Five for Friday - Summer is almost over!

I cannot believe that Monday my teacher friend and I will be teaching Kindergarten Jumpstart and then the next Monday all teachers report back to work. I am happy to be back in the blogosphere after taking a few weeks off from blogging with my nieces in town and my crazy busy schedule, I missed you guys! Here is my quick Five for Friday. Thank you to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting!

My nieces! Sure I have probably post more than anyone (other than me) cares to know about these two but I just can't help it! They came back into town last night for one more weekend before we all go back to school!

AMSTI Math & Science

After four total weeks of training (2 weeks this summer, 2 weeks last) I am finally fully AMSTI trained in Math and Science. You will have to check back in during the year to see all the amazing hands on math and science lessons my kiddos will be doing this year!

I LOVE Discovery Education!

My award for my Discovery Education blog came in the mail a few weeks ago!

A few days later I got my Silver Star for being a DEN STAR!

If you have not heard about DE, check out my previous posts {here}, check out the DE site, and stay tuned for a whole lot more posts this coming year! DE is probably the best tool I use in my classroom!

Digital Renaissance Summer Conference

This week I spent two amazing days with wonderful teachers in Baldwin county learning lots and lots about using tech in the classroom. Check out my post from yesterday {here} for more information!

I am having a TPT Sale August 4th-5th, all items in my store will be on sale! Click {here} to visit my store to start your wish list and then see who else is having a sale!

Kindergarten Pond Getting Techie!!

I have spent the last two days at our county's Digital Renaissance Summer Conference!!  (If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a lot of tweets with #digrensc.) I am on fire and ready for school to start so I can share all this fabulous tech with my kiddos!!!

( 2nd, 1st, and Kindergarten representing with our Superintendent!)

Here is just a taste of what I learned from the past two days:

Kevin Honeycutt 

Have you met this guy? If not, you are missing out. He is an amazing teacher with so much to share!!! Check out his web page and YouTube channel.

My  five major takeaways from him were:
1. Relationships are important between student and teacher! Teacher empowerment comes from being trusted, how you feel when you are learning is how you remember the learning – emotion cements learning and leads to launch moments!!!!

2. We need to teach ourselves and our students to "Learn to Love to Learn". We should all be "self-updating software" continuously improving and learning on our own.
3. Be prescriptive! Make the tool fit the students.

4. Don't be secret geniuses!!!! Share! Social media is like a jar of lightening bugs, the more you have the more you can see!!!
5.  Find the teachers you want to be like then stalk follow them! Learn from each other!

Kindergarten Tech (using 1 to 1 iPads)

Here are some fabulous apps I discovered:
Brainstorm & Brainstorm Companion (to use whole group, students respond to a question or prompt and then "flick" their answer to the teacher's iPad which can be displayed on the board)
Stage (allows you to use iPad as a document camera, it also have tools on the side to annotate and more)
Eggy Words (sight words game)

Using Popplet in K

Beginning sounds sort - (reading center) Letter cards on desk with a lot of different picture cards to sort (ex. Letter b card on table, find the pictures that begin with /b/, take photographs of cards and add to Popplet)

Students take a picture of self and then add adjectives around the picture

Students take a picture of self and add pictures of all the other students and type in their names

Essential question – so that everyone can share their answer: students come up and answer on the  board or on the iPad in a center

Facts about a topic - written or pictures

Pre-writing - answer questions to prepare to write a narrative

Using QR Codes in K
Record reading, writing, and singing to send home.
Teacher record leveled readers, add QR code to the book, students can follow along in the book as they listen to the story.
Multiple uses during reading centers - memory, sight word review, sound matching, word writing - using the QR codes to check work.
*Great sites:
www.recordmp3.org, www.qrcode-monkey.com, www.qrstuff.com

iMovie 
Let me begin by saying, Eric Lee from Technology in Motion (Jacksonville State) is amazing! He is so knowledgeable and patient. This is the second time I have attended a session of his and learned so much each time! (I attended his iMovie session last year and then updated my OS system and iMovie changed.) I plan to make a how to video and share with you very soon for my students and to post here!

Google Drive
I have used Google Drive in the past as a file sharing tool but oh my goodness, Drive is so much more!!! I may not use it to it's full potential with my students but it will definitely come in handy with our new collaborative planning!!!

And last but not least, I WON AN IPAD MINI FOR MY CLASS!!! I am so excited and so thankful!!! Thank you to all of the people that presented and organized this amazing conference!!!

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Five for Friday

Here we are again! Another Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching and another week closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Time is flying by this year. I know I sure have been busy with starting a TPT store and starting this blog. I have also been working on implementing my AMSTI (Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative) training into my curriculum. This has meant a lot of video and audio recordings of my teaching and my students learning. So for #1...

AMSTI Math

 Roll and Record
Working on one to one correspondence, subtilizing, writing numbers, counting, composing numbers and more!!

Pattern Block Scarecrows

 Build It - number recognition, counting, composing numbers, ten frames

I have loved using the Terc Investigations math series along with my AMSTI training. It is all about being hands on and the kids taking ownership of their learning. We have learned a lot of different math games and the kiddos don't even realize how much learning is going on. 

AMSTI Science

Weather Unit: Thermometers & Temperature

Math and Science have always been my favorite subjects! So being able to get AMSTI science kits this year has been a dream come true. I was amazed at the learning that went on in my class during our weather kit. The work my kiddos did with thermometers blew my mind! Using talk moves during my lessons has made a huge difference. I was astounded to watch them work together sharing ideas until they figured out what a thermometer was and what it did. 

 My Last Post About Mamma Mia (at least for a year)!

WE WON!!! We took home first place in our food category and we were part of a three way tie for overall Mamma Mia Spirit!

 The theme for the entire night was Rificolona - a Paper Lantern Festival in Florence Italy where farmers and peasants sold their goods.

 Under the Tuscan Moon
Our team took that theme and ran with it! We decorated our booth as a booth at a 17th Century farmer's market and dressed the part! We cook Tuscan Pasta and Chickpea Soup and made Caprese salad bites (displayed on a head of lettuce).

Luckily we live in south Alabama where there are a lot of farming families! One of our teammates found the wagon, butter churn, and even an old scale (not in the picture) in her in-laws barn! 

 iCurio + Discovery Education = Learning in the Digital Renaissance

I know I have mentioned Discovery Education here before and shared with you how absolutely fabulous a resource it has been for me. If you don't know about DE check it out here! It has an array of wonderful multimedia resources and lessons.

Another great resource has been iCurio. This is another subscription site that our county has purchased for us. It is amazing. It is a resource where you can gather multimedia rich content aligned to both state and common core standards. From their website:

• Over 330,000 digital resources for all K-12 curriculum areas aligned with state and Common Core standards.
• Supports the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework.
• Flexible, dynamic content can easily be targeted to differentiate instruction for all students.
• Address learning outcomes for every class, every lesson, every student.
• Improve student engagement with videos, text, learning games, images, simulations, and more.

As a Kindergarten teacher and being new to this site, I use it to plan my lessons. There are links to amazing resources for everything. You can even save pages you find and share them with your grade level, school, or district. This week I found an entire unit on Pilgrims. We started with a Pilgrim scheme sheet (they love learning "5th grade" words), made a list of things we would pack if we moved to a new home, sorted those items into what the pilgrims could have brought on the Mayflower, and wrote about what it would have been like on the Mayflower. We are also going to create an ONLINE venn diagram comparing pilgrim children and children today. Next week we will focus on the first Thanksgiving. 

Click on Picture to visit ReadWriteThink.org to create your own online venn!

 On a personal note:

I LOVE Christmas. Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love everything about Christmas!!!!! I love the wonderful church services reminding us of the Reason for The Season. I love the time spent with my family and friends. I love buying presents, especially for my two beautiful nieces. And I am absolutely giddy just thinking about decorating my home and classroom. I have a tradition, the day after Thanksgiving or that weekend, Christmas music plays, hot chocolate is drank, and the house is trimmed out in red and green!  I cannot wait for our class elf to arrive when we get back from Thanksgiving Break. I say all of this so you know I am not a scrooge when I say: Christmas in October and November has gone too far! What is going on????  In October,  I was looking for Halloween decorations but I couldn't find them for all the Christmas decorations. I lost most of my Thanksgiving decorations in a horrible attic accident (pic below) and could not find replacements because Christmas had invaded all of the shelves. I just think each holiday should be given the appropriate attention and not be used as a marketing tool. Each holiday has a special meaning to someone and should not be overlooked just to make a few extra dollars. 

Exiting soap box now! 

What have you been up to this week? Any great Thanksgiving or multimedia lessons to share?

Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and share!

Wednesday Wild Things!

 HAPPY HUMP DAY!!! I LOVE that silly commercial!

It is Wednesday and I have been looking over my plans for next week. I am a little nervous because I am going to try to teach my kiddos about book reviews and how to write them. Luckily I have a lot of help from one of my favorite teacher tools, Discovery Education!



If you don't know about Discovery Education (DE), stop reading and go look at this site right now! Then come right back and continue reading :)! This is a subscription site paid for by our county school system and is an amazing resource. As part of my county's Digital Renaissance Leadership Team, I have been able to attend a lot of different workshops on how to use DE effectively in my classroom. At the last workshop I attended, we where shown different model lessons that have been created to align with common core and to integrate technology across the curriculum. You can find these lessons by looking under the Streaming Plus icon on your home screen and then search by grade level, subject, strand, cluster, standard. Not all standards have a model lesson. There are four model lessons in Kindergarten ELA though and they cover most of the ELA standards. 


Next week I am teaching Wild Things! During this week, we do a lot of work with the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. After 10 years of teaching this unit, I was ready for a change. This summer I started by looking on my favorite idea spot, Pinterest! (My Kindergarten Creepy & Spooky board is here.) I found a cute directed art activity and then when I found the model lesson on DE to go with the book, my week was practically planned for me! Here are the things that I have planned for next week.

Idea from ElementaryArtist (picture links to their lesson)

Monday: Book Introduction, Using Details in Writing and Illustrations to tell a story
We will read the book Where the Wild Things Are. We will discuss the characters in the story and talk about how each wild thing is different. We will talk about how illustrators use details from the story to add details to their illustrations. We will take a look at all the details used to create the different wild things. We will create our own wild thing using directed art for the main body parts and then each student will be allowed to go back and add their own details. We will use crayons to draw and water colors to paint our wild things.

Tuesday:(DE Lesson) Finding Your Voice: Sharing Opinions about Books - Part 1
First we will vote on what is better: hot dogs or hamburgers. We will use this vote to discuss what an opinion is and how someone's opinion is not right or wrong. We will then vote on if we like fiction books or non fiction books best. This time I will get some of them to tell my why they chose to vote the way they did. Next we will review the book Where the Wild Things Are. We will make a graph of who likes/dislikes the book. I will ask them what they did and did not like about the book. We will then view a video of the story  Where the Wild Things Are from DE. I will tell them to think of the reasons they like or dislike the story. After summarizing the story again, we will watch the video once more as I stop and ask questions about what is going on in the story. This way the students can really focus on the different parts and details of the story so when they write their book review later in the week, they can give good reasons for liking/disliking the story. We will wrap up with some of the students giving me their opinions of the story - hopefully adding more details in their reasoning.

Wednesday: Writing to a Prompt & How to Write a Book Review (2 different lessons/meetings)
We will use our story telling pieces to retell Where the Wild Things Are. We will then write to finish the the sentence..."When I feel Wild, I..."
Later more students will share their opinions of the story. I will introduce them to a book review. We will read and discuss a book review for Where the Wild Things Are. Next we will watch and discuss book reviews (from Reading Rainbow) of Where the Wild Things Are and two other books.

Thursday: Writing a Book Review
First we will review what a book review is and what it contains. We will review some of the books we have read recently. Students will be able to choose which book they want to review. (Here is my book review form.) The student will copy the title of the book onto their paper. Then they will write if they like or dislike the book. ("I like this book." "I do not like this book.") Then they will draw an illustration showing why they like or dislike the book and write a sentence (as best they can) describing their picture. Students will then work in small groups to video each other giving their book reviews using IPads.

Friday: Speaking and Listening - Sharing Our Book Reviews
Students will either share their book review in person or use the videos they prepared the previous day.

So these are my PLANS for next week. However, as you all know, with Kindergarten (or any group of kids) things may or may not go as planned. Fingers crossed for success. I know they will love doing this all the time if we can get the procedure down!

Have any of you tried doing book reviews with your kids? Any tips????