An app I simply can’t live without is Clear+. Right now, it is $4.99 in the App Store, but it is worth every penny and then some to me. It is a very simply premise actually – just a bunch of lists. A list of lists! I can organize everything from a traditional ‘To Do’ list to my grocery lists, wish lists, ideas, etc. The best part is that you can drag and drop items in a list to help prioritize. This comes in handy with my grocery list, because I can reorganize it so similar items are grouped (or if you’re really OCD, you can organize it by where it is located in the store). I can also prioritize my To Do lists in order if what needs to get done immediately through what needs to get done at my earliest convenience.
There is something so very satisfying about swiping an item off the To Do list – Clear+ rewards you with a buzz and a chime. It’s so addicting, I can’t wait to finish a task! I have also come to realize that if I don’t write something down, it won’t happen. I check in with my app about 3-5 times a day to keep my goals in mind.
When parents ask me for suggestions for their child who loves technology but needs a little help staying organized, I suggest many free apps from Reminders to MyHomework, Google Calendar, CalenMob, etc. Yet for some, these free apps just have too many bells, whistles, and complications. Some students need the simplicity of Clear, and I am happy to suggest the app to them.
Which apps or other tools do you use to stay organized?
Surprise! Teachers Pay Teachers has decided to throw a surprise flash sale of 10% off everything site-wide! In addition, everything in my store is 20% off as well – for you math wizards, this means a combined 28% off everything in my store. What a bargain!
Okay, an alternate title for this post could be “Kristen’s Lazy Chicken Noodle Soup.” I’m not too proud to admit it – I’ll take shortcuts when I can. Teachers are busy, man!
So one of my favorite cooking tricks is what I call ‘Soup Hacking.’ I take a soup mix and ‘hack’ it by adding tons of stuff to it to make it a hearty meal. For lunches this week, I chose chicken noodle soup.
I start with a mix by Bear Creek. Then, I add frozen vegetables and chicken (to other soups, I add pasta, rice, beans, etc.). If I have time, I prefer to grill the chicken or cook it in the slow-cooker, but this week I went for the even-easier rotisserie chicken. I just throw all the ingredients together and boil for 10 minutes – so simple!
Cooking all of this food would have made 10 meals, so I cut everything in half to make 5 lunches. The total cost comes to $10.05 or $1 per meal! I also keep nutrition in mind: each meal contains about 200 calories, 6 grams of fat, 14 grams of protein, and 4 grams of fiber.
Happy Friday, everyone! S’long, week 6! I’ll celebrate your grand exit by highlighting the best of my week.
1. My Brilliant Students: Last week, I did a fun warm-up with the iPads where I asked everyone to find a picture on the internet to represent how they are feeling today. Many of them did exactly what you’d expect – they found pictures of tired puppies or crying babies or emoticons to represent their feelings. It was fun, but it wasn’t especially challenging. So this week, I repeated the activity with one caveat – they may not use any emoticons or pictures that have faces in them. What a challenge! At first, they all balked and whined. But within minutes, it was like watching a slow-motion miracle as each student suddenly brightened up with an idea and set to work. Smiling devilishly, they dug through google images until they found just the perfect one to share. I let each student stand up and show their pictures, then ask the class to guess how they felt. They had pictures of fireworks, red monsters, trampolines, stoves, trains, and many more really exciting ideas. The warm-up became a real challenge in thinking metaphorically and stepping outside of the comfort zone. Students had just as much fun guessing the meaning as they did explaining their own pictures. The train, for instance, represented feeling motivated and charging ahead. The red monster represented anger. But you know what was the very best part of all? The kinds of students who were enjoying this – all of my struggling readers and writers were laughing, raising their hand, and having a blast. This was such an unexpectedly fun way to start class!
2. ORCA Testing: I finished Phase 1 of my data collection for my dissertation, which involved getting 180 kids on laptops to take an online reading assessment (looks a lot like facebook). Oy. Uff da. Now that was stressful. Thanks to Murphy’s Law, everything I planned to go wrong actually went right, and everything I couldn’t have foreseen went terribly wrong. The room I booked was unavailable, the school’s internet went down, students didn’t follow directions and their data was unusable. I haven’t felt this tense since I watched ‘Gravity’ in the theater last weekend (pssst… go see that! What a thriller!). BUT, I think I have enough usable data, and it feels really good to have at least one piece of the project behind me. Now to grade all of them!
3. Rocket Pencils: I blogged earlier in the week about using Rocket Pencils (Twist ‘n Write) with my 8th graders. I shared them with a few new students this week, and they are loving them!
4. Scholarship Letter: We finished writing all 5 paragraphs of the Scholarship Letter this week – phew! Now next week, all we have to do is peer revise and edit, and the final draft can be due on Thursday. Guess I know what I’ll be grading all next weekend?! I’m incredibly proud of my students because every single one of them – without fail – has been working hard at this assignment and they all have a full draft. This is no small feat! It was accomplished only through tons of encouragement, support, and careful scaffolding.
5. Something Fluffy and Pink: Okay confession – I MAY have purchased a tutu this week at Target. What? It was an impulse buy! What girl doesn’t need a pink tutu? I’m actually just thinking ahead to Halloween. Mrs. D always ‘brings it’ for dress up days!
Currently, we are working on the Scholarship Letter unit. This is a 2-week unit on argumentation / persuasive writing in which the students apply for a fictional scholarship to attend a famous, world-renowned (yet fictional) high school. They choose their dream high school based on their interests. For example, there is a school for arts, sports, civil service, etc.
This is a very authentic, important unit to my students – they gain much needed practice with argumentative/persuasive writing, professional letter writing, and an opportunity to be reflective of their academic and personal goals. Our district’s guidance office always collects the scholarship letters and uses them for scheduling students in high school and directing them toward college applications. The students know this is an influential writing assignment, and the put a lot of thought and effort into it. I’ve been doing it for the past 6 years, and it’s one of my favorite writing units.
We spend about 2 weeks on this unit, proceeding slowly and carefully. Yesterday, we wrote body paragraph 1 together as a class, step by step. I explain the directions for each sentence/component, give students a chance to write, then we share – sentence by sentence for the entire paragraph (known in the teaching world as ‘scaffolding’). It’s definitely worth it to go slow. Below is a student’s work on body paragraph 1:
I have every student use the scaffolding for body paragraph 1, but only my writers who struggle with focus and organization receive scaffolding for the other 4 paragraphs. I create a packet for those students that has a scaffolding grid for each of the 5 paragraphs in the letter.
Tomorrow we will write body paragraphs 2 & 3, and Friday will be the introduction and conclusion. We will spend next week peer revising and editing, focusing especially on language and word choice. What’s most important at this stage is that students gain practice and confidence with the TELCon writing structure I use in my classroom. I can tell that the scaffolding is really improving their confidence and sense of self-efficacy when it comes to writing.
Okay, you elementary teachers out there have probably heard of the Twist ‘n Write, and you’ve been using it for years. Well, I teach middle school, and I don’t always get to hear about the ‘latest and greatest.’ Furthermore, one would think that I don’t have a need for such a tool, but one would be mistaken.
Now let me preface by saying that I have no idea how to address handwriting concerns – this is just not something middle school teachers are even trained in. Yet, over the years (and maybe this has something to do with technology…) I am seeing more students who can’t stay on the lines, who crunch all of their letters together, who can’t apply consistent pressure to the pen/cil, etc. So I brought my concerns to our school’s Speech Language Therapist, who then referred me to the district’s Occupational Therapist.
I explained to the OT how I had one student in particular whose writing was completely illegible. I watched how he held the pencil – in a very strange way that didn’t look at all comfortable or effective. The OT recommended the Twist ‘n Write, which I lovingly call the ‘Rocket Pencil’ because of it’s shape. The Twist ‘n Write pencil is designed to help students who struggle with gripping pen/cils and, therefore, handwriting.
I demonstrated to my student how to use it, and he was very excited to be able to control the pencil much more with this new grip. The Rocket Pencil forces you to grip the pencil in the correct way. His writing improved – nowhere near perfect, but definitely a major improvement.
I purchased a few more, and now I keep 3 in my room at all times for students to borrow. Some try it out and find that the Rocket Pencil is the love of their life, and others find that it isn’t for them. I only wish that they were a little more affordable, and that they were refillable. But hey – it’s worth a try, and they are a great tool to add to your classroom!
Happy ‘Stomp Out Bullying Day’ – aka ‘Blue Shirt Day!’ It is a day to stand in solidarity and educate about bullying and cyberbullying.
My sweet students made these awesome posters, which we hung up around the school. They also created videos, poems, and raps to share with the class. We did this during PBIS time (Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports), a time built into our school schedule for character building.
Did you celebrate ‘Stomp Out Bullying Day’ at your school?
Around this time of year, I start craving my grandma’s oatmeal bread. It’s filling, nutritious (well, it has oatmeal in it!), and it reminds me of fall and home and Grandma’s house. This is a staple in our house, and I hope it will become one in yours, too!
Ingredients:
* 1 cup oatmeal (I used old-fashioned)
* 1/2 cup butter or margarine
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1 tsp. vanilla
* 1 & 1/2 cups flour
* 1/4 tsp. salt
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 1 tsp. cinnamon
* 1/2 cup nuts (optional. I like walnuts)
* 1 & 1/4 cup boiling water
To start, I get out all of the ingredients:
Next, you’ll want to put the oatmeal and butter in a large bowl, then pour the boiling water over the entire mixture. You need to let this stand until all of the butter is melted and the mixture is cool. Once the butter is melted, you can put it in the fridge to speed up the cooling process. All about a half-hour for this.
(Yes that is my crazy awesome fridge with the Instagram magnets. My husband and I collected them over years and ordered them from StickyGram.)
While that is cooling, prepared all of your other ingredients. You’ll want the sugars in one bowl and all of the other solids (flour, soda, salt, cinnamon) in another bowl.
Then, go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Grease 1 large bread pans or 2 small bread pans. I prefer 1 large pan.
Once your mixture is cool, begin by adding the sugars.
Then the vanilla and eggs. (Psst – I actually use this amazing vanilla I bought in Mexico – it’s the best ever!)
And finally, add the flour mixture, a half at a time.
Then, it all goes into the pan, and off to the oven for 50-60 minutes (mine took 58 minutes)
Check with a toothpick to make sure it is completely cooked through. The last part is the hardest – actually allow the bread to cool off before you cut and eat it. Yes, I realize it smells amazing and you’ll want to devour it right away, but patience is a virtue, and burned hands and tongues don’t feel so nice. I feel your pain.
I love to heat up a couple of slices in the microwave, add some butter, and enjoy with some tea for a lovely, filling fall breakfast. Enjoy!
This October marks my one-year anniversary with Teachers Pay Teachers, a great website in which I can meet other committed, passionate teachers like myself, find new ideas for lesson plans, and share/sell my own lesson plans and materials. I have loved being a part of that community, and it has definitely made me a better teacher.
In celebration of my one-year anniversary, I am having a sale and a giveaway! Everything will be 15% off this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Now is a great time to stock up on those items on your wish list. Can I recommend a few great items? These are my top sellers:
1. School Duty: Are you blessed with an extra school duty? I have morning duty for first quarter. This means I get to monitor the ‘holding tank,’ a hallway in which students must stay before the first bell. I used to be pretty disgruntled about this – I mean, every second before school is precious time to set up my room, prepare materials, and get ready for the day. I am trying to reframe my thinking these days and cherish my morning duty instead. I actually really love hanging out with my students. I get to learn so much about them. Building relationships with my students is a cornerstone of my teaching, and this is a critical time where I can check in with students and hear about how things are going at home, problems they are having at school, or just sharing some laughs. Yesterday, my students wanted to use their iPads to snap some fun photos. On the top left, we used our feet to make a star, and on the top right, we made a giant star with peace signs. I’m the pink nail polish in both, of course!
2. Rewind, Pause, Review Day was such a success! (Read more here.) I am still so proud of my students and so grateful we took a day to get caught up. Progress reports were due today, and I know a lot of students who are going to get to keep their cell phones and video games thanks to improved grades …
3. French Twist Oh La La: I cut my hair 4 years ago for Locks of Love, and I’ve been keeping it short ever since. It’s just SO much easier to take care of, especially with the thick, heavy, wavy huge head of hair that I have. But my husband asked me if I would grow it out again, and I’m giving it a try. I was so happy to discover that I can do a French Twist again! Tres chic!
4. Fall: Yeah… I don’t usually have many nice things to say about Fall. But, since it is High 5 For Friday and the point is to find the silver lining, I will make a confession. I really do enjoy the satisfying crunch of golden leaves under my feet. When I take Rocket out for a walk, I deliberately hop from small crispy pile to pile.
5. Reading Interventions: I am making some real progress in creating a reading intervention system for our students. This year, I was freed up from the classroom for 1 hour a day to become our school’s Reading Specialist. I am defining my job as I go, which is lot like building a plane as I fly. I started by identifying all of the students who performed below the cutoff on our recent MAP Reading test. Then I deleted the ones on that list who already receive any other kind of support, like Special Education, Speech and Language, or Read 180 (a reading program). That left me with roughly 15 kids per grade level. Now I am deciding how to best serve those students through pull-out reading tutoring, small group interventions, additional testing, etc. Phew – my mind is swimming! But the good news is that I am making progress, and we are finally going to have a plan to address the students whose needs are not being met in any other way.
How was your week? Feel free to link up in the comments below!
