Discovery Bottles-ABC Version

I have been slowly recovering from my Vegas trip.  Something good to have come from my Vegas trip it seems that I have kicked my summer afternoon nap habit.  I tried to take a quick snooze this afternoon and found myself up and working on laundry.  That will be good come August. Last night I used our Cuisnart ice cream maker for the second time in  1 1/2 weeks.  We've had that thing for 18 months and never used and look at us now.  I'm not sure that is a good thing, however. 
Last night I got busy and decided to make one of my discover bottles for school.  I decided to make an ABC discovery bottle since it is definitely one of the one's I'll use at the beginning of the school year.  Here's what you'll need: an empty soda bottle with the label peeled off, ABC letters, rice and a hot glue gun.  I also have a small pair of wire cutters for the plastic letters.

I bought ABC letters at The Lob that are made to go on a necklace.  Make sure your letters are small enough to fit in your bottle or use a Gatorade bottle with the larger mouths.  Since my letters were from the jewelry department I went about cutting the loop off at the top of each letter. 

I then lined up my letters in alphabetical order to make sure I had them all.  Nothing like getting 1/2 way done, getting a phone call and coming back later and not remembering which letter you were on, thus dumping all your letters back out and starting over. 

Once all my letters where lined out and the loop cut off I dumped them into my bottle.
I then added rice to my bottle.  I made a simple funnel out of paper to help guide my rice into the bottle. 

When I was about 1/2 way finished I realized it was going to be very hard to find the letters in all that rice so I quickly made a second set of letters and added them to the bottle.  This is an activity for the beginning of the year, we don't need any frustrated kindergarteners. 

After I filled the bottle to almost the top, leave several inches of room to allow for shaking, I put the lid on the bottle and hot glued it shut. 

To hold kids accountable for their learning I have also included a recording sheet.  When a child finds a letter they get to circle it with a highlighter on the recording sheet.  They also can then take the recording sheet home so their parents can see they were learning in class.  Parents often equate worksheets with learning.  Although, we know this isn't true, it is very hard to change the thinking of parents.  So it is sometimes easier to find ways for children to enjoy learning and also record their learning.  In this case the recording sheet helps the kid learn alphabetical order when referring the the sheet to find the letter they just found in their discovery bottle.

There are many different things you can put in a discovery bottle.  I suggest if you are going to make some bottles that before you put the items in the discovery bottle you first take a picture of the items so kids with have an idea as to what they should be looking for in the bottle.  You can also use sand or different things for filler instead of rice.  I just used rice in this one because it is cheaper.  I've bought some white sand to use when I assemble my ocean unit discovery bottle.

Vegas Day 4

How fast time flies!  It seems like only yesterday Jill and I were meandering around the streets and hotels of Vegas trying to find our way to registration for the national I Teach K! kindergarten conference and now it was our last day and we looked like pros because we had finally found the perfect route to and from our hotel to the conference hotel.  Ok, we didn’t look like pros but we at least had the confidence to go walking through hotels as big as a whole city block like we knew what we were doing.  Having a teacher conference in Vegas was probably the biggest influx of good manners that city has seen in a lonnnnng time. 

Note: Apparently, Deanna Jump has an app that notifies her every time she is mentioned anywhere on the web.  I have no idea how that works but I’m going to give you her website & Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) store website down in the section where I talk about what I learned in her session today.  Mrs. Jump if you actually do get notified and you come visit my blog, could you leave a comment?  How cool would it be for my first ever blog comment to come from THE Mrs. Jump?  I’m not holding my breath but it’s my summer of nothingness so I have nothing to lose. 

 Oh Dear What Could the Weather Be?

Sherri Strating
Sherri’s weather presentation was filled with many good ideas.  I thought many of her ideas were adaptable for upper grades.  She stressed how important it is to make sure you are using the correct vocabulary when talking about science.  She had a very cute song that utilized the water cycle using the vocabulary evaporate, saturate, condensate and precipitate.  We made a cloud book using the flap book method and shutter book method together.  We made a shutter book taking a 12x18 piece of construction paper and folding the paper in 6 inches on both sides so it was like a window with 2 shutters that opened and closed.  We then made the four types of clouds on the shutters using cotton balls.  Inside the shutter book she stapled 3 sheets of paper folded down into a 6 page flip book and the kids drew and wrote about the weather and what kinds of clouds are usually seen during different types of weather.  I really thought this type of book was neat and will suggest it to my mentees this year as they both teach 4^th grade. 

 Math Magic

Deanna Jump
www.mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com
Like yesterday’s presentation by Deanna it was jam packed with ideas.  Yesterday we talked about integrating all subjects into themes, or as she called them, integrated curriculum.  Today she went over all the different types of math games she uses in her classroom.  She also told us she was moving the first grade this year with her class, we call it looping here in Kansas, she had a different name for it.  She’s from Georgia.  She started off the presentation by talking about the stages that kids go through when learning math: rote counting, one-to-one correspondence, cardinality, conservation of numbers, subitizing and the second stage of subitizing, one & two more/less, anchoring numbers to 5 & 10, part/whole and computation strategies. 
Deanna said several times during her presentation she is convinced that a teacher could teach math all year with nothing more than dot cards and ten frames.  I have made dot cards and use them in my classroom for practicing automaticity but Deanna had so many more ways to utilize dot cards.  (Dot cards are simply a round card with stickers put in different arrangements for kids to practice subitizing numbers.)  She has kids practice by giving them their own mat and chips and she’ll then hold up a card and the kids have to make it on their mat.  A game called Nestle Quick! has small dot cards in a can of Nestle Quick and she pulls them out and has the kids say how many are on the card as quickly as possible.  A game called I Wish I Had… is where the teacher says, I wish I had a 9 but the card only has 7 dots and the kids have to figure out how many more I need to get to 9.  Make 10 is the same game but focus on the standard of understanding sets of 10.  She has kids practice matching dot cards to number cards.  She has bought one minute sand timers and she has the kids race the timer and see if they can match the cards before time runs out. All of these games could also be played with 10 frame cards.  She also plays the matching game with dot cards and 10 frame cards.  A game from her Back to School Unit had a bus game with dots on them.  The kids have to put the dots in order from least to greatest.  Then they will go through and match unifix cubes to the dots.  There were several variations to this one game but they all allow important hands on practice with real materials in math. 
These were just several of the ideas Deanna presented.  She had many, many more.  I suggest you check out her TPT store here:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Deanna-Jump-11

Take Home Bags for Every Subject Area

Susan Mazzarella
Susan was a delightful lady about my age.  Her presentation was on take home bags or homework bags.  These are something I had a similar concept at my old school but never got reorganized after I moved to my current school.  A take home bag is essential a bag containing books (fiction and non-fiction, were CCSS), games, puzzles, maps, etc. that all are based around a single (sometimes broad) topic. The items are stored in a bag and a note is usually included explaining what materials are included, which activities should be done and how to do the activities. Susan’s method for designing bags was usually based around finding an interesting item at the Dollar Tree or dollar spot at Target then beginning to wonder what kind of take home bag she could design around that particular item.  For example she found a single tangram set at DT 2 days before she came to the conference.  She then looked around and found some boards that made pictures using tangrams at the DT.  Go quick and get yours!  She then went to her books and pulled out different books on shapes and fiction books utilizing shapes.  In a quick inventory of her personal book collection she had 5 books that could go in  her new tangram take home bag.  She discussed her methods for keeping track of who takes home which bag, what she does when something comes back missing and how she organizes them in her classroom for storage.  In the time we were in this session Jill wrote down 24 different take home bags she could make with her current materials.  I’m very excited to get back to school and get going on my take home bags. 

Summary

So that was our week. I bought a ton of materials and books.  I bought a really cute grey fleece jacket that says Children Are My Business.  We saw very interesting sights on Las Vegas Blvd.  Combined my two bags that I checked weighed 80 pounds and that didn’t include my backpack with my laptop.  I’m ready for a new school year.  I’m planning another Pinterest Party with my girls on Wednesday.  I’m so excited!

Vegas Day 3

I really can’t believe that day three is already over and I only have tomorrow left.  I am having a ball and learning so much.  Today’s learning was by far the most intense.  We had excellent presenters all day, every single one of them.  I took nine pages of typed notes and Jill took 15 pages of hand written notes in our sessions.  Yes, there were that many great ideas.

Boasting Fluency Development

Pat Pavelka
Pat wasted no time and got right into the good stuff.  We really like that. 
*She explained how important it is for students to be able to read punctuation marks so they will have fluency when reading as these are the clues for intonation when reading.  We quickly made a period, question mark and exclamation point on 3 index cards and started playing games.  She started by having us reading an alphabet strip and every time we came to a highlighted letter we would have to read it with the correct punctuation.  She would hold a punctuation card over a kids head and everyone in the class would say that child’s name using the correct intonation for that punctuation and then the child would guess what punctuation was being held above his head. She also had various sentences such as: The dog ate your homework or We’re having pizza for dinner and then when she held up a punctuation card the kids would read it with the correct punctuation intonation.  She had several other ideas using these cards.  She suggested the book Yo! Yes! by Chris Raschka as a good book for punctuation practice as it has very few words in it. 
*Sight words are another key to fluency for students.  Without a bank of sight words students do not have automaticity in their reading.  She gave us this research: “The average child needs between 4 and 14exposures to a new word to recognize it automatically.  However, children with reading difficulties need 44 or more exposures to a new word.”  Wiley Blevins Building Fluency: Lesson & Strategies for Reading Success 2001.  She had fabulous ways of practicing sight word in class.  When practicing sight words she puts in 70% known words and 30% unknown words so kids have continued success.  She makes bracelets that the kids wear around the school with words such as: a is the is red is (the word to learn is: IS) and when the kid is out and about the school upper grade kids and teachers can stop and ask him to read his bracelet (or stamp a watch face on it and it’s a watch for hesitant boys).  This gets those repeated exposures so the student can learn his word.  What if the student doesn’t know any words?  Throw in letters or numbers that the child knows to read around his new sight words.  She plays a game where she has a snowglobe and the student has to say it-spell it-say it as many times as he can before all the snow falls in the globe. 

Creating Hans-On Literacy and Math Centers Using Children’s Books as Themes

Angie Bonthuis
Angie was a practitioner presenter.  It basically it means she’s a regular teacher giving one presentation and she doesn’t do this on a regular basis, yet.  Angie is a teacher from Iowa and she has a website: www.ilovekindergarten.com which will link you to her blog and Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) store as well.  She has many of her ideas as freebies on her TPT store.  Angie bases all of weekly teaching around one book that she calls her theme book and then she brain storms all of the ideas she can teach from standards from the book.  She also brings in many other fiction and non-fiction texts to support the theme book.  She literally had TONS of ideas.  Checking out her TPT store and website will give you a broader scope of some of her idea.  Kindergarten is her life.
*She makes tons of her own games and she makes many of the same games over and over using different themes.  Many of the games you could make yourself and she even said so in her presentation.  An easy game you could program many different ways would be to use the excess wooden building blocks that come with our math curriculum and program them with numbers, letter, sight words, etc. Then kids work in pairs picking blocks out of draw string bags (or whatever works for you) and reading what is on the block and then stacking it.  The first person’s tower to fall over is considered the non-winner (or loser).  J  She also does the same thing with coding the tippy-tops of the dominos.
*A neat game she made to go with the book Hi Pizza Man! Is she makes front doors and puts house numbers on the doors.  She then hides a character cutout from the book under the door and the kids take turns guessing the house number (by reading the number) where the character is hidden.  She also incorporates language (because kids can’t learn if they don’t talk-they have to process things out loud) by making them use a complete sentence to say: the snake is not behind house number 14. 

Boosting Kindergarten Literacy with Name Games

Shari Sloane
Shari is a famous teacher singer and author.  She sang for us during our presentation and we were impressed.  Luckily I only sing in front of 5 year olds so I don’t have to worry about singing in front of groups, nor do I have to worry about the royalties from my teacher music CDs.  Her ENTIRE session was on name games.  Name games galore.  I thought I would start out my school year incorporating name games at the beginning of the year but she has name games and books for the entire year.  She was a kind soul and reminded us the she doesn’t do every single game and book that she showed us in our session every year.  Visit her website at: www.kidscount1234.com
*She has the kids make name cheer books and she keeps them together in her classroom.  Whenever they have a moment or need a moment, she’ll pick out a name cheer and the child who was picked will come to the front of the class and lead the cheer, sometimes with a pom-pom.   The book will have the words printed on each page with one letter per page: Give me a M, choral: M, Give me a A, A; Give me a N, N; Give me a D, D; Give me a Y, Y; What does that spell? Mandy! She said they usually have to do a couple names at a time. She also makes I Have…Who Has? with class pictures.  She’ll write kids names on 12x18 construction paper and then have the kids use bingo daubers to stamp out their name.  A good tip she had was when making a big class book to support a song in your class (and she had tons of name songs-go to her website) she recommends that you bind the book so you can fold down the pages instead of trying to turn the side to side or flip them up.  Genius!
*She uses names in math.  She makes scattergrams in which the child gets an entire set of alphabet letters, she teaches them how to cut out long strips, where you cute down the entire line instead of cutting out each individual letter (a personal pet peeve of mine-drive me crazy) and then the kids glue the letters that are in their name on one side of the paper with a smiley face and glue the letters that are not in their name on the side with the sad face. They do whole class graphs in which the kids get small stickers and they come up and place a sticker in each letter column for which they have that letter in their name.  This way we can see which letters are most frequent in the names in our class. 

Reading and Math and Science Oh, My!

Deanna Jump
Deanna is the highest selling teacher on TPT.  It is said she made $700,00+ last year alone.  I wish I was cutesy and computer-y.  She believes in using integrated curriculum as the base for her teaching, also known as theme teaching.  She starts planning her lessons by first picking a science or social studies standard and builds from there by picking fiction and non-fiction text to support the standard she chose.  She does this because the brain thrives on connections and it gets kids excited about learning. 
*If you buy one of Deanna’s units from her TPT store you’ll quickly discover that she likes glyphs.  Before I thought the glyphs were cute but we don’t necessarily always have time for a craft.  However, she explained that she doesn’t do anything without having a standard with it and once the glyph is made then she’ll have her students write a special story about their glyph, in the case of the one I bought a pirate.  Wouldn’t that have been so simple to have had the kids write a story about their pirate after we finished making them?  Geez! No wonder I’m not making $700,000 on TPT.  She does this with other things they do as well.  I began to start thinking I need to reevaluate every time I want to do something cute but think I don’t time and begin to turn it around and think, what curriculum standard I can meet by adding this to our day.  Not just for the cutesy stuff either but for all things I do.  
*Deanna is a big believer in interactive writing, schema charts, and chit-chat. Her chit-chat charts are a way to review important information that students have already learned but have blanks in them for the kids to help fill in (whole group on carpet) to complete the chit-chat.  For example she may leave out numbers, whole words, beginning sounds, etc for some of the words in her chit-chat message.  On her schema charts they initially write or draw what they think they know on sticky notes and put them under the column: What we think we already know.  Then as they learn more about the topic there is a place to record new learning and a place to move things from the what we think we already know to a misconceptions column.  She likes the misconceptions column so no one’s thoughts are devalued by being removed and trashed but just relocated.  She also makes lots of illustrations that the class then labels and also have each kid with their own individual copy to label as you do your class one on the board.  Labeling is the precursor to emergent writing.  We’ve heard that a lot this week. 

Summary

We heard a lot today about theme and integrated curriculum teaching.  Someone said if you can’t get at least two standards out of an activity you shouldn’t be doing it.  I’m not sure I believe that completely but I do think I should start evaluating how I can integrate more than one standard into each activity and try to see if I am not getting more than one.  I really liked Pat first thing this morning as she was amazing in a non-showy way.  She took simple idea and made them work in many areas all throughout the year.  Angie did this in a less subtle way by taking the same game and  tweaking it with clipart and/or manipulatives for each of her themes.  They were the same basic games week to week so she didn’t have to reteach the rules every time.  I also liked how Pat had her research posted with the author and study so we could write it down quickly to back up what we are doing in our classrooms with the why aspect.  Deanna’s presentation was fun because I finally met someone whose blog I read often and materials I purchase from TPT.  Another famous to me blogger, Fran Kramer, was in the session two rows ahead of me.  So I got to stare at the back of her head for an hour and 15 minutes.  She’s shorter than I had imagined.  Today was an absolute wonderful day. 
Tonight Jill and I got a little crazy and went down to Circus Circus to play the slots.  Jill doubled her money and I lost all of mine.  Go figure.  Now Jill can go buy those shoes she’s been admiring all week in the exibit hall.  We thought it was a little cruel to have shoes in a teachers exhibit hall.  We are weak “soles” when it comes to shoes.  (Terrible pun, I know.)  Tomorrow is it for us.  I’m still trying to determine if I will buy a grey fleece jacket with a school embroidery on it.  I’ve bought way too many books.  Luckily, I brought an extra suitcase inside my other suitcase so I have plenty of room to bring my stuff home.  I’ve thought this out, NBLB-No Book Left Behind.  Until tomorrow.

Vegas Day 2

So I realize that yesterday’s post was a bit long, 2351 words long, in fact.  I decided not only was it long but it took a good two hours to write last night.  I do enjoy the fact that I was able to get all my learning from the day down into a readable format and that I did it the day I learned it so it was a good reflection of what I learned in a timely manner.  But, I also am in Vegas, I need to pretend that I am enjoying Vegas nightlife and not going to bed at 9 PM.  So to shorten up my blog post today I decided I would only post five highlights from each of the sessions I attended.  You know, a summary instead of a novel. 

Implementing Math Stations

Presenter: Julie Brinkley

Julie started off by begging for mercy as it was her first time as a presenter.  She also brought her husband to Vegas with her and he was in attendance in her sessions.  He served as her in house techie and he got a big round of applause from the ladies.  Julie is a lady after my own heart as she loves Pinterest almost as much as me, she has 994 pins and I’m well over 1600 now.  (I’m not really sure if this is something one should brag about but what the heck.)

*Her session was over the BUILD concept of constructing math learners through hands on math.  BUILD stands for B-Buddy Games U-Using Manipulatives I-Independent Reading L-Learning Numbers D-Doing Math.  If you search BUILD centers on Pinterest you’ll come up with many different ideas.  BUILD is similar to the reading center called Daily 5. 

*She had an old school concept called Math Work Jobs in which has come back around in the educational world.  It is timely as it fits right in with our Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  The way she uses them she’ll make five boards with, for example, a tank on the board.  She then uses plastic army men as the counters and the student will lay out all the work boards, in this scenario a tank, and then show all the different ways s/he can make the number 7.  The idea is to keep your mat so there is an inside of the and outside place on the mat for kids to show separation.  So a student might put 3 army men on the tank and 4 outside the tank and show that 3 & 4 make 7.  On another board they’ll put 2 on the tank and 5 outside the tank.  They continue laying out army men in all the different ways they can think of to make a 7.  Julie then had a quick check sheet the kids could look at to determine if they’d found all the ways to make 7. 

*Math is about patterns and we kept hearing all day about this and how we need to work on patterning in kindergarten.  With the new CCSS patterning is not a standard in any grade as we have performed it in the past.  But since math is based upon patterning the presenters seem to be pushing patterning, which I agree with wholeheartedly.  They integrated some various methods for getting patterning into their day.  Julie has a special book the student made at calendar each day so if they were doing an AB pattern October 1^st would be a green bug and October 2^nd would be a red lady bug and continue this in a small booklet she made with the correct number of pages for the month.  Then the pattern book could be added to one of her BUILD centers for students to read during independent reading time.

*One of her simple ideas was having students order numbers by putting them into a pocket chart and ordering them.  She also had them put number cards in order by punching holes into either side of the number card and joining them together using the simple math link manipuatives that we all have in our classroom.  She also took one of the simple number borders you can get at Dollar Tree, cut it apart and the kids could put it in numerical order.  The genius thing about the Dollar Tree border is that is has a slight puzzle like quality so it was self-checking.

*Finally, she did her math calendar time a little bit different.  She had a folder that had a pocket for holding chips and a popsicle stick with a pom-pom to use as a pointer & eraser for dry erase markers. She had boards with the 100s chart, a ten frame for practicing writing numbers and a chart for after Christmas where students would write a number in the middle box (usually chosen by rolling a dice or two) and then the students would write the number that comes before it and after it. She would do many activities with each board.  One idea for the 100s chart included counting to 16 then having the kids draw a triangle around the 16, geometry, number recognition and counting all in one fell swoop.

Recipe for Success

Presenter: Kim Adsit

We went to Kim’s session yesterday and we came back for more today.  She is not only a good presenter but an excellent story teller.  I love a good story and especially when they do the voices and actions along with it.  In this session Kim used one theme, bats, to show how even though bats are not a state standard in GA, she was able to use it to teach all the different standards that she is required to teach.  It was a good reminder that we as teachers need to stretch our imaginations a little and use what we know to incorporate it into our teaching.

*She stressed how you can use a fiction and non-fiction text (CCSS says all text read in the classroom needs to be at least 50%) and use them to compare and contrast real versus not real. 

*She uses interactive writing charts in her room.  I’m not very familiar with these and would like to do some more reading about them and see if I can’t use them in my classroom as well.

*Labeling is a precursor to writing and she used lots of ideas for labeling pictures to teach science, in this case bat body parts, and then use the same picture to demonstrate in writing that the kids already knew how to use labeling and had a concrete model for kids to look at to demonstrate the skill. 

*She makes many, many, many different classroom books that are predictable for the kids to practice reading.  Not only were they fun the books taught prosody as the kids could read the predictable text.  Many of her ideas where based upon already know songs or were from known books the kids read within the unit.  One of her examples was based upon the book Silly Sally.  She integrated in the bat unit as a rhyme since bats hang upside down.  She took a picture of the student with their hands up in the air then glued it into the book upside down so it looked like the kid was hanging from the ceiling.  She then had a poem: Silly ____ went to town, walking backwards, upside down.  Each student then had their own page in the class book. She gave several examples of these types of books.

*She also talked about we don’t want students sitting on the carpet while we are doing all the work. We want activities where the students are also engaged in what is going on whether this be by having a paper with a small Venn diagram they fill in as we build a Venn diagram or a list where students write words as we list them on the board or a small picture that students label as the class labels a bigger bat on the board. She says we need to stop having kids sit and get and hope and pray that they are getting what we putting out there for them.  We need to provide activities that the kids are involved in as we do them together.  She was good about presenting not only the top work out of her class but she also showed us examples of what her lower students were producing so we could see she worked in the reality that not everyone was at the same level but students could still gain something while participating. 

Julie Brinkley showing her self checking tennis ball that she cuts a slit in and then the answers for her math work jobs are inside.

The First 30 Days

Presenter: Donna Whyte

I love Donna.  I saw her 3 years ago at the conference and I love her.  She is also WONDEFUL storyteller and has a great kid voice she uses.  She is rooted in the reality of what we do.  Our session was to discuss what we can do at the beginning of the year to set up our classroom and routines to make our lives run much more smoothly throughout the school year.  If our routines are not in place at the beginning of the year we will spend the rest of the year repeating useless instructions to our kids and wasting valuable instruction time.

*Donna has only 1 rule in her classroom: Do the right thing.  She says it always comes back to that.  Although, she takes time and does daily mini-lessons on what it means to do the right thing.  She’ll go through scenarios in which she’ll trip and drop all her things and then they discuss what the right thing to do is: ask if the kid is ok, help pick up the dropped materials, etc. They also discuss what they shouldn’t do; laugh, kick the dropped things, etc.  She then tells them that they know what the right thing to do is so I expect you to do the right thing.  She has many of these types of scenarios. 

*Donna also explicating teaches kindness through a two week mini lesson on kindness.  She thinks it is very important and not a social skill that all kids understand.  She says you’ll ask a kid what it means to be kind and they’ll always answer to be nice.  She takes the same method as before and demonstrates what it looks like.  On day 1 she teaches: what it means to be kind and only uses positive examples. Day 2: Give an example of a kind thing to do and then discuss what an unkind thing would look like.  Day 3: Use story book characters and discuss why or why not that character is a kind person.  Those were some of her examples. 

*She makes a classroom scrapbook that she keeps in class all year with a brief description of each student and a photo or two.  A great way to connect to families in which each family made and filled out and all the teacher had to do was put it in a three ring binder.  She also advocated using the picture frames of family pictures in your classroom as we heard about yesterday in Kim Adsit’s presentation. 

*An easy method for diffusing tension with a parent is to say (especially when they are hopping mad): I’m happy to see you.  I want you to know that you and I have the same goals for your child.  We care about your child.  She says it works like a charm.  We’ll see if I can use it effectively next time when the heat is on. 

*Donna’s passionate plea to us was to reach out to new teachers and make them feel welcome. Fifty percent of teachers leave the profession in less than five years.  It takes that many years for a teacher to become proficient at what they are doing and many are leaving before they do.  The stressors put on teachers have pushed them out before they develop their craft.  She had a cute note that she uses and puts in new teachers mailboxes at the beginning of the year extending a helping hand and listening ear for a new teacher to seek her.  She encouraged us to become building mentors if our school has the program or be informal mentors if not.  The funny part to this story is I decided not to reapply to be a mentor in my district this year after being one the past four years.  I enjoy it but it does take a lot of time, especially when your mentee is in another building.  Tonight I got a call from Dustan saying I got a letter from the district thanking me for applying to be a mentor this year (you reapply yearly) and they’d assigned me a mentee.  Dustan asked why I signed up after telling him I wasn’t going to do it.  I told him I hadn’t and figured there must be some confusion. He asked if I was going to call and tell them I wasn’t going to do it this year.  I said no, I figured it must be fate for me to do it. Plus, how could I let Donna down by refusing to help a new teacher to our profession?  Timing is everything. 

I’ll not report on our last session as we spent a little bit too much time (and possibly money) in the exhibit hall and before we knew it we were 20 minutes late to our last session.  By missing the beginning I feel that I may not do her session justice as I came in the middle.  I’d hate to be judged by someone who walked in and didn’t get the whole message.  In other words, I wasn’t impressed, but I learned so much in my first three sessions I felt I learned more than any one person could ask for in a day.

So here I am at the end with as many words as last night and as much time spent as last night.  Hummmm…..maybe less bullets?  I don’t know and I’m not sure I care as this a great reflection piece on my learning today.  Tomorrow Jill and I are getting up early to hit the exhibit hall so there won’t be as many people in our way and we have enough time to shop without needing to run off to our sessions.  We also have some things we need to acquire.  That’s right, I said need.

Vegas Day 1

**Internet access is very limited.  I have photos but didn't get them pasted in here. I'll try to go back and add them later. 

After a summer of uneventfulness, finally, the big week arrived.  Dustan and I went to Albuquerque for the weekend for my cousin Lane’s wedding.  We had a great time and I found a fantabulous dress to wear at my new favorite dress shop, The Dress Barn.  (I’m turning into a little old lady, what can I say?) After the big day for Lane and his new bride, Chelsea, Sunday Dustan flew home with my family to KC and I boarded a plane to Las Vegas.  You know what they say about Vegas, right?  What happens in Vegas ends up on Facebook.  I’m not here for the craziness, I’m here for the National I Teach K! kindergarten conference.  Let the professional developing begin.  It’s four days of everything kindergarten.  It will also be an extra suitcase to check with all my goodies I have to have. 

After getting in last night and getting settled I fell asleep and woke up early as I’m still on Kansas time.  I got in a quick in room workout via YouTube and was ready to go 10 minutes early.  I’m here with my friend, Jill, and she had already beat me downstairs.  We were quick to walk next door to the Venetian hotel and get our registration packet.  We hurried to get our seats in the keynote speaker area.  We were four rows from the front.  Jill told me people would assume we were administrators as that’s where they always sit at during conferences. 

The following are my reflections and notes of interest from my sessions today.

Keynote: Jack Hartman (famous kid/educational musician), Donna Whyte (famous author for teacher guide books) and Sharron Krull (never heard of her)

Jack did several of his songs for us and had props for all the songs he did.  HE did  a great penguin song with lots of movements.  The problem was Jack’s microphone wasn’t the best and kept cutting out so I missed the actual name of the song!  I’m hoping to find it later.  He also did a song called Silly Rockstar which had audience participation with teachers dressed as a rapper, cheerleader, astronaut, cowgirl and an Egyptian.  It was a lot of fun.  Jack stressed how important movement is in the daily school routine.  Without movement we have kids sitting too long and mentally checking out.  He also is a big proponent of movement to combat childhood obesity.  The only part I did have a non-alignment of beliefs with the man is when he went on for a good minute about how terrible our kids our and how bad off they are and how we have troubles in this country. (His fix for this was more movement  in public schools.)  I don’t believe that our kids our terrible and that mindset is not healthy for educators and it isn’t healthy for the general public.  We have great kids in this country and we as teachers are faced with the challenge of educating all students.  We are lucky to live in a country where everyone gets a chance for a full education.  I didn’t appreciate his rhetoric on this one.

 I had seen Donna Whyte before and I loved her.  She does the best kid voice when telling stories.  It is best appreciated in person.  She tells wonderful stories.  She talked about how as teachers we need to quit answering all the kids questions.  So true!  We are quick with an answer instead of giving kids time to muddle through and wrestle with their own thoughts in exchange for the quick fix.  She talked a lot of about kids needing to talk in our classrooms to gain necessary vocabulary so when they are ready to learn to read and write.  If kids are sitting quietly (which is the ideal classroom setting for some teachers) they aren’t practicing their oral language skills to further their learning in kindergarten and as they move down the road into the next grades. 

Sharon Krull was a trooper as she fought microphone problems the entire time she was on stage.  She had several activities using a single juggling scarf.  Using a scarf she had us make shapes by folding it and talk about what shapes we made, then we sorted ourselves by big triangles, little triangles then we made a new shape with our scarf.  We practiced throwing it in the air and clapping the number of times we were told for a concrete approach to number sense.  We also practiced throwing it and catching it to make it balance on a body part.  We also did a game where we threw the scarf from one hand to another practicing a teacher skill crossing the midline.  Crossing the midline is important because it makes your brain work and transfer thinking from one side of the brain to the other, strengthen the synapses in your brain and making more connections.  This was also a good activity because it was developing reading skills such as tracking from left to right and returning your eyes back which we all do when we read.  She emphasized how important it was to find ways to use movement to meet the needs of your students while still incorporating learning.

Session 1: Math Centers & Games: Practice, Exploration & Fun

Catherine Kuhns

Catherine Kuhns is the author of several math teacher resource books for teachers.  I have one and use it all the time.  She spent a great deal of time discussing how important is that we remember that kids learn through play.  She reminded us that kids need lots of practice first with concrete activities, touching, feeling and manipulating things.  Then they can move to a pictorial representation to practice their learning followed by the abstract idea.  She also discussed how important it is for kids to talk when they are learning.  She never sends a kid to an activity alone; they must go with another student because kids need to talk about what they are doing in order for greater learning to take place.  She went throw tons of activities for learning centers but I really learned a lot on her ideas for discussing learning.  She stressed when teaching sorting you need to start by only sorting by 2 attributes; ex: Velcro/not Velcro shoes, black/not black shoes, etc.  Time needs to be spent discussing the sorting rule and then releasing the kids into having them tell you the sorting rule or making them figure out the sorting rule.  Too often the teacher will say I want you to sort by color which takes the learning away from the child and places it in the hands of the teacher instead of where it needs to be with our kids.  She had kids draw their favorite cookie and then they did a whole group activity with sorting their cookies by different kid assigned attributes.  Once the kids had practiced in a guided setting with the cookies they were moved for independent practice to a learning center.  She also had many good ideas made from Solo cups, she liked 100 charts and had them plastered inside her classroom bathroom.  She talked about how important math models are and how kids need to use language to make story problems with concrete toys first before they move to the next step of drawing it or putting the equation down.  She was very big on the concrete activity must come before the pictorial.  Really she had so many wonderful ideas and I’m glad I have her book as some of them came out of my book but I wasn’t ready to use them until she showed me a concrete example of how useful they can be. 

Session 2: Phantastic Phonics Phun & Games!

Karin Huttsell

Karin was obviously a very talented teacher and has her National Board Certified Teacher certification to back this up.  She spent several minutes going over how important it is to have both phonics and phonemic awareness learning in the classroom.  She showed us how to make several different games that could be used with various skills.  She had a Firecracker game made from a Pringles can with popsicle sticks inside the can coded with upper/lower case letters, sight words, etc. and the kids pulled a stick out and would read what was on the stick.  If they pulled one of the BOOM sticks they had to put all their sticks back into the can.  There are many variations of this game on Pinterest. 

It was at this session that Jill informs me that she has over 100 stamps with pictures on them for beginning and ending sound practice.  She got them from Lakeshore before the ease of the internet.  I’m going to borrow them.  They sound cool. 

Session 3: Literacy Activities for Your Smart Board

Cheryl Dick

Cheryl is a 4^th grade teacher with excellent ideas.  She showed us how to manipulate our SMART Boards to make games and change games we find in the SMART exchange.  She showed us how to use the vortex feature, just type in VORTEX into the find box on your SMART board menu and it will bring up the vortex.  What it does it will “swallow” up a picture or text if you drop it into a correct sorting category or reject it if it is wrong.  You just program it with whatever you’d like.  If you’re like me you like your SMART board you just know you are smart enough to know that you aren’t using it to its fullest potential.  With her lessons and what I learned earlier this summer at a tech class I took from the district I finally feel like I may be getting a little stronger and more comfortable with my SMART board to use it for more than a classy whiteboard and to play games already made from the internet.  I also find great satisfaction that you can make games that you then throw a Koosh ball at the board to break a bubble or balloon and then do the activity hiding behind.  I mean who wouldn’t like that?  She has a website with all her ideas at: www.cherylsclassroomtips.com

Dollar Store Diva!

Kim Adsit

Kim is a well-known seller on the Teachers Pay Teachers website which is a place for teachers to sell their resources to other teachers.  She is one of those people I really envy.  She can look at some odd item and go, “Gosh, you know that would make a great penguin,” and then turn an oversized wooden spoon into a penguin.  She also had very strong opinions onto which type of glue you should be using for your classroom props: E6000.  Her creativity was amazing.  She turned a splatter guard for a skillet into pumpkins for the poem 5 Little Pumpkins.  She made frogs out of sand toy shovels, for 5 Little Speckled Frogs.  She used small yard game racquets for pig puppets for a pig song.  She made puppets/props out of slippers, hats, ice scoops, colanders and kitty litter scoops!  Seriously, would you walk past the kitty litter scoop and say, “Gosh, you know, I think this would be the perfect base for my animal prop?”  No I wouldn’t because I can’t see multiple uses for everyday things.  Her reasoning for using rhymes and songs was practicing prosody according to About.com is the use of pitch, loudness, tempo and rhytm in speech to convey information about the structure and meaning of an utterance.  Acting out the songs also help with story retelling, which is part of our new Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  Also when you do songs such as 5 Little Monkeys it helps kids learn about shrinking patterns (or in other cases growing patterns), which is a algebraic concept.  She also encourages the use of the props to get kids moving to add another modality to their learning.  She had wonderful ideas!  She was the queen of the Dollar Store.  She used metal cookie sheets for every activity imaginable.  She turned flashcards into book that then would corspond to songs from favorite singers, such as Dr. Jean. She used fun sunglasses and pointers for learning centers such as read and write the room.  She used garden gloves for practicing syllables. She said it wasn’t necessary to have all these tools for kids to learn certain skills. However, it provides a hook for our kids to get them to do activities more easily.  She pointed out that they cool Captain Hook hook isn’t necessary for a read the room activity but what kid isn’t going to want to put it on?  Once the hook  is on the kid will have to do your activity to keep the hook from being taken away so there is some motivation to keep the hook.  There is an added motivation to learn.  Kids love toys and if they can play while they learn they won’t necessarily see our teaching as work.

Summary:  The big themes that kept popping up throughout the day were movement, talking and play.  Kids are naturally made to move.  They need movement incorporated into their learning.  Kids need to play to learn.  It’s how kindergarteners learn through playing and experimenting with materials.  Mistakes are a bad thing.  Play is how kids learn to interact with each other.  Donna Whyte pointed out kids don’t learn how to share at home anymore because each one has their own tv, their own iWhatever, and their own Gameboy.  They don’t have to wait for a sibling to finish so they can take a turn.  School is where some kids get their first experiences with waiting and sharing.  Kids practice and better gain understanding through communicating what they are doing, analyzing what they discover and talking through activities with teachers and peers.  The best thing we can do as teachers is to be quiet and listen. 

Tuesday is shaping up to be a great day.  Now if I can find some free internet in this town I could post this.  Apparently, the only thing free in this town are numerous advertising flyers. 

Story Retelling-The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 This past week was filled with animal drama around here.  If you aren't caught up, Molly got skunked, one of the summer fish fish pulled a Nemo and someone ate my Thirty One bag.  I was very sad about my bag.  It was my super cool teacher bag.  Not anymore. 

I was rather busy all week.  On Wednesday some girls from school came over and we had another Pinterest party.  I am loving the parties and we are killing the food.  The recipes we're making from Pinterest makes us all look like freaking Martha Stewarts.  I suppose if you don't see our kitchens after we cook, bake and create then you'll never really know that we don't have her orgainization skills and production crew backing us up keep our kitchens immaculate.  We had Houlihans chopped side salad, pizza muffins, calprese salad, cookie dough cupcakes, mini dessert fruit pizzas and banana pudding.  It was delicious!  If only I'd remembered to take a picture.

Girls from my school come over and we usually work on school projects during our Pinterest parties.  This time we had a wide assortment of activities as usually.  One teacher was Mod Podging (yes, it's now a verb) her clipboards with scrapbooking paper.  Another was working on an "Issue Box" make from a Kleenex box for kids to place their problems inside.  Several of the girls were jazzing up their clothes pins by putting scrapbook paper on the pin with Mod Podge. 

I decided to work on a story retelling prop.  It is helpful for students to practice retelling stories using hands on materials to facilitate their learning.  We do a lot with the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle, in our kindergarten class.  The idea I found on Pinterest used a Pringles can with a slot cut out for the caterpillar's mouth and soda lids for placing the pieces for the food that the caterpillar eats.  Using white cardstock I Mod Podged the cardstock on the can and added a small piece of green around the top.  I then cut out my caterpillar pieces and Mod Podged them onto the can.  I freehanded the caterpillar.  My teacher friends, Darci and Christina, were kind and wrote the title at the top and cut out the slot for the mouth for me. 

I decided since I don't drink soda it may take me a while to collect the soda lids so instead I found wooden nickels in the wood craft section of The Lob.  I cut out the cute pieces with the food on them.  I found the link for them here:  http://alljoinin.blogspot.ca/2011/11/very-hungry-caterpillar-story-props.html You'll need to register to download them but it is free to get them.  After cutting out the food pieces I used Mod Podge to adhere them to my wooden nickels. 

That was it!  It was a super easy project to  put together and it will be ready to go for next school year.  Now I am trying to figure out ways to incorporate my other stories into story retelling props.  Now if we can just figure out what happened to my Thirty One bag.  Girls?

Summer Fish Tragedy Adverted

You may remember on Monday after Molly got skunked I really hoped that it wasn't a sign of the week to come.  I mean, Monday really was a week's worth of excitement packed into 15 seconds of adrenaline rush followed by two days of hydrogen peroxide bath time fun.  So after Molly got skunked on Monday I was hoping for a quiet week.  I had a Pinterest party on Wednesday with some girls from school.  The food was fabulous! I should have taken a picture to post on Facebook to induce some food envy.  It was that amazing.  But I was too busy stuffing my face to slow down to snap some pics.  Thursday I had a computer class at school and Friday a good friend, Sam, came into town so some friends got together for dinner.  I had planned a full week.

Instead it was a full week of animal drama.  After Molly got skunked, she then proceeded to come down sick.  I don't know if getting sprayed by a skunk can make you sick or it was coincidence but she came down with something and was drooping and clingy.  I was happy by Thursday that she was just happy to be in the same room with me all the time and not trying to walk between my legs, sit on my feet and generally cause a hazard wherever I went, not to mention her aroma which until I bought a new bottle of hydrogen peroxide still was a light (being polite) scent-o-skunk.  I recommend making sure you use a fairly new bottle of peroxide when dog washing skunked dogs.  The stuff apparently does follow its expiration date.  Who knew?

But back to what you're here to find out about.  As I was heading out Friday night for a small girl's night out, Dustan was getting ready to take the pups out for a stroll.  Which is all you really can do in this heat.  Before he went he decided he'd better feed our summer fish.  In case you were unaware, this summer we have a 50 gallon (or in other words, very large) fish tank with Gage's (my brother-in-law) 5 fish.  We are watching them while he is off galivanting around the globe leading the carefree life of a recent college graduate.  We fully support this lifestyle, just not financially.  Having the fish has been quite fun.  I've renamed them all for Gage.  They are fun to watch.  I truly enjoy trying to discipline Rainbow Fish when he's bullying the others, it's the kindergarten teacher in me. 

A picture of the fish tank along with its stand to give you an idea of it's size. Underneath and hidden is the full filtration system.  Dustan added the doors so you can't see it. 

As Dustan went to feed the fish he realized that one of the Tres Amigos (the 3 yellow giraffe cichlids)  was missing.  Our summer fish never miss dinner.  As he started looking around, AKA looking at the top to make sure we didn't have a floater he realized there was now Dos Amigos in the fish tank.  He then proceeded to do a full sweep around the perimeter of the very large fish tank with no sightings. It wasn't until he got to the back and to the very complicated filtration system that he found Un Amigo floating tail up in the sucker outer contraption on the back side of the fish tank.  It may be at this point I was a teensie bit disappointed he didn't stop to take a photo but do understand why.  Probably assuming the worst Dustan quickly shut down the entire tank, which is a task as not only do we have a HUGE fish tank we also have an additional ~15 gallon tank under the fish stand that is its own full super filtration system for the larger tank.  Apparently you when you get into fish you get into them big or go home.  Dustan removed said sucker out contraption, revived Un Amigo with timely CPR and put him back into the main tank.  He said it was touch and go there for a little bit.

A picture of behind the fish tank to show how it is set up.  Un Amigo must have gotten into the black filter inside the tank then sucked out through the clear tube into the clear plastic box behind the tank.  Luckily the clear box always has water running through it.

 It's at this point that I would be remiss to not remind you of how hysterical Nemo's dad got any time Nemo would go near the filter in Finding Nemo.  The other fish thought he was over reacting and being paranoid.  We spent quite a bit of time examining the fish tank last night and cannot figure out how Un Amigo ended up where he did.  He had to have gotten sucked down some rather small tubes.  Virtually impossible to believe unless you've seen Finding Nemo.   

All the fish this morning.  Rainbow Fish is to the left and Tres Amigos are reunited.  When a giraffe cichlid suffers trama all of his spots will fade away.  I didn't look that up, I know this from direct observation.