Snowy Days

I don't know about you, but my classroom is definitely benefiting from all this snow Pennsylvania has been getting. We've had so many snow days, I lost count! Since I live so close to my school, I was still able to make it in and spruce up the place a little bit. I revamped my big closet doors to make them pretty and of course to hang some student work. We have been working on our animal reports, and I needed the perfect place for them. If I'm allowed to brag, I am super excited about their work; they have been doing an AMAZING job! I'm very proud! :)

Anyway, I have been seeing all over Pinterest the cute double border, so I thought I would try it my self. I used a black background so my bright owl border would stick out much better. I ordered my owl border and little owl guys, they're soo cute! It's part of the Owl Stars theme:



 I first saw the idea on SchoolGirlStyle, click on the picture to see other awesome ideas:

 

I will keep you posted on the rest of my snowy day endeavors!

Happy teaching!

Vocabulary's CODE

Take a second and think about how you teach new vocabulary... This is what my reading supervisor asked the ELA teachers in grades 3-5 during a professional development day.  I learned several ways to teach new vocab throughout college courses and trainings in my district, but what my supervisor showed me next was very intriguing.

She introduced a book called The Core Six: Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core, which can be found here.
In this book, there are lots of strategies for teaching within the Common Core, but we focused on the second strategy, Vocabulary's CODE.

The short version: CODE is an acronym. C is for Connect, O is for Organize, D is for Deep-Processing, and E is for Exercising in review. We tried some awesome strategies for these different ways to practice and learn words. As teachers, we should try for each of these ways to work with words. You can have kids sort words based on your own criteria or criteria of their own. They can draw pictures to represent meanings of words or make connections between different words in the same or separate books/passages. I've only talked about a few, but there are endless possibilities.

If your state has aligned their standards to the Common Core, you already know that deeper thinking is a big focus! Vocabulary's CODE is awesome for deeper thinking with vocabulary words.

Happy teaching! :)

The Beginning

Welcome to my teaching blog! I am super excited to get started on this new chapter in my life! First of all, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a first year teacher in a district that I grew up in. It's so wonderful to be working alongside some of the teachers that I looked up to growing up! I graduated from Shippensburg University in the fall of 2009. Since then, I have had loads of different experiences! I started out, as most do, as a day-to-day substitute teacher, fighting my way through the waters to get my name out there. Then, all of a sudden it seemed, my hard work payed off when I received a phone call for my first long term sub position in second grade. I have subbed in every single grade from Kindergarten to 12th grade, with the exception of 9th grade, with several long term assignments. Whoa, my eyes were certainly opened! Anyway, my last long term assignment landed me where I am now, happy as a clam, in third grade! Currently, I'm working on my Master's of Reading degree at Shippensburg University.

 I just started my journey on the teaching trail and I want to be able to share all of my ideas for reading, writing, and word work that I've come across over the years and help any other new or veteran teachers out there wanting a different way to do things. Stay tuned for some good stuff; you won't be disappointed!

Happy teaching! : )