Banned Book Week! and other education(ish) news

I love reading about things in the news that are related to my career as a teacher or anything in the education world.  I'm sure you've noticed since I try to post some education(ish) news that I've found to share with you, so once again here is a pretty linktastic news post.

It's banned books week!!!  Go read a banned book and figure out what the big deal was!

Click above for the American Library Association's information about banned books

 Judy Blume shares about the right to read:

Are These Books Banned from Your Library?

Official Banned Books Week Website

NCTE's Complete List of Banned Books from 2004-2011

and in other news...

Bring Your Lunch to Work

Apparently bringing your lunch to work is uncool.  My other option is school lunch, so...

7 States Slashing Education Spending

The usual.

How Blogging and Twitter Make Us Smarter

....I thought I was getting unusually smart after I started my blog.

Can Emotional Intelligence be Taught?

What do you think?  This made me think of a question that one of my professors posed to us in a college course:  Can anyone be a teacher?  Can being a good teacher be taught?  Ahhh I still think this is an interesting debate.

Who's the Expert on What Your Child Eats?

....which leads me to this....

Schools Sending "Fat Letters" to Parents about Overweight Children

...and this small gem that I found to be a little...anti-teacher.  I understand and respect his opinion here, but we aren't all monsters who think we are better than you...

'Fat Letters' to Parents are Wrong
Do you think it's acceptable for schools to send home letters are about students' weight?


And that's a wrap.  As usual, Happy Teaching!

Sorry I'm not sorry.

So many bloggers are apologizing for having not updated in the past... two days or something.  What?!?  You have a life?  Your readers are so lucky that you post anything in the first place!  Keep up the great work!  Don't be sorry.

So, sorry I'm not sorry for not updating in awhile.

This has been me lately.

Our classroom got the monkey for a few days because we sold tons of magazines.  It wasn't distracting at all.  Our monkey kept very busy.

We've been very busy in the classroom.  Miss M has been teaching away lately so I haven't had to plan things and grade papers and it's been pretty dreamy.  Come mid-October, I may be in for a rude awakening.  She really is doing a great job and we are very lucky. 

In the meantime, I've been busy planning a bachelorette weekend, heading back home for weekends, and heading off to a college alumni bar crawl event.  Tonight is Culvers night, so I'm about to head out and run some hamburgers to the tables of some very lucky students and their parents.  It's pure madness.

We've been working on number forms these past two weeks (4.NBT.2 to be exact) and Miss M and I have been working together to scrounge up some things for these kiddos to get busy working on.  I'm always looking for great ideas for guided math time.

Naturally I started thinking about games I used to love playing with friends.  Have you played Spoons?  In high school, my friends and I would get together on someone's living room floor and play spoons for hours.  We were a special level of cool.  We also had so much fun.  Anywho- that's what made me think of making it a game for my students using number forms.

We played the other day and they-loved-it.  It was almost...too much fun.  Wait.  There is no such thing as too much fun.  I put together a "beginners level" with numbers in the hundreds and thousands, and then an "advanced level" for numbers in the ten thousands to millions place.  That way I could differentiate within my classroom when I was working with students.  The cards are great for other purposes as well- especially for using number forms during guided math time.  

So, if you wouldn't mind helping me out... I'm going to put these two games up on my TpT store for the next two days for free.  If you teach the number forms standard and think your kids would enjoy it, please download and leave me some feedback.  I hope your students enjoy it as much as we have!!   Also I am really sorry for not posting any blog posts in awhile so I thought a freebie would bring you back to me.  Except I'm not sorry.  

Here they are...click on the picture to link to my TpT store and download.

There's so many things I think to blog about and never make it on here to get'r'done.   I'm off to Culvers to run food around in circles!  Wish me luck!

Happy Teaching!!

Graphic Organizers: The Framing Routine

Graphic organizers.  A teacher's best friend and worst enemy.

I say that because I love using a good graphic organizer, but there are so many out there that this helpful little tool can actually be a bit confusing for students.  Here's an example.  To find main idea, usually we read the text, then look for the main idea and find the supporting details, and when we write, we organize our thoughts by having a main idea with details to back it up.  We don't start with details and figure out the main idea later.  When we were studying main idea last year, my students opened up their reading workbook to a graphic organizer that listed three details on top with the main idea on the bottom.  So naturally they start writing the main idea in the first box, except that was supposed to be the detail.  And let's face it, kids just aren't into details.  It didn't matter that the first box said "detail" instead of "main idea".... none of them took the time to read that.  They were in a hurry and couldn't be bothered with reading the words on the page, just filling in the boxes.   Doesn't Miss B give out some kind of award for who finished first?  She doesn't?  Then why are we doing this?  

I found my go-to [research based] organizer a few years ago.  Actually, the only other organizers I use now are a web or venn diagram.  It's called The Framing Routine and it's from the University of Kansas' Center for Research on Learning.  Our school had a half-day training on The Frame and how to use it.  Our trainer came a couple times and observed each of us completing a Frame with our class.  Then we were Framed and granted our Framing books.

In order to use The Frame "correctly", you're technically supposed to be trained by a certified Framer (I don't know if that's what they are called, but they should be).  It's not difficult, but it is interesting.  To be honest, the training is insightful as to other ways to use the Frame for connecting ideas and uses in the classroom.  However, it appears that KU has taken down the contact information for training, so I'm just going to post my mini-training here.  

It goes like this. The basic organizer part is pretty self-explanatory.  Be sure you (the teacher) fill it out ahead of time so that you and your students don't get off topic.  This is actually a very helpful tip, even though I kind of blew it off the first time I attempted a Frame with my students and it was a small disaster.  Since then I've always completed one ahead of time.  The most important part of the Frame is the "So What?" category.

Reasons I love "The Frame":

1. All the information is on one page

2. It makes a great study guide

3. Students have to figure out why this information is important 

4. I can use it for every subject all the time- from vocabulary to science text to reading skills or math concepts.

Ok, so here's an example of what they look like.  The book has a bunch of versions that you can't find online (I tried, guys), and there are some made for primary students and some for intermediate and/or secondary.

If you can get your hands on the book, it has more info about the research and uses of The Frame. 

 {You can get your hands on black-market book here}  

Some of them are a bit...pricey ($150?  Really?), but there are a few for around $20.
They are a hot commodity.  

Or you can read a short article about The Framing Routine from the Adolescent Literacy website {here}.

If you want to skip all that pesky research and head straight to the good stuff, you can find a few intermediate frames {here}.  

There are a few more included {here}.

If you're interested in the University of Kansas's other learning strategies and resources, you can go {here}.  They really are awesome.

Read the fine print:   

*I'm not "selling" anything here...although it kind of sounds like it.  I just really love using this strategy.  Plus, there isn't really anything to sell unless you want to buy the book, which doesn't benefit me at all since as you read above, I already own it and am not selling it.  Although if I did, I would sell it for one million dollars.*

**If you really think you might love this, just leave a comment and we can chat more about it.**

***If you are from the university and you are unhappy about me sharing this, then please fix your website link so that I can share it.  Also, I would love for you to train me and then I'll go train everyone else.  Thanks!***

            

Follow RTL On 

Teachers are superheroes... and a message from the Kid President

When I found out I had a student teacher, people told me two things: "You will have so much time to do things now!" and "You are going to be so busy!".  And both of those could not be more true.  How is it that I can have so much down time and yet not be able to get everything done?

I'll tell you.

Because the time I have is random time at school when I wish I could be on my computer getting things done except my student teacher is teaching using my computer.  If I want to be productive during that "down time" then I'm actually planning ahead of time for my time and who has time for that?  Not me.  Then we are at school late every day going over things for the following day week.

You know what I've learned?  It's really super hard to explain everything you do as a teacher for a 15 minute lesson let alone an actual entire day of teaching.  Here's how I manage the class.  If that doesn't work, do this.  Teach this.  Look this up.  Help kid #1 write his name on his paper.  Reteach to kids #20, 14, and 16.  Check in with #4.  #9 leaves early today.  Also, send this upstairs.  Today there's an assembly.  Prepare for the next lesson.  Explain this.  Use these exact vocabulary words.  But let them know they may hear it said like this also. They need to know both.  Circulate the room.  Here's 12 books.  And 15 binders I've put together.  Plus my jump drive.  Also, here's all my passwords to every website ever.  oh wait LOCK DOWN, everyone hide (seriously, that happened).  Get copies made.  Check these papers.  Oy vey.

Seriously!  Wow.  Teachers impress me.  Great job, guys.  Pat yourselves on the back, because our job is hard and we make it look easy and that's the ultimate definition of A-MAZ-ING.  **note:  I don't feel like I make it look easy, I feel like I'm herding cattle and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but somehow I pull it together and they appear to be learning. 

Here's what the Kid Prez says.  There's some great one-liners, so pay attention.  

Get your learn on!

A day just for teachers

Apparently yesterday was Teacher's Day.  At least, that's what Google+ kept telling me.  I wouldn't know.  No one appreciated me all day long.

Just kidding.  About the being appreciated.  I'm sure someone did.  I didn't feel like I was being ignored or anything.

But I didn't know it was Teacher's Day.  I'm also not quite convinced it was officially "Teacher's Day" in our country.  I think maybe it was in India.  That's what I gathered from some (very) informal research.  But I say, it's 5 o'clock somewhere, so go celebrate yourselves!

Speaking of which.  Isn't there an official Teacher's Day (in the U.S.) in May?  We don't celebrate that at our school.  We have a teacher day during our Catholic Schools Week and then call it good for the year.

I mean...this school had a cake cutting and some kind of gift opening (and some shaking videography).

You better believe I'm bringing that up at our next faculty meeting.

We aren't having faculty meetings this year anyways because we are doing PLCs instead.  We've only met with our PLCs once, and we took a quiz to see what kind of personalities we have.  I LOVED IT.  {Here's the link in case you've never taken the quiz.}  

I'm an ESTP, which is "The Doer".  No surprise here!  You can read more about my personality {here}.  Or just click there to navigate your way to your own personality and read up about yourself!   I thought it was great because we all work together and got to see how each person deals with situations and people differently.  Plus, there was a question on our survey about how we view our time spent in PLCs and it was good to talk about with our group in order to use our time most effectively.

I'm off to play in the sun for the weekend.  Blogging is hard to fit into the schedule of adventures!!! Happy Weekend!