Although this is not directly related to what's been happening in Room 17, I felt this was worth sharing--a thoughtful blog post that would make many teachers stand up and applaud. As someone who used to teach in an inner city school, I can definitely relate to much of what this blogger expresses in her writing. Read this pithy commentary by Kristie, a former teacher, who pretty much covers all the bases of the teaching profession, I think.
"For My Fellow Teachers," a blog post from Keeping Up With Kristie I have been backlogged in my writing for my own blog, having been inundated with parent conferences, but will make a better attempt to catch up with current goings-on of Room 17 soon.
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Thanks to the fun teacher blog, Simply Skilled In Second, Room 17 was able to dive into the new year with a thoughtful and colorful activity, the 2014 flip flap book. Essentially a booklet made of different-sized overlapping pages, this flip flap book encouraged the class to reflect on highlights and favorite memories of last year and to think about resolutions for the new year. I started off introducing the idea of new year's resolutions with a read-aloud I found on YouTube of the children's book, Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller (I was so thankful to have this video, since I didn't have my own copy of the book on hand). After the read aloud, we made a list of our new year's resolutions on the Smartboard. Among my favorites were, "I resolve to use my iPad less," "I resolve to practice more piano," and "I resolve to read more!" Students then recorded their new year's resolutions in their flip flap books.
This blogging teacher and mom articulates precisely the same approach I take when supporting my students in their writing development. Read her article here in Imagination Soup:
One of the highlights of the fall semester was Fairburn's first ever Art Night, which took place on November 20. The evening offered an exciting variety of workshops in photography, sculpture, drawing and painting. I volunteered to teach two workshops on Cezanne. Since each workshop was going to be 45 minutes long, I had to think of a lesson that was simple and direct, accessible to all ages, and allowed children to finish the project in less than an hour. Thankfully, I found a wonderful lesson on Pinterest that fit the bill. I began the workshop by showing a few still life paintings done by Cezanne, including Still Life With Apples (1895), quickly going over his use of composition and color. My introduction was quite brief, about five minutes. I then moved on to the project we would be doing, showing an example I had created the night before: Here were the steps needed to create your own painting in the style of Cezanne: Materials: Drawing paper (gray or white) Pencil 4x4" square of cardstock Oil pastels 1) On a 4x4" piece of cardstock, draw an apple shape that touches the edges of the paper. Cut the shape out to make a stencil. (For the Art Night workshop, I had these shapes premade to save time and to make it easier for the K-1 crowd.) 2) Trace three apple shapes onto a sheet of drawing paper, keeping composition and space in mind (suggest overlapping the shapes, having an apple lying on its side, etc.). I used a midtone gray paper for Art Night because I like the way gray paper brings out the brilliance of pastels, but white paper would work also. 3) Trace the outline of the apple shapes in black oil pastel. Add a horizon line (or as I like to call it, an "excuse me" line). 4) I always encourage my students to be creative when using color. I explain how if we think like artists, an apple should not just be a plain red, yellow, or green, and show how to mix hints of orange, yellow, or even blue or purple with red to make the most gorgeous colors. The photos below demonstrate how I apply layers of color to make an apple really "pop" from the page.
5) Apples saturated in color! 6) Color the background (wall) and the tablecloth with a non-apple color, such as purple, blue, pink, or brown. 7) Fill in the rest of the background and tablecloth with apple colors: yellow, red, orange, or green. 8) Add stems with black pastel. Completed still life. A couple student samples (the first is obviously in-progress): I found that students had success with this project on so many levels, and children as early as kindergarten were able to produce remarkably sophisticated and fine quality work. It worked well on the other extreme, too; fifth graders and even parents loved doing this! My thanks to the parents who volunteered to make this wonderful Art Night happen, and to my awesome colleague, Ms. Lessner, for assisting me. In Room 17 we listen to a lot of music while we work. We write about it, talk about it, and even dance to it. I have been thrilled that this year's group of second graders has proved quite enthusiastic about listening to classical music--I would say, more so than any other year I've taught. I first noticed it sometime at the beginning of the school year. I had set my iPod one morning during math time to one of my favorite albums, "Voice of the Violin," which features the incomparable violinist, Joshua Bell. I have played this album for my students in years past without them making a single comment. Imagine my delight and surprise when several students started shushing others who were talking and saying, "Ssshh!! Quiet, I want to hear the music!" A few others asked me, "Ms. Long, what is that music? I really like it!" My students have fallen in love with one piece in this album in particular - Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" from the opera Rusalka. Who'd have thought, in a youth world of Beyoncé and Bieber? The kids keep asking me to play this track on my iPod over and over during worktime. I don't mind in the least, I love it too (as well as the violinist!) (-; Spurred on by my students' interest in classical music, I began to think of
The 2nd graders were so cute and winsome during this year's winter show. "Song of Peace" was the first selection they performed, a sweet and poignant number. The next song they sang, "Born To Shop," is such a blast to perform with its sudden, surprise rock'n'roll beat that follows a seemingly mundane intro. We gave lots of props for the children to use, including fake money, gift bags, stop signs, and a giant "Fairburn Express" credit card. For a little fun, I've included an audioclip of one of our rehearsals. And here is one of my favorite performances of "Born To Shop" by students at Chesapeake Bay Middle School: I'll be perfectly honest, I was never a fan of Halloween. However, as I teacher, I capitalize on the idea of Halloween as much as I can and use it as an opportunity to spice up my instruction and pique students' interest. One of my primary vehicles is through literature, and I shared some of my favorite books, both funny and spooky, in a previous post. I also include poetry as well, and during the month of October Room 17 had fun memorizing and reciting the traditional "In A Dark, Dark Wood" and "I'm Not Scared!" by Karen Baiker. Practicing these poems develops fluency in reading and confidence in speaking in front of an audience. Something wonderful happened a couple weekends ago when I happily rediscovered some material from my old lesson plan files. It was a copy of an excerpt from Shakespeare's Macbeth, the witches' chant "Double, double, toil and trouble." I used to give this to fourth graders to memorize, and I thought, why not try it with my 2nd graders? I gave a very brief and general summary of the Macbeth story, and concluded by sharing film composer John Williams' rendition of "Double, double, toil and trouble" from the movie "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." You can listen to this catchy and delightfully wicked song here: We later used this goodie from Shakespeare as inspiration for writing our own recipes for magic potions. Besides this piece of music, I draw on other music that has long been associated with Halloween, including "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saëns and "Toccata and Fugue in d" by Johan Sebastian Bach. "Danse Macabre" was a particular favorite this year, and we had a devilishly good time doing some impromptu writing while listening to it. We even got to dance to it, thanks to our wonderful dance instructor, Ms. Devon Wall, who taught us how to freeze into all sorts of marvelous shapes with our bodies based on a broom, a trick-or-treat bag, a witch's hat, and a jack-o-lantern. Of course, there must be visual art in the mix. Students used chalk pastels to make spider web drawings and the following week, pumpkin patch landscapes with oil pastel: We wrapped up our Halloween funfest by making origami ghosts. They were deemed "simple" on the YouTube video where I learned it, but was quite a bit more complicated for my 2nd graders. Even so, they still found it engaging and, despite a bit of frustration, seemed determined to get all the steps down. Thankfully, I had two parent volunteers who were able to help the children with the trickier folds. The bubbling excitement from the students from all these activities is quite contagious. It almost made me like Halloween . . . almost!
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