Monday, February 27, 2012
Huge Leap Day Sale on TeachersPayTeachers!
It is time to celebrate that once every 4 years day that is right around the corner... Leap Day! Currently, all of my products are 20% off but on February 29th, TPT will add an additional 10% off by using the code found on the banner below! It is a win-win situation and we hope to see you there. Tons of sellers already have products marked on sale and are spreading the word! Don't miss out!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Another useful website
I recently ran across a website that it pretty useful and thought I would share it. The address is
The dictionary part of this website is student friendly so the definitions are easier for your kiddos to understand.
The thesarus part of the website unfortunately leaves much wanted so I would probably use thesaurus.com over this website.
There is also a rhyming option for students to use which would be very useful when it comes to creating rhyming poems. Students have the opportunity to click on rhyming words to see what they mean as well.
The games are simple but good vocabulary practice. These games focus on spelling (Alphabot), word knowledge (Robo-Bee), and synonyms/antonyms (BigBots). Unfortunately, the last game was blocked for my students but not for me. The jumble game has them unscramble simple words for clues to solve a riddle (Jumble Kids).
The Build Your Own Dictionary section is pretty interesting. Students can create words and then enter the usage (noun, verb etc.), the definition and an example sentence. This would be great for students who are studying prefixes, suffixes, and roots as they create their own words to show understanding of the meanings. This would also be a fun activity for those classes using the novel Frindle. You can see a list of previous words created by individuals from all over and you could have the students dissect the created words and look at the user-created definitions to see where they came up with them based on the word!
There is a nice tab dedicated to educators which provides some interesting information. Again, some of the links would go great with the novel Frindle, as they could read about how words get added to the dictionary and so on.
I hope this website proves to be a fun and engaging place for your students to learn even more about words! Enjoy!
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Liebster Award
Thank you Amy of Science Stuff and Ann Marie of Innovative Connections for nominating my blog for the Liebster Award!
Here's a little background on the award:
Liebster means “dearest” in German, and the award is intended to help up-and-coming blogs get the attention they deserve.
As with any award, there is a bit of ceremony involved. In order to accept the award, we must do the following:
1. Copy and paste the award on our blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award.
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs.
What a privilege to accept this award and I am passing it on to the following blogs!
Mrs. Johnson's First Grade
Third Grade Etc.
Science Etc.
Go Figure with Scipi
Joy of Teaching
Here's a little background on the award:
Liebster means “dearest” in German, and the award is intended to help up-and-coming blogs get the attention they deserve.
As with any award, there is a bit of ceremony involved. In order to accept the award, we must do the following:
1. Copy and paste the award on our blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award.
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs.
What a privilege to accept this award and I am passing it on to the following blogs!
Mrs. Johnson's First Grade
Third Grade Etc.
Science Etc.
Go Figure with Scipi
Joy of Teaching
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Standardized Testing Blues
Now that Christmas Break is almost over and the count down to the STAAR (or whatever test your state does) has begun... I'm beginning to feel the Standardized Testing Blues.
STAAR is new to our state this year (replacing TAKS) and so far it has been very disorganized from this Reading Teacher's point of view. There will be a STAAR reading test but throughout the year all focus has been on Science and Math. Both subjects have had a multitude of benchmarks so they can see what the test will look like and the kids can begin to become familiar to the new language and set up of the test but there has been nothing for reading.
Finally, the last week before Christmas Break they released a Reading test... awesome... the worst week possible for those kids to see a hard test for the very first time. Also, Math and Science were given all kinds of resources to teach from this year and Reading was given nothing. I have had to either use old TAKS materials which are no where near what STAAR will be now or make everything on my own. I'm a little miffed about it.
Now what I'm hating about STAAR....
Math and Science seem to be pretty straight forward in their questions and not completely confusing in their wording. Sounds right with straight forward subjects. Now reading is a gray area where you have to dissect and make connections and understand. So why are they making the actual understanding of the questions part of the test??? Students came to me with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade reading levels yet the questions sound like a junior high. They call it "upping the rigor" but all I see is where we are no longer even teaching a skill but they have to decipher the question before they can even begin. Now add the much much harder questions and then they put a 4 hour limit on the entire test?? Really? So my 3rd grade reading level students will have to read 4-5 passages with extremely difficult questions in 4 hours? What ever happened to having time to think about what you are reading and make connections? Not to mention those students who need to read it a few times to get it or read parts over again will not have the time. I was even told that someone at a STAAR training said not to teach the kids to write strategies throughout the test because they won't have the time. Are you kidding me? Maybe at high school I would expect them to be able to comprehend without writing a single note or taking time to think it through but we are talking about 10 year olds here. Shouldn't they have to learn how to make those mental connections and work through a passage before being expected to just fly through it in 4 hours no problems?
It's not that I don't want my students to be challenged, I challenge them every day in the classroom. But I think there is a difference between "Do you know this skill?" and "Can I write a way above you in language question and have you figure out all the confusing nonsense before your time runs out?" I get that we need "tests" to show the kids are learning but this test is not set up so that all students have a chance for success. It will work for those bright students who get everything quickly. I don't know what has happened in the recent years to make reading levels so much lower when they come to me each year but I don't see TAKS or STAAR improving this problem.
Here is an example of the difference:
How TAKS would test figurative language:
"Following her heart" in paragraph 15 means that Amanda will.....
How STAAR tests figuarative language:
The author's use of figurative language in paragraph 15 emphasizes that....
Now my low readers will have to look in paragraph 15 and decide if they need to look for a metaphor, a simile, an idiom, an adage, personification, or an onomatopoeia.
My question, we don't want to teach to the test but how can I get a student prepared for a question like that if I don't know they are going to throw in the word "emphasizes" or won't give an example anymore. I don't think it is right to keep students in the dark about how a question can be worded when that one word will mess everything up for those low readers.
We were told the key to STAAR is to try to think of how many different ways they could ask about one objective. I'm so busy trying to get my low readers to understand the concepts that it is becoming a major challenge to try to fathom what they might have come up with. Teachers have to become psychics now instead of teaching reading skills and helping students improve their reading abilities.
Sorry for the long rant... I'm just having a moment and wanted to vent :)
Good luck in your classroom in the months to come!
STAAR is new to our state this year (replacing TAKS) and so far it has been very disorganized from this Reading Teacher's point of view. There will be a STAAR reading test but throughout the year all focus has been on Science and Math. Both subjects have had a multitude of benchmarks so they can see what the test will look like and the kids can begin to become familiar to the new language and set up of the test but there has been nothing for reading.
Finally, the last week before Christmas Break they released a Reading test... awesome... the worst week possible for those kids to see a hard test for the very first time. Also, Math and Science were given all kinds of resources to teach from this year and Reading was given nothing. I have had to either use old TAKS materials which are no where near what STAAR will be now or make everything on my own. I'm a little miffed about it.
Now what I'm hating about STAAR....
Math and Science seem to be pretty straight forward in their questions and not completely confusing in their wording. Sounds right with straight forward subjects. Now reading is a gray area where you have to dissect and make connections and understand. So why are they making the actual understanding of the questions part of the test??? Students came to me with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade reading levels yet the questions sound like a junior high. They call it "upping the rigor" but all I see is where we are no longer even teaching a skill but they have to decipher the question before they can even begin. Now add the much much harder questions and then they put a 4 hour limit on the entire test?? Really? So my 3rd grade reading level students will have to read 4-5 passages with extremely difficult questions in 4 hours? What ever happened to having time to think about what you are reading and make connections? Not to mention those students who need to read it a few times to get it or read parts over again will not have the time. I was even told that someone at a STAAR training said not to teach the kids to write strategies throughout the test because they won't have the time. Are you kidding me? Maybe at high school I would expect them to be able to comprehend without writing a single note or taking time to think it through but we are talking about 10 year olds here. Shouldn't they have to learn how to make those mental connections and work through a passage before being expected to just fly through it in 4 hours no problems?
It's not that I don't want my students to be challenged, I challenge them every day in the classroom. But I think there is a difference between "Do you know this skill?" and "Can I write a way above you in language question and have you figure out all the confusing nonsense before your time runs out?" I get that we need "tests" to show the kids are learning but this test is not set up so that all students have a chance for success. It will work for those bright students who get everything quickly. I don't know what has happened in the recent years to make reading levels so much lower when they come to me each year but I don't see TAKS or STAAR improving this problem.
Here is an example of the difference:
How TAKS would test figurative language:
"Following her heart" in paragraph 15 means that Amanda will.....
How STAAR tests figuarative language:
The author's use of figurative language in paragraph 15 emphasizes that....
Now my low readers will have to look in paragraph 15 and decide if they need to look for a metaphor, a simile, an idiom, an adage, personification, or an onomatopoeia.
My question, we don't want to teach to the test but how can I get a student prepared for a question like that if I don't know they are going to throw in the word "emphasizes" or won't give an example anymore. I don't think it is right to keep students in the dark about how a question can be worded when that one word will mess everything up for those low readers.
We were told the key to STAAR is to try to think of how many different ways they could ask about one objective. I'm so busy trying to get my low readers to understand the concepts that it is becoming a major challenge to try to fathom what they might have come up with. Teachers have to become psychics now instead of teaching reading skills and helping students improve their reading abilities.
Sorry for the long rant... I'm just having a moment and wanted to vent :)
Good luck in your classroom in the months to come!
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Poetry in the Classroom
What poems do you do in your classroom and how do you have the students analyze and work through them??
Friday, November 25, 2011
HUGE TPT sale!
I try not to post a lot of "selling" type blogs but don't want you to miss on this one! TeachersPayTeachers has sales like this only a few times a year so make the most of that Black Friday Madness leftover energy and head over!
Many stores have their items on sale for 10%, 15% with a lot having 20% off!
If that's not enough to get your educational mouth watering....
Type in the code CMS28 at checkout and you get an additional 10% off!
Check out my store here for you Reading/LA/Social Studies-minded individuals or search for anything that you will be doing in the classroom. Now is the time!
Good luck! Two things I can guarantee: You will find an amazing deal and it will be safer than Black Friday Store Fronts!
Starting Monday November 28th!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Scoop.It - Cool online magazine
There are several sites now coming out that help you to create newspaper or magazine type sites for specific information. I had tried paper.li with little success but was recently introduced to scoop.it. It was actually easy to maneuver and figure out. I got it up and running very quickly and was impressed with the types of finds it pulled up for my chosen keywords. I will be updated (curating) this magazine often so please take a look and let me know what you think!
Click on the picture below!
Click on the picture below!
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