May Currently

Hey there,

Loooooong time, no blog! I do, however, Instagram way more frequently. Check me out there!

The last currently ever... Sad day! But at least I realized that it's the FIRST and I actually caught it in time! Woooo!

Here we go:

Listening: Outside of my dog snoring her little heart out it is dead quiet in my house, and I LOVE it!!

Loving: The end is nigh! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! This time of year is always so bittersweet. I love seeing how far my firsties have come, but, man, am I ready to let them go for the summer.

Thinking: The weather is perfect today to go and lounge by the pool. And that is JUST what I am doing once I am done typing this!

Wanting: We are moving schools! My campus is a K-3, and the campus next door is a 4-6 and we are combining at the end of school year. Every single teacher will be moving rooms, so we all have to get every single thing packed and cleaned. It is a mountain of work that I have not even started. Not even a little bit. Wish me luck!

Needing: Ya'll, I have SEVEN weddings to attend this year. I am only in two of them, but that's still a lot of weddings! I also have to learn choreography for one of them for a flash-mob style first dance. I am not a bad dancer, but I am horrible at learning choreography. We are doing the whip and nae-nae (got that one down) and Footloose (not so much...) All I gotta say is, good thing the bride and her sister are excellent dancers!

Truth: These past two weeks have been HARD. School has been very hectic. And, this time last year, was the last trip I took out to Colorado to visit my dad. He passed away a few weeks later right before the end of last school year. There have been a LOT of emotions going on as I've grappled with dealing with this truth. Cherish every moment you have with your loved ones because you just never know.

And that's it! Now time for my awesome pool day!

December Currently

Holy cow! It is already December! Here's the currently from the Fabulous Farley!

Listening: Started a new show with the roommates. Quantico is on Hulu and it's lots of drama, but fun to watch! I actually wanted to be an FBI agent for a while. Specifically a criminal profiler.

Loving: CHRISTMAS! I love all things Christmas and I am so excited that I was finally able to decorate the house! We just gotta get our tree up and decorated and then we'll be ready.

Thinking: There is SO. MUCH. HAPPENING. in the last few weeks before Christmas break! canigetanamen!? We have to make sock snowmen, and do our space rotations, and holidays around the world, and make presents for the parents, and watercolor coffee filter snowflakes, and gingerbread houses. Plus I still have to give running records, and a math test, and there's DIBELS... It makes my head spin.

Needing: I have got to get this house clean. My husband worked all day on Thanksgiving and so we are hosting a #FriendsGiving with the roommates on Saturday. The house cannot be a disaster when our friends come over!

Real or Faux: I adore real trees! I love when we are able to have them. All the boys agreed we could get a real one for the house, and I am SO excited! I will probably be helping my mom set up her fake tree too this year. I get the value in a fake tree, but nothing beats the real deal.

And that's it! I have SO many things that I want to blog about, but haven't had the time. Now that my first semester of grad school is over I can hopefully get some stuff posted!

November Currently!

Hey!

I'm writing a blog post! Whaaat? Stop the presses! Granted, it's more of a personal thing since it's the Currently from Farley, but it's still a post!

I am planning to blog about the past two weeks where we did our Laura Numeroff unit, though, because we did some BIG things, and I have another BIG thing planned to truly cap off that unit. Stay tuned!

Here we go:

Does anyone else watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine? I started watching it with my husband and the roommates, and it is HILARIOUS! I just binge watch it forever and get nothing productive done.

I am LOVING that southern Arizona got the memo that it's not summer anymore! It seems like around Halloween every year the weather goes, "Oh! Right! It's fall!" and the temps gloriously drop from the 90's to the 70's. And we all pull out our sweaters and boots and complain that it's cold... :)

We start our space unit tomorrow! Woo-hoo! We do five weeks of space, and the kids L-OOO-VE it! It's so much fun. We do the sun, the moon, inner planets, outer planets, stars and constellations. We take a break from it for Thanksgiving week because we all know nothing productive happens in those three days with the kiddos amped for turkey! It's a great unit, though, and I'm excited to share it.

I want a vacuum mop. So. Badly. It's literally a vacuum that has the power to mop your floors. Put in water and cleaning solution, turn it on and push it around while it scrubs and mops, then switch it dry and push it around as it sucks the dirty water back up, and DONE! Presto! Mopped floors. Plus you can use it as a regular vacuum too. Want one now? I bet you do.

I need a massage. Stat. There is so much neck and shoulder tension happening up in here. amiright?

I make a killer vegan pumpkin bread from a recipe I found on Pinterest. I only looked for a vegan recipe because I never have eggs or normal milk in the house (I use coconut milk and dislike eggs). But, lemme tell ya, this recipe is bomb! So much flavor. And I haven't made it yet since the official stat of all-things-pumpkin season

That's it for now! Link up with us at Oh Boy 4th Grade!

All about reading!

Hey, ya'll!

I thought it was about time for another blog post! We've been back in school now for a few days since fall break. The kids have actually fallen right back into routine pretty easily!

I worked really hard first quarter to get them into routine during our small group reading hour. Last year, our team leader, made up her own reading routine to get her kids more exposure. She showed all of us what she was doing (because my principal gave us all time to observe during a school day!) and we fell in love and all did the same thing!

So, here's what we do during small group reading time. And it's NOT CENTERS!!!!

Back at the beginning of the year, after I heard everyone read, all of the kids were assigned to a book (or level of books). They keep their book in one of these bins for easy storage and access. The bins have nothing to do with groups or level or anything. I just slapped their names on to some chalk labels using chalk markers, and, BAM, that's where they keep their books, bookmarks, and reading journals. Fancy, huh?

The kids grab their book and take it somewhere in the room. I let them read anywhere they want to. I have not yet introduced pillows and the bean bag chair and the stuffed animals because I wanted them really and truly in reading routine before adding in anything that could be distracting! They HAVE TO read their book a minimum of 3 times for fluency. We talk A LOT about fluency in both reading and math. If they are not yet feeling fluent, and like a reading champion (GoNoodle reference), then they keep practicing.

The bookmarks have the ZooPhonics alphabet on them, N-Z is on the back.

After they've read it 3 times they get their recorder. I have 15 recorders and 20 kids, so for the sake of "fairness" (and to save some $ on AAA batteries) I am only using 10 recorders, so they all have to share. They record themselves reading their story out loud, and then, and this is HUGE, they LISTEN TO THEMSELVES!!! We go over what fluent and not fluent sounds like, and then they have to judge themselves on if they sounded fluent! If not, well, it's back to reading. Yes, I do spot check their recorders to make sure their reading really is fluent. We got the recorders because my principal is amazing, and incredible, and has mad budgeting skills that let her buy 15/teacher (60 total!).

This is one of my super strong readers, so he gets to just choose books instead of the leveled readers.

***NOT PICTURED***

After recording they get their reading journal. They use the sentence frame, "My favorite part of _____ is _____ because _____." and then they get to draw a picture. I am having my stronger readers also start writing a re-tell as well. We use "Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then". But some kiddos are not ready for the extra writing just yet. After Christmas they will ALL be doing the retell part as well.

The last step is for them to complete their phonics journal. I use this interactive notebook because it's amazing and has soooo many skills! We do a phonics mini lesson at the start of our small group time. We spent the entire first quarter on alphabet review, short vowels, and CVC, and we have now just started digraphs (sh, th, ch, wh).

Once their phonics notebook is complete they get to choose ONE center. They can do word work (mostly puzzles I got from Lakeshore where they build sight words and such, but also magnetic letters, and compound words, etc.) writing, or listening. For writing I use Cara Carroll's Work-On-Writing centers that she made last year. They are AH-MAZING!!! And then, after that ONE center, they go get their next book and the cycle starts all over!

How do students keep track of where they are at in the cycle, you ask??? Well, they have these handy-dandy laminated checklists! After each step they check the box and go on to the next step! When they've checked everything they know it is center choice time and they get to erase everything to get ready to start over.

My small group time runs from 9-10am Monday-Thursday. During this time our first grade reading specialist pulls kids out to read with her. She takes 2 groups from my class. The checklist makes it easy for the kids coming and going too because they know where they last left off since they move through things a little more slowly. Because all students are engaged in reading or writing for the entire hour I am able to read with them as well. It also gives me time to do running records and to progress monitor for DIBELS.

Yes, it's a lot of work to set up. Yes, it's really hard to be able to meet with any groups during the first quarter, so I didn't even try! I just made sure I was keeping up with assessments. But, you guys, it is SO effective! SO. EFFECTIVE. Kids need access to books that are ON THEIR LEVEL! They need to be reading and reading and reading to be able to improve. What we're doing does all of that! They get repeated practice with books on their level, they build their fluency, they practice writing, there's phonics worked in, and there's some fun at the end. Plus, lemme tell ya', once their in routine with this, it makes sub plans really easy for this hour! I am seriously in LOVE with how we are doing reading.

*Phew* That was a long one! Thanks for making it to the end! You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram

Habitats!

Hey ya'll!

We do a HUGE 3 week unit on habitats! We study the Savanna, the Rainforest, and the Ocean. We do one habitat each week, and we focus the first day on the habitat, the second day on the animals, the third day on the people, and the fourth day we put it all together with writing! (And on Fridays we did an art project for that habitat)

This year I chose to organize the kids' units using file folders. They just glued a piece of paper that was divided into 3 sections on to a part of the file folder, and then each day we wrote in one section. Then the next week we glued another paper in. This kept them from getting mixed up and made it easier look at to grade, PLUS I could then put their 4th day writing papers inside the file folders when we were all done! Voila!

If I was more with it I would have handy dandy pictures to show you of a completed file folder, but I sent them all home during parent/teacher conference week!

I DO have pictures of a few of the anchors we created, though! One the ocean one, everything on the anchor they also wrote in their folder over the 3 days, and the other 2 weeks looked very similar for the other habitats.

Here is us working on a guided art project to make a picture of a rainstorm at sunset in the savanna! This was actually quite ambitious for me to do during the 3rd week of school, but they LOVED it, and so did I!

The finished products! They were all so beautiful!

The kids LOVE this unit! And they all learn SO much! Parents were really excited to get to take their units home, and I heard a lot of, "Oh! They came home everyday tell me about this!" My teacher heart was SO happy!

Math!

Hey, there!

I LOVE teaching math! Looooove it! Our team has an awesome self-created curriculum that we follow too. One of our teachers went to the SUMS training a few years back, and it was all about how math should progress to make the most sense, especially in schools that serve low-income areas. So, we took the research-based progression, tweaked it here and there to make it work for us, and wrote all of our own lesson plans to go with it! It has been a serious labor of love, but when your district says they won't buy curriculum and they don't really want you using the old stuff either... You do what you gotta do! You create! It's very refreshing to be treated like the expert when it comes to educating our students. So, here are a few pictures of what we've been up to! (And, unfortunately, I do mean a FEW. It is soooo hard to remember to snap picture when you're, you know, teaching.)

Number Bracelets! We did these last week (or the week before) as the middle of our decomposing numbers unit. The recording pages are a freebie from TPT (find it here). I snag pipe cleaners whenever I see them at Target Dollar Spot, and the beads I found at Dollar Tree this year!

 Rekenreks! We made our rekenreks ourselves with window blinds, stretchy string, and beads. My team made these the same summer I got married, so they made mine for me! But we do a lot with the rekenreks to help us find different combinations of numbers.

And that's all I have... :(   It's SO hard to remember to take pictures when they are in the middle of working! I have been doing a little better by using Instagram to catch them in the moment doing math, so feel free to check that out here.

I will try to get some actual posts about actual lessons for both math and ELA because we do some awesome stuff!

Routines and Procedures

Hello!

Let's chat about how I get my room up and running! There are quite a few little pieces that all have to come together to run an effective classroom. :)

The Rules:

I use Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom. (well, parts of it, but I want to add more!) So, we go over our 5 rules every single day. Complete with hand motions! At this point in the year, my calendar person is the one who actually leads the class, and it's SUPER cute! I'll have to record it one morning.

In the beginning of the year we talk about what all the rules mean and why we follow them, and then later in the year I can just say, "Rule 2" and they know EXACTLY what I mean! I have quite a few little guys who love to blurt out, so I love having an easy way to remind them that makes them stop for a second and think about what they're doing. 

Schedule: 

I am counting my schedule because we go over it Every.Single.Day. They know what each card is, and what we are doing during that time, and they are aware of any changes in our schedule as soon as they walk in and see it. It actually gets to the point where they're practically dependent on it, and if I forget to change something, they totally freak out and call me on it! But I'm glad they know where to look to see what's happening.

Active Listening:

This one is HUGE. Our entire campus made an Active Listening anchor chart as part of our first 20 days of school. They all have the same components to them, and every child knows what it meant by active listening. We build the chart together and go over every single piece. It is referred to all year, and all you have to do after a few weeks is say, "I need Active Listening." or, "I need 100%." and they will all immediately straighten up. It has also helped our reading and math specialists, and our specials teachers because they know that all the kids know this.

Partner Talk:
I follow Whole Brain Teaching for this one too! We all built the same anchor in first grade, but each teacher has made it fit her room. So, for the "wait until teacher tells you what and when to share" I use the "Teach/Okay" from WBT. I also assign partners using WBT, so, at the beginning, they are apples and trees, and right now they are stingrays and jellyfish, and then next month they'll be a new thing! Each month they get a new partner and a new thing to be. We also worked a TON on being able to share what your partner said to you instead of just what you said to your partner. :)

Volume Meter:

We did not do this last year, and I have seen it alllll over Pinterest and always wanted to try it, so when one of the teachers on our team just went ahead and did it, we all jumped right on board! It's pretty self-explanatory and it seriously works wonders. I even have kids saying things like, "we're on yellow right now, announcements are on."

Engagement:

This piece was also new this year, but it was really helpful to teach it! My kiddos are excellent at the WHAT and the WAY, but we seriously struggle with the WHEN. So, it's our class goal to get better at that part. I am often reminding them of Rule #1: Follow directions quickly! We did one piece of this each day and gave examples of what it would be like if we didn't do it. So, for the what, we played Simon Says, for the Way we did a guided drawing and stopped partway through as if we were done, and talked about how if we don't finish it the right way we'll never know what it is. And for then when we got them all hyped about doing something fun, and then stalled until we "didn't have time" and talked about how that felt, and then did the fun thing. Super duper effective! And my kiddos are finally getting better about that last part!

Phew! That was a long one! Thanks for sticking with it! It it SO true what they say about doing it right the first time. Spending tons of time on rules and procedures with really focused lessons in the beginning of the year, saves so much frustration later on!