Journal Help

I am very passionate about teaching writing to my kiddos. In Kindergarten it takes a LOT of patience and modeling but looking through the journals my students kept this year--they made soooo  much progress in their writing. The first day most of them are barely writing letters and by the end the fact that they are writing whole sentences...well, I was very proud of them! :)

I am looping up with my kids to 1st Grade and I want to keep that momentum going. However, I do not want them to get bored with writing or associate it with a task they find monotonous (I already started getting the eye roles from the morning journal work-we have to write in our journals again!?). The supply list my new team came up with includes many journals and I'm looking for ideas of ones we can do that will be more exciting for my munchkins.

I do poetry journals once a week for the poem we are working on. Math journals never really worked out for me because by the time they copied the problem-time was up. I've heard of people having them glue in a problem and then answer it, but to me the journals should be more of a reflection of what they are learning. Maybe some sort of reading response journal...?

Do you guys use any fun kinds of journals that may help my students retain their enjoyment of writing?

You Might Be a GT Teacher If.....

I haven't done one of these in a while. I officially teach a stand-alone GT class (although this past year only 8 of my kids had been identified as GT before we started the year). We do test 4-year olds in our process. Some people protest that, but I believe that the earlier you identify them, the earlier they can really be challenged. I love being the one to lay the foundation for all those critical thinking concepts. There are some myths about teaching GT kids that I hear a lot. Like for one how it's easier....LOL.

So how do you know if you are a GT teacher?

1) Your kiddos have just as many behavior issues as other classes do. Maybe even more so if they aren't being challenged enough.

2) Your students struggle academically. It's a myth that Gifted means academically superior. In some cases, absolutely that can be true. But in my Kinder class for at least the past few years, I have had zero students begin day one being able to truly read. And even if they can read,  it's a natural ability-you have to teach reading backwards so they can learn the phonics rules which will help with spelling and fill in those gaps.

3) Your munchkins are very, very, very sensitive and there's lots of drama. My kids even know what that word means because I say it all the time. Someone taking your chair or you not knowing an answer on the test can genuinely seem like the end of the world!

4) It takes you sooooo long to prepare lessons so they can be engaging and novel. I spend so much time online (what did we do before the internet?) trying to find original ideas for projects. It is definitely a myth that teaching GT kids is easier--if you are doing it right anyway.

5) You have to light a fire under some kiddos. Many people think a child can't be GT if they don't like learning--I have several students like this in my classes every year. Not to mention there's a lot of literature out there on underachieving GT kids!

6) You will be asked questions 576 times per day. What does that word mean? Do fish drink water? If there were no people when dinosaurs lived, where did people come from? (how exactly do you explain evolution to a 5-year old :). I do very much encourage this, but boy, sometimes it makes it hard to just get through a lesson!

7) Your students really do try to incorporate their vocabulary words. We were talking about good citizenship the other day and one of my girls talked about "expiring her neighbors". I had to ask her a couple of times to find out what she meant-apparently she wanted to "expire" them to go out and help people too (inspire! :). Or my all time favorite-I said something sarcastic (I teach the kids about this concept-how you have to listen to an author's tone in determining the meaning). And he told me how he knew I was just being "psychotic"! :)

8) Your room is a little bit messier than that of the other teachers. We did an activity last week and I asked to use one of the teacher's drying racks--she didn't have a problem with it, they never paint. I'm not judging in any way--but I don't think I could ever make it through a whole year with no projects. How do you teach creativity never giving them an opportunity to show their learning in creative ways!

9) Your kids remember everything! Remember that time you made an off-hand comment about how you played in a snow forts when you were little, uh huh--they will bring that up 5 months later. Or that conversation you had with your neighboring teacher about how you have to split up the class on Friday-they are paying attention to that too. Now if I could just get them to remember to put their names on their papers! :)

10) You are just astounded and amazed at what these kiddos can achieve every single day.

 

This Is Not My Hat

I discovered Jon Klassen through the student book club I facilitate for. The book:

was on our list. The kids just loved it! I saw that there was another hat-related book and we had to check that out too. It's called:

The endings are great for discussing how authors sometimes don't spell out what happens at the end of a story, but you have to infer what happened. I also, of course, like the latter book for a discussion of the ethics involved. The fish gives many excuses as to why he is keeping the hat, even though it's not his. My kiddos wrote about their feelings on the matter.

The Cutest Story

Have you heard of:

 

I may be a little bit biased because you know, I'm a dog-lover--- but I think this book is soooo cute! It's basically a profile of different breeds of dogs, they are speaking from their perspective about their unique characteristics. And of course, they have a German Shepherd! My shepherd doesn't "herd" people like the one in the book, but I don't think my baby knows she's a dog at all, much less how she's supposed to act as a dog! She's not spoiled by the way....she's cherished. :)

I can see the kiddos writing from their pet's perspective or classifying the different dogs by their attributes. There are many possibilities! I love how it starts out with the puppy and its owners expectations for him and ends with an older dog who does all those things now.

Anyway, just thought I'd share! Hope everyone is either enjoying their summer break or at least close to getting there. I'm teaching summer school-not even a day in-between as a break! But I really like it-I like working with a different group of kids and really trying to fill in those gaps.

Exit Ticket T-Shirts

I encourage reflection from my munchkins on what they are learning throughout the day. A little more challenging is asking them what they have learned throughout the year. We always do a t-shirt where they can write some of the skills they learned in Kindergarten. They have all their friends sign the back of the shirt. 

Summer Bucket List

I don't really have one because between summer school, catching up on things like dental appointments and reading--there's not really anything exciting on mine. But I had my munchkins come up with a list for themselves. Can you tell I've drilled it into them to read this summer?!

A Letter to Next Year's Teacher

Boy, weeks like this were definitely not in the brochure! :) I'm moving classrooms (again) next year so I have to pack up everything-closets, cabinets, all of it-spent more money this week on boxes and tubs! I've gone home so exhausted every day this week plus I can't sleep at night because I just have this rolling list of things I need to get done. Even things that I love to do, like burning CD's of all our videos from the year (have to make 26 this year!) just really seem to make that to-do list really long. Add to that the fact that try as I might, the kids were just not in the mood to do anything work-wise. I tried, I really, really tried, but to no avail. It's just been one of those weeks!

Yesterday was the last day for students and since I had to start packing up and taking bulletin boards down, I did want to give them something productive to do. Their assignment was to write a letter to their teacher for next year telling them about themselves. Now, it was kind of a strange one because I will probably be the teacher next year for most of them. This first one was my favorite--we talk so much about taking risks and being original (I actually gave an award this year for our most unique student. Another teacher said it sounded like a euphemism for maybe challenging-but it absolutely wasn't. Unique is a compliment to my students!). I think that definitely came through for some of them-forgive the handwriting-I had already packed my pencil sharpener so I just let them use markers:

We watch a Schoolhouse Rock about adjectives and it talks about a man who has a boyish face-now she uses "girlish" everywhere!

I need help with multiplying and not reading like a robot. :)