Happy 2016!!

I hope your first day back from vacation went well. How many wake-ups until the next vacation?!?!?

KIDDING, KIDDING!! 

May all of your new year's wishes and dreams come true. 

Well! I hope Thanksgiving was great! Now, we are on to the Winter Break. Want to help encourage students to write over vacation? I am sending home a hardcover white book with plain white pages and a list of suggested writing topics. Check it out. If you don't have a white book, don't worry. A journal would work just as well! Feel free to adapt this and make it work for you.

Ideas to Write About During Vacation

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• the best gift you got
• the best gift you gave
• decorations in your house
• the most unexpected place your elf was
• what you did with your family
• a family tradition
• a book you read
• a movie you watched
• a game you played
• a trip you took
• what you were most looking forward to doing on vacation
• what are you excited about doing when you come back to school
• your hopes or wishes for the new year

Looking for a creative way to get your students to be a character in a story or to encourage the home-school connection?

This website lets you "create" a book using a child as the main character! Check it out. It isn't free, but it is fun! Happy creating! Happy reading!

www.putmeinthestory.com

Hello! Big news on the blog front. I recruited the technology trainer in my district and she helped me post some rubrics under the writing tab. Check them out. There is more to come. We have all 3 genres for all grades 1-5. Happy searching!!

Oh my gosh! WHERE does the time go?? I can't believe we are back at school already. I hope you are having a great start to your school year. If you haven't started yet, I hope you are enjoying the last days of vacation.

I'm just sad that I didn't have more time to add to the blog. I will try to. I promise!!

Some new things on our agenda this year:

• The DRA 2+
• The Daily 5
• Reworking the Treasures unit assessments

And a new item on my personal agenda:

• Wilson 

One more thing: Yea for Tom Brady! That is the right call. Go Pats!!

 

Hello!!

Happy Summer!! We made it!! I can't believe it!! I hope you are enjoying it and not working too hard. 

The big news on this front is that I am now officially certified in Wilson. I didn't think I'd actually make it through. I even asked my instructor about dropping out. She basically said no--and good thing! Perseverance really does pay off. If you get the chance, I highly recommend taking it. I learned so much about the structure of our language. It really is worth it. I felt that I never had a strong foundation in how to teach phonics and this of course was the answer. 

If any of you are going to go through the Level 1 certification, or if you are thinking about it, please feel free to ask me any questions. I will be glad to help.

Oh my gosh! Where does the time go? I have so much I want to post and so little time! I hope to get my act together this summer, but I am teaching summer school, so who knows! Ha!

I did attend a conference with Irene Fountas as one of the keynote speakers. She was amazing. She was so inspirational and had a lot of good advice about how we think about and teach literacy. Some of the big take-aways for me were:

• a SHARED ownership for each student (in other words: Johnny isn't just the classroom teacher's responsibility or the special educator's responsibility, rather he is everyone's responsibility)
• remembering to make literacy a joyful experience for students
• services need to be cohesive 
• evaluate the effects of what we are doing
• the expertise of the teacher is crucial: she needs to make good teaching decisions while teaching
• let's get away from the term best practices and think about effective practices, because who is to say what is a best practice when considering individuals
• and my favorite: support students in how to be literate in life 

If you can, check out the book: The Continuum of Literacy Learning Grades PreK-8 A Guide to Teaching by Gay Sue Pinnell and Irene Fountas; and think about attending the Literacy for All conference in November in Providence, RI.

If you are on summer vacation, I am jealous!! Ha!! Seriously, though, may you enjoy every second!!

Don't forget to come back soon to the blog. It is definitely a work in progress!