Teaching Blog Addict's Open House Week

I am linking up with Teaching Blog Addict's Open House Week!

The Schedule for the Week is:
 Monday: Meet the Teacher- tell us all about you and your teaching style!
 Tuesday: Classroom Photos
Wednesday: Handouts for Parents
Thursday: Bulletin Board Photos
Friday: FREEBIES!

So... Without further ado: 

A little bit about me:

I teach 3rd grade in a rural town in Northern Nevada.  This is my first year teaching third grade after making the jump down from 7th grade math.  It has been quite the adjustment, but I am loving it so far! In addition to teaching my 20 classroom kiddos, I am also a mom to 6 boys ranging in ages from 6 to 19.

My teaching style is very eclectic (for lack of a better word)! I love the individualized attention of Daily 5 and Cafe, but I also love the whole class methods of Whole Brain Teaching.  I am not overly strict, and my students know that I love them to pieces. I prefer Love and Logic Methods to threats.

Me in a nutshell... or two.. :)

Giveaways Galore!

Rock and Teach is celebrating 100 followers with an awesome giveaway!  Prizes include all of the usual teacher faves:

Giveaway Items include: $5 Starbucks Giftcard $5 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Certificate $15 Target Giftcard.

Tonya's Treats for Teachers is having a mega give-a-way to celebrate 500 followers with way to many prizes to mention, but it includes a $50 gift card to your choice of Amazon or Target

Who Knew That a Little Worm Could Bring About So Much Learning??

Today was one of those days when you have a perfectly good lesson plan written, and suddenly a great teaching moment lands in your lap, so you scrap your lesson plans and watch the students soar as learners.
One of my students came in with his mom and a jar with what looked like a bunch of leaves in it.  She told me that they had found this horn worm on their tomato plants, and decided to bring it in to share with the class.

I planned on just having the student share his little "friend" during our sharing portion of our morning meeting, but I would have never guessed that my students would be so intrigued!  They started asking a billion and one questions and even asked if we could do some research about the horn worm (which has a horn at it's bottom that gives it its name - we had quite the discussion deciding whether it was its head or its bottom, but when it started eating we knew the answer).

The students spent some time writing down their observations and questions.

Then they decided to do some research on the computers about the tomato horn worm.  They checked out these two sites:  VegEdge and Wikipedia.  They also loved watching this video on youtube.




We talked about how gardeners might not like these worms on their plants as much as we liked learning about them.

It was amazing how many different ways the students responded to the hornworm in our classroom.  Some of them approached their learning as artists, drawing pictures of the hornworm.

Some of the students responded as scientists formulating a list of questions they could discover and research.

This little guy lying on the carpet saw me with the camera and said, "Quick! Mrs. Malloy has the camera! Camouflage - blend in like the worm!"

We wrapped up our fun-filled learning day by writing thank you letters to the student and his mom for bringing in the horn worm for us to learn about!

All in all, this was one of my best teaching days ever- the kids were completely engaged from morning until afternoon (we actually worked past the bell and had to scramble to leave!).  One of my older boys came into my class this day because he left his lunch at home and commented about how busy all of the students were.  "It was a whirlwind of activity!" he said.

I am linking up with Teaching Fourth for Fun Friday! Stop by and Link up!

Favorite Back To School Reads

Week one is in the bag!  Today I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' to share my favorite back to school books and a giveaway!

If you link up your favorite books, you can win $50 from the Clever School Teacher. Here's what you need to do:

1. Link up your favorite back to school books with Blog Hoppin'. 

2. Link up your blog post, not just URL

3. Display the graphic above in your post.

 

So without further ado, here are a few of the books I read to my third graders last week:

 

We all have jitters about the first day of school (even us teachers) and this is a great book to talk about just that!

 Reading about Mean Jean the Recess Queen is a great way to begin a chat about recess rules and expectations.

The Wednesday Surprise is a great book to talk about the importance of reading.  A few of my third graders said they read it last year, but they were surprised by the ending, so I wonder if they really understood it last year.

What are some of your favorites?

First Week and a Peek into my Classroom

Well.... I did it!  I survived the first week of school, along with a trip to the DMV for my 16 year old (third child) to get his driver's permit,

 football camp at UNR (University of Nevada, Reno),

 football practices (two teams) and our first football games of the season (sadly both teams lost).

Despite the fact that I feel like a walking zombie - it has been a great week and I think I am going to LOVE third grade!

Here is a peek into my room the day before school started:

The view from the door

Another view from the door

My desk

Daily 5 wall and part of library

 Whole Brain Teaching Rules

Classroom Hand Signals

Word Wall

Student Book Boxes for Daily 5

Daily Schedule and Calendar

Cubbies and Clock

I am linking up with Swimming Into Second 
.

Three Star Homework - WBT Universal Homework Model

I have a love/hate relationship with homework.  I love the fact that students get an opportunity to practice the skills they are working on at home, but I hate the battle that not turning homework can turn into.  I also know as a parent that sometime very less than minimal effort goes into completing homework.  So, what to do? What to do?

I am completely and totally sold on the Whole Brain Teaching Method, and not suprisingly they had an answer to my dilemma - The Universal Homework Method.  You can watch the video below to hear Coach B explain it, and then I will explain what it is going to look like in my classroom.

Watch live streaming video from wholebrainteaching1 at livestream.com

In my classroom, we will begin Star Homework during the second week of school.  They will receive the weekly form pictured below each Monday.  They will complete their choice of homework each night.  During morning meeting, I will briefly call out their names and will ask them to tell me how many stars they earned.  We will briefly cheer and give a ten finger cheer to those students who complete two or three stars.  We will then tally up the number of stars they have earned.

I will probably also use this as an extra math activity as well.  For example, "Class, we had 42 stars yesterday, we earned 48 stars today, how many stars should be in our tally now?" "How many more stars did we earn today?" " How many stars do we need to earn to have 103 stars tomorrow?"

I was inspired by the weekly form at  Third Grade Thoughts to create this Star Homework form.  You can download it and modify it to suit your needs for free here.

I am hoping that this will cause less stress regarding homework for myself, my students, and their parents!  I will keep you posted about how it is working.

Must Have Materials for Reading and Writing Workshop

I am linking up with My Life as a Third Grade Teachers Must Have Materials for Reading and Writing Workshop.

Here are a few of my must haves:

A classroom library.  You can't work on reading without books can you?  I have my books organized by author.  They are also labeled with the DRA and AR reading level. I used a system similar to Beth Newingham's.

 I also use Classroom Organizer to keep track of all of my books. This is just a small section of my library.

Student Book Boxes.  I got these from Really Good Stuff, and I love them!  They fit the reader's notebook, word work folder, and the books the students are reading.

 Reader's Notebook.  This is binder that holds all of their paperwork that they use during Daily 5 including a books read list, reader's response, and handouts from mini-lessons. I will post more in depth about this later.

Spelling Folders.  Again, I modeled after my hero Beth Newingham for my spelling program. I don't have pictures yet, but I will be posting about them later on as well.