ESL Chat

I have recently discovered that I love working with students who are learning English as a second language.  It is such a challenge!  My brain is constantly working on how to best communicate with my ESL friends and also how to help them learn.

Actually I minored in Spanish, but they always say if you don't use it, you lose it.  "They" are right, unfortunately.  My Spanish is pretty rusty and I'm certain that everything I say is in present tense among other terrible mistakes.  Many of my friends are so helpful and I find collaboration so valuable with ESL students.  

And, when teamwork or my simple knowledge of Spanish fails, we rely on the Google Translate app.  It is free and so handy!  It took a week or two until I discovered that you can scan and translate.  This has been so helpful!

I did have an embarrassing moment this week when communication broke down, though.  We were reading a passage where a boy got nuts on his ice cream.  I did accidentally read out loud an inappropriate word in Spanish!  A language barrier can be difficult to navigate sometimes!

 As always, a sense of humor is a must in the classroom.  I'm so glad to have this experience and I love seeing how kind and welcoming my students have been.  It has been a new experience for us all.

We can do it!

This week was our first round of ISTEP testing in third grade.  I'll be honest, this is a rough time of year.  Winter seems never ending in Indiana.  You know it has been cold when anything above 20 degrees feels like a heat wave.  There has been a nasty stomach bug going around.  Lots of students and staff have been out multiple days, including me because my own kiddos had it.  The stretch between Christmas and spring break is always a tough one.  A lot of learning happens, but we are all just looking forward to spring and some warmer weather.

We took round one of our testing this week.  The paper/pencil constructed response portion of the ISTEP is given in our classrooms.  Because of this we must cover any educational posters or information that students could potentially use to help them with the test.  So all anchor charts, posters, name tags, multiplication charts, number lines, etc. must be covered or taken down.  We pull out the yuckiest chart paper (don't want to waste the good stuff) we can find and staple it up to cover our beautiful, helpful walls.  Something about this depresses me.  I don't want to cover or tear down all of our learning.  We build those bulletin boards together all year and it is a colorful snapshot of all we have accomplished.

To help us stay positive, we talked about our goals for the year and made a bulletin board (since we had to cover it anyways) to keep us motivated.  Our slogan for this testing season is "We can do it!".  Our big goal for the year is to master the Indiana standards and pass our IREAD and ISTEP tests and I ask the students to set a couple of personal goals.  Some of them choose funny or silly goals, like eating a sandwich in one minute or beating a video game.  Many of them chose awesome goals like improving their grades or becoming a better person.

We spent some time reading about Rosie the riveter.  Then we took photos and drew pictures to help inspire us even more to do our best.  I have awesome students.  We can do it!

Testing Time and ESL

It is a dreaded time of year in third grade (and maybe just generally for everyone).  February-April is testing season in Indiana and third graders actually get the worst of it.  Indiana requires third grade students to take ISTEP (2 times) and I READ.  We are all feeling especially stressed this year with our new Indiana standards, and a new test that is supposed to be hours and hours longer and tougher than ever before.  The test is actually so long that our governor is working on shortening it at the last minute.  Add to that a couple of snow closings and a handful of delays for sub-zero temperatures.

It is a perfect storm of stress.  When I'm stressed I drink too much diet coke and eat too much junk food (all the valentine's candy is long gone so I had to spring for some Easter candy early). And I sort of feel like my creativity is zapped.  Well, nothing will jump start your creativity like getting a new student who doesn't speak English a week before the big test.  I scrambled around today (my new friend arrived without warning) to find some activities for ESL students.  Our school has a subscription to Brainpop.com and thankfully they have an ESL section of their website.  Students can watch videos, practice their English, and take short quizzes on the app.

I also quickly downloaded a couple of free apps suggested for ESL students.  One is called Action Words and it helps build vocabulary for kiddos.  Another is called Fun English.   It looks great and comes with 2 free lessons and 14 games but you have to purchase all the additional lessons individually.  The free content is super fun and useful, though.  A Kid's Academy app, I downloaded looks like it will be basic practice connecting letter sounds with words while giving verbal and picture clues.  

I also read a short article from Edutopia today.  I love it when I read an article and it reinforces everything I've been doing!  I pulled out some old posters and hung them in the classroom to help my new student, but also to encourage my other students to learn and connect with a foreign language.  We will learn and communicate together as best we can.  Nos gusta aprender.

 

#edchat about Class Dojo

Being married to a teacher is exhausting because you work really hard all day (one on her feet is worth three in the seat, you know?) then spend all kinds of time outside of school prepping and grading and building your PLN (got to keep up with the #edchats and #teachersofinstagram meanwhile annoying all of your non-teacher friends and family all over social media) and then you get to rehash it all at home.  It's nice because we can relate and support, but it's tough because it also never seems to stop being about school.

Dickens when they aren't teaching.

I got an email recently announcing that I am a Class Dojo mentor.  While this has little meaning to many people it caused a small spat in the Dicken home.  I was super excited (there are stickers and badges and FREEBIES involved!) but the Mr. was not.  My husband uses Class Dojo in his kindergarten class like a madman (he wrote a blog about it), and he may have felt a tad slighted that he was not chosen as a mentor.  Prior to this email neither of us had known Class Dojo mentors existed but now it's out there and the Dickens are a competitive group of people.  All this to say that at our house and in our classrooms we love Class Dojo!

Class Dojo is a website/app that can be used as a behavior management tool and a way to communicate in a very positive way with parents and students.  We all used to use the old school behavior chart where Johnny moves his clip and misses recess.  A lot of educators are starting to question that method.  The amazing thing with kids is that they come in all shapes and sizes and they just don't all fit into that clip chart model. Class Dojo provides an alternative for the connected generation.

One of my favorite features is the option to message parents and send photos.  I try to send messages to relay accomplishments in the classroom and send the occasional pic.  I get the nicest messages back from parents.  I feel super connected and appreciated when parents message me questions or praise the job that I am doing.  Most parents want that involvement and feedback.  Thanks Class Dojo for making that possible.

Dinosaurs and ChatterPix

After almost two weeks, we finally finished all our hard work on our research papers.  The kids did such a nice job.  See some examples below.

We also completed a Pinterest art project to go with it.  They look super cute!

(Yes that is a stegosaurus getting eaten by a T-rex).

  A teacher's dream come true to have our science flow right into our writing and then a perfect art project to go along with it.  I love dinosaurs and I love these projects.

The final step once our research papers were published was to add a technology element to the project.  The students got to make a ChatterPix from their finished paper.  ChatterPix and ChatterKid are both apps that allow kids to take or choose a photo.  They can make up a silly greeting or use it as a digital element in their school work.  They loved it!  We lost a little steam in the publishing phase.  Typing is hard work for third graders!  But the promise of creating a ChatterPix helped us find the motivation to accomplish our goal.  ChatterPix is free on the app store and my preschool age daughters, my third graders, and my teacher husband all love it.

That Kid.

I have a challenging student in my class this year.  My friend provides daily entertainment and challenges. This is the kind of kid that you do not forget.  My friend makes you laugh out loud.  My friend sometimes makes you cranky.  Above everything else, this kid makes you question how to reach the unreachable student.  The truth in education (and maybe life) is that I cannot force a child to do something they do not want to do.  I can encourage, plead, bribe, challenge, inspire, threaten, punish, cajole....  But I cannot make a child do his/her math or listen in class or even remove his/her head from inside of his/her desk (yes that happens, btw) if he/she is really determined otherwise.  My friend has figured this out.  So what do you do?!  MINECRAFT.

It turns out my friend has a major obsession with MINECRAFT and everything that goes with it.  So, instead of trying to change the subject back to fractions, or conjunctions, I'm embracing MINECRAFT.  I spent some time looking for things to engage students with MINECRAFT and educating myself about this game, because my world at home is still basically Disney princesses. I found some awesome FREEBIES from TPT, including these editable bookmarks from a seller called Prime and Pi.

 I splurged on a paper craft item at Walmart, and we are off.  My friend is responding, but I am learning a lot in the process.   I discovered that MINECRAFT is being used in many classrooms to teach a variety of different subjects.  I'm planning a math lesson next week with it and exploring how to use it beyond simple motivation in the future.

It takes some effort to get to know your students, but it really pays off.  I'm sure this won't work forever.  Problem students can't be fixed by MINECRAFT.  However, sometimes they can be motivated by it.

Research Reports and Super Bowl Predictions

Last week I introduced research reports. We are researching dinosaurs. A little thrill of anticipation went through me as I wrote my objective for the week. Just the thought of my kids' excitement, and how much they will learn gave me a nerdy little chill. I have lots of great books from my years in second grade (there was a running joke during my master's classes about my love of dinosaurs) and the kids have been dying to dig into them.

This will be their first real experience doing research reports. I've done them before with third graders and you might think, research reports? Boring! The funny thing is 8 and 9 year olds can get on board with just about anything. We started on Monday, and they were so into it! I am excited to see how they turn out.

Meanwhile, I had to be out a day last week and I left a fun Super Bowl writing and craftivity for my kids to start with the substitute. I got this for free on teacherspayteachers.com.  Did I mention I LOVE FREEBIES! I'm pretty sure my kindergarten husband and my teaching partners find my love and sharing of freebies a bit obnoxious, but I love them! Of course all the kids (from Indiana, Colts fans, and still bitter about "Deflate-gate") were hoping to see the Patriots lose (see Tom Brady crying below). Poor kiddos!

A Glimpse at Martin Luther King Jr. Week

Apparently all the cool teachers are blogging, so.....

Last week in third grade we spent a lot of time reading and writing about Martin Luther King Jr.  We read a great book:  Martin's Big Words and watched a Brainpop Jr. video on the topic. We wrote about our dream and did a craftivity to go with it.  I've been walking by these guys for about a week now and I still can't get over how cute they are!

One of my favorite activities from last week was our guided reading groups.  We used a set of books I ordered from Scholastic to read about MLK and answer text dependent questions.  We are focusing on using evidence-based terms to answer questions from our reading.  There is a great free set of posters on TPT for this.  

Sometimes digging into a text with students can seem monotonous, but with an interesting topic, cute graphic organizers, and a specific purpose we can really do some close reading.   Soon we will need to transition these discussions into our writing.  Students will need to be able to read a text, respond to it in writing, and provide evidence supporting their perspective.  As third graders! It is asking a lot of them, but it is amazing when it all clicks.