Reflections…

Increase Opportunities to Respond with a “No Hands Rule”.

Look for ways to generate student names randomly.

Many of you already use names on popsicle sticks. In this article, Dylan Wiliam highly recommends this approach – but I like how he calls them “Lolly Sticks”! He suggests a procedure where you “Pose, Pause, Pounce and Bounce” (pose the question, pause for kids to think, pounce on the first random name you draw and bounce that response to someone else – draw another stick, and then another…).
Get cue card here.
OR…
Use the “card-o-matic” idea in this Teaching Channel Video:
http://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/card-o-matic?fd=0

During the month of November, I am going to attempt to “code” my instructional coaching time using this list of “Ten Roles for Teacher Leaders“. I heard Joellen Killion at the Instructional Coaching Conference in Lawrence, Kansas last month. She talked about how important it is for coaches to know how they are using their time. It is important for coaches to know who they are working with and what they are working on.

Jim Knight opened the 2010 Instructional Coaching Conference with this video…

The website that is linked to the title of this post has directions for making designs on a 100s chart. It is a great activity for number recognition, or you could give the directions for +1, -1, +10, -10, etc.

I think I will go to the craft store and buy some “jewels” with a flat side so that they can make the designs with those. It seems like a really fun way to practice a lot of math skills.

I found something really fun on Apples4theTeacher
It is so cool! Some of the kids can play on the computer! This is a link to a 100s chart coloring page! You can choose different colors, touch the crayon to the number on the hundreds chart and click on it to make it change color.

Too much fun with a 100s chart!

This time of year it seems inevitable that I will end up searching for something new on Jan Brett’s website.
This year, I think I hit the jackpot!!!

She has a great video section. I downloaded the two videos for the Gingerbread Baby. One video shows how to draw a gingerbread baby, and in the other, she talks about the story and her illustrations and ends up telling the story.

I think my favorite part was how she explained the illustrations in the side bars of the page. She talked about how that allows her to add extra details to the story and to do some foreshadowing. She spent some time talking about giving her characters voice and making them seem real to the reader.

The videos are extremely well made. There are several to choose from. Most of them focus on how to draw the illustrations in her books. Her conversation while drawing is an added bonus!

This is the single-word quote that I am known for in the article featuring Adobe Software use at LPS as published on Adobe’s website! I guess it would be another one of my favorite things – my little “blurb” is near the bottom of the article! I like to use “fill-in-the-blank” forms for students and for a lot of my teacher work. Adobe Professional allows you to create forms that you or your students can fill in with necessary information. The article is linked to the title of this post.

I love using these “bingo” markers in guided reading groups.

When we work on word families, we make a book with many of the words in the family (-at family: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, rat…).

Sometimes it’s hard to get kindergartners to isolate the onset sound of these words – we call it the “leader” – just like we have a leader in our line, words have leaders too! We use the dot markers to put a dot under the leader of the word so that kids will pay more attention to the sound that starts each word.

It has worked quite well, and the kids love it! Do-A-Dot even has their own website – linked to the title of this post – check it out!

I love the little 5 minute “filler” programs that are on the Disney channel! I’m a big fan of Daniel Cook – Daniel goes on little field trips to learn about all sorts of things, it’s a great show for young children.

Anyway, Daniel now has his own interactive website, and it is awesome! I learned about it in a class I took last night, and I’m so glad I did!

Click on the title of this post to go to Daniel’s site!

I love to use this alligator “snapper” (from Safari Ltd.) to teach greater than and less than! Jack Hartmann has a song – Mr. Alligator Can Chomp on his CD – Movin’ 2 Math. Here are the lyrics:

Mr. Alligator can chomp, he can swim and he can stomp, he’s a real smart alligator…he chomps at numbers that are greater!

Once we get a couple of numbers up, Mr. Alligator looks them over and then decides which one he will “chomp”! The kids make alligator mouths with their hands open in the direction that they think Mr. Alligator should chomp. It’s a lot of fun!

I think that finger spelling is a great way to teach letter sounds. It is a way to make an auditory concept visual and kinesthetic. I have had a lot of success using this to teach kids to use letter sounds in their beginning reading and writing.

The title of this post is linked to a University of Oregon site that lists many different sources where you can download free fingerspelling fonts. The one I use is the Gallaudet font.