Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Pantsy Fants
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Camp Read-a-Lot Family Night

We tried to do this through many different means, but my favorite by far was our Family Literacy Night event.
Every year, we hosted a family night event where parents, kids, and their families were invited to participate in fun themed activities.
All they needed was to show up. We provided the stations, a snack, and a free book to each student! (Access to books matters!)
The first Family Literacy Night I ever hosted was camping themed. I called it Camp Read-a-Lot. It was so much fun.
We had a good turnout and the families who came seemed to really enjoy the activities!
Here are the fun stations from our fun camping event, all centered around A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee!
Our teachers loaned us sleeping bags and set up tents on the back patio behind the school. Aren't they incredible? What a fun way to read with your kids!
Once it got dark, the kids used flashlights to read! They had a blast.
Our kids made puppets from the book: Dee the dog, and the bear!
Fishing
for rhyming words! We taped an index card with a word on the floor.
Then kids used their fishing poles made of branches, string, and magnets
to fish for words that rhymed!
S'mores station was a big hit. We used graham crackers, chocolate,
popsicle sticks, and marshmallow fluff. The kids followed the directions
to make a S'more and then wrote about it on their five senses sheet.
At our Game Night station, students and parents practiced a lost art. Playing games together. We put out Connect Four, Trouble, Candyland, and some others, and the kids and parents chose which game to play. It was so nice to see the kids and their parents interacting around a fun game.
Our Building Words station was a big hit, too. I don't think I've seen parents getting more competitive than they were at this station! They kept adding words to their list, shouting when they thought of a new one.
Want to learn more? Check out my How to Plan an Awesome Family Night video!
Want some more great camping ideas? Check out the Comprehension Connection's Thematic Thursday: Camping! There are bunches of neat ideas for hosting a great Camping Week!
Friday, March 15, 2013
More STAAR Revision & Editing Preparation! *Freebie!
Just a little update! We are hurtling towards the Writing STAAR in Texas, and I've been pulling out students to work with in a writing class. It's been a challenge to cram so much into such a short amount of time, but I've really enjoyed putting together some lessons and modeling the writing process for the kids.
Test-taking writing stinks, but writing itself is so much fun to teach. I think so, anyway.
This week, we continued with the third lesson from my Revising & Editing Lessons pack (freebie below)!
I found a yellow pocket chart and it made things sooo much easier. No more taping to the board for me! So I wrote the sentences from the lesson on sentence strips to build the paragraph. The first day we worked with verb tense.
The kids used the context of the sentence to choose the correct tense of many verbs, including find/found, use/used/using, are/were.
To prepare for Tuesday, I cut words that had homophones out of the sentences. Then I wrote the homophone pairs on cards and we decided which belonged in the sentence. We chose between our/are, their/they're/there, and it's/its.
On Tuesdays, my buddy is unavailable to help with the group, so our lovely principal stepped in! She even explained to the kids about how important it is to stop and think about whether the "it's/its" in the sentence means "it is" or "belongs to it". I think that's a valuable life lesson. Let's just say I know a lot of adults who don't take the time to check before they send an email!
In case this sounds like something you'd like to try out in your own classroom, I put together a new freebie pack!
It includes the lessons, how to prepare, and pictures of the first lesson's delivery!
Saturday, March 9, 2013
STAAR Revising & Editing Lessons, continued! *Freebie!
So last week, I shared an idea I'm trying out in my writing classroom. My students and I used a paragraph through the whole week to work on some revising and editing skills. I aligned the questioning with STAAR, but instead of boring test practice, it was interesting and engaging! (I thought it was, anyway).
This is the paragraph I had on the board the first day (you could also do a pocket chart): One benefit of being a reader is that you can grow your vocabulary. When you read, you learn new ___ and you can use them in your own writing! I have to use context ___ to figure out their meaning and understand what the message was.
On Monday, we practiced editing skills: apostrophe or plural? You can read about that here.
Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.
Tuesday - Thursday, we practiced revising skills. Below are the skills and the questioning that we practiced.
Tuesday: Look at
sentence __. The phrase “---“ does not express what I was trying to say.
- Which word could BEST replace “grow“ and help me improve
the meaning of the sentence?
- Which word could BEST replace “figure out“ and help me
improve the meaning of the sentence?
Choices: expand, demonstrate, determine, decrease
Wednesday: I would
like to add the following sentence to the paragraph. Where is the BEST place to
insert this sentence?
Sometimes I come across words that I’ve never seen before
and I don’t know what they mean.
Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.
Thursday: I want to
add a conclusion to my paper. Which of the following could BEST follow sentence
__ and close the paragraph?
-
I don’t like taking vocabulary quizzes.
-
When I use my vocabulary strategies, I get the
most out of reading!
-
Yesterday, I learned the word, “elated”.
-
Some context clues are difficult to find.
Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.
At the end of the week, this is what the paragraph looked like:
It took about fifteen minutes each day, and fifteen minutes more to practice the STAAR-released question that utilized the same exact skill, as well as some Mentoring Minds questions.
At the end of the week, this is what the paragraph looked like:
One benefit of being a reader is that you can expand your vocabulary. When you read, you learn new words and you can use them in your own writing! Sometimes I come across words that I’ve never seen before and I don’t know what they mean. I have to use context clues to determine their meaning and understand what the author’s was. When I use my vocabulary strategies, I get the most out of reading!
Not only did we create a pretty decent paragraph, we addressed several difficult revising/editing skills in an engaging, collaborative way, and we applied it to test-taking situations to prepare for the STAAR test. I think it was a week well-spent.
In case this sounds like something you'd like to try out in your own classroom, I put together a new freebie pack!
It includes the lessons, how to prepare, and pictures of the first lesson's delivery!
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Revising & Editing Lessons *Freebie!
After this, I had students practice two questions that required them to use this skill. That was our editing day. The remainder of the week, we worked on revising skills. I'll share those, too.
What do you think? If you like it, I can share the paragraph and daily sequence with questions.
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