Morning Calendar

Boy, sometimes the littlest things make the biggest difference! I am sure this is a no brainer for a lot of people, but what a difference it has made with my morning calendar routine! I started giving students individual white boards to do the calendar work on! Yeah, I know, not rocket science!

One student now leads the calendar and the rest of the students write the answers on their white boards. They all are on task instead of talking or just zoning out. And, with a quick glance, I can see whether they are doing it or not. They are getting the daily practice in important math skills everyday!

Character Trading Cards - Cont.

My wonderful aide made a suggestion as I was showing her the Character Trading Cards about 3 minutes before my lesson. She said it would be cute to have them use the card to draw and write about their Halloween costume - the Character they would be on Halloween. Then they could make the character out of art materials. So, I changed my plans on the spot and my students loved it!

Character Trading Cards

We will be finishing up our mini unit on characters soon. Students will be making a Character Trading Card about one of the characters from a story they have been reading. Here is the sheet they will fill out. I will post some pics when they are completed!



Character Trading Card

Syllables

I am so in love with all the cute graphics out there! When I see them, I want to just sit down and make something!

That being said, here is a syllable sort I made for Halloween!

Spooky Syllable Sort

New Year, New Room!

This summer I had to move classrooms. I was a bit overwhelmed at first. This is my 4th classroom in 6 years even though I have been at the same school! I made it though with the help of the custodial staff and my husband. Here are some picture of my new room!

Characters

Another story element we have been working on are the characters. Students use this graphic organizer to keep track of some of the characters in their story and to note what the author said about the character. We will discuss this in our writing as well as we begin to describe out characters in our personal narratives. Character Graphic Organizer

Story Elements

During our first trimester of school we work on story elements. After working on setting for a few days, we played a "Setting Scoot" game. I set a book out on each table. As a group they needed to look through the book, and agree on the where and when of the story. After a few minutes, they had to "scoot" to the next table and do the same with that book. They students absolutely loved it! And,  I got a good glimpse at whether they got it or not! Setting Scoot

I Do!

Wow! Another long gap between my posts! I promise I will be back to business in a few days. In the mean time, I wanted to tell you my wonderful news!!!!

On August 19th, I got married!!!!!

Sooo trying to get used to my married name. Friday at school they paged Mrs. Marx and I didn't respond! I totally forgot that was me. I was sitting with the guidance counselor who hadn't heard the news and she said "Who is Mrs. Marx?" Ohhh.. me!

To those of you who have started school, I hope your year has started out smoothly!

And to those who are starting soon.. take a deep breath and enjoy your first few days!

~Mrs. Marx

Sushi, anyone?

 My students worked on ILP's (Independent Learning Projects) near the end of the year. Each student chose a topic they wanted to learn more about. One of my students is the son of a chef and he chose to learn about sushi! His father volunteered to come in and make sushi for the students and talk a bit about culture, and the nutritional value of sushi!

It's been a while!

Wow! I cant believe I have not posted since February! This year just flew by!  I am technically on summer vacation, but was informed that I will be moving rooms next year so I have been working on packing up stuff. I will also have two new grade level partners next year! So excited about that!

SUMMER READING!
  I tend to spend a lot of time in the summer reading professional development books. My current topic of interest is Conferring and I cant wait for my new book to arrive:
 

I also cannot wait until July 20th! I am going to see The Sisters in MA for a Daily 5 conference.

Honored!

Thank you Mrs. Harris  (  http://adventuresofroom129.blogspot.com  ) for honoring me with this award!


Here is what you need to do to keep the award going:


1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award


2. Share 7 things about yourself


3. Award 5 recently discovered great bloggers


4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award


Hmmm..... 7 things about me:
  1. I have two wonderful daughters (ages 15 and 4!)

 

  2.  I was a classroom aid for almost 12 years before I took my leap of faith into having my own classroom. Best leap ever!

3.  I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in second grade. 

4.  All our pets have the middle name of James - Bentley James, Oliver James, and Dexter James!

5. I lived in Queens, NY until I was 7 then we moved to Leeds, Maine! I went from a tar playground to a school in the middle of a corn field!

6. I love horror movies! For some reason when people hear this about me, they are shocked.

7.  When I look at where I was in my life just seven years ago, I think of the old cigarette add: "You have come a long way baby!" I could not have made this journey without my best friend, my Ed.

 5 Bloggers I have passed this award to:

http://mrsnielson-2ndgrade.blogspot.com/

http://msdurning.blogspot.com/

http://ladybugsteacherfiles.blogspot.com/

http://fabulousinfirst.blogspot.com/

http://frogsbeesundertheseas.blogspot.com/

Homophones!

Yesterday we started working with Homophones. I had one of those right - before - the - lesson - brain - cramps and decided to start my lesson a different way. Instead of me telling the students what homophones were I gave each student a card with a homophone pair on it. Students then got EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee) with a classmate and talked about what they noticed about the words. Then we discussed what they noticed. This is what they came up with:
   * They sound the same ( with a little coaching from me... they wanted to say they were just the same)
   * They are spelled different.
   * They do not mean the same thing.

I was amazed and a bit proud of them ( well... and myself!)

We then listened to the homophone song and students had to highlight the homophone pairs in the poem.

Today they took a homophone pair and used a graphic organizer to draw a picture of the word, and use the word in a sentence. We are going to make these into a class book.

Snow day Frustration!

So.... home all day due to "Snowmagaden" and thought I would bake. Went to the fridge to get the ingredients for some peanut butter cookies... No eggs! UGH! Decided to do some updating on the blog - still having issues with Google Docs. For some reason, I can not get the link to show on the right side so I can embed my documents! One more frustration and I may just have to go outside and shovel!

Plurals

Next week we will start working with plurals. I made a concentration (memory) game for making words ending in a consonant +y plural.

Our year so far!

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Visualizing

Today we started learning about how readers make mental images using their schema when they read.  We listened to the Visualizing song.


 

Then, I read aloud the book Bedhead by Margi Palatini. As I was reading, students drew their mental images. After the story was finished, students found a partner and shared their drawings. Then, students adjusted their pictures. To finish the lesson we discussed why all of our pictures were different.... we all have different SCHEMA!