Fire Up Conference

So many great presentations are the fire up conference. Here is the summary of what I learned and of idears I took!

Fire Up Conference Reflection

Session #1: The Importance of Teaching Creativity in the Classroom by: Ryan Hipp

Ryan has written two books- Kids and Music, Curious Glimspe of Michigan – I would love either of these two books J

·         We live in a very visual world. So teach visually.

·         Creativity brings out personality in students. It helps the students become who they are.

·         There is a fine line between encourager and facilator.

·         The Dot, Ish by Peter H. Reynolds (Want these books too) – can help kids learn about creativity

·         Things that prevent creativity:

1.       Negativism

2.       Control

3.       Overspecialization

4.       Fear of failure/ridicule

5.       Impatience

6.       Jealousy

7.       Apathy/laziness

8.       Uniformity/tradition

9.       Fear of change

Don’t allow the classroom to become stagnant-it is important for things to change.

Cool writing activity- dump out a bucket of nicknacks –allow kids to draw from to start up a writing activity

http://www.ryanhipp.com

http://www.delicious.com/hiphop

http://www.twitter.com/hiphop

http://www.facebook.com/rip.hipp.is.awesome

Session #2

Elementary Classroom Management –Dan Vandenberg

Some important ideas:

·         Read over every single kids cum before school starts and talk to previous teachers.

·         Welcome note to each student that is on your student list.

·         Be ready for the first day of school-always have extras.

·         Know the yearly curriculum and create a sequence and scope for the entire year before school starts so that you know you can fit in all the important information.

·         Send out a “What’s Up!” so that the parents know what is going on the week before.

·         Closure is huge at the end of a lesson.

·         Important not to leave out social studies and science.

·         Create open communication line between the parents right from the beginning.

·         Send home homework that kids can do: it isn’t a bad idea to create 3 levels of homework.

·         Discipline Plan: Write it out before school starts give a copy to parents and to the principal.

·         If a teacher has a discipline plan it makes you not the bad guy any more.

·         Change seats every two weeks!

·         Give jobs to all students.

Loved this session! Dan had tons of wonderful things that he presented to us!

Session #3 – Sure Wish I’d Know Sooner- Charles Bultman

·         If you do not have an elmo- video camera/flex camera’s are $25 they can make a good make shift elmo.

·         Hands out a tri-fold instead of a syllabus.

·         Shows a new literacy term every week with a cartoon.

·         FUN homework idea: Pepper the toilet and take one drop of dish soap. See what happens?

·         One Rule: Do nothing to hinder either teaching or learning.

·         If emotions rise during the discuss, “hang up” the phone and dial again later.

·         Do not be their friend stay their boss.

·         Do not tune out during a movie that is showing-stay focused or do not show.

·         Ideas for student helpers:

1.       Paper Hander outer

2.       Paramedic –help the sick out, took notes for the sick

3.       Attendance taker- highlight who was absent on the list

4.       Time timer Set- exact time left

Enjoyed Charles Bultman’s presentation…he had lots of energy and lots of good ideas for teaching especially for middle school and high school.

Session #4

How to WOW Moms and Dads in the First Month of School –Dave Sipka

·         Send letters out to the kids before school starts include things like: favorite color and a picture of yourself.

·         Write a letter to the editor the newspaper and tip them off about something cool happening in the classroom that would be awesome for them to come see.

·         Video yourself teaching and put it on youtube.com for students to watch.

·         Create a packet of information for elementary parents:

1.       Homework Packet-how long should homework take

2.       How do we handle birthdays?

3.       How do we collect $?

4.       Absent- How do we handle parents?

·         People love pictures, take tons of pictures.

·         Open House of classroom even if no one else is doing it.

·         Plan for a positive phone call home each night. First phone call home should be a positive one.

Some great basic ideas. But I was kind of disappointed. I was expecting a better presentation.

Session #5

Blogging

http://mrskisonsclassblog.blogspot.com

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this session. It inspired me to blog and post up all the cool ideas I am learning about and trying in our classroom. This will allow me to have on-line ideas of sweet stuff I have used, learned about and want to try out.

Here are some websites I learned about and want to try out:

http://bit.ly/fireup2011

khanacademy.org (database of resources)

quizlet.com (notecards/flashcards)

hippocampus.org  (For looking up topics)

Team/group blog

http://exploreressms.blogspot.com

rvlearningblog.blogspot.com

Cool Art Idea for Halloween

Loved how the students took the witches legs and made them incredibly funky to practice patterns and colors. The students also each created a different style boot made of black construction paper as well taking a ribbon to be the top of their pants line.

Here is one example:

Daily 5

Here are some of the daily 5 activities we have been using in our classroom.

My First Classroom Decoration

I took my students art from our introduction to plants and a review of writing in oreo sentences and created this bulletin board for our classroom to have up during parent teacher conferences.

Sorry We Missed You Note

We created a basic "sorry we missed you note" to go home with students who were absent.

Fly Guy

I love Fly Guy books and so do my students!

Example of Cool News Letter

Here is an example of the newsletter that Mrs. Brown is sending home everyweek to our parents.

Antomyns

Here is the cool song my students and I are singing about antonyms. The students love it. It is based off this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFubkdSGGFo

Students loved the hand motions and were singing as well as acting out as we went.

Justin Bieber Says

This is how Justin Bieber is used in our classroom:

The students were giggling when they noticed him on the back white board. The students were sure to quickly turn in their unsharpened pencils. Justin's memo's will change whenever there are new updates.

Writing Main Ideas with Supporting Details

Got this wonderful idea from Mrs. Brown and used it with my students.

Each student gets a saltine cracker and one toothpick. The student is suppose to make the cracker stand up with one toothpick. The kids won't be able to do it, so the teacher gives the students another toothpick. This still doesn't work, so the teacher gives the students yet another toothpick (we are now at 3). Some students can get their saltine to stand up now but it is not sturdy. Finally, the teacher gives the students four toothpicks and everyone saltine crackers stand up like tables.

This analogy is a lot like oreo sentences.... The table represents good paragraph writing. It needs a topic sentence or main idea (the saltine cracker) and it also needs 4 supporting details (like four toothpicks) in order to stand up.

The kids responded really well to this idea.

Here are some pictures:

 We will also be using hamburger writing in the future. This will be posted up as soon as I see how it goes.

Compliments Reward System

We are implementing a new classroom management procedure in our classroom for our specials times. We are doing this because our students have been very disrespectful to all our specials teachers and simple warnings have not helped our students behavior improve.

So students are now working to gain compliments from the specials teachers. Each time they gain a compliment they gain a letter in the work compliments..... One they have gained all 11 letters which they could easily do in two weeks if they had perfect behavior....

THEN THE STUDENTS EARN A PARTY OF SORTS.

Will keep you updated if compliments reward system is working....

Brad Pitt Says

Saw a great idea on Sunday while teaching Sunday School. The classroom we use for Sunday school is also a high school classroom.... And in it their was a picture of Brad Pitt on the board. The teacher had drawn a bubble from him saying: "Brad Pitt says" Then under that the teacher had wrote important annoucements.

I love that idea.

I am hoping to use a Justin Bieber or a Hannah Montana to give annoucements in our classroom.

Fall Leaves Project Continued :)

Students surprisingly brought tons of beautiful leaves in from home.

Students took so much pride and care into creating beautiful objects with their leaves. Some of my favorites include: lion, alien, and abstract art.

 Once students created their masterpieces. The teacher asked them to write about the process they went through to get to where they were now. They were asked to include the books we read, comparing and contrast them. They were asked to tell what inspired them and how their art turned out. They were also asked to write about their emotions after they created their materpieces. The students had an absolute blast and we had so much fun doing this!

Here are the students writing away:

Once student art was complete, I took pictures of their art work. I will have the pictures printed at meijer and will hang their picture of art with their writing. This will look awesome for parent teacher conferences next week!

My Students Think I am a Cowgirl

My students secretly think I am a cowgirl.

The students ask in a whisper voice if I am a cowgirl? Since then, I have snuck of number of various cowgirl appareal into my school clothes... like scarfs wore like bandanas, jean vest, and more recently cowgirl boots.

This is the drawing a student drew of me with the cowgirl boots on!

Plant Journal Observations

16 days ago our students each planted their own green bean plants. Some have grown wonderfully and others have not even sprouted.

Students wrote about the process of planting and watering seeds.

Students are also recording written observations as well as picture observations of their own plants.

Here is the cover of our observation book and here is our plants at day 16:

Fall Leaves (Books to Read and Crafts to Use)

Today we read Silly Sidney and Time to Sleep. Silly Sidney is funnnnny and Time to Sleep has beautiful pictures.

The two stories made for a great compare and contrast.

Students will be taking these stories and the idea of saving leaves...to collect beautiful fallen leaves. Students will use those leaves tomorrow to create animals or non-leaf objects.

Ms. Sass collected tons of leaves....

Here they are drying:

Then once done, students will be writing about the process of collecting leaves, creating an idea, to following through with the idea!

Student work both art and writing examples to come!

Assignment Log Creates Less Questions on Assignments Dos and Donts.

Ever get sick of students asking you the same questions over and over after you gave the directions explicitally what seemed like 12 times?

Ever get sick of students asking what to do when they are done, even though they know there options...

Ever feel like those questions are a waste of time...

I saw this wonderful idea on pinterest...

And I decided to create one for our students. The directions are always did you read the board before you asked me? Students are asking less questions about can I use markers or crayons and MORE questions about content!

It is wonderful and a huge time saver :)

Compound Words

Teaching compound words is tons of fun! Besides the compound Boogie... Mrs. Brown and I used these cubes to help kids put together two words to make one.

We created these blocks ahead of time in sets of 10 for Word Work in the Daily 5.
Students got the blocks in two different colors. One color was always for the beginning and the other color was always for the ending.

Then the student was to match up the words shown here.
Then on a worksheet they would write ______ + ______= ________________________

Number Line

Students went crazy over giant chalk NUMBERLINE!

Students used Holton Mifflin Math to add and subtract by literally hopping forwards from the highest number for addition and the lowest number for subtraction.

Want to Introduce a Lesson with Talking Animals?

Try goanimate.com

I used it for the first time today. I created an introduction to a centimeters or measurement using it. I had an elephant and a giraffe talking about measuring as well as going to Mrs. Brown and Ms. Sass' class.

The coolest part was when I included Harry, the alligator, who we meet during greater than and less than. The kids thought it was sweet.

Here is an example you can watch, to see if you are interested. It is only 1 minute long....check it out!

http://goanimate.com/movie/0ZsR4UqBeT-k?utm_source=linkshare&uid=0vAG5lj7ug10

Sentence Surgery

Students go nuts over Sentence Surgery....it is basically having sentences with two mistakes...either capitalization, end mark or spelling. The teacher wear a doctor's coat and a theses cope while modeling worksheet with students. The students look for mistakes and teacher models how to make corrections. Once corrected the students re-write the sentence correctly.

Here is an example of what an incorrect sentence would look like:

Is that your nute.
the boy has a cut backpack.

The teacher and the student would change them to say:

Is that your note?
The boy has a cute backpack.

Letter Writing for 2nd Graders

Here is a great idea for writing letters.
I found this idea on pinterest...

http://pinterest.com/pin/304972859/

Our students used this to write a thank you note to the farm that just hosted a field trip for us. Having the header, the greeting (hand wave), and footer does really help! Our letters turned out awesome :)

Book Wishlist

There are several books I want to read and/or purchase!

I would love to re-read First Days of School by Harry Wong. (Thank goodness GVSU made me purchase it.)

I really need would love any and all Jim Fay books :)
In particular, Love and Logic or Helicopters, Drill Sergeants, and Consultants or Quick and Easy Classroom Interventions.

I also hear that both Jim Fay and Harry Wong have wonderful website that I should check out!

Harry Wong's Site: http://www.effectiveteaching.com/
Jim Fay's Site: http://www.loveandlogic.com/

Teaching Compound Words

This youtube video was a wonderful introduction to teaching compound words. Students were so engaged and so excited. We ran along with the video twice :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0X7xMDXmc8

Youtube.com (search compound boogie)

Teacher will follow up with cube compound words that you put together to make compound words, then record them.

Mrs. Brown's Oreo Sentence Lesson

The teacher that I work under had an awesome engaging fun and yummy lesson today.

Oreo sentences.
All the students got oreos and they had to describe them.
Then students are asked to say how oreos and sentences are alike?

Students really aren't able to tell you BUT
The teacher tells the students.

Capital Letter, Meat (Noun and Verb/Complete Thought), End Mark
Chocolate Cookie, Filling, Chocolate Filling

The students were able to eat the oreos afterwards.

If the future students will be given an oreo at random times that they are showing oreo sentences. This will encourage students to use oreo sentences all the time!!

Introduction to Plant Unit in 2nd Grade

After a discussion with the other second grade teachers, I decided to start the plant unit with a touch, feel, taste, and smell kick off.

I brought in:
carrots with stems
asparagus
almonds
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds
corn with the husk
green beans
sugar snap peas
celery
apple
bananas
fresh spinach

I showed each item one at the time. The kids went nuts over it. I let them touch, smell and taste after I had introduced each fruit and veggie to the students.

The students were so excited --they were literally saying, "I love spinach. It taste so wonderful!"

Mrs. Brown and I plan to do a follow-up where we allow the students to taste lima beans and black-eyed peas. Both every southern and delicious, both something none of them have tried. Should be awesome!

Fire-Up Conference

The Fire-Up Conference has inspired me to start blogging ideas that I have used in past student teaching placements as well as ideas I will use in the future. More pictures, websites and lesson plans to come.

Website to try out soon:
quizlet.com
hippocampus.org
khanacademy.org