before and I’ve had many of them in my class over the years.

To cut to the chase in, as the veil was lifted from my eyes as a parent about these two areas of my profession, I became not only a better mom and advocate for my children, but also a far better educator.  During the course of the year I slowly unraveled these mysteries.  I consider myself a very smart woman, and I knew that if I hadn’t understood some simple concepts prior to beginning my journey, then it was likely that most everyone else was like me.  I knew that the new school didn’t get it either, because if they had, we wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place.

Because of my unique perspective (teacher/parent) I have offered to provide trainings to the staff on RTI/PBiS and IDEA at my own school with the hopes of starting to change the system from within.  And I must say: it’s working.  The challenge is to push this enlightenment to the next level, and help the rest of my district especially the upper crust (you know who I mean), begin to see what changes need to happen within our district in these areas so that other families do not experience what I have over the last year.  The question I ask is:  How does one teacher make this happen?  The Answer:  Be like the parent who won’t stop advocating for your child until your voice is heard. 

As I walk my journey of advocacy for change as a teacher and a parent, I will share my followers my experience, my advice (if needed), and many of my materials to help you make the changes you desire too.  And as always, I will do my best for you to make it fun.