Instructional Coaching

It's been an eventful few years since I last posted on this blog. I finished my position as a University Supervisor for pre-service teachers at Brigham Young  University. (My school district puts a three-year cap on that position.) I went back into the classroom for two years teaching first grade, and this school year I am an Instructional Coach focusing on Literacy for two elementary schools in my district.  To say the past few months have been a learning curve is a huge understatement!  What is an Instructional Coach? An Instructional Coach is someone who is a support to the teachers at the school. They can do any and all of the following things:  model, support, coach, collaborate, observe, plan, take data, work with small groups of students, work with whole classes of students, provide professional development, research, and find resources. And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. A typical day for me lately looks like the following:   8:00 - Pre-conferences with teachers about upcoming lessons 9:00 - Read with a small group of students 9:30 - Model Guided Reading 10:00 - Model Shared Reading 10:30 - Observe lessons from earlier pre-conferences 12:00 - Lunch 12:30 - Reading Diagnostics  1:30 - Model Informational Writing Lesson 2:00 - Work with small group of students on beginning sounds 2:30 - Benchmark new student 3:00 - Plan tomorrow's GR lessons 3:30 - Post-conference with teachers about lessons observed 4:00 - Head home I love the variety of my job and how I get to still work with students and all the teachers at my schools. One of the most important components of this job is to create relationships. If you don't have good relationships with your teachers, they won't want you coming into their classroom. So, as a new coach, building those relationships has been my main goal and focus.  I think I'll end this post right here. I'll continue talking about instructional coaching in my next few posts.

Cyber Monday

Floating Snowflakes - 'OA' & 'OW' Vowel Teams Word Sort

Vowel teams can be tricky, and knowing when to use which one is even trickier. So, I came up with "Floating Snowflakes" to help students know when to use which one. Students will have fun with sorting the snowflake cards onto the sorting mat and then recording their findings on the recording sheet. I'm also including in this packet, two anchor charts with examples of each vowel team. Students will always know the correct team to use while they are spelling. This activity is of course Common Core aligned, who has time to do anything else, right? :/ Click on the picture below to get your packet.

Enjoy!

So, I'm sure this is not news to anyone now, because it's all over the blogosphere, but I too am participating in the TPT Back to School Sale today and tomorrow. Make sure you enter the promo code BTS14. Enjoy shopping! 

5 Favorite B2S Freebies from TPT

I am definitely feeling like a fish out of water (again!) I don't have a classroom that needs setting up. So I haven't been shopping for B2S supplies, but I may or may not have browsed the aisles in a few stores :) I have been helping my interns set their classrooms up though, and that has been almost as much fun.  Even though I'm not setting up a classroom, I thought I would share some of my favorite freebies from TPT that I have used in my classroom. Click on any of the pictures to find them on TPT.
1)   First up, are the Schedule Cards from the none other than Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade. She has created just about every time of the day there possibly could be in a school day. The graphics and fonts are super cute too!

2)  Next is from The Teacher Wife. Her glue bottle vowel cards help students see how important vowels are in words and which letters are the vowels. I had these up on my board all year long. They served as a good reminder for the little darlin's.

3)  Another favorite freebie for the beginning of school is from Abby author of The Inspired Apple. Her Highlight-a-Letter activity is perfect to assess and/or practice with the little darlin's on their letter recognition.   
4)  This next product is hot off the press. I haven't used them in my classroom yet, but if I had one, I would. Instead, I'm going to give these to my interns as a "first day of school" gift. This cute subway art is the work of Rachelle Smith from What the Teacher Wants. 

5)  Last, but certainly not least, is this cute little subtraction unit from Katie King of Queen of the First Grade Jungle. This is a great little unit to introduce or have students practice the Zero Property concept. It's one of the first concepts taught in math, so it's a great one for B2S.

I hope you will find these useful in your classroom as you are setting up shop.

Getting Fit Friday

I'm linking up with Christina at Bunting, Books, and Bright Ideas for  
With my change in jobs this year, I found myself going out to lunch FREQUENTLY! And when I did, I didn't make the healthiest choices. By the end of the school year, I was tipping the scales at my all-time highest weight. I wasn't feeling good about myself and knew a change was imminent. I recently heard the following and this has helped turn the light bulb on, so to speak, and keep it on as motivation for me.  It's not about willpower, it's about your behavior. I can choose to eat, to not eat, to workout, to log my food, to make healthy choices. It's not about having (or not having) willpower, it's about choosing good behavior habits. I always used to think I didn't have the willpower to lose weight, but when I look at it as behavior choices, it makes it easier for me. Maybe it can work for you too!
If you haven't checked out Tone & Tighten, go check it out NOW! I feel like Jared is my personal trainer without having to leave my home. There are workouts posted there for any kind of workout you may want or need. You can do a different workout every single day. I've been very inspired to workout 5 days a week because of T&T.
Getting my fruits and veggies in everyday has always been something I struggle with. So...I discovered green smoothies. YUM! I have one just about every single morning. When I start my day off with my green smoothie, I know I have had almost a full day's servings of fruits and veggies, and it's easier to get the remainder amount in for the rest of the day. You can find green smoothie recipes just about anywhere. One of my favs right now is coconut milk, spinach, banana, almond butter, and cacao powder. Try it, I think you'll like it.
I began these changes on May 13, 2014. In the past six weeks, I have dropped 10 pounds. I'm feeling stronger, and I'm beginning to see some changes in my body. This is a good start for me. I'm very motivated to keep it up. 

Do You Zentangle?

Well, it's been a while since I paid attention to this blog. I thought it was about time to remedy that fact.  We are into our third week of Art Studio. The first two weeks were with K-3 grade students. They did amazing work! This week and next we're working with 4-6 graders. I'm amazed at how much more art stamina these older kiddos have in comparison to the younger group. And we are seeing some fantastic art! So....do you Zentangle? You probably do and didn't even know that you did. What is Zentangle? Well, it's basically doodling. Doodling in repeated patterns. Today we did a lot of Zentangle. The students were in heaven! They totally took off with this, and we heard all kinds of moans and groans when we had to stop to clean up. It's definitely something we'll keep at one of our "stations." Here are some examples that students created today:

So cool, eh?

Get your black Sharpie two-sided pen out and get Zentangling!