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Monthly Archives: February 2011

ARMT Practice

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For the next 3 weeks I will not be teaching from the Scott Foresman reading series- we will be practicing for the ARMT/SAT 10. I will be using several practice books to get passages and questions from for the practice. I am planning on doing about 6-8 practices each day!! I wanted something for the kids to do as soon as they come into my class but that wouldn’t take too long so I am going back through the Scott Foresman Reading Practice Workbook and pulling passages from that book. Then I am making up questions to go with the passage for the skills/strategies they need to be able to use/do for the test. I will have them do these quickly and independently. I want them to do this independently so that I can see at a glance who still needs to work on certaing skills/concepts. I am going to make a page on this blog so that you can click on each one and use if you want to.

My Other Blogs

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You might want to look at my other blogs/websites (since I haven’t really gotten this one going so far-just wait for summer, though)!!!

This is my reading and writing blog where I am posting all kinds of thoughts/links, etc. on teaching, 6th grade, comprehension, etc.

http://extremereadingandwriting.wordpress.com/

This is my cooking blog-yes, I said cooking blog! 🙂 Well, I do cook sometimes!!

http://shannonsdishes.wordpress.com/

This is my OLD Kindergarten blog. I sort of stopped posting on this one after I found out I was moving to 6th grade. However, I do have plans to add some more stuff to this blog (again, this summer).

http://thekinderexpress.wordpress.com/

And-this is my 6th grade school/classroom website where I have uploaded some documents for parents to view as well as students.

http://www.wadleyhighschool.al.rch.schoolinsites.com/?PageName=TeacherPage&Page=16&StaffID=137670&iSection=Teachers&CorrespondingID=137670

Can you tell that I love to blog/teach? I think it is my addiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  🙂

Trifold Discussion Questions

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One of the 1st grade teachers in our school district, Amy Richardson at Rock Mills, sent me one of these trifolds that one of her 1st grade girls completed during the fall of this year(yes, this 1st grader was able to restate the question!!!). I recently came upon a website of a school in Maine that has lots of Scott Foresman resources(including the trifold template) so I am linking to it below. I took their already made template and am now in the process of adding discussion questions from each story to a trifold template and uploading them to this blog for 6th grade.

http://www.sad29.k12.me.us/reading_first.html

Richard Peck’s take on reading aloud

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I found the following information on www.readingzone.wordpress.com about Richard Peck’s interview in an issue of 5 Questions For Richard Peck.

You talk a lot with young readers. What are they telling you?

Things they didn’t mean to. Over and over they’re telling me that the books I wrote for them to read are being read to them by their teachers. And hearing a story read doesn’t seem to expand their vocabularies. If a teacher is going to take limited classroom time in reading aloud (and even giving away the ending), the least she could do is hand out a list of vocabulary from the reading to be looked up and learned

My thoughts on this are exactly the same as the author of the readingzone. I would NEVER want to read if I thought I had to look up vocabulary words/definitions just to be able to read a specific book!!!!!! Does EVERYONE want to take the joy out of reading????? Just because I choose a certain book to read aloud to my class doesn’t mean that nobody in my class is ever going to want to read that same book for themselves!!! AND for SEVERAL students it would be the ONLY time they would enjoy that book because of the fact that they are not readers by nature!!!

Keep the read aloud STRONG AND ALIVE!!!!! 🙂

Parents and Teachers as a Team

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My instructor for one of my online classes that I am taking right now posted this poem which shows how parents and teachers help to form a child. Pretty neat!

Unity
By Cleo V. Swarat

I dreamed I stood in a studio
And watched two sculptors there,
The clay they used was a young child’s mind
And they fashioned it with care.

One was a teacher:
the tools she used were books and music and art;
One was a parent
With a guiding hand and gentle loving heart.

And when at last their work was done,
They were proud of what they had wrought.
For the things they had worked into the child
Could never be sold or bought!

And each agreed she would have failed
if she had worked alone.
For behind the parent stood the school,
and behind the teacher stood the home!

Powerpoints for whole group instruction

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I have started creating powerpoints for my whole group instruction. I got this idea from Lorrie Cooper and the other wonderful teachers at C.E. Hannah in Oxford, AL. It is used to engage the students, but also just to keep myself on track as I am teaching. They were gracious enough to share a week’s worth of their powerpoints so that I could see their schedule/tasks, etc. I am now in the process of creating my own powerpoints to use in my classroom. They do whole group for 30 minutes, and I would love to only use that amount of time so that I could really get into my small groups, but I am really having a difficult time getting it all in for no more than 30 minutes. I’ll keep trying though. So, as I create the powerpoints I will upload them to their appropriate spot on this blog-please try to be patient! 🙂