Mentor Sentences- Tried It Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday all!  Hope you are all having a great week so far. I'm not looking forward to the colder weather that is headed our way, but other than that I can't complain!  Life is good!  I'm super excited to share some bits and pieces of something that I tried this year, and that I'm loving!  Hope you enjoy!! I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for another Tried It Tuesday!

First of all, after blog stalking this past summer, I cam across the idea of mentor sentences.  After much reading and discussion back and forth (thanks Jessica) I finally bit the bullet and decided to try it.  If you're interested, I got my resources from Ideas by Jivey.  She does a great job putting mentor sentences into action and also shares so much to make it happen in your classroom. You can start small by just getting one or two or getting a whole bundle pack. I started with the first 10 weeks mentor sentences and then bought the rest of her bundle.  I know that you can make them work with any book you're reading, but for me, having it already prepped and done has been a life saver! It's great that you can do what works for you!  

**Also, this blog post is a post on my experience and success with mentor sentences. I have not been asked to write this or to promote this product in anyway.  I'm just really loving this great resource, and appreciate the hard work that went into it! My students are showing great success with it and I am pleased to share what we're doing!


Mentor Sentences:
1- Monday I read aloud a story to the students and then write a mentor sentence from the book on the board.  We do some guessing why I picked it and just read it a few times to get a feel for it.  I am also using the picture books to teach them. So Monday we spend a lot of time picking a theme for the book and adding it to our theme wall!

2- Tuesday: For morning work students put the sentence in their writing notebook, rewrite it on the lines and then start to label things that they notice.  Then at the beginning of our writing block each day we discuss and do things with the sentence.  We will label and notice the sentence and talk about special features (quotations, alliteration, contractions, etc.)

Here is the sentence for one of our books on the board.
I write it out and then we label it with everything that
they can come up with.  This one isn't all of the way done,
but I was impressed that they did a lot on their own!
It took us several tries to get to that point.  When they are
done labeling and noticing, I bring other things to their attention
that maybe they didn't think of.

3- Wednesday is our revision day.  We talk about changing up just a few small things in the sentence to still keep the general message.  We talk about how changing adjectives or verbs can simply add a new dimension to writing.  I also write my own on the board and then they have the chance to write their own revision too.  These are revisions from The Widow's Broom. Their revision is under the sentence that we label.  

4- Thursday: On Thursday we get to be our own sentence authors and imitate the style of our author from the week.  We take the basic structure of the sentence that we've worked with and totally mix it up and make it our own sentence that could be used in our own writing. I always do one first to show the students an example and then they write one last sentence in their notebook to go along with our weekly mentor sentence. We then hang up a few on a bulletin board each week and use them as sentence models.  Here is our display. 

Here are our sentences to go along with Enemy Pie.
This was one of the earlier ones we did. I am super
impressed with how they have grown.  I can't seem to find my
more updated picture tonight of more samples.. :(....
But you get the picture!!!

5. Friday: On Friday I give students the "Invitation to Edit" quiz that Jessica includes with all of her mentor sentence units.  It gives the students time to use all of the skills that were used on the sentence for that week and they also find some mistakes in the sentence that we used and correct them. It's like a mini quiz to end the sentence and to end the week. 




I'm also doing a book study with several colleagues at my school. It's called Everyday Editing. Mentor sentences come from the idea behind this book. I'm very excited to be using this book and Jessica's great resource to help my students with their writing! If you don't know where to start, but you want to learn more, I suggest this book!  I love how it also has a whole section dedicated to in class implementation and practice.  What a great way to actually try something out!! I love books that are designed for that. 

I'm so loving how great my students are doing with using mentor sentences! I also love how they are fitting into my daily teaching so nicely.  Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Kids blogging Away!

Happy Tuesday!

I'm excited to be here today to share something 

super fun that I've been working on 

with my kids for the past couple of weeks---

KidBlog!!!

I'm linking up today for Tried It Tuesday

with Fourth Grade Flipper! 

I have heard about this site a lot,

but never have taken the plunge to do it. 

After a super sweet comment on my blog from Jamie

over at Thrills in Third Grade. 

We decided to team up and give this whole

virtual blogging thing a try... with our two classes!

One from California, and one from Wisconsin!! How fun!

A couple of things before I start:

1. KidBlog can be a completely private site.  So only people with a password can access it, which makes this teacher one happy camper! I'm always thinking safety when it comes to internet sites. 

2.  The site can seem like a lot at first, however it gives you complete access to each student and teacher account linked to your kid blog site. It's so great to keep track of what students are doing. I have set up notification so each time a comment or post is made,it comes to my email!

3. I tried this cold turkey without ever using this site, and have learned right along with my kids. Although stressful because I didn't have all of the answers.... such a great experience!

The main page of our blog consists of the 'blog roll' for each student.  As you can see across the top, I've named it for my class.  I guess, I could have used something more creative ;)  The tool bar in red allows you to see all of the blogs, which is what this picture above shows, go to your individual blog (one set up for each student) or make a new post.  Look at us with 2,464 views!  Our California friends I bet are checking to see that we have our work written up for them!

This is what each individual blog looks like.  Each student has their own page that can be viewed by anyone who has access to their site.  Jamie and I exchanged class codes (found in the dashboard section of the site) so on our blog rolls, both of our classes can be found.  We did find however, that it's easier if the students make new posts from their actual teacher's site.  Then go to the other site (which I will show you in a second) to read other blogs and make comments.  That way the main blog page doesn't get too full with new posts!  It can be a lot to manage. 

The posts that we started with were the current chapter book that we are reading, and an "All About Me" post to share some likes with their buddies.  I had them start with a book post so I could comment and ask them questions. That way the got used to checking their dashboard for new comments. 

This is what the teacher dashboard looks like.  The student one is very similar, however they don't have access to every post and comment made on the site. It's a great place to keep track.  The far left shows how many posts, drafts and comments that are made.  The middle shows the specific comments on the blogs, and the far left shows all of the most recent blog posts.  I've really been trying to teach the kids to check their dashboard for comments so they don't miss anything! 

When a student (or teacher) clicks on new post, this is what it looks like. I feel that it's very user friendly for kids too! They title their post, write it below with options for new fonts, colors, sizes, etc and then to the right they can save, preview and add tags.  I was so impressed with how quickly they understood about tagging.  

Above is another part of the dashboard.  In this case I clicked on "My Classes" and it took me to all of the collaborators of the blog.  In my case, since teaming up with Jamie, both of our classes show up.  This is one way that my students can get to her site.  The other is just clicking on a student name from the main page. Like I said, both of our classes are listed together for easy access!  I like how they can easily go back and forth between the two classes, and have access to what she's working on as well.  

Here is her site. As you can see you can also personalize it to be just right for you and your class!!!

For now, because she's awesome, she has posed several questions to her students about various things, and my students have been allowed to comment.  We both read Stellaluna last week, and are both working on multiplication concepts. I plan to have my students read her post, follow up on her student comments and then make their own to answer her questions. I will assign them to find their buddy that we assigned them too, and also comment on their response! 

We're in the works to plan a November activity for the students. I also plan on giving this as a choice in my writing center as we become more comfortable. Students can blog a story or two during their writing time on here for me to read instead of always doing it on paper. 

Do you have any advice on using this site? 

I'd love to hear how you use it or if you have any suggestions!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Have a great week. 

Student Made Name Tags {Tried It Tuesday} 9-8-14

Well, it's the beginning of the school year

so I'm back in full swing with trying new things 

in the classroom. 

Source

I'm excited today to link up with Holly 

from Fourth Grade Flipper for

Tried It Tuesday!

Be sure to stop by to see what others are trying out.

My 'tried it' isn't anything groundbreaking today....

but it is something that I've tried differently 

this year as we get started. 

Student made name tags:

I've always had ones that have been purchased 

with tons of resources on them

that take up the whole desk. 

Since the resources are all up in the room anyway

and most have their own personal copies of things to store

that I could try something a bit different this year. 

I really love how they turned out!

They took their time and really put in 

a lot of effort!

There was a mix up with our order of name tags this year

so instead of using all different left over ones,

{and because I just plain ran out of time} 

I decided to have students make their own tags.

I'm not sure if they will get just as beat up or not

as the year goes on,

but I'm hoping that since they took the time to make them

they will take some more pride in taking care of them. 

I'll have to let you know!

Happy Tuesday! Hope you're having a great week so far.

Tried it Tuesday- Homework

It's Tuesday, so that brings me to another edition of 'Tried it Tuesday' and linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper.   I had to laugh when I decided to do this post, because today was NOT a good day for turning in homework in third grade land.... tomorrow is a new day though.  So here we go.......

I've officially hit the point of the school year where I feel like we aren't looking forward, but looking back to where we were on day 1.  It may be the long winter we've had, or the fact that my students are just way to comfortable with one another right now and we need Spring Break to come fast..... or it could just be that natural dip in the year where you feel like progress is going nowhere!  Whatever it is, I am really feeling it this year, so I decided to do something about it and tackle one of the biggest problems head on....HOMEWORK! {Or should I say lack thereof???} 

I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, not knowing what was late, who was missing what, what was already put in the grade book, who was behind, and who was needing to stay back from recess to finish their work.  I thought I was keeping track of what was missing, but then I realized that I was working harder, my kids weren't doing what they needed to do and I'm guessing their parents had no clue that it was becoming such a chronic problem.  

Well, I started where anyone else would.... with a rant!  Good thing Jennifer, from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings teaches the grade above me, and appreciates all the hard work that goes into prepping kiddos for 4th grade.... she was the lucky one that caught my rant.  Lucky Her! :)  I thought talking to 4th grade would be a good idea, because after all I'm trying to get my students ready for 4th grade...as well as expectations!She actually helped me out in more ways than one.  Be sure to stop by her blog for great ideas on everything!!!!

1- First, several weeks prior she gave me the 'Late Notice' red sheet that they use in 4th grade. She passed it along and I filed it away, because I didn't really need it at the time.  Well...I pulled it out and we officially started FOURTH GRADE in my classroom.  I sent a note home in my newsletter explaining what the expectation was (just as a reminder) and then what we were going to do to improve this to be ready for 4th. Whenever a student has a late or missing assignment (even not filling out their reading log) a red late notice sheet goes home stapled to the assignment that was not complete.  They are required to fill out the basic assignment information, write down the due date, and also say why they didn't do it. They also owe be $5 from their Bentin Money for each late assignment. They don't like giving up their money, and they also don't like when they don't get paid. So if they don't get their homework it's a double whammy to their bank accounts!  In order to earn their free time or recess back they must bring the late notice back signed.  It's worked wonderfully! (except today...we won't talk about today!!!) I still have my homework offenders, however it's much more managed and out of my hands! I also like that now students are more in charge of their actions. 



I love this quote, because it is true of many students who decide not to do homework.  Saying "I don't get it" doesn't always cut it.... I respond with.. "Well, what have you tried???! Show me!"

Source: Bing Images

2- I invited Jen to come into my room and say something about the long list of missing assignments on the board.  She even questioned students about it and asked why they didn't have it done.  It was an eye opener for kids to realize that others were noticing if they weren't doing their job, and they wanted to impress their possible 4th grade teacher.  She even sent down her "Good Job" jar full of sweet treats several days later to give to any student who wasn't on the list of 'No Homework!' 



**Man, this post got long, sorry for that! I'll save my fun math trick for next time. Thanks for stopping by.  Any other suggestion on late or missing work.....I'm all ears! Send them this way!

Tried it Tuesday- Literature Circles

Happy Tuesday!  I'm on a roll this week and trying to make up for not really posting last week.  I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for her Tried it Tuesday linky!

There are a million and one ways to run a reading group.  In fact I feel like I've tried about a million and two things in my classroom over the years.  No matter what you do, I've always found that I can go back to a traditional literature circle.  This year I've struggled so much with some of my higher readers, because I only have very few of them that can really handle the responsibility and challenge of a chapter book.  This hasn't really ever happened to me in my years of teaching, so I've had to revamp a lot of what I do during guided reading.  I feel lucky to have a few students who really challenge themselves and are ready for a challenge from me. I've recently pulled out this literature circle packet to guide us through her reading of The Tale of Despereaux.

This was designed to use with small groups of students, to get them talking about books that they are reading.  Discussion can sometimes be hard, especially when students don't know what to bring up. This requires students to be an active participant in the book discussion, and not having me ask all of the questions and they answer (or stare blankly at me). I like using this because it can be used in so many different ways, and with so many levels of students (2-5). It's easy to change up or add/take away responsibilities based on grade level and independence of students.



The most common use is having a small group of students work on one book together by going through this packet either a chapter at a time, or several chapters at a time. Pages can be taken out or added depending on the length of the books that are being used.

There are 4 different members made into this packet, but you can have more than one member 1 or member 2 and so on to accommodate larger literature circle groups. I've found that 4 is a good number to keep it to though, as discussion can be repetitive or very long with a lot more students. The files that I've created already have each members booklet in order.  I tend to make a different colored copies for each cover based on what member they are (member 1 is blue, member 2 is green, etc,) and then do the rest of the pages white.  I have in the past color coded each job page before putting books together (so every time they see a yellow paper they know that they are in charge of drawing a visualization for the group).  That takes up a lot of time, but when I used this in 2nd grade that helped to keep jobs separate. Each person had a different job for each day based on the pages/chapters that have been read.

1. One job is to give a summary of what was read. 
2. One job is to pose long answer questions to the group based on what is happening in the story.
3. One job is to draw a picture and visualize what is happening in the book to share with the group.
4. One job is to make connections to the text to share. 

Not only are students required to keep up with their reading each night, they also must complete their job to share with the discussion group.  I like how it has them self-evaluate after each day as well.  It's important that they actively talk and listen during their group time.  It's always amazing how they are harder on themselves than I would be when grading their own work and participation.  If you're interested in this, or have questions please don't hesitate to contact me.  The plan is to get it up and running on my TpT store as soon as it's ready! It's a really big file, and with being new to TpT, I'm having some issues.  Please stand by---- ;)


How do you teach small groups?

Crafty & Yummy Things--- Tried It Tuesday

Happy Tuesday!  I'm sitting here at home for the second day in a row because this polar vortex has taken over.  Today was our 5th cold/snow day of the year.  Gosh, I don't even remember the last time we had 3 in a year.  I'm doing my best to sit back and try not to be anxious thinking of all the things that I need to do when I go back to school with my kiddos {easier said than done, right???!!!!} So in order to try to keep my mind off of what I should be doing, and not worrying about it, I have done some things at home to keep me busy.  So today I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for a 'non-school' Tried it Tuesday.

I usually think of myself as a crafty person, however I hate that I can never find the time to do the crafts that I want to do. I've seriously pinned a million and there they sit.  So I have decided to make a Valentine's Day banner for my house.  Today was a purge day of everything 'WINTER'!!!!  If it had a snowman on it or a snowflake on it, I put it away.  I was saying to winter I am SOOOOOO over you!  I don't have a lot of Valentine's day things to put up so this craft was perfect. 

I started by going to the craft store and buying some burlap.  I made a template out of a piece of cardboard so I could trace my shape to the burlap.  I just picked triangles to start, because I've never worked with burlap before and didn't know what to expect.  It wasn't that bad, however when cutting it did get all over the place.  So if you're going to do a project like this, make sure you're ready for the clean-up after.  Then I decided that I wanted to put a background on my banner.  I had a chevron stencil.  I did the background on all of the triangles first so they could dry.  I used a small sponge to dab the paint on.  

After I was done with the background I stenciled on the letters with red paint and a brush.  I used a brush so it had a slightly different look than the background paint texture.  When all of the pieces were dry I hot glued each triangle to a piece of ribbon. It's hard to see but it's white with red dots along the top and bottom.  I left just a tad of the burlap sticking out on top, but you could glue right up to the edge if you wanted to. 

There you have it! Instant Valentine's Day decoration.  I had most of the supplies at home so the only thing that I had to buy was the burlap for this project.  I only used about a yard of it, and it was on sale for 2.99 a yard.  I bought some extra to have around in case I decide to do another small project with it.  I think though it fits perfectly on the fireplace!

On to another great love of mine...trying new recipes.  I don't have a lot in the house, because we haven't ventured out much the last few days so the goal was to make something with what we did have.  I looked and looked and just didn't know what to do.  Each year our school has a soup-off challenge.  Where you can make a big crock-pot of soup bring it to school and compete with others for the title of best soup.  Not to toot my own horn but I won 3 years in a row! It's sooooo fun!!!!!  This year I didn't enter, however I did get some great recipes from it and ended up making one of them for our adventure in the cold!

Cheeseburger Soup:   It was delicious--that's all I can say.  Maybe not the best in terms of healthy eating, but it had veggies and milk, so that counts, right???? We followed the recipe almost exact, however we did not have potatoes so it didn't get any and it tasted just fine without them. I would be curious if we could use turkey sausage instead of ground beef so next time we're going to try that. We used Velveeta cheese instead of shredded cheese.  I cubed the cheese up and it melted nicely. Lastly I garnished with just a little bit of shredded cheese.  If we had chives that would have been a great topper too!

All of the veggies together.. YUM!

Adding everything together to melt the cheese!

Final Product!  

Thanks for stopping by today! I promise next week I'll have something school related to chat about.  I'm working on getting a TPT store open so that is both new & exciting!! 

Have a great rest of the day!

Graphing Fun and Tried it Tuesday

Hi there.... I don't know about any of you, but today felt like it should have been Thursday to me.  I'm not sure if it was because we were back to -20 this morning or if it was the indoor recess, but it certainly was hard to get going today.  With that being said, my kiddos and I had a great day!  It started out slow for me, but great as well... I mean how can you not smile at this cutie?  She's not a very big fan of the cold, and with it being -20 this morning we had to go with a coat and booties.  If we wouldn't have done so, she would have gone on three legs and refused to move. Not that the clothes are much better, she runs away from us- at least it keeps her protected.

Meet Ellie... Our 'Puppy Kid'

So now to school-- today my kiddos were finishing up their math review on measurement.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, the unit covered so many things.  We were talking about weighing things in different units as well as comparing their measurements, measuring with a ruler to nearest 1/4 and 1/2 inch, measuring liquid volume, telling time, figuring out elapsed time and finally graphing with pictographs and bar graphs.  The kiddos were spent and their heads were spinning.  So this week we did an activity to spark some creativity.  As a class we came up with different questions to ask each other.  The only rule was that we couldn't ask the same question twice.  We wrote up our questions as a survey and then all answered them.  Students then took their own question from the survey and organized their data.  They had to organize it in a tally chart or in a function table.  From there they could choose how they wanted to share their data with the class.  They could make a pictograph or a bar graph.  I think that they turned out really good for the short amount of time that we spent going over graphs. They worked so hard, and I was impressed that they took so much ownership into this project. They really enjoyed it.

Finally I'm linking up this week for the first time with a blog that I'm new to for Tried it Tuesday! Check out the blog, it's called Fourth Grade Flipper.  I've spent a lot of time going through the links, and I'm so impressed with the new things people are trying at school and at home.  I'm hoping to be inspired to do the same!

I've used exit or entrance slips in the past in my classroom, but have not used them in awhile.  It was just something that I set aside, but always kept on my brain.  So I decided to make a 'parking lot' for exit/entrance slips and today was my first day for putting it to use.

I actually made this at the beginning of the school year, but just as other things come up it didn't get put into the routine right away so it wasn't used. I pulled it out today and students loved it, They compared it to a game show, which I thought was funny.  After our daily work this morning a review question on area and perimeter came up.  So before they headed off to specials I handed out a post-it to each student, and had them tell the different between both.  They could use either words or pictures or both.  :)  When they were done they put their post-it that matched their number and went to gym. Most of them did great, however there were a few that mixed up the vocabulary words.  So this afternoon during centers I pulled those few students to do a practice activity to practice with them.  I'm glad I brought this out and hope to use it again later this week.

Hope you had a wonderful day!  Thanks for stopping by!  :)