October Teacher Talk 2019

Posted by Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

It's October Teacher Talk Time.....Well, the first month of school is over and it's BOO-tober, time for Halloween fun, Columbus Day, Stop Bullying Month and beautiful fall weather.  We have so many great tips and ideas for you from awesome educators. Be sure to take a look at what everyone has to say.

If you're interested in joining this unique group of teacher entrepreneurs, blogging buddies and/or our blog linky, sign up here....The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative. If you decide to join, be sure to mention one of our names.

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Bullying No Way!

By Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

Monthly Read Aloud Books for We Teach So Hard Podcasts about Bullying and how to help stop it from happening.

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 Bullyproof Your Kids for Life
By Retta London of Rainbow City Learning 

 Using a great read-aloud to start the conversation this month about dealing with bullies.

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Stand Up to Bullying 
By Kathie Yonemura of Tried and True Teaching Tools 

 Bullying. It has become such a buzz word that is often casually thrown around. October is National Bullying Prevention Month and picture books are the perfect way to elicit conversations.
 

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   The Empathy Project Update: Explorations into Empathy, Part 2
By Tracy Willis of Wild Child Designs 

 The 2nd installment in The Empathy Project, this post uses a visible thinking routine and a popular picture book to teach upper elementary students about empathy.

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 Surprise!

By Renee Heiss of All American Teacher Tools

 Surprises provide the best motivation

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 Pause...In the Neighborhood
By Gini Musmanno of Reading Spotlight 

 Pause.. for a moment in Mister Rogers neighborhood. He still has much to teach us today.


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 Independent Reading Success in the Classroom
By Marcy Howe of It's A Teacher Thing 

 Learn tips for creating a successful independent reading program in your classroom.

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 Fall into Figurative Language
By Charlene Tess of Charlene Tess

 Fall is the perfect season to study figurative language. 


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 Real World Math
By Michelle Webb of Teaching Ideas For Those Who Love Teaching

How to incorporate real world math into your daily teaching.

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April Teacher Talk

Posted by Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

It's April already, the school year is almost over.  Now it's time to look forward toward spring vacation if it hasn't already come and gone. Stop by our blog linky and see what great tips and advice are there just for you.

If you're interested in joining this unique group of teacher entrepreneurs, blogging buddies and/or our blog linky, sign up here....The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative. If you decide to join, be sure to mention one of our names.

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 Spring Activities

By Retta London of Rainbow City Learning

Begin with mud and splash into fun learning this Spring.

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Music to Calm the Soul and Enhance Learning

By Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

“Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.” –Ludwig van Beethoven. Why is it that for many of us, music is an essential part of our personal lives yet when we go to work or school we turn it off?

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 The Elephant in the Classroom

By Gini Musmanno of Reading Spotlight 

 Where is the elephant in the classroom? The recent college admissions scandal might give us a clue.

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 Scaredy Squirrel - Mentor Text

By Alison Monk of The Literacy Garden 

 What happens when Scaredy Squirrel visits YOUR home? This free writing activity will get your writers excited!

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 I Feel Bad for People Who Say They Feel Badly

By Charlene Tess of Charlene Tess 

 Do you know how to decide between the words bad and badly? Many people don't.

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 7 Tips to Help Students Revise Their Essay

By Sally Hansen of Purposeful Plans 

 Try out these 7 helpful tips to guide your students during the revising phase. Your writers can use these tips throughout during the writing process.

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 How to Start Book Clubs in Your Classroom

By Marcy Howe of It's a Teacher Thing 

 Are you considering using book clubs in your classroom? Learn five things you should do before you introduce book clubs to your class.

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 Make Mistakes on Purpose

By Erik Arndt of Insights to English

 When students have the opportunity to correct the teacher, it reinforces that language point, assesses the students' understanding of that language point, gives the learner confidence, and teaches students to problem-solve.

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 Exploring Patterns With Project-Based Learning: Rotations, Reflections & Translations

 By Tracy Willis of Mossy Oak Musings

Explore 4th and 5th grade geometry concepts with project-based learning. It's always surprising who excels with this type of project, and who finds them challenging. This one doesn't disappoint!

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Whole Body Learning

By Kathie Yonemura of Tried and True Teaching Tools

 Geometry was a daunting subject for me in high school. So when I started teaching, I was determined to think of a way to teach geometry that was fun and interactive.

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 Be sure to visit all of our teachers for some awesome ideas to use with your students.

 

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Love Letters & Brussel Sprouts: Odes, Point-of-View and Visible Thinking

You're my funny valentine, sweet comic valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable

Yet, you're my favorite work of art.

-Rodgers & Hart

Growing up, I never crushed on the cutie patooties or the hottie patotties.  I fell for the guys who could make me laugh hysterically or make me swoon by reciting poetry.  So, it's only natural that as a teacher, the valentine books I love the most incorporate poetry and humor.  That's what led me to Love Letters by Arnold Adoff.  This book is comprised of funny, touching, and yet untraditional love letters written as poems and odes.  The letters are addressed to teachers, classmates, family members, or to"fill-in-your-own-name," which is the perfect poem for those people who have a harem of admirers.  The poems in this book stand independently and could be shared one at a time over the course of a couple of weeks. 

Adoff uses fantastic imagery that any child can relate to,  "I love you more than peanut butter cookies crumble. I  love you more than yellow bees bumble. I also love you more than dark thunder clouds rumble..."  These lines are from the poem entitle "Dear Tall Girl at the Front Table," one of my favorites in the book.

Every year, I share this book with my students.  My fourth and fifth graders love it and "get" the humor in it. I use it to introduce odes and anti-odes. We brainstorm a list of ideas for our own odes, for example: A  pet dog, cat, guinea pig, etc., pepperoni pizza, mom's lasagna, brussel sprouts, broccoli, piano, hockey stick, soccer ball, x-box, play station, Legos, teddy bear, favorite book, favorite book character, etc. 

After we've made our collaborative list, they choose a few of the topics that grab them, and sort them into the categories "things I love," and "things I hate. Once they've done this type of thinking, they zoom in one topic and dig deeper into their feelings about the topic. Here's an example:

Then they explore point-of-view. In Love Letters, the poems are sometimes companion poems that explore different view points. So if I'm writing about brussel sprouts, I write about own point-of-view and how much I loathe them. And then, if the brussel sprouts were to write a letter back to me, what would they say? As a poet, I explore both viewpoints.

Finally, my students begin their rough drafts. We spend about two sessions drafting and revising. I make sure to include a mini-lesson about line breaks, because fourth and fifth grade students still tend to write poetry in paragraph form. We do a lot of reading aloud to ourselves using our whisper phones. By the way, this is AWESOME fluency practice! I teach my kiddos that poetry is actually an art form that is meant to be read aloud. So when they choose to read poetry books or their own poems during independent reading time, I let them go hog wild with whisper phones. 

I should add that I model each pre-writing, drafting and revision step for my students. Here are two examples of poems that I wrote with them in order to model the process:

 Dear Macaroni and Cheese,

I looooove your cheesy goodness.

I am overwhelmed by your

bubbling orangeiness.

I love you more than a dog

loves its bone,

more than a baby

loves its bottle.

Your crispy cracker crumbs,

golden like the summer sun,

send me over the moon.

I will love you forever.

Love,

Your Hungry Fan

(By Ms. Willis)

My students identify comparative statements (simile-like), personification, alliteration, and descriptive language as I write and we discuss.  Then, I model an anti-ode.  You can also see it below:

  

Dear Brussel Sprouts,

I loathe your army-green leafy heads

wrapped tightly on my dinner plate.

No bacon or butter

can disguise your nastiness,

your cruciferous metallic taste.

You look like mutant baby heads.

And on dark and lonely nights,

you hold me hostage

at the supper table,

long after the dishes have been done,

and the kitchen

has been cleaned.

 Signed with disgust,

I'll-eat-any-other-vegetable-other-than-you Girl

After students have published their poems on the special valentine stationery I provide for them, we use an envelope template and make envelopes for our poems. They address the envelopes. They put their published poems in their envelopes, and we display them for everyone to read.

Valentine's Day can be a tricky holiday in upper elementary. Hormones have begun to rage, friendships are precariously navigated, and feeling are easily hurt. This project is one of my students' favorites, year after year. It's funny, creative, and non-threatening (and Common Core aligned)!

To learn more about using it in your own classroom, simply click on the picture.

If you're looking for more upper elementary valentine resources, you might also check these out. Two of them are free!

 





October Teacher Talk

Posted by Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

It's October Teacher Talk Time.....Well, the first month of school is over and it's BOO-tober, time for Halloween fun, Columbus Day and beautiful fall weather.  We have so many great tips and ideas for you from awesome educators. Be sure to take a look at what everyone has to say.

If you're interested in joining this unique group of teacher entrepreneurs, blogging buddies and/or our blog linky, sign up here....The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative. If you decide to join, be sure to mention one of our names.
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Bullies Not Welcome
By Retta London of Rainbow City Learning

Some tips for creating a safe and accepting bully free zone in your classroom.
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Interactive, Mentor & Read Aloud? Oh My! Choose Your Next Read Aloud
By Tracy Willis of Wild Child Designs

Interactive read aloud? Mentor text? What are these and how do they elevate your reader's workshop? This post explains how they "feed the beast" and take your reader's workshop to the next level.
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Halloween Spooks
By Deann Marin of Socrates Lantern

October is the perfect time to get those creative juices flowing in your students.
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Bring on FALL!
By Wendy McCarty of 1st Grade Fireworks

Bring on FALL! We are ready!
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Prefixes and Suffixes: Ready to Use Lesson Presentation
By John Dsouza of John Dsouza

A Lesson Presentation that presents Teaching Resources in Prefixes and Suffixes. This presentation presents perfect teaching resources that will help the teachers to walk into the classroom with ready to teach confidence as it covers all that a teacher and a student need for a vocabulary lesson on Prefixes and Suffixes.
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Make the Connection! Getting Parents and Speech Pathologists to Work 
Together.
By Susan Berkowitz of Susan Berkowitz

Make the Connection is my new book for bringing parents and professionals together as partners in working on teaching a nonverbal child to communicate.
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Be Lear Me. Fall is Great! Using Leaves in Science Investigations
By Vicki Rauch of Scipi

How do you save fall leaves so they can be mailed?
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One Student I Will Never Forget
By Gini Musmanno of Reading Spotlight

I will always remember her-- she was the only student I ever had who wept hysterically in my class. I learned a lesson about the fragile ego of students who fail, which I knew, but failed to fully comprehend.
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     "I Spy" Collage Project
By Margo Gentile of  Margot Gentile

What's more fun than searching for pictures in an "I Spy" type of collage? Making one yourself and then "trying it out" on your friends! You'll find complete directions and a student's finished product here. 
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All About Spelling: Independent Product Review
By Thia Triggs of Print Path

One of the things I was surprised to find out when I started reading handwriting research is that handwriting is the most significant obstacle to the quality and quantity of written language composition. Now I’m finally going to get to my point: guess what the second most significant obstacle to written language composition is? You got it, spelling. 
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Tips on Using Comparative and Superlative Adjectives and Adverbs
By Charlene Tess of Charlene Tess

Learning to compare adjectives and adverbs is easy. Here are some tips to help you get it right every time.
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Simple Ways to Build Relationships With Your StudentsBy Marcy Howe of It's a Teacher Thing

Learn easy ways to build relationships with your students and create a positive classroom environment.
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Questioning Strategies
By Lisa Robles of Lisa TeachR's Classroom

Here is a quick explanation of the DoK levels of questioning
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