The Case for Class Plants

 This is just a quick post to strongly encourage my teacher friends to get some plants into their classrooms (or add a new one).  There are a number of reasons why class plants make a fantastic addition to your learning area.  Increased oxygen levels, responsibility building, novelty in otherwise mundane tasks, a hands-on science manipulative, and bright accent in your room are all good reasons to go green in your living spaces!

An increased oxygen supply is one of the main reasons I brought plants into my classroom- especially because I don't have any windows or outside doors, and the air circulation in our 40 year old school isn't so hot.  Well, actually it is hot, because we don't have any air conditioning!  More oxygen equates to a better-fed brain, which should in turn help with higher productivity and better learning in your class.  In the age of high-stakes tests, this is always a plus!

 Another reason to get class plants is to have students build responsibility by caring for them.  This is particularly helpful for students who need a "special job" or for one of the options for your class job list.  In my classroom, all students can apply for jobs, and those who get their job applications turned in on time and relatively neatly with good reasons for why they should get that job, enjoy employment for two months.  "Gardener" is one of the jobs, and it's usually a popular one.  I'll do a whole new post on my class jobs.

Yet another reason I keep plants around is to add novelty to mundane things.  For example, instead of having students just say the scientific method aloud, or sing a chant, or read a page of their book aloud, or recite the parts of speech poem, they sing or say it to a PLANT!  For elementary school students especially, this is weird, unusual, and a little crazy, which makes it inherently FUN!  We have also named all our class plants, and I can refer to them when doing related science lessons, like teaching about photosynthesis, camouflage, etc. Pictured below is Frederick Jr.  He is a sprout off of my original class plant, Frederick.  The two spider plants above were started as tiny spiderlings and have grown over the years, much to the delight of my dozens of students who come back to my room after moving on to middle and high school.  It's one more thing that students will remember fondly from your classroom!

 

There you have it.  Increased oxygen supply, responsibility building, something fun to practice oral language with, a hands-on science manipulative, and something to make your classroom a nicer, brighter place to be.  The only question is what type of plant you should add to your room.  I have 2 marble queens and 2 spider plants at this point, and I'm going to add bamboo to both of my fish tanks.  What types of plants do you have in your classroom?  What species thrive with only florescent light?  Which are little-grabbing-finger resistant?  What plant do you have that you think looks the best?  Leave a comment and share what's worked for you, or your plant-related quandary!

Classroom Pets ~ Fish Edition!

 I love animals.  This is part of the reason why I love to have animals in my classroom.  Even if you're not really an "animal person," there are SO many great reasons to have a classroom pet.  Many students never get to have a pet of their own at home so this is their only 'pet' time, it builds interest in your classroom, they are great for writing about, kids learn responsibility by caring for them, develop empathy taking care of them, they get to learn about a new organism, develop their observation skills, you get additional inside jokes with your students, etc.  I have had about a dozen different species of animals in my classroom over the last few years.  I've already talked about my amazing bearded dragon, Chubbs, so this post will be devoted to the classic classroom pet- FISH!

I started with a tank of goldfish and added a few other community fish to their tank.  Visit your local petstore to find the perfect fish for you (I suggest starting with something easy like Tetras, ghost shrimp, etc).  There can be a bit of a start up cost for getting fish (buying the tank, gravel, filter, light, plants, food, etc), but try posting something on Craigslist.  That's how I was given two bearded dragons, a cichlid fish, an oscar fish, 2 goldfish, an eel, and a Chinese algae eater for FREE!  A lot of families lose interest in fish after they've had them for a few months, but they want to give them to a good home.  What better environment than a classroom where they will be loved and adored by 30 students each day and carefully cared for and examined.  Check in with your community to see if there's anyone wanting to rehome their fish.  You can also look around 2nd hand shops, like Goodwill, for a used tank, because they almost have a great setup for a very reasonable price.

 This is my favorite fish, perhaps of all time, because of his amazing eyes.  His name is Calico, and he is fabulous.  Look at that tail! Fan-tailed goldfish are great.  One of Calico's eyes is a regular yellow eye, while the other is all black.  My students love when I talk about Calico being my favorite fish in a fake-whisper voice (so the other fish won't hear and get jealous).  I also pet this fish (it started on accident when I was moving the plants around the tank the first time, and now purposefully every so often for fun). He shares the tank with three other goldfish and one Chinese algae eater.  All of these fish are Community fish, so they get along well.

 Think about a variety of fish that will go well together.  Fish are generally categorized as Goldfish/Community OR Semi-aggressive OR Aggressive.  Your local pet store can help you find compatible fish.  Below is Bubbles, a cichlid, who shares his tank with an eel.  Bubbles is the only fish I've ever known who routinely rearranges his tank.  I knew Bubbles was unique when I looked over after school one day to see him pulling one of his tank plants to the other side of his aquarium WITH HIS MOUTH!  Fung-shui is very important to Bubbles and other cichlids, and they make for cool pets.

Fish are great because they are very low-maintenance.  I probably do about 10 minutes of work per month to care for them, because one of our classroom jobs is ZOOKEEPER!  This is one of the few jobs that I have two students cover (Zookeeper 1 & 2), so one of the students can care for Chubbs and the other can feed the fish.  Then at the end of the day, the other student feeds the fish.  Besides feeding them, that's all the students do.  The only thing I need to do is clean their filters about once a month and possibly change out some of the water.  You'll need to clean them more frequently depending upon the size of your tank and the type of fish you have; goldfish are notoriously dirty fish.  Still, 10 minutes of work to provide your students with a great topic to write about, an easy thing to have them "teach," a fun new organism to write about, and another fun memory from your classroom is definitely worth it!  Post an ad on Craigslist and see if you can add a cool new living feature to your classroom for free!

Student-Made Theme Books!

 What Are Student-Made Unit & Theme Books?

They are awesome.  These little books are very easy to make and cost about a penny each.  They help reinforce key ideas from whatever unit you are working in (I usually use mine for social studies, science, and health) and they help the students OWN the information.  It encourages creativity, reflections, fine motor skills, ELD, graphic organizer use, and some good, old-fashioned copying!  The day before the post test, each student can take home their theme book and study from it so they are ready to ace the test the next day, as well as show off their great work to parents at home.  These little books will make you look good on test scores and to parents!
  

How Do I Make Such an Spiffy Little Book for My Students?

Most schools keep the necessary supplies on hand-construction paper, blank white paper, and staples.  For most of mine, I just take a large piece of construction paper, and slice it in half.  Do that to 15 pieces of construction paper, and you have a class set of theme book covers!  Decide how many pages you want your book to have.  I usually want at least 6 pages (I make my students use the front and the back of each page).  For books that students will do a lot of writing in, like their Oregon Trail Journals that also have their journals as well as the info from the unit, I do 20 pages.  If you want 6 pages total, you'll just take 3 regular sheets of paper (in a cool color if you so choose), and fold them in half horizontally (hamburger way).  You just made the inner pages for the inside of your theme book!  I like to choose a color that has something to do with the unit we're learning about (like dark green cover and light green inner paper for Oregon, brown cover and tan inner paper for historical things like our Oregon Trail Journals & Corps of Discovery journals, and blue cover with white paper for our government books).  Tuck your inner papers inside the construction paper, and staple twice at the fold.  Done!  It's just that easy!  (The exception is the crazy Animal Classifications one picture above, I'll show you how to make it in another post).  I usually don't waste my students' time making these, but when I have former students come back wanting to volunteer in my classroom, or a random parent volunteer, or an awesome student teacher, I have them make a few class sets in a variety of colors.  If I don't use them this year, I'll sure use them next year.  Generally, I have the students do all the writing on their books, including the covers, that can look something like the picture above.

 What Do We Put in Them?

Anything & Everything.  If it's important, it's in the book.  Ideally, every answer on your post-test should be able to be gleaned from the pages of the almighty theme book.  Students will spend time on this.  They will labor over it, add more to it, decorate it, talk about it, teach someone else from it, and study from it.  I have very few student examples because NO ONE WANTS TO GIVE THEIRS UP!  They work hard on it and they keep them.  Here are some different examples of some things that could be included:

Venn Diagram comparing the life cycle of two organisms, complete with comparative sentence stems on the right side.

The names of Oregon Trail Landmarks along with a sketch of each...Dangers of the Oregon Trail, with a labeled picture for each.

Timelines of important events you want them to know for the rest of their lives (and the post test!)

Summaries of their textbook reading or a narrative input chart (look up GLAD strategies for that awesome tool!)

Labeled diagram of the life cycle of a Douglas Fir Tree and a salmon.

I'll do another post that goes through every page of an Oregon Government Book we are in the midst of teaching from, but the key to remember is that if it's important, it should be in the book.  You can have students teach a buddy (pair up with a younger/older grade classroom and have your students be the experts who are sharing their knowledge with their buddy).  This is NOT just a place for them to copy things from the board into their book without any actual teaching.  That has very little use.  This IS a great place to have students write reflections about what they've learned, write vocabulary words from the unit with pictures & definitions, copy down chants about the subject, write their related sentence stems, and record graphic organizers you've done as a class.  Theme books can make learning more fun, make studying easy, help parents connect with their child's learning, and will be a beloved memory of your students' time in your classroom.

Questions?  Have a cool variation or a different way you use theme books?  Please leave a comment, & remember to pass it on to others through Pinterest & Facebook!

Dictation ~ Dictado

Dictado Background

 Dictado (Spanish for dictation) has helped my students' writing skills grow significantly over the last three years I've been using it.  This blog is all about how I implement dictado in my classroom.  I am an ESOL teacher, not a bilingual/dual language/Lit2, and this year I have 2 Spanish speakers, 2 Russian students, 1 Mandarin speaker, 1 student who speaks Hmong, and one Dutch speaker!  If you want to help your students become more careful listeners, better writers, and better communicators, dictation is for you!

The Goods- Dictado Journal

I used steno pads for our dictado journals for the last 2 years, and they work really well.  The size of the page is perfect for one 3-5 grade length dictado.  This year, it was going to cost $2/steno pad, and because of budget cuts, I didn't want to cost the school anything extra.  Instead, I put the 60 spirals that I got for a penny each to use!  I'm also trying out the combination of the ELD (English Language Development) work along with the dictado in one spiral, and we'll see how it goes.  My awesome student teacher, Michele, labeled the class set, and then if the kids have extra time they can decorate their journal.  Here are 2 shots of the cover of my dictado journal.

I just have two sections for the journal- the front is for random ELD goodness and dictado practice (like the pretest, partner dictado, and other practice) and the back is for dictado post tests only.

Differentiation in Dictado

 Last year, I saw that some of my students were ready for a challenge, while others were failing every week (these were mostly my students who read/write at a first grade level, so making them write this fourth grade level dictado is unreasonable and unfair).  In the official dictado, there is no differentiation for students with different needs.  That's just silly.  So I made my own differentiation up.  This is why I have three groups for dictado- Foundations, General, and Challenge.  Foundations are my kids who work just on the first sentence of the dictado- we pour our attention and practice into that one sentence so they can be successful with it by Friday and actually learn something from it (rather than getting frustrated and just giving up).  The majority of my students are in the General group, and they do the first two sentences of the dictado.  These are my on grade level students.  Then there are my Challenge students, who are ready for the third sentence, which is usually high school level in terms of vocabulary and complexity of syntax.  To become a challenge speller, a student either has to get 100% on the first three dictado post tests of the year OR get 100% on the Challenge Dictado Week (which is about once every other month).  For that one test, every single student tries doing all three sentences, and if they get it right, they get 10 bonus Pioneer Dollars instead of just the normal 1 Pioneer Dollar that they usually get for earning 100% on any test.  If they get it, they become a Challenge dictado student and do all 3 sentences for the rest of the year.  Of course there are exceptions to all this, so use your professional judgement as you work it in your own classroom.

Dictado Schedule

Here is the run-down on the dictado schedule that I generally follow for each week:

Monday- 

Teacher administers pretest- The instructor reads the entire dictado (usually 3-4 sentences for 4th grade) aloud fluently.  Then the teacher reads the first sentence slowly, word by word, going just fast enough for the slowest writer in the class to just keep up.  Next, they read the sentence fluently again.  Follow this fluent, word-by-word, fluent pattern for all the sentences.  The last thing to do for the pretest is to read the entire dictado fluently one last time.  You will need to do a lesson (probably after the first one) about teaching students to listen to your voice to hear pauses (commas or semicolons go there!), all the sounds in a word, etc.  This is a perfect time to teach them about capitalizing the title, starts of sentences, & proper nouns. Dictado is the time to teach indentation, homophones, and language patterns.  The teacher writes the dictado based upon what the students are struggling with, so it's geared exactly to the class needs.
Mini-Lesson-  Once the pretest has been administered, the teacher gives a brief lesson on the focus for the week- capitalization of proper nouns, your/you're/you are, there/their/they're, use of semicolons, how to use quotation marks, how to spell key vocabulary words...whatever your students need!  I usually write my dictados about whatever our social studies/math/science unit is so they get content along with the writing lesson.
Students Copy the Dictado- Students write the dictado from the board (I have mine typed up on my SmartBoard and on my class website each week) right below their pretest.  I have my students write it in green felt tip pen ("Editing Marker") and I expect them to write it perfectly as they're just copying it from the board.
Students Edit their Dictado-  Next, students read through their pretest and correct any mistakes they've made using the editing marks (we have a poster of the editing marks and most of them are already familiar with them)

Tuesday

Students just copy down the dictado on a 1/2 sheet of paper to take home to study from.  I sometimes have them body spell the dictado on Tuesday morning to connect with the passage more kinesthetically.

Wednesday

Partner Dictado-  The students pair up and take turns dictating to each other in the front of their ELD/Dictado Notebooks (write your email in the comments if you want a copy of the instructions I post for students to remind them what a good partner dictado will look like).  Then they trade and correct each others work using the correctly written dictado from Monday.  This is when I pull my intervention/Foundations group and I dictate it to them while hinting at the language focus for the week.  Then I correct each Foundation student's dictado and discuss the results, reteaching if necessary and mostly giving more language pattern tips.  I sometimes have my students write something to the effect of, "Today during partner dictado, I was still tricked on _____________.  On Friday, I will make sure that it doesn't trick me by remembering ___________________________."

Thursday

During school, students write the dictado on a 1/2 sheet of paper to study from that evening.  Their homework for the night is to study the spelling words and the dictado, and to turn in whatever they did to study the next morning.  I have a long list of different ways to study; leave a message with your email if you'd like them!

Friday

Teacher Administers Post Test- The teacher administers the post test in the same fashion that they did on Monday.  This time, students leave their dictado open to that testing page and turn it in to the teacher, who grades it.  The teacher simply edits the work carefully, and marks how many mistakes (a misspelled word counts as -1, incorrect capitalization -1, forgot to indent -1, etc) there were total.  Celebrate the improvement from Monday, and remind students that they can use the language patterns that they've learned in dictado this week in their writing for the rest of their lives!

Questions about dictado?  Leave a comment!  Happy writing to you and your students. :)

Great Classroom Pets Explained ~ Bearded Dragon Edition!

There are SO many great reasons to have a classroom pet.  Many students never get to have a pet of their own at home so this is their only 'pet' time, it builds interest in your classroom, they are great for writing about, kids learn responsibility by caring for them, develop empathy taking care of them, they get to learn about a new organism, develop their observation skills, you get additional inside jokes with your students, etc.  I have had about a dozen different species of animals in my classroom over the last few years, and I'll talk more about having a tank of fish in another post, but this post is about why you should consider getting a bearded dragon for your classroom pet!

You will love a bearded dragon. I know.  It's a lizard.  I had never had a reptile before I got my two bearded dragons for free, so I wasn't sure how I'd like them and how they would interact with my students, but I thought the worst that could happen is that they'd be lame and I'd just give them to a student.  Wrong! They are so fun!   There are some simple things to do to set up your bearded dragon system, and then they are very low maintenance and low cost.

First, you'll need a really big tank ( like 50 gallons big!) within a few years, so I suggest just starting with a large terrarium now. Check at garage sales, put an ad on Craigslist, or check goodwill if you don't want to pay around $300 for a new one. My dad found mine at a crazy Goodwill on Portland Road in Salem where they have everything in huge bins.  It was just over $20! You'll probably have to get the accessories new, unless you can get some nice Craigslist person to donate them to your class, which will run just under $100.  Beardies need a special UVA UVB light and a heat lamp(or a heating pad).  They are desert animals, so it needs to stay warm and dry in their habitat.  Putting the heating pad/heat lamp at one end of the tank is good because then they have a cool end of their terrarium to escape to if it gets too hot.  You can get climbing rocks/branches/foliage if you want.  My students love rearranging Chubb's 'furniture' in her terrarium! Get a deep bowl for the food/water that they can't tip over (mine is a cat bowl because my beardie, Chubbs, tracks her substrate (bedding) all over). Do not pay gobs of money for the stupid sand they sell at petstores, which can give them skin irritation and kill them. Just buy millet, the plain bird seed that they sell in feed stores for $5 for a gigantic bag. It looks nicer too and is easy to clean with a kitty litter scoop.

Here is a picture of my students with their candy Native American dwellings, but you can see the tank in the back of the classroom.  You have a lot of options when it comes to feeding. The colorful pellets they have at petstores are great and you can get a yogurt type food they love too. I feed ours crickets every once in a while, but they are more expensive. I usually keep the crickets in a separate terrarium and then dole them out one by one and let my little table groups come up to watch if they want to, which they all do! Feeding your beardie live crickets is the fastest you'll ever see them move! When they get big, you can feed them live mice too! I have never done this in front of the class (somehow it's okay if a lizard eats an insect, but if it eats a mammal then it's gross and cruel...).  If you want to see Chubbs eat a mouse, click this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zb-y5PloYg  and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=TNvYUI9rfRs  Bearded dragons do well with a variety of fruits and veggies, and you can google what's safe for them to eat. I give mine the smooth-leafed dandelion from the playground (free!) and little pieces of whatever fruit/veggie I'm having for lunch.

Bearded Dragons are low maintenance.  I do not feel like coming in every weekend to feed Chubbs, so I always give her enough pellets to last her through the weekend with some little fresh greens on top and she is as happy as can be. I do this right before I leave work in Friday as well as fill her water bowl. During the week, I have two responsible students, who applied for and got the 'zookeeper' job, feed her, once in the morning and once in the afternoon/lunch time. On Friday, they get to stay in for recess and clean her cage. The crazy thing is that they love it and all the kids want to be zookeeper so badly! This is great because then I have to do very little care for her and can just get her out to run around before school or carry her around on my shoulder (she sits on my shoulder for picture day) or whatever I feel like instead of wasting precious time caring for class pets. I usually come in once or twice for Christmas break and spring break, but that's it. They are very low maintenance!

My bearded dragon is very calm (except when eating live food!) so every Friday, during our classroom meeting time when all my students are circled on the carpet, I get Chubbs out and let her walk around. Sometimes we feed her a grape or a cherry tomato. Because they roll, she chases after them, which the kids love! The general rule of thumb for feeding beardies is that the piece of food needs to be smaller than the bottom of the triangle shape on the top of their head (just before their neck). They don't really chew up their food with teeth; they just kind of mash it with the sides of their mouth (except mice they eat whole) so it's important to not feed them something that's too big that they'll choke on. They can bite, but I've only been bitten once when one of mine was a baby and she was eating off my hand, and it felt like a tiny pinch. Generally, if you don't wiggle your finger right in front of their mouth like a worm, you won't have any problems.

When I have my students pet Chubbs, I just put her on my arm and have them pet from the top of her head gently down towards her tail. Make sure to tell your students about the possibility of salmonella and have them wash their hands thoroughly after touching your beardie or its things. Make sure they know to be gentle with her, not to pull her tail, to gently touch her spikes (they all want to do this), to sit still, etc. Apparently you can take them outside if it's warm, but you have to be really careful that they don't eat any bugs or plants, because there is not a complete list for all the plants/insects that they're allergic to in a schoolyard/backyard setting. As a general rule, I do NOT let my students hold Chubbs now that she is about 2 feet long from head to tail because if she tries to wiggle free, her spikes DO hurt a little, and her tiny claws make miniscule scratches on bare skin. I just don't want to risk anything happening to my students or her, so we stick with petting and watching, and I do the picking up and holding.

Generally, the more you get your beardie out to walk around (before or after school when the students aren't there to step on her and when the floor is clear of debris is best) the better. One time, I thought I had clean floors, but then Chubbs found a red hot cinnamon candy that was underneath a bookshelf and almost ate it! I had to pry it from her little mouth! They will eat anything that looks like food/that can fit in their mouths, so you have to be careful with them. They generally chillax in their terrariums and only move a little, but they are always watching, and soon you'll notice they have their own personalities too (which I never expected from a reptile). I'm sure I'm forgetting cool things they do/important care tips, so leave a comment below to remind me.  Because they are so low maintenance, they're safe around kids, and they're fun to watch, pet, and feed, I think bearded dragons make great classroom pets!

 I also have two tanks of fish, a terrarium of crickets throughout the year, and "visiting" pets, like rough skinned newts, banana slugs, pill bugs, snails, etc that just stay for a week or two before being released into the wild again.  Do you have a classroom pet?  Which animals do you think do best as classroom pets?

Writer's Notebook Organization!

I've been using the Writer's Workshop model of teaching and celebrating writing for the last 8 years, but this is the first year that I feel I've got a good grip on how to help my students organize their Writer's Notebooks (WN). This blog will show you some options for organizing WN's and some sample lessons to help you implement the Writer's Workshop model easily.  Please visit my TeachersPayTeachers account to support the work I've done here at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Writers-Notebook-Organization-Writers-Workshop-Starter-Kit   For everything I sell on the site, I give 10% to DonorsChoose.org and an additional 10% to Food for the Poor.  The complete kit is only $5 for all that you see here, plus Writer's Notebook labels and additional information for everything you  need to start your Writer's Workshop off on the "write" foot!

Here is the cover of my Writer's Notebook. I usually show my students a few of my WN's that I've used over the years (including one from 2nd grade!).  This is my newest one and it's still a work in progress. I encourage them to put anything that is school-appropriate on their WN, including photos, magazine & newspaper clippings, stickers, and words that symbolize who they are. The point of decorating it is to have more ownership in their writing/WN and to garner ideas for their writing based off of what they included on the covers of their WN. My first year I had my students decorate them in class, but I find it to be a huge waste of time when I have SO much else to teach them.  After explaining it, I make decorating their personal WN homework for over a weekend.  It makes for pretty fun homework!

I also decorated the back of my WN.

Here is the title page, which is the first blank page in the spiral/composition book:

Next comes the dedication page. Again, this brings more purpose to students' writing- they are writing for someone or to someone and get to choose who their audience is.  This is the first tab in my WN, but I probably won't have my students tab theirs, simply because they won't use this much after they write it. I made up some little tabs that are easy to print and put them on Teachers Pay Teachers so no one has to write all these by hand or deal with the crazy formatting!  I used the little Staples sticky notes that I got 100+ of for a quarter, and then put clear tape over it to help it stick better.  Most of my students have their tabs last for the entire year, but a few have to retape theirs.

The next tab is for the Table of Contents and it's just one page long.  This is a section that students will add to throughout the year, so I like to have it tabbed for easy access.  It's organized by the title of the work and the page number, just like a real non-fiction book or chapter book, which helps solidify the text features lessons too! 

 Now for the Writing Ideas tab, which is the next five pages.  This is another area where students will be flipping to on a regular basis for ideas on what to write, so a tab makes this search much more efficient.  The first ideas for writing activity that I do with my students is their Authority List.  I do a quick-write where they finish the sentence, "I know a lot about..." and they jot down as many things as they possibly can.  I give them different categories, like sports, animals, colors, friends, activities, places they've been, books they've read, favorite authors, things they do at home, things their family does, what they do on the weekends/summer/mornings/etc.  The idea is to get as many things down as quickly as possible so they have a lot of options to write about when they come back to this page throughout the school year.

For even more ideas on how to get kids excited about writing and give them a plethora of ideas on it, visit my TPT site!  There are four additional pages with pictures and descriptions to help your students have a never-ending supply of things to write about!

The next tab is My Writing.  This is the largest tab because this is where all the student's fabulous writing will go!  Brainstorms, graphic organizers, rough drafts, editing, and final copies can all fit in here.  Frequently in my classroom, I get out our "Final Copy Paper," which is designer paper.  Students can choose from dozens of different designs to find the one that fits their story the best, and then they write their final copy on the fancy paper instead of on regular paper in their WN's.  This mostly just serves as extra motivation to write their story out all over again after the long editing process!  Notice the date column on the left so you can see what they've produced each day, and so can they. :)

 Second to last in the WN's is the Writing Notes tab.  This is found on the second to last page of the book, and this is the one section that we write "backwards."  While the My Writing section slowly progresses towards the back of the Writer's Notebook, the Writing Notes section moves steadily towards the front.  This is where any notes from our daily/weekly Writer's Workshop lesson is recorded.  You can see the column with the date in the left margin (I love dating things so students have more accountability for what they have achieved each day).  Pictured are notes about types of punctuation, tips for narrative writing, and some great ways to start your first sentence of your story.

This is the very last page in the book, and it is reserved for Writing Goals.  These are the goals that I help each student write based on their particular struggles in writing.  Here are some sample goals from my classroom.  In the past, after my student and I create and record their new writing goal, they get a colorful sticky note.  On the front, they write their name and on the back, they write their goal.  Then, they place this sticky beneath the writing trait poster that they're working on (Conventions, Organization, etc).  From time to time, I'll have my students write about how they are doing with their writing and/or literacy goal, talk to someone about it, tell their parents about it, etc.  Ideally, I meet with each student at least every other month to assess their progress on their old goal and to create a new one if necessary, but this doesn't always happen.  I'm sure in your classroom, you will magically find time to meet with every student all the time! :)

What do you put in your Writer's Notebook?  Which lessons are best for the beginning of the year?    I do want to note that some of these WW lesson ideas are not mine, but can be found in Teaching Quality Writing or are from district workshops that I attended regarding Writer's Workshop.  This is simply my own take on it, and a nice way to organize everything.  What tabs would you add to your WN?

Again, all of these fun things, plus easy-to-print labels and additional information can be found on http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Writers-Notebook-Organization-Writers-Workshop-Starter-Kit for only $5.  Thank you preemptively for supporting my work, and for sharing your love of writing with your students!

One Cent Conditioner (& Shampoo Too!)

I've been thinking about trying these very inexpensive, less chemical-filled, alternatives to shampoo and conditioner for some time, and I'm wondering if any of you have tried them?  I've tried the conditioner on my dog, and it seems to work well.  As a general rule, I try to only buy shampoo when I can get it for $1/bottle for namebrand stuff (this is usually accomplished by combining sales and coupons together).  This recipe is cheaper and it has fewer chemicals/detergents/harm of the environment.  Here's how to make shampoo and conditioner for about a penny per use:

Mix a cup of water and a tablespoon of bakin soda in a bottle.  After wetting your hair in the shower, just squirt it on the roots of your hair and rub it in.  This is supposed to be a gentler way to clean your hair with fewer chemicals than regular shampoo and no detergents that strip the natural oils from  your hair. 

For the conditioner, just mix 1 cup of HOT water with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a bottle.  Then squirt it on the tips of your hair to condition it.  This seemed to help soothe the irritated skin of Keely Dog, our pooch, when she had some hot spots, and the apple cider vinegar smell was an improvement from regular dog smell!

I've heard that, depending upon your hair/skin type, it can take some adjusting to get used to this new shampoo/conditioner system as it no longer strips all the oil from you hair.  For some people, it takes a few months for their hair to stop producing so much oil, but I've heard that for most people it just takes 2 weeks or so to make the change. I'm thinking over Thanksgiving Break would be a great time to try this.  Have you tried this or another homemade recipe?  Are you brave enough to try this one?


P.S. The pictures are borrowed from another blog, who borrowed it from somewhere else, so thanks to "Heather" for the borrowing of your graphics! :)