Teaching Theme- Disney Style

Hello! My name is Damien and I am a Disney Fanatic! 

I know, that's not much of a confession.  Heck, as I write this I am wearing a Mickey Mouse hoodie and watching the Disneyland 60th special on ABC (I cried twice). Disney movies, Disney songs, and Walt Disney World are a part of my soul. I am who I am because I was raised on Disney films!

So, what does all this have to do with teaching. Well, Disney always seems to find a way to sneak into my classroom and most recently it was to teach my kids how to identify, support, and write about theme. 

Here's one of my friends following along with the lyrics as we
listened to the song. 

The lesson started with me using an anchor chart to define the word theme.  I quickly passed out lyrics to the song "Let it Go" from Frozen, maybe you've heard of it-LOL. I told the kids that while I played the song I wanted them to listen while trying to find the message the author wanted us to apply to our own life.  When this was done we examined the lyrics for text evidence to support our theme. 

Here's our Writing About Theme Anchor Chart with
markers on what is expected when writing about theme. 

On our second day I modeled to my third grade heroes how to write about the theme as we wrote about Let it Go together. 

Over the next few days I exposed my kids to two others Disney songs giving them greater independence in finding the theme and the evidence to support it. We listened to "You'll Be in My Heart" from Tarzan and "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story. 

One of the great things about this lesson was that their was minimal "reading" required. I am an ICR classroom with five special education students and this allowed everyone to practice identifying theme without their reading abilities getting in the way. I also found youtube videos of the songs and placed them in my Google Classroom incase my friends wanted or needed to listen to them a second (or third) time. This really allowed my friends to focus on the skill and not be hindered by trying to apply it to the reading they were doing (that time was coming soon). 

 This lesson was a *magical* way to learn about identifying and writing about theme. 

Have a *Magical* Day Buddies!
-Damien 

Publishing Informational Texts

Hello Buddies-

Have you ever heard of Bare Books?  Bare Books, or barebooks.com, sell hard cover blank (or bare) books that students can write in. They also have a plethora of other items that you can purchase, bare, for your students. In the past I have used bare board games, bare books, and other items they sell.  

The entire third grade at my school orders barbers to publish our informational writing. The kids LOVE the idea that they are creating "real books" with hard covers and often tell us how they remember watching their older siblings work on their books when they were in third grade. 

If you haven't checked them out- well, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

Here are my third grade superheroes "reading" their published informational texts using Bare Books

Let me know if you check them out. 
Bye Buddies!
-Damien 

We are WRITERS!

Hello buddies-

We are Writers! That's right, we WRITE and WRITE and WRITE! This year my district fully adopted the new units of study by Lucy Calkins of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. I am so lucky that a select few teachers in our school have been using it for three years now and the results are UNBELIEVABLE! 

I was lucky to have my looping class when we began diving in to Writing Workshop. I had two years of direct writing instruction on structure, content, and writing strategies.  As I read the units of study books in preparation to teach I often thought Queen Lucy was crazy (b/c all rulers are at least a little crazy) for asking my ten year olds to produce the writing she asked for, no demanded! My colleagues and I fretted, stressed, and pondered what was best for our kids. In the end, we followed the visionary (you don't question Walt Disney about theme parks, you don't question Lucy on Writing-LOL). 

The growth in student writing was unbelievable. I read informational texts that were built on structure. I read memoirs that made me cry. I read opinion pieces that made me want to change the world. And now, now I'm doing the same work with my third grade superheroes and finding that the growth in their writing over the past few months is quite unbelievable, yet again! 

Here's a look at Writing Workshop in my classroom:

It's messy, it's creative, it's student driven, it's hectic---and it yields results! 

What are your Writing Workshop experiences?
Happy Writing Buddies!
-Damien 

Narrative Writing- The Heart of the Story

Hello Buddies-

How's it going? Life is pretty busy here as we enter the final inning of the "big game". As I write this blog post I am currently in the middle of PARCC testing(yuck), my DRAs are due in two days (double-yuck), and somewhere in there I am trying to teach.  But this ISN'T a complaining post (I promise).  This post is all about my recent Narrative Writing Celebration.  Thanks to a dear colleague of mine and my extreme fear that for my looping class I would be the last writing teacher they would have before middle school (PANIC!)- I dived deep into Writers Workshop and it has been a HUGE success.  Seriously, like my kids are writing better than any other class I have ever had and the district keeps sending teachers to my classroom to see my writing instruction.  Not too bad for year two of Writers Workshop.  

Celebrations are a HUGE part of Writers Workshop and this time around I chose to publish our books hardcover using a great website called www.barebooks.com where you can order a variety of blank templates to write in.  They look great when finished and the kids talk about having created a "real" book. LOVE THEM!

Look at my writers and readers with their hardcover books

Although our book were fantastic, and they were.  I wanted those in attendance to see behind the published piece so besides a video of my kids explaining the writing process and answering some pretty challenging questions about writing we created exposition boards. An exposition board included samples of our work with post-it notes showing off some of our techniques and the changes made to our writing throughout the process. 

Here one of my writers teaches our second grade buddies about the process behind his story.

An exposition board close-up- (and sideways! LOL)

The boards are really impressive and help my kiddos to guide the conversation when parents, kids, administrators, or other teachers stop by their station in the APR. The post-its show what they want to showcase and help them share what happened, in some cases, weeks ago in our classroom.  God bless my classroom para who photocopies the samples for the kids to use on their boards.  

In the end our celebration was a HUGE success and my kids were so proud of their writing and a few people (including myself) teared up as the read the HEART of their story aloud in small groups.  

How do you celebrate the writing that your students have completed? Is your school using Writers Workshop? I'm dying to know!

'Til next time!
-Damien 

Narrative Writing FREEBIE: Show...Don't Tell

Hello buddies-

We are a workshop class.  I LOVE both Reading and Writing Workshop.  

My class is currently revisiting our Narrative Writing Unit where our goal is to elaborate our writing and to tell all the little pieces of the small moment.  As part of our revisiting of the unit I wanted to review some of the criteria of a Narrative but in a differnet way.  

I told the gang to think about the story they were going to tell and what emotion they felt in the story.  Then they drew a picture of themselves showing that emotion.  

She looks quite happy!

This little guy is QUITE an artist!

After they finished drawing it was time for some writing.  First, my students had to write about that moment in a "telling" kind of way.  Some of their telling statments were "I was so excited to be walking down the aisle at my aunt's wedding" or "I was very nervous getting ready to take the field".  Then it was time to become a storyteller.  Their task was to show the emotion as opposed to tell about it.  

Let's take a look at some of the finished products. 

Here is our display outside of my classroom.

I can't remember the inspiration for this activity but I am hoping to inspire you by giving away this activity for FREE at our TPT Store.  

Keep checking back to our blog for another FREEBIE later this week!

-Damien 

Working on Writing

Want to know a secret?   Well, do you? 

Here it is:  I'm not the greatest writing teacher.  

There, I said it. phew! Thanks for listening blogging buddies. 

Well, this year I have decided to do something about it.  This year I am teaching a looping class.  That means I will ahve the same kids in fourth grade that I do when I return to fifth grade. That means I will be the last teacher they have in elementary school and I have two years to kick their writing into high gear.  

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! 

My entry in my Writing Notebook about a
time I rode Splash Mountain.

One of the things I did was to seek out a thrid grade colleague of mine who is a phenomenal writing teacher.  She just gets it and thankfully is willing to help me out.  

A LONG entry (along with sketches) in a students notebook. 

A student sketching out his ideas to help
create a picture to write about. 

Our first unit of study is a narrative writing.  We started in mid-September and are getting pretty close to publishing our pieces of writing. 

Our curriculum is built on Writing Workshop and I would love any writing tips our blogging friends have to offer.  

What do you do about writing?

Have a Fantastic Day!

-Damien 

Sale and new product

Don't you just love my door.  Everyday when I walk down the hall my door makes me smile and want hot chocolate!  My kids wrote persuasive essays about a favorite book.  This was a freebie from Across the Hall in 2nd Grade .  There were lots of paper choices to choose from and I opted to photo copy the mug tracers on colored paper.  Perfect writing activity!!

Here is a close up, my kiddos love Franny K. Stein.  Santa actually gave Franny K. Stein books to some of them, how does Santa always know the perfect gift to give?

We have also been studying polar bears.  Here are the anchor charts that were made from all their schema and learning.  Then we created polar bear paragraphs using my latest product Nonfiction writing for any topic First the students created opening sentences followed by writing 4 facts they learned about polar bears.  Last they wrote a closing sentence and copied their sentences into a paragraph.  The graphic organizer helps my 2nd graders understand how to write sentences that are not run ons.  (sorry the picture is sideways!)

We then added a cute polar bear head and created the polar bear paragraphs bulletin board.  The polar bear craft is not included in my product.  There are many different paper choices with the nonfiction writing product so it will work with any nonfiction topic.

Another fabulous activity that my students did during read to self was R controlled vowels another freebie.  I cut out each of the three super heros and placed them on chart paper. As students were reading to self they wrote down any er, ir , ur word on a sticky note.  At the end of read to self students placed their sticky notes under the correlating super hero.  I have never seen my kids so motivated to do a word hunt and they also concluded that the most popular r controlled vowel was er,  super hero Derek.  Each super hero has a name and description using the matching r controlled vowel.  Awesome product my students finally got the bossy r thanks to super heros Derek, Arthur and Kirk!

Enjoy the super bowl and don't forget to shop, TPT is having a big sale and so are we. In between commercials view your wish list and take advantage of the big sale!

Happy Shopping,

Kelly and Damien

 

Earth Day, The Lorax, and a little Dirt!

For Earth Day Kelly and I fully embraced everything LORAX!


We started by reading the Dr. Seuss tale about a little orange creature who "speaks for the trees".


The day before we got together to examine the story.  We completed character analysis activities on both The Lorax and the Once-ler using an activity I created for my SmartBoard.

Using the SmartBoard to drag character traits to the appropriate
character. Some character traits are shared by both characters. 

Reading Buddy pairs used photocopied excerpts
 of the story to find character traits and support
 from the story. 

We had the Reading Buddies identify a character trait and write support from the story.  I modeled an example on the SmartBoard to make sure my first grade friends knew what was expected of them.


Then we had a debate about two famous Dr. Seuss villains-The Grinch and The Once-ler.  We had previously gotten together in December for celebration of Grinch Day and spent a day discussing and dissecting that story. So, we asked the kids: "In your opinion, who is the worst villain, The Grinch or The Once-ler?"  


Quite a debate occurred with quite a few reasons given and supported from the story.  In the end, we seemed to agree that The Grinch was the worst villain because he set out to hurt people on purpose, where the Once-ler caused his destruction accidentally.  Our Lorax SmartBoard activities is available or purchase at our TPT Store


in the afternoon we got together in Kelly's room to create decopage cups and plant our own land of the Lorax.  We used plastic cups and some watered-down glue to attach tissue paper to the cup and then coated the tissue paper with glue for a final coating.  Once that was completed the kids colored paper Loraxes and Trufflula Trees and mounted them on popsicle sticks.  The next day, once everything was dry we planted grass seed and the effect was quite wonderful. 

A Reading Buddy pair working on their pots. 

Coloring the decorations that will be placed in their
Land of the Lorax

  

Two finished products

Kelly's Lorax bulletin board

My Truffula Trees and personal Lorax writing tasks. 

I took pictures of my kids with The Lorax Mustache
so they could protect their trees. 

About two weeks later we have grass growing in our plastic cup pots.  The kids were thrilled to see this and Kelly's couldn't wait to take their Lorax Lands home so they could "cut the grass and watch it grow again".

This was another FUN and EDUCATIONAL 

Reading Buddies Activity!

Damien and Kelly

The Reading Buddies