slice of Life: Fend For Self (FFS) February 28, 2008

While preparing to go home from a long day at school, my cell phone rings. 

“What’cha doing?” asked Tony

“Oh, just finishing up somethings here at school,” I say.

“I am going to go to the gym and won’t be home until 7,” stated Tony, ”so you may want to cook something for dinner.”

“Ok, see you then,” I said as I slowly packed my school bag full of descriptive essays that desperately need to be graded.  Once my bag was full, I put my black coat on and advanced toward the door. The jingling of my keys rattled as I walked towards my jeep. I jumped in and was on my way home. My stomach started to growl, so I pondered on what I would  fix for dinner. As I pulled into the carport, the thought popped into my mind, mac-n-cheese is what I want.

My girls greeted me and I let them out to run around for a minute. The first thing I did after walking in the door was open the pantry door to find the Kraft macaroni and cheese. I rounded up the materials to prepare this decadent meal. I tore off the top of the box and poured the dried noodles into the roaring bubbling water. While waiting for the noodles to cook, I checked my emails. “Beep, Beep” sounded the kitchen timer. “Yes,” I thought to myself, “dinner time!”

I drained the soft noodles and anticipated the buttery, creamy noodles melting on my tongue. Once drained, I stirred the butter and powered cheese in. I opened the fridge door and reached for the gallon of milk. “What! No milk!” I cry. I thought to myself, “Now what. What am I going to do?” I concluded that I would try water. “It can’t be that bad, right?” I wondered. Well, the girls liked mac-n-cheese for dinner and I settled for left over pasta from Wednesday. Again, I guess I need to make sure I have all the ingredients to make something before starting. It never crossed my mind that we would be out of milk because we always have milk. Oh, well.

Six Word Memoir February 21, 2008

My friend Beth has got my mind spinning trying to come up with a six word memoir, so here it goes:

My life– quilted, embellished, comfortable–loved.

I was thinking about doing this with my students and hanging them on a bulletin board or having them use it in a piece of writing. 

Please feel free to share yours!

Stay A While February 17, 2008

It’s amazing how one day the weather is freezing cold and the next day it’s beautiful. I wrote an etheree about spring. See Ruth’s entry and Stephanie’s entry.

Spring

is in

the air now

but not for long

tulip leaves emerge

birds chirping songs of love

people walking their furry friends

trees swaying in the breezy wind

the sun and clouds dance across the sky

don’t you wish spring is here to stay a while?

 

Book Jacket Project February 11, 2008

At the end of literature circles my students created a book jacket for their book. Each group created one jacket. They had several days to create their jacket with the following guidelines:

• must have a cover with picture, title, & author
• summery of book
• biography of author
• and a book review from each group member

I then graded them on the following:

• creativity
• accurate details
• organization
• group participation (for this I had each member evaluate their group’s effort with an evaluation form & I also watched them as they worked)
• CHIPS (capitalization, handwriting, indenting, punctuation, spelling)

I am impressed with the outcomes. Take a look at their final projects. Click on each for a bigger picture!

The Big Question February 5, 2008

It is time to be thinking of my Lenten promises as a Catholic. Tomorrow marks the first day of Lent to make sacrifices for the Lord because His son died for us. I have been thinking about it for a while and I think I have the answer to my big question: what are you giving up this year? Really, you shouldn’t boast about this or anything like it, but I feel I need to get in writing so that I will stick to my plans. I feel that I don’t really need to GIVE up anything, but I need to work on being a better person. My promise consists of 2 components which correlate with my one little word I chose.

• Work on not complaining about every little thing (my husband says I have a severe problem)
• Work on being appreciative for the little things in life, especially everything my husband does for me

Inspiration Goes a Long Way… December 19, 2007

 

Today was our class’s Christmas party. Before the party stated, we created an inspirational calendar for a 12 year old girl who has cancer. One of my student’s brought me an article about her and wanted to do something special for her. Stacey gave me the idea of gifts that are written, so I came up with the idea for making her an inspirational calendar. All I did was go on microsoft publisher and create a 2008 calendar with clip art and printed it off. Then I glued the calendar onto assorted colors of construction paper. Here is where my students came in: they chose an inspirational quote that I printed out from an inspirational quote site and wrote it onto white paper then decorating it however they chose. It turned out beautifully. I bound the pages with a spiral comb with the front and back cover. I had each student sign the back cover. The student, who had the idea, is going to deliver the calendar to the young girl over the holidays. Thanks Stacey for the idea!

Writers in the Spotlight December 18, 2007

Each quarter I have my students create a writing of choice. This is where they browse through their writer’s notebooks or come up with a new topic to write about. I give them a week to create their works of writing. I provide them with self editing rubrics, peer editing rubrics, and a teacher rubric. These rubrics are to help them edit their writing. The teacher rubric looks just like the self and peer rubrics; however, they don’t write on it. I use it to grade their work. I feel that they need to know what I am expecting and that’s why the self and peer rubrics have the same criteria. This has helped greatly.

After completing their writing of choice, they turn them in and I grade them. I then decide on the best ones and display them in the hallway. I have a flashlight with a beam coming down and their writing is placed on the beam. The title says “Writers in the Spotlight.” I then award those students with an award and a pen for their creative work. By the end of the year, I will have everyone’s work on the wall and they will also be awarded. I try to look for improvements in their writing. I also send a postcard to their parents to let them know how well they are doing in class. I have gotten several complements from their parents and my students too!

More on Organization November 23, 2007

My students have a writing binder that stays in the classroom. It has 5 tabs in it to help organize their binders. This idea came from Judith Gould except for the rubric tab. That’s my idea.

    The order of tabs:

 

tab 1 = my work – this is where their current writing is located (choice of writing, assigned writing, etc)

 

tab 2 = conferences – all the essential tools needed for conferencing are located here

 

tab 3 = rubrics – this is new this year! I have several rubrics for my students to use (self editing, peer editing, & teacher rubrics) I found that having a place for their rubrics helps me and them stay organized

 

tab 4 = writer’s helpers – all the essential tools to help them be better writers (transitions, proofreading stuff, whatever you would like for your students to have, etc)

 

tab 5 = tips from writers – any pieces of writing from other authors that they may want to use for guidance in writing styles

Each quarter I have my students turn in a choice of writing. This writing is anything that they choose to write about. (poems, songs, stories, etc) They are given time in class to work on these pieces. Once the pieces are done, I have them use rubrics to help edit themselves. The rubrics consist of self editing, peer editing, and teacher rubric. The self editing is where they edit their piece of writing themselves and once finished with that they get a peer editing sheet. The students are to give their piece of writing and the rubric to any peer to edit. They then conference on what was edited. Now, my students are to make any revisions that they may have. After making revisions and they are ready to hand in the writing of choice, they are to get the teacher rubric. The teacher rubric is the one I use to grade their work. Each of these rubrics have the same criteria on them except the teacher rubric has a scale of 5-1 and the self/peer rubric has yes and no check sheet. I found last year that giving students a scale of 5-1 didn’t work because they didn’t know what consisted of each criteria. Yes, I need to model each of these and that would show them each, but right now I haven’t had the time.

Back to organization:

To organize their rubrics, I bought color coded folders and labeled each of them. Each folder has a different type rubric in them because you know that poetry is different from essays.

Blue folders= 7th grade poetry/songs

folder 1 = self editing rubric (students are to get this rubric first)

folder 2 = peer editing rubric (after self editing, they are to peer edit)

folder 3 = teacher rubric (get when ready to turn in)

Pink folders = stories or essays

folder 1 = self

folder 2 = peer

folder 3 = teacher

Yellow folders = 6 poetry/ songs

I have a rubric station where they can get these rubrics when they need them. I took time to explain the rubric folder system. We’ll see how it goes. Next week I plan on going step by step on each rubric to explain what the criteria means.