Walk, Talk, ROCK! A simple problem solving strategy for your students!

I recently had an opportunity to attend a training by the Diagnostic Center of Southern California.  I learned a new strategy to teach students problem solving skills that I thought was so awesome!  It’s called “Walk, Talk, or Rock”.  If a student has a disagreement or other problem with another student, they either “Walk” (walk away from the situation), “Talk” (talk through the problem), or “Rock” (do rock, paper, scissors).  It’s important to teach students these invaluable life skills.  I thought this idea was so clever!  Do you have a clever way of teaching problem solving skills? 




Feel free to download this poster and use it in your classroom by clicking here. 

Third Grade Goes Hollywood!

 Happy summer! We are finally able to exhale and join in on the summer fun with the rest of you who are off! Of course, on the last day of school when I'm anxious to hurry home and get my summer started, I found myself stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour. So, I decided to give my co-blog author a call and wish her a happy last day and we ended up gabbing for FOUR hours!

 What could we have possibly talked about for that long, you may ask (my husband will most definitely ask)? Did we talk about our summer plans? No. Latest movies? Nope. Good books? Of course not. We talked about school for four hours straight! I mean, who engages in a four hour conversation about school on the last day of school?! I think we may have to change our blog name to "The REAL Dorks of Orange County!"

Anyway, I thought I would take a moment to invite you into my classroom and give you a peek at what it looked like at Open House. My school had Open House a few weeks ago, but with all of the end of the year craziness, I finally managed to get the pictures uploaded and posted. I have been doing a Hollywood Theme for the past three years now and really like it! My kids film a movie Beth Newingham style and I play it during Open House. Since we have the movie showing, the Hollywood theme just fits. My students learn about the solar system during this part of the year, so I break them up into small groups and have them research a planet. Then they write a script pretending that they are astronauts on the planet they researched. We use a green screen and the whole bit! I film one group a day during lunch. I find that filming them during lunch is easier because then I don't have to disrupt class time for this project.  I end up not eating lunch for almost two weeks so I can manage to film all the kids. It's a lot of work, but the final product is worth it. In addition to the movie, a parent from my school who is an amateur photographer, takes my students' head shots. I wish I didn't have to cover up their faces because they look absolutely beautiful! Some students actually look like professional actors/actresses in their pictures.

Each year I add a new element to my Open House theme to make it better than the year before. I purchased the plastic popcorn containers at Target in the dollar spot and filled them with white flowers. Fortunately my mother in law has access to a whole sale flower place, so they ended up being pretty cheap! My kids also wrote compliments to each other on the orange stars you see hanging from the ceiling. Each student has a kind compliment from every student in the class on their star. I also write each student a kind note on their star. The kids feel so special when they come in the classroom on Open House night and see their star! One of the other pictures you see above is a package of microwaveable popcorn with a note that says, "Thanks for Popping in!" This was a Pinterest inspired idea, which I gave out to the families. The red and black movie curtains were made out of plastic table cloths. 

 

Next to the students' head shot was an autobiography they wrote about their lives.

The students also wrote their own "Fractured Fairytale"  after reading many different fairytales and fractured fairytales in class. The published copy was created in a hardback book, which was purchased from a company called Bare Books. The kids felt like professional authors! 

During Open House night, I provide my students with a check-off sheet where they have to give their parents a tour and show them everything on the sheet. I love this idea because the parents are so busy hearing about their students' work that I don't have to get stuck in any awkward conversations about their child's progress or which teacher they want/don't want for next year. 

I hope you enjoyed my Open House tour! Happy fun, sun, and relaxation! Yay, summer!

And Another One Bites the Dust!

I stumbled upon this great linky party from Amber over at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher. She wants to know what was great and not so great about the school year. I thought this would be a great way to reflect! Be sure to check out Amber's blog! 

 

The Great:

1. My Kids!

I have the most loving, adorable, sweet class ever! I will truly miss them. 

2. Classroom Decor

I kept my classroom bright, cheerful, and neat. I think it was a comfortable and inviting place for my students. Here are a few of my bulletin boards from the year. 

Brightly colored buttons were glued to the clothes pins. Next year, I think I will paint the clothes pins too! 

3. Hands-on Activities

I worked hard to keep my students engaged in meaningful lessons.

My students created these posters after learning about the different text features.

4. Literacy

I helped instill a love of reading through my book bag program. My students loved it! I had many parents tell me how much their child enjoys reading now. 

The Not-So Great:

1. Organization

I am still VERY disorganized when it comes to keeping track of resources, worksheets, and lesson ideas for the different units I teach. Some of it is filed away, some of it is in my cupboards, and other things are saved on my computer. By the time I get to that unit, I have forgotten what I did last year and waste too much time searching for it all. I would love to make organizational binders for all of my units. That way, when I find an idea on the internet or create something on my own, I can easily slide it into the binder that goes with that unit. I think this will work better for me than file cabinets. 

 I love the color scheme of these binders!

 

2. Reading Groups

I think I've improved in this area, but I hope to be better at teaching guided reading next year. I want to improve at being able to teach the different reading strategies and be able to better identify my students' needs in terms of what reading strategies they need help with. 

3. Paperwork

This also kinda goes with organization. I want to be better at completing all school related paperwork right away. I tend to leave it on my desk and forget about it until I get an email from the office asking for it. oops.

4. Challenging my high achievers

 I can easily help my struggling students, but sometimes I find it difficult to find activities to challenge my more advanced students. Next year I hope to have more activities to support these students as well.

5. Leaving on time

 Let's just say, the custodian and I are best buds. I want to manage my time better so that I can actually get out of there at a decent time. I'm tired of all the, "so did you sleep here last night?" jokes!

Reel in your readers!

Hey everyone! I'm so jealous of all of you that are going to be out of school soon. For some, it's only a matter of days before you get to enjoy summer! Here in the  OC, we still have plenty of school days left. 

My kiddos have been working on narrative writing. To teach them how to write more interesting beginnings to their stories, I first shared several different book beginnings  from real authors and we charted how the author began his or her story (dialogue, question, onomatopoeia, suspense, etc.). The next day, I gathered several (over 15) books and put them all over the desks and tables. The students wandered around the classroom and read the beginnings of different books using the "Fishing for Strong Hooks" chart below. They had so much fun and they're now using better openings to their stories rather than, "One day..." or "Once upon a time..." Feel free to click on the picture below to download.

Fishing for Strong Hooks

Happy Mother's Day!

Wow... just shy of a month since our last post! We have been in the middle of our state testing and are getting ready for open house that's in two weeks. I honestly didn't think I would have any time to come up with a Mother's Day gift, but I managed to squeak by with this little thing. 

 

I really needed to make a Mother's Day gift that wasn't going to cost any money because I have already purchased way too much for open house! So, I had my students create a paper bag book for their moms using brown paper lunch bags, scrapbook paper, and other embellishments that I found around my house and classroom. Some of them turned out pretty cute and others are, well, creative to put it politely. 

 

I used three paper bags to make the books. I stacked them together making sure that the openings were all facing the same way. Then, I folded them in half and stapled. That's it! Inside each pocket the students will write something they love about their mom. My students brought a picture of themselves with their mom, which will go inside the last pocket. We added ribbon for little pull tabs. 

Students added pictures with their moms inside the pockets. 

I know most of you are super organized and probably finished your mother's day gifts weeks ago. Not me. My students will hopefully get these finished tomorrow in time to take them home! Anyway, if not for Mother's Day, you can also make paper bag books for other activities going on in your class. End of the school year memory book? Word book or alphabet book for younger grades? I was thinking they would be fun to use when teaching figurative language. The kids could write the definition of a simile on the page and then put examples of similes inside the pocket. Each page of the book could be a different example of figurative language. You could even turn these books into states of matter books in science and have examples of solids, liquids, and gasses inside each pocket! Fun! 

I wish you all a wonderful Mother's Day!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Sunny Days in Second Grade! To help celebrate, Sunny Days in Second Grade is hosting a linky party asking bloggers to share their favorite birthday idea. Click here to link up!

 In my classroom, my students write each person a birthday letter on his/her birthday.  This is a great way to sneak in letter writing! I also write a letter to the birthday boy or girl to include in the book. For the cover of the book, I use those birthday awards that you can buy at a teacher supply store. I hole punch the corner of the award along with the birthday letter pages and attach them to a metal ring.  At the end of the day, the birthday boy/girl has kind, thoughtful notes from their entire class!

To help manage this, I have my parent volunteers hole punch the birthday awards and copy the blank birthday writing paper at the beginning of the school year. They count out the number of pages each student would need and paper clip it to the award. This way, when a student's birthday arrives, I can quickly grab the pre-made book and we're ready to go!

 You can download the birthday book pages I use for this here.