Student friendly writing rubric

We of course have the writing rubric that teachers use to grade students' writing. Ours is a 4 point rubric on each of the 6 traits. However, this doesn't help our students in self-evaluating their writing, so a few years back we began using this student rubric.

Students grade their own writing, first with teacher guidance, using the four points of this rubric: I finished and colored my drawing, I incorporated a capital and period in each sentence, I placed spaces in between my words, and I used my sounds to write. For the last part I tell students that if I can read it and it says what they wanted it to say then they used their sounds correctly.

I think there are many other things that I would like to incorporate such as penmanship, a detailed drawing, and word choice, but don't want to overwhelm the students.

What do you think?

What do you use?



Cute way to integrate art with writing

So . . .  our new "not really the principal but has been given the work of principal instead of support teacher" decided that us language arts teachers will also teach art. Well, with the pace of language arts that we have it has become extremely difficult, but here is what my students did once, and they finished in a 20 minute center :)

First, students had to write their sentence. If not, they couldn't paint (some need that motivation). We all wrote the same sentence together. I see a ______. I have a really cute book that shows how to fingerpaint a number of different animals, so as I painted each student's fingers they painted their  . . . can you guess?? After each color they went to wash their hands. What do you think?





Modge Podged Christmas gift

For those of you who might still have a few more days of school and need an idea for a Christmas gift, here is what we did . . . .

 Choose a few drawings that you would like to have your students trace and make enough copies for your students (my largest group in centers is 9 students so I made 9 copies). Tape them down to the table so they don't move. Cut up transparencies in fourths and tape each quarter sheet of transparency on top of the drawing each students wants to trace.

 Instruct students to trace along the black lines with a black sharpie first. (I didn't think they could, but they did very well). Then they can color the rest of the drawing using a sharpie. I really underestimated my students but they did really well by themselves! I wrote each student's number so it could be identified later (since this took a few days total) and placed them in ziploc baggies with their names.

 At a different center each student modge podged 4 fat popsicle sticks in the color scheme of their choice. I just cut up holiday tissue paper (about $3.00 total) into sort of squares and let them at it. Since I'm a bit of a control freak and didn't have that much modge podge I painted all of the sticks myself and them painted them again the next day to reduce the risk of ripping. Students saved these in their baggies as well once dry. 

 Then I simply stapled each drawing onto a piece of cardstock that matched the color scheme of each student's popsicle sticks. Make sure that you place the yarn/string in place BEFORE gluing the packing onto the sticks. I learned this the hard way. Regular elmers glue, just make sure students really hold it in place for a loooooong time.

 And voila .  . . glue each child's photo on a desired spot, have them write their names somewhere with a marker, and done.

 I had them write a very quick little note, to . . .  from. . . . and a drawing inside.

Did I mention I had all of these supplies already, just had to buy the tissue paper? That's why we did it. My partner found these perfect envelopes. We just slipped the frames inside, punched holes in the top of the envelopes and notes, tied with a string, and done (sorry didn't take a final picture).



Cover Sheets

Wanted to share some of the cover sheets I've created for various things. Hope someone can use them.

This is the cover to our daily behavior communication folder. I need to take a picture of one, but basically it has this on the cover, inside are mini calendars of the entire school year, and on the back is a legend of what the different colors mean. You can get a copy of the Behavior Folder Legend here.

Behavior Folder Cover Sheet

This is the cover to the communication binder I posted about here.

Communication Folder Cover Sheet

This is something new that my partner and I are trying this year. We use Houghton Mifflin practice book pages but separate the pages by themes so that they are easier to manage. Last year I stapled each with a construction paper cover but that's a lot of construction paper. This year we decided to laminate manila folders with this cover sheet and use brads to secure the pages inside. We'll see how it goes.

Practice Book Cover Sheet



Home School Communication

We've only been in school for a month but I think I've communicated with parents more in this month than in any other complete year :/ Many of you know what I'm talking about :) So I've had to keep a log which is something that I should have been doing anyway, but never got around to it. Here are two different communication logs. I use the simple one, but a great coworker emailed us the cutesy one. Hope these are useful to someone. If you happen to use them I would love to hear from you :)

 

Simple communication log

Cutesy communication log

Dropbox - Sharing files without email or flash drives!

I just discovered Dropbox.com and I looooove it! My school issued laptop works fine at home but only turns on when it feels like it at work, so printing out files and just looking up things is very difficult. But then I heard about dropbox and I don't know how I've lived without it. It's great!

Just log on and create a FREE account. Then you can add a dropbox folder to any computers you use and simply drag files to that folder and they will be available online or on any other dropbox folder on your other computers ANYWHERE, ANYTIME! No more e-mailing yourself large files that take forever to send or figuring out which flashdrive holds the files you want.

Try it out and you'll never go back!

Alive and kicking! And Hard!

Sorry it's been soooo long, but as most of you have experienced, blogging during the school year is not as easy as during, so my posts will have to be short and sweet from now on :) At least until Winter Break.

Last Monday the kids came and I read them Un beso en mi mano. The "shortened" version because my 2nd group this year is quite a doooosey (I have no idea if that's how you spell it).

The fun part is that for snack time I made the kids kissing hand cookies. I got the idea years ago off the web. Of course I don't remember where. Here are the before cookies.

I'm no baker so I bought the ready to bake sugar cookie dough from Pillsbury, rolled it out, cut it out using my handy dandy hand cookie cutter (sorry, forgot the picture), placed on an ungreased cookie sheet, placed a nestle chocolate chip in the palm, baked @ 350 for whatever time the dough said, about 10 minutes . . .

And then . . . . voila!

Pretty much the same just fatter :) Still white since they're sugar cookies. Cookies and milk with a message make a great first day snack :)