How to Use Spell Check

Once, when I was teaching grade 8 ELA I had a bunch of students who really, really, REALLY disliked writing... but they had an extra ELA period (with another teacher) in the computer lab so I set up blogs for each and every one of them so that they would have to write (I talk a bit about them here).  How did it go?  It went ok... I must admit that some students were not responsible enough to have comments enabled or unmonitored, there was some plagiarizing, and there were a bunch of boring topics.  BUT, this is not a story about any of that!

This is a story about how a student used the word "ovaries" continuously throughout his writing because he didn't know how to spell a word and just went with the first word that the spell check suggested.  And that pretty much sums up the story actually... I don't recall what the word he was trying to spell actually was but it was hilarious but he decided ovaries was the correct word.  So teach your students how to use spell check correctly, and if they really don't know if the word they are using is correct it only takes a minute to look up the definition of the word which would hopefully grant them more clarity. 

Community Book

I was in a grade 1/2 classroom recently that had written a very impressive (for that grade level) book about their community and it got me thinking... any teacher could easily do this!

Whether you live in a major city or small community you may just have to narrow your focus more. For example, if I had a classroom in the city and wanted to do this I might write a book about the community the school is in. 

The kids each wrote about a different spot in their community and wrote different facts about those places. For example they might write about the school they are in and how many classes or teachers work there. Or, the fire hall has this many firemen (women). Or, the grocery store gets its deliveries on Tuesday. 

Hopefully, it gets kids more interested in their community (and they might learn something new about it too! Plus, they get to work on asking questions or interviewing different people to get the information that they need.

Since it was a grade 1/2 classroom they also included a drawn picture of the place they were talking about. If it were older kids I think they could even take a picture with a camera instead (if they aren't interested in drawing/colouring anymore).

Storyathon

Have you heard of Storyathon?

It's a free online event where students are encouraged to write stories that are exactly 100 words long.  100 words isn't a lot so not only does this encourage student writing but it isn't too daunting of a task and helps students really think about the words they are using and the impact they have in their stories.  Plus, as a teacher if you are grading these stories you aren't having to sit through pages and pages of a single story that is going no where... slowly (or is it just me that disliked teaching English because of this?)

How to Teach Your Students to Write Descriptively

I was in a grade 3 classroom a while ago and had the opportunity to co-teach a lesson with another teacher (which pretty much meant she led the lesson and I helped the students with it).  The aim of this particular lesson was to get students to write descriptively and here was how it went:

Prior to teaching the lesson to the students the teacher pulled me aside and told me that another teacher was going to come in all in a panic that a scary dog chased her through the school but wasn't going to describe the dog anymore than that.  

So this happened and she came busting through the classroom door and the students got all excited.  She told them about the dog and that the principal wanted them to make found posters for the dog so that they could find it's owner.  

All was going according to plan until one student freaked right out and dashed over to some counter height stools and climbed on top of them.  He was terrified of dogs (and it didn't help that the only describing words for this dog was that it was scary).  The rest of the class loved it but the one that was afraid I had to continually console him from off a tall table (that he tried sitting on multiple times) and their pictures all looked very different (which was the point of the exercise).  

At the end of the period the teacher confessed and told them that there was no dog and explained why it was hard to come up with an accurate poster for this found dog because we didn't actually know what the dog looked like!  

But alas, even with the confession the terrified student couldn't be convinced to leave the classroom.  So while the rest of the class went to music he stayed behind and read a book (at least he wasn't on top of the table anymore).  Eventually I convinced him to leave the classroom and walk with me to go pick up the class from music (and then it was the end of the day so he went home). 

So, have you ever had a lesson backfire in a pretty major way (even if it was just for one student)?

What are you doing to help encourage your students to add descriptions to their writing?

Here's another post I did about a project where students described a hero, here is what a grade 5 class did to describe hot chocolate and here is what I had my grade 8's do when describing how to make a sandwich.

Scaredy Squirrel Project

A while ago I was in an early years classroom that was doing a project on Scaredy Squirrel

First, I'm assuming they read some Scaredy Squirrel books.  According to my research there are currently 8 Scaredy Squirrel books out there.  They likely read at least a couple of them to come up with such an extensive list of what he was all afraid of!

Then, I'm assuming they made a list of everything Scaredy Squirrel was afraid of (looks like they came up with 26 things)

Next, they made a map.  Below is the teachers example (or maybe the one they did together).  Above is the criteria they needed to include in their maps.  

Finally, they had to do a little bit of writing as to why they thought this new BFF would be perfect for Scaredy Squirrel.

Personally, I loved the idea!

And, in case you are wondering "what are some possibilities for Scaredy Squirrels BFF?" well here is a short list that I saw kids writing about

1)  Mrs Scaredy Squirrel (everyone needs a companion?)

2)  A Couch (perfect for watching tv and now he won't have to sit on the floor!)

3) Ice Cream (yummy!)

4) A doughnut (no sharp corners!)

I looked and I looked for where this teacher might have gotten this project from but couldn't find it.  BUT, if you Google "Scaredy Squirrel Class Project" lots of ideas do come up!

What else could be Scaredy Squirrels new BFF?

What If I Had Animal Teeth Art Activity

When one of the teachers that I go in for regularly asks me to plan an art lesson I normally do not hesitate to do so (dare I say it's my favourite subject?). Anyways, that's what happened when I was going to be in a grade 3/4 classroom a little while ago. To find an art project I went to my favourite blog for art ideas which is A Faithful Attempt and found this lesson:

If I had Animal Teeth 

I'm a sucker for an art project that also involves writing (you can see how I've incorporated poetry into my art classes here and here) and I felt that I was given enough time in the morning for the class to use their iPads to do some research on animal teeth with a partner and then write about those animal teeth. 

I gave them about an hour to do the research and the writing part of this activity (I also gave them the sentence starter "If I could have animal teeth I would want ______ because _____________" and encouraged them to come up with at least 3 reasons as to why they would want that particular animals teeth and one fact about that animals teeth. Since they had the iPads now and might not later in the day I also had them do some rough sketches of their animal teeth so that they wouldn't forget what they look like. If they finished early they could read/write/draw (which was just something that the teacher had in the lesson plan a couple of times throughout the day).

Later on we did the actual art project.

Before I got to school that day I had cut out templates of the mouth and tongue just in case students couldn't figure out how to draw them (I did give them the option to use my template which would look similar to the example of to make their own).

But, before starting the art project we went over some expectations.

The nice thing about using A Faithful Attempt's blog is that she always posts lots of student examples! So before starting any project that I get the idea from off her site I always show kids all the examples. While I'm showing them the examples we do a bit of critiquing and talk about what we liked (and did not like) about them. Based off of what we come up with I create a list of expectations for their art. For this particular project we decided that it needed to fill up the page, that the person had to be a fairly accurate representation of them (I told them their teacher should be able to come back the following day and decide who's is who's just based off of how it looks, and the animal teeth also need to be an accurate representation of the animal they chose (which is why we sketched the teeth earlier when they were doing their research).

Then I explained the process of creating the head (start with the head shape, sketch and cut out the mouth, tongue, teeth, and hair, glue everything together, and then draw on some eyes and a nose). Once that's all done they chose another colour of consruction paper and glued their head on to it.

And voila! They were done!

Here are some examples of what my grade 3/4 class came up with:

I just had them leave their writing in their writing books and left it as an option for the teacher to add later if he wanted (although we really didn't leave space for any writing with how we put them up).

Thanks A Faithful Attempt for the great art activity!

Grade 1 Polar Bear Unit

I was in a grade 1 classroom (a year ago now) and I found all these interesting things they had done with polar bears

First thing I noticed was some polar art with northern lights.

Then I saw some more art... polar bear faces

and then a polar bears den/igloo (I got mixed messages about what exactly it was)... it likely wasn't finished yet.

I'm assuming/hoping this teacher was also reading her students lots of stories about polar bears (both fiction and non fiction) and hopefully at some point they did some writing about what they learned about polar bears.  

It would have been cool if they could have teamed up with an older grade to have the older kids help the younger kids with some polar bear research but I understand that's hard to arrange.

Anyways, I needed to get this up now before the Christmas break in case anyone wanted to plan for it in the new year (I feel like if someone is going to do a polar bear unit it needs to be in the winter time).

Have you done a polar bear unit in your classroom?

What did you all do with it?

Grey Cup Champions!

You may have heard that The Bombers are Grey Cup champions this year (and for my readers outside of Canada the Grey Cup is Canada's Super Bowl).

So last week I put this writing prompt up on the board 

Grey Cup Writing Prompt

Some of their ideas:

-  Fill it with Gatorade

-  Draw a picture of it to duplicate it and turn it into a pool to swim in

-  Break it

-  Make a fake duplicate of it so that I could keep the real one

-  Pee in it (there's one in every room isn't there?)

Summarizing Reading

Here is a way to get students to summarize what they've read that I saw a while ago:

The teacher called it CSIW (Colour, Symbol, Image, and Word).

In this particular example a student was summarizing on of the Hunger Game books.

She or he chose the colour red to symbolize the anger in the book (and explains why)

She/he chose the symbol of a fist to represent the power in the book (and explains why)

She/he chose a crowd of people where Katniss is volunteering as tribute as her image because it was what stood out to him/her.

This student hadn't picked a word yet to represent the book but you get the idea.

The template is super easy to make in a couple of minutes and it doesn't just involve writing (I think the drawing and colouring will hook a few more students).

If you are looking for other ways I've seen teachers get students to summarize what they've read here is another post I've done on the topic.

How do you get your students to summarize things?  

Book Trailer

A while ago I was subbing in a class that was making book trailers.

This was back when I was doing a lot of subbing in the school with just a few kids and was teaching grades 1-8 all at the same time.  It was the perfect thing for the kids to do because the younger kids could do their book trailer on a picture book they read and the older kids could do it on a novel.

First, some resources that I used:

What is a Book Trailer

I used this resource for the rubric (which I wrote on the board for my students).  I used the book trailer review sheet idea but instead we watched a couple of book trailers and reviewed them together as a class.

Book Trailer Examples

More Book Trailer Examples

It was tricky showing such a wide range of student ages book trailers that would not only be appropriate for them but picking one that might be familiar to them.  So after we watched a couple we story boarded our own book trailer.

To do this I read them a picture book (because it would be quick and fresh in everyones minds).  

Then we used the rubric that I had written on the board to add in ideas that we could use in our book trailer.  For example, according to our rubric we are supposed to pick 4 adjectives to describe the overall theme of the book so we picked 4 together and I wrote them on the board.  Then we had to have a sentence to entice people to continue watching our trailer.  Now, it was a few months ago so I don't exactly remember but I do remember the book was about monsters getting their hair cut.  So, our leading question was something like "Have you ever wondered where monsters go for a hair cut?" and we wrote that on the board.

We continued to fill in the rest of the rubric with ideas we had from the picture book I read them.

Then it was time to start creating our trailer

Book Trailer Maker

We never finished our book trailer for the picture book but together we came up with about 4 slides, what the words on them would be, what the picture would be, and then added effects like music.

I wish I could show you the one we created but in order to download them you need the upgrade (otherwise it's free!)

If you are interested in other ways I've seen students share what they are reading check out my post on Book Creator.

My Story Parts

I saw this being used in a grade 1 classroom a while ago:

my story parts

Students used it to tell me their story (I'm sure they also used it for writing stories too though).

What they did:

The bear started in the first circle and started their story with one of the sentence starters there (or came up with one of their own).

Next, they moved the bear to the 2nd circle and told me their next sentence using one of the sentence starters at the bottom of that circle.

Finally, the bear moved over to the red circle and once again, they had some options of how to start their final sentence.

Their stories were mostly 3 sentences long (which in my opinion, for a grade 1 student, is awesome).  I would definitely use this in a classroom where they were students struggling with parts of a story.

Boggle Board

I've talked about this before but I think it's worth another mention as I've seen it twice now recently.

One teacher had lettered dice that the kids would roll and then arrange in a grid to make words but I think I would much prefer (if there was board space) to have something up a little more permanently like this teacher did.

Boggle Board in the Classroom

How would I use it?

I've talked before about how I had guided math groups in my classroom and how if I had another classroom in the future I would try guided ELA groups. If I still had 4 groups I would think the centers would be as follows:

1) Work with me

2) Work on spelling

3) Reading

4) Work on Writing

And I would include a 5th one to take the place of one of the other 4 occasionally to be a game like Boggle or Bananagrams (or something else to do with spelling likely).

I ran my math groups 5 days out of the 6 day cycle (on the 6th day we did some problem solving practice) and I would probably do something similar for my ELA groups (on the 6th day we might have a spelling test or sharing or a bigger group lesson).

What kind of games do you incorporate into your ELA class?

Fake News

A while ago on my post about what we all need to know about Reddit I briefly talked about fake news. This got me thinking... this could be a teachers job to help kids figure out ways to distinguish between real and fake news. Naturally I went out into the world wide web to see what had already been created on this topic to share 2 with my readers.

The House Hippo is a great way to get students (of all ages) to think critically

Here is a lesson from New Fluencies to go with the House Hippo video

And then I found a link to the "Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus" website

With this website (which in case you do not know... a tree octopus is not a thing) you could discuss things such as:

What are some things you observe on this website? (links don't all work, the sites url doesn't use pacific or northwest, etc)

How does the website seem legit (quality of design and images, updated regularly, some links work, etc)

Then have students fill out an "Is It A Hoax" worksheet 

Fake news has really become more popular over the past few years (possibly because of a certain president?) so I'm guessing a lot of kids will likely be familiar with the phrase "fake news" but do they really know what it means? Lets teach them to be critical thinkers!

Do you have any other ways you teach your students to be critical thinkers?

Or do you have any other fake news lessons to share with my readers?

Book Creator

If you're like me you will remember creating your own books when you attended school using paper and pencil crayons but it seems those days are behind us now and the more technology one can incorporate into their projects for students the better!... at least from a students perspective.

Cue Book Creator

I was in a classroom last year that was using it and just got around to looking more into it and well... I'm impressed!

There is a free version which I'm assuming should be sufficient for most classrooms as long as you don't exceed 40 books (which for most classrooms I've been in means maybe 1 or 2 books per year unless they are getting deleted).  There are also options for paid per year subscriptions which allow you to store more books if your budget allows.

There is also a read to me function... which sounds exactly like a robot but for those that are struggling with reading it could be a great option.

If you watch the video you can see examples of what you can all use the Book Creator program for... personally I think I would use it for book reviews and maybe even a digital portfolio.

What would you use it for?

How to Write a Summary Paragraph

I was in a classroom this past year where the teacher had her students writing a summary paragraph and her way of writing it was different from what I've seen/done in the past.

Typically what someone will suggest when summarzing something you've read is to read it, put it off to the side, and then put it into your own words.  Sometimes it works and sometimes its VERY similar to the original.

Well, here's what this teacher did.

We started off by watching a video on Youtube

In case you aren't taking the few minutes to actually watch the video (it's really not all that important anyway)... it's on indoor gardening.

After watching the video the first time each student comes up with 2 questions they have about what they watched.  No one had to answer the questions they just had to ask them (or write them down).  So something like "I wonder...." would work wonderfully.

Then we watched it a second time but this time we took some jot notes while watching.  Because it was the first time they had ever done this I also took some jot notes on the board and if they didn't take enough notes they could borrow some of mine.

Here's what my jot notes looked like:

Jot notes for summary paragraph

Then we picked 3 powerful words that summarizes the video (you can see ours at the bottom of our jot notes: Indoor, Plants, and Winter)

I modeled the actual writing of a sample paragraph for this class and this is how it goes:

1) Start your paragraph with a question (choose one of the 2 you wrote down earlier)

2)  Make a sentence about at least 4 of your jot note points

3) End your paragraph with a sentence that includes all 3 of your powerful words.

Here's what we came up with together:

Summary Paragraph

We wrote our sentences based off of the jot note points that were starred.

Do you have any sure fire way to get kids to summarize their reading (or in this case their watching)?

What do you do?

This Week At School and a Free Calm App Membership

I know this is a long post folks but make sure you at least scroll down to the bottom to look into how you can get your own free Calm app subscription (it's a $60 value!)

Well folks it didn't take long for this substitute teacher to get her first subbing job!

... and it just so happened to be on the 2nd day of school these kids had this year

... and it just so happened to be home economics and art so all of the classes were new to her on this day.

Needless to say there were definitely parts of the day that were a bit of a gong show.

I had 40 plus students show up to my room for art at the end of the day which seemed not right at all so I called down to the office for some help deciphering what the problem might be... turns out I had 2 classes of art in my room (so double the students).  Naturally I sent half of the class on their way to their actual class.

In art I had my students doing 2 different name drawings (a graffiti name and a name tangle)  here were the teachers examples that she sent me via text.

name graffiti

name tangle

I'll get into what the instructions are in a later post (but it may not be until next year *gasp*)

In home economics I had one class of cooking (we made biscuits) and one class of sewing (I introduced the class to them).

I can't say it was a great day.... but I was still [sort of] suffering from my sinus infection in the form of what seemed like a lot of pressure on my ears.

Luckily, while I was at that school on Monday another teacher asked if I would come back for her the following day and thus began my official busy week!

Next up I was teaching grade 7 ELA which was a pretty easy half day...not much to report here.

Then I managed to book myself a day at another school as a "teacher vacancy"... which ended up being cancelled the day prior by the person who made the job.  Which is disappointing because...

Pro tip: If you want to find a way to meet a lot of teachers (and their classes) all in the same day search for a teacher vacancy!  You'll likely be in at least 4 teachers classrooms and get to spend time with their classes in their classroom (so you'll know if you want to come back!)

Everyone and their mom has been posting "back to school" pictures of their kids well... here's mine

Finally, when I wasn't working (because lets be honest I wasn't working every day this week)

I made some apple muffins here is the recipe and they are delicious!

Although there is a few alterations I would make... cut the butter you need for spreading on top of them to an 1/8 cup and also cut the cinnamon sugar down by a bit too... because you will have leftovers and that's just wasteful.

I also made some peanut butter chocolate ice cream!  Which I regret to inform you was not that good... we'll find a better one and eventually link that recipe!

And I visited the doctor again in the hopes that I would regain proper feelings in my ear

There is one last thing I wanted to throw out there before I closed off this post.  A few weeks ago I mentioned how Calm was offering free memberships to educators (a $60 value) and they offered me another membership for my readers (ideally an educator but I'm not going to know if you aren't one).  So, if you are interested in one please email me at

confessionofamodernday@live.com

I'll pick a winner from those that email me and announce it here and on next weeks TWAS post.

Although, my guess is I don't actually have THAT many readers and even fewer will have made it all the way down here so if you are seeing this late and I haven't posted a winner please email me... you may not be too late [maybe]!

I'd be interested to know how you would use the app in your classroom.  I've been working my way through the 21 Days of Calm (I'm on day 7) and to be honest I'm just not sure how calm of a person I am to focus on it... yet.  I do like that it requires me to close my eyes for about 13 minutes a day and relax though.

Anyways, if you want your own membership please email me!

Back To School

I know it might still be early to talk about back to school but I found a cute little writing activity for you to do with your students (and best of all it's free)!

I've posted about Mel D-Seusstastic and her Teacher's Pay Teacher's store before and well, I've just got one last freebie of hers that I want to talk about (if you've seen my other posts where I mention some of her stuff it's all very similar).  But this one is a back to school writing activity!

I would have my students fill in the information and then colour it.  If you happen to use it in your classroom come back here and let us know how it went in the comments below.

This Week At School

It's official everyone... we're on summer vacation over here!!

And... on my last week of school I worked on 4 different days!... so pretty much every day I could (because no one is going to book me to come in and substitute teach when the kids aren't even there!).

How'd it go?

I had one teacher tell me that if she were a sub she wouldn't book herself for these last 2 weeks because the kids have checked out already (and lets be honest, a lot of the teachers have as well).  Luckily, the kids I taught in elementary school this week (which was one day) were not checked out yet and still eager (for the most part) to work... and it may have helped that they were having a class party in the afternoon that the teacher told me to bribe them with.  

Other than that this week at school I...

Watched a lot of movies (Despicable Me and The Incredibles, and one other that I can't remember what it was).

Gave students A LOT of time on the iPads (which I'm kind of on the fence about... I mean, they may as well stay at home if they are getting free time on the iPads since that's [likely] what they would be doing at home).  

Did TUSC... and students got to decide what role they wanted to have this last time so there were a lot of "angry chefs" which meant a lot of sugary treats being passed around.

Took my classes outside.

Had a "gym riot" that was neither in the gym or rioty in the slightest (it was outside and very well organized).

All in all it was a pretty swell last week of work... and now I get to switch gears to "this week off from school" and enjoy some much deserved time off!

Psst.. I've got my next month worth of posts planned (for the most part) so you can expect regular posting to happen throughout the summer.  Enjoy!

Quote Scroll

A little while ago I posted this picture

Inspirational Classroom Quotes

And said that I had noticed that the teacher changes the quote every week.

Well, the reason she changes it every week is because she also prints it out for each student (on a small piece of paper) which they glue into their "Weekly Inspiration" Journals to reflect on. 

What I like about this...

1) It inspires them (hopefully)!

2) It gets them thinking... what might this inspirational quote mean?

3) It gets them writing. And it didn't have to be anything long or elaborate... most just wrote a couple of sentences and that was perfectly okay.

Here's another post I wrote about inspirational quotes.

3 Little Pigs STEM Activity

I can't take credit for coming up with this idea but I also couldn't figure out where I found the idea originally (if you search on Pinterest tons come up!)..anyways, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is big right now and here is a fun project for you to do with your students (especially at the end of the year when you may (or may not be) trying to kill some time.

1)  Read "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs"  (in my opinion you could also use the original version of the 3 Little Pigs... or do both and discuss the differences to the 2 sides of the story).

2)  Give students the task of building a new house that the wolf cannot blow away with a variety of supplies (Popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, tooth picks, newspaper, tape, etc).

3)  Use a blow dryer to see whose houses can withstand the wolf