Book Talk Tuesday!

This week, I'm linking up with the lovely Deanna Jump for her Book Talk Tuesday! 

For today's book, I chose to move away from the picture books that I so love. Instead, I chose You Read to Me, I'll Read to You; Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together.

 As you can see, there are a number of traditional tales to choose from!

Each story is roughly 2-4 pages, rarely longer. 

Don't you just LOVE those illustrations?!

Additionally, the text complexity varies throughout the book, making it an absolute gold mine for differentiation!

My absolute favorite thing about this book is that it merges traditional tales with grade-level appropriate text while still introducing some rich vocabulary.

I love to use this book to pair up students for fluency work. They get a kick out of experiencing such popular tales in a new and different way and especially love getting the opportunity to act out each tale! Once we become familiar with these tales, it functions as a fantastic fluency center where students are given a choice as to which story to read. Additionally, I will often copy lines of text onto sentence strips and have students work with them in a sequencing activity. When I student taught, I mixed up the tales and had students create their own fractured fairy tales. I hope to do it again this year and will definitely be sharing out once I do! :)

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Apple!

This summer, my Principal approached me about ways in which I currently utilize technology in the classroom and limitations that I have. She began to ask me a number of questions about strategies for teaching and making connections between school and home. After receiving probably 4-5 days' worth of questioning via email, phone calls, and texts, I finally asked her what was going on and she explained that she was pulling together information for a grant application.
Soon, she pulled together a small committee, myself included, to review and enhance her application based on teacher need. In early October, representatives from Apple came out to our building to speak with administrators, teachers, and students as well as to make notes of our technological infrastructure and last week, it was finally announced..

Roosevelt School in Bridgeport, CT is the proud recipient of the Apple ConnectED Grant for the 2014-2015 school year!!



With the grant comes iPads for every student in the building, iPads and Macbooks for every teacher, AppleTV for every classroom, added access points for wireless internet throughout the building, updated technological infrastructure to improve speed and connectivity, and my favorite part... Professional Development! Every teacher will be given support in integrating all new technologies!
I am so excited and honored to have been a part of the process and cannot WAIT to share so many new and exciting technological opportunities with my students!! Upon notification of our school's selection, we were asked to make wish-lists of iPad apps for the classroom.
So, I ask you... what are your go-to apps? How do you Apple products (iPads, iPods, Apple TV) in the classroom? Don't hold back!! If you do not currently have the technology you would like, what would you put on your wish list?

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Summer School Review

Ayyyyoooo!! I am sad to say that we have returned from our cruise. While there are oodles of exciting things coming up in the next few weeks, it was just so lovely to be away... just the hubster and myself. One of my favorite things about cruising is that there is no technological temptation. It takes me a few hours to get used to not checking my phone every 4.5 seconds, but it ends up being such a blessing to just cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and be totally immersed in paradise. Now that I am over a week removed from the end of Summer School Programs 1 & 2, and set to start Summer School Program 3, I thought it would be a good time to debrief the first two programs. You can CLICK HERE to check out how each program was set up in terms of student demographics, etc... but here is where I divulge the process... the ups and downs... the ins and outs... and give my ultimate evaluation of each program. Program #1 District Summer School
Training: 2 hour session in mid-June. Supplies were handed out and a packet including a list of Dolch and Fry words was given. This packet also included recommendations for activities to teach sight words.
Supplies given: 

• 25 pencils
• 15 boxes of crayons (8 crayons per box)
• 1 package of sentence strips
• 1 box of chalk

Sight Word Activities:

• Sight Word BINGO
• See and Spell word
• Cheer and Chant
• Blast Off

Week 1: 5 students attended. I assessed all students using my own sight word assessment -- available in my TpT Store HERE. I found that of my 5 students, only 1 students knew more than 10 of the 50 words. I knew that I had to jump right on the sight word wagon , ESPECIALLY considering the students with whom I was working were in grades 2 and 3. Based on their DRA2 scores, even though my students were in 2nd and 3rd grade, the highest student was barely at an end-of-Kindergarten reading level as our district requires students to be on a level 4 entering 1st grade. Sight Words for the Week:

• the
• like
• got
• of
• from

Read-Alouds for the Week:

• Huck Runs Amuck (Monday-Tuesday)
• The Relatives Came (Wednesday-Thursday-Friday)

Poem of the Week: Down By the Bay Skills for the Week:

• CVC words
• Word families

Week 2: 11 students attended. We continued with our schedule and the kids got right into the swing of things!
Sight Words for the Week: Read-Alouds for the Week: Poem of the Week:  Skills for the Week:
Week 3: 15 students attended.
Week 4: DRA testing ALL. WEEK. LONG. By this point, I had 17 students. Sadly, 2 of them began attending this week so it made it a little difficult. I tested them last, but they demonstrated no growth. Each morning we followed the same schedule...

• 8:30 am: Arrival/Breakfast/Attendance
• 9:00 am: Morning Meeting
• Greeting
• Question of the Day
• Poem of the Week
• Skills practice (i.e. short vowels, blends, magic e, etc...)
• 9:30 am: Read-aloud
• 10:00 am: Literacy Centers
• Roll-Write-Stamp-Build
• Computers -- Lexia
• Fluency Practice
• Teacher Group
• Sight Word games with my Paraprofessional
• 11:00 am: Writing Activity
• Usually a quick-write followed by skills practice
• 11:30 am: Share-Out
• 11:45 am: Sight Word Song or Game
• 12:00 pm: Lunch
• 12:30 pm: Dismissal

Being that only 15 students attended on our busiest day, no group was larger than 3 students at any time and on many days, students were able to work independently. On these days, I was at first concerned that the kiddos would get distracted wanting to work with a friend, but each student really took ownership of their work and ended up being incredibly focused! I was so surprised! This also allowed me plenty of time to get through assessing each student when the program began to wrap up.

When all was said and done, of the students who consistently attended the program, 4 students improved their DRA2 score of at least 1 level.

Program #2 Principal-Funded Cusp Program   Training: None -- My Principal handpicked members of our staff based on our various skills.
Weekly breakdown: Each week ran in the same manner. All students were present from Day 1. We followed a Balanced Literacy approach -- Short, targeted mini-lessons in the areas of phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension followed by workstations and small group teacher stations to better enhance skills taught. Student to teacher ratio was 4:1 which was phenomenal and I had the opportunity to co-teach with one of my closest friends!
Assessment: We used the DRA2 as well as the assessment from my Sight Word Assessment Pack (find it HERE) to monitor student progress. At the end of the month-long program, the students averaged a growth of 11 sight words and a DRA2 growth of 1 level.
Final Determinations
Of the two programs, which would I be the most likely to participate in again? Honestly, each had it's Pros and Cons. The first is a tried and true program that runs every year and therefore, a number of elements have been in place and the department running the program is incredibly organized.
The 2nd program was a pilot through a grant that my Principal acquired. She relied heavily on our Assistant Principal who is transitioning to Principal of her own school (Yay! Congrats, Ms. M! You totally deserve it!) and there were times when we all felt uneasy with the organizational level. But honestly, any pilot is shaky.... and when it comes down to it, our kids really showed growth. It was wonderful to spend so much time with our Tier 2 students and really work to push them over that hump.
I am incredibly proud of the work that I did this summer. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to do something similar next year.
But, for now... let's get back into that classroom of mine and get it set up! I've got 24 little faces to prepare for!

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Shipping Out!

My husband and I have just finished packing for our cruise and we leave for the boat in... 19 minutes! Talk about LAST MINUTE! I hope we haven't forgotten anything!!
I can't be too upset with myself, as per usual... I got stuck at work late last night. There is just something so incredibly satisfying about engaging in rich conversation with colleagues with the same drive and passion. I know that many of you can relate!
Yesterday, to celebrate the end of summer school, my Principal and a few of my co-workers had a chicken wing party! Living in Connecticut, you really haven't lived until you've tried the wings at the Dew Drop Inn in Derby. I wish they had a website that I could link up to, but... check them out on Facebook. They have something like 80 different varieties of wings -- ALL ARE DELICIOUS! My favorite are Parmesan-Bacon-Garlic, Peanut Butter & Jelly (with a fluff dipping sauce!), and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I know, I know... they sound ridiculous, but NOMNOMNOM they are just... oh, so good! I won't even begin to pretend like I know how to explain how a combination of chicken and candy work, but they just do. Trust me! :) REGARDLESS! While we were chowing down, we began to talk about the the school play for the coming year. During each of our 3 years under the PCAH Turnaround Arts Grant, we held a school production:
Year 1: The Wiz Year 2: The Jungle Book Year 3: Hairspray, Jr.
This year, we were planning to present The Little Mermaid, but made a switch to Annie, Jr. after learning about the new Jamie Foxx-Cameron Diaz movie. 
Through our discussion we began to brainstorm the many ways we are able to integrate the play into our instruction as aligned with the CCSS and district curriculum for grades Pre-K through 8. Our discussion lasted for nearly THREE HOURS! We were unexpectedly productive, building off of one another and now we have been set to task -- as soon as I return from the cruise, I will be putting together a packet for our staff complete with arts vocabulary and ideas for lessons, units, and PBAs (Project Based Activities). I am so optimistic for this school year and really cannot wait to delve into it and share all of our ideas with you!  But now I'm curious! At this point through all of my training, substituting, and now teaching, I have working in 6 different school districts (over 20 schools total!) and have seen arts integration at all different levels. I'd love to hear about your arts integration experience. Answer the question below and feel free to give more info in the comments! I apologize in advance for delayed responses since I will be out of the country until August 2nd!

surveys & polls

Also, don't forget to follow me here, on bloglovin, or on Instagram (Shoelaces_SweetFaces) before I get back on the 2nd. All followers by then will receive a FREEBIE of my completed Sight Word Assessment Pack!
Happy blogging, all and soak up all the sun you can! School will be back before we know it!! :)

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