New Discovery: Teacher Support Force

Thanks to Pinterest and my friend Melissa McCormick Roysdon, a Tennessee ESL teacher in DeKalb County, I have a wonderful new discovery to share with you!

Pat Jones, a teacher for almost 30 years in Georgia & North Carolina, writes a blog that is part of an amazing website called Teacher Support Force.

LET THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

The site is divided into sections: 

• Aesthetics, which includes strategies using drama, art, dance, and music
• Learning Environment, including cooperative learning, creative grouping, motivation, time management, and lowering stress
• Reading, with coordination, vocabulary, Dolch sight words, reading fluency, and comprehension sections
• Math, addressing the language of math, math word walls and centers, math and art, engaging the senses, and integer rules
• Games & Strategies, including word walls, focus games, memory activities, and free games
• The Early Years, featuring early childhood, parents, car games, benefits of play, reading together, and focus problems

The "pin" that grabbed my attention and took me to Pat's site was this one:

Citing the brain research of Dr. Fritz Mengert, she explains using a red dot in the center of a word to help kids focus on the middle of a word and not just the beginning (to stop guessing), as well as Using a Red Dot to Improve Fluency. 

I'll be letting Pat know that I linked to her site today; I can't wait to share it with the teachers at the school where I'm working as an Academic Specialist. I hope you'll find the site useful and that you'll let her know if you do! 

Everybody is a Genius

Ok, so I was busily pinning post after post from Everybody is a Genius, and suddenly realized that only my Pinterest followers were ever going to see Sarah's amazing blog if I didn't write my own post about it!

Sarah is a middle and high school math teacher in New Jersey who's been teaching for six years and blogging for four. She's young and inventive, and some of her ideas knock my socks off!

From her lesson plan binders

to her activities with manipulatives

and interactive student notebooks,

Sarah's ideas simply ROCK!

So, click right on over, "steal" all of Sarah's ideas that will work for you, and maybe leave her a thank-you comment. I'm letting her know how much I like them and that I've shared with you!

12 Things Kids Want from Their Teachers

Angela Maiers is an educational consultant who specializes in literacy, communication, and social technologies. She says that for twenty years, she has asked her students how she can be their best teacher, and added what they wrote to her ongoing list of how teachers can help their students be most successful.

Her list is simple, and yet profound. I urge you to read it, believe it, print it, and refer to it regularly. 

You may already be doing the things that students find most important for their success, but Angela's list can be a reminder that THEIR main things need to be OUR main things, every day.

Here is a paraphrased list of Angela's 12 Things Kids Want from Their Teachers:

• Greet me each day, and smile!
• Give me your attention - ask about me - notice me.
• Imagine with me; help me dream of things I might be able to do; not just the things I need to do now.
• Engage me...I came to you in love with learning, keep me excited, keep me wanting more.
• Give me challenging content and assignments - show me how to handle it. Teach me what to do.
• Let me have time...time to let things sink in. Time to think. Time to reflect, process, and play.
• Demand of me - hold me accountable to high standards. Don’t let me get away with what you know I am capable of doing better. 
• Trust me - believe that I can do it. Allow me the chance. I promise to show you I can.

Anchor Charts - Making Them Your Own

With the popularity of my first post on Anchor Charts, I've been busy researching for you, trying to find more great examples.

If you're on Pinterest, you can view many excellent charts on my learning twice: Teaching Resources board. If you aren't, send me an email at nancymcneal@gmail.com, and I'll send you an invite. Teachers are pinning good ideas every day, and I think all teachers should be able to see and use them!

Today, let's look at how you and your students can make charts from other teachers your own. Remember that co-constructing them with your students and making sure that they match your kiddos' developmental level are two of the key features that make anchor charts relevant for their ongoing learning.

While looking for Active Literacy resources (a future post), I found the Reading Resources wiki page of Pender County Schools in North Carolina. The number of links there will no doubt lead to other posts, but Iet's look at six posters that you can download, adapt, and turn into great anchor charts.

The posters all address signal words, and give good information. The best part? They are editable! Once you download a poster, you can change font and pics, cut, paste, and do whatever you like to give yourself the starting point you need. Here is the original poster for cause and effect:

And here's what I did to create the "bones" of a cause and effect anchor chart:

You choose how much to have on the chart when you begin working with your students. I titled it, chose seven signal words, included the traffic signal clipart, and color-coded the Cause (Action) and Effect (Outcome) so you could see what I was imagining for perhaps a 3rd grade class. If I were making this chart with students, we would write sentences using these words (writing the cause in each sentence in blue and the effect in red, underlining the signal words).

You might not want to begin with this much information, depending on where your students are in understanding signal words. And of course, you'll only use the document you create as a mini-template, since you'll be writing on a poster board or chart paper as you and your kiddos co-create the actual anchor chart. You will make it yours!

The other five posters on the page depict the following categories of signal words:

• Compare and contrast
• Description or list
• Problem and solution
• Question and answer
• Sequence or order

The compare and contrast poster is shown below. What would you do with it to adapt it as an anchor chart for your class? Narrow it down to only a few signal words? Change the graphics? Divide it into two charts - one for comparing and one for contrasting?

Whatever you decide to do, enjoy making great signal word anchor charts with your kiddos starting with these ideas. And once your chart is finished, don't forget to take a photo, put it in a binder, and add it to your ongoing slide collection so you can project it if your entire class needs to revisit it, as suggested in an earlier post, Anchor Charts - Another Blogger's Ideas, and by Jodi at The Clutter-Free Classroom, in Anchor Chart Planning and Management!

Anchor Charts - Five Essential Features

Persistence pays off....eventually. This morning, I felt like a miner who had discovered a rich new vein! I've been looking for a clear description of what an anchor chart should be, to be most useful for student learning. That's really all that matters in any instructional strategy, right? I found the information below on a wikispace, and finally found the source through some backwards searches. I DO love technology. ;-)

Cornerstone Literacy is "a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that strives to improve literacy outcomes for students in elementary schools serving urban and high-poverty communities by dramatically increasing the number of highly effective teachers." Their website is amazing, packed with research, strategies, and frameworks for literacy and thinking skills. Be sure to go there and check out what they offer for FREE.

Cornerstone's information about Anchor Charts, written by Wendy Seger, is exactly what I've wanted to share with you:

1. An anchor chart should have a single focus. Sometimes a teaching standard is broad by design, such as "Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail." To be able to meet this standard, teachers would have to help students accomplish the many discrete skills that build capacity to meet the writing expectation. Those skills make up the topics of the lessons that are taught in the day-to-day work in the classroom. It is such discrete skills that are represented in an anchor chart. For example, the chart below supports the learner in one of the skills that would lead toward mastery of this standard.

2. The anchor chart is co-constructed with the students. The brain-based research of Marcia Tate and others support the use of visuals to incorporate new learning into memory. When the visual represents a learning event that includes the students, it becomes an artifact of the learning experience. It has meaning for the students because they participated in its construction. 

3. The anchor chart has an organized appearance. Clarity is paramount to understanding. If the students can’t read the chart or find the statement of explicit instruction, the anchor chart will be of no support to the students when they return to it as a scaffold.

4. The anchor chart matches the learners’ developmental level. The language, the amount of information, the length of the sentences, and the size of lettering should all match the cognitive level of the students for whom the chart is created. Below are three anchor charts developed for the same lesson: introduction to the comprehension strategy of schema. The one on the left was designed for second graders, the one in the middle for fourth graders, and the one on the right for first graders. Notice the differences in language and complexity.

5. The anchor chart supports on-going learning. One of the most important considerations is whether or not the chart is relevant and used by the students. Charts should reflect recent lessons or concepts that need continued scaffolding. Teachers can support learning by placing an anchor chart in a classroom library where students can access the information later. 

NOTES: 

• See "Anchor Charts - Another Blogger's Ideas" for a great way to save your charts in a binder.
• Jodi, over at The Clutter-Free Classroom, posted a great idea in Anchor Chart Planning and Management about creating an ongoing Powerpoint presentation that students could access on classroom computers and that you could project when the entire class needs to revisit the chart.

I've put together a list of sites that you can visit to see a variety of beautiful examples of Anchor Charts for different grades and subjects:

A Literate Life at julieballew.com

Classroom Anchor Charts and Ideas

Fabulous Fourth Grade

Hall County Schools Literacy Site

Mrs. Meacham's Classroom Snapshots

Mrs. Zimmerman's Learning Conservatory

My Life as a Third Grade Teacher

Second Grade with Mrs. Wade

Teaching in High Heels

Working 4 the Classroom

To see photos of more great anchor charts, click over to my "learning twice: Teaching Resources" board on Pinterest!

So. Read about anchor charts. Look at exemplary anchor charts. Make anchor charts with your students. Use anchor charts for reflection, reteaching, review, and scaffolding. And let me know how anchor charts work for you and your kiddos!

Exploratorium - Even if you don't live in San Francisco!

If you don't live in San Francisco, you probably can't accept Exploratorium's invitation to take your students there on a fabulous field trip. But oh, can you find things to do, make, listen to, and watch on their awesome website!

Below are just a few of the 528 things to make, see, and do:

• Blue Sky - why the sky is blue and the sunset is red
• Color Chromatography - the colors in "black" ink 

http://www.exploratorium.edu/afterschool/activities/images/nav/color-on.gif

• Ice Balloons - density, changes of state, etc. 
• Modeling the Seasons - refer to the blog posts on "A Private Universe!"
• Peter's Savage Garden - carnivorous plants in action with California Carnivores' owner

http://www.californiacarnivores.com/Images/CC_Peter_N_Truncata.jpg

• Slinky in Hand - transverse and longitudinal waves

And oh, my goodness, explo.tv! How do 1030 webcasts, videos, podcasts, and slide shows sound?
With registration, you can download videos so that you don't have to wait for buffering when showing them to your students. Here's one I downloaded from Ice Stories Polar Media Collection, "Traverse Across Frozen McMurdo Sound":

So, don't wait - hurry to the Exploratorium site and see what's in store for you and your kiddos!

Teachers Pay Teachers (But some give it away!)

Teachers Pay Teachers bills itself as "an open marketplace for educators, where teachers buy, sell, and share original resources." There are literally hundreds of thousands of items on the site, all created by teachers. It's a great idea - much better than buying books of worksheets, classroom organization ideas, and lesson plans from publishers - for a couple of reasons. One, proven ideas from real teachers in real schools are just worth more, and two, creative teachers can make a little money from their hard work!

But here's the thing: in addition to all of the items for sale (from under $1 and up), there are more than 40,000 items that are FREE! Many are simple - a spelling test template, for example. But check out the second page of the template below. I love the reflection piece! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREE-Spelling-Test-Template

Others are much more complex, such as a complete literature and grammar unit for Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl. It's 60 pages long, with activities, etc., for every chapter of the book. Remember - this is FREE!

You can browse TPT by grade level, subject, price, and type. Wondering exactly what is meant by "type"? Well, there are 90+ types listed, from Activboard Activities to Windows Software.

So. Click right over to 

and see what other real teachers have shared with you. And please, send a thank-you email to those whose freebies you use, for their time and generosity!  

Anchor Charts - Another Blogger's Ideas

I'll post again one day soon about making and using anchor charts. Today, I just want to give you a link to another blog with fabulous anchor chart ideas. Nancy, over at Teaching My Friends, is a 5th grade teacher in New Jersey. Go to her amazing blog and look around! She's been blogging for two years now, and has written about 140 posts so far, chock-full of good ideas!

For her posts on anchor charts, click on the "Anchor Chart" label in the right-side column. My favorite is her post about how she manages to organize the beautiful charts that she and her 5th grade "friends" make: Too Many Anchor Charts! Here is a snapshot of the binder she uses to keep her charts organized and to make them available for her students after they are no longer hanging in the classroom:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjccZNEAWOXgDg9-TttQccRiKYBSROTyOf3KtzFdhP5KYoWZkP_H06DmQ1y7rkONwhsDyK2n5VLp8Ji1CVY6-ZyIk-efST2bNBWC4T_GNHfNM9ZVbI6YaV906oUa3DF2rR6jP95dG2HmkD/s1600/binder+016.JPG

Best of all, Nancy explains how she puts the binder together and shares her index method!

I wrote to her today to let her know that I was linking to her blog. Hope to hear from her as well. :)

Classroom Library Organizer

Keeping up with the books in your classroom library can be daunting! My daughter found an awesome site this summer that makes it much easier. 

Using Booksource's Classroom Organizer, you can load your books by entering ISBNs or by using a mobile app to scan them, and your students check them out by going online. It keeps up with everything, including due dates, and even prints reports (so you can see which books are checked out most, which students are using your library, etc.)!

From the website:
Classroom Organizer is a web-based program that allows users to maintain and inventory books in their classroom library. With this amazing tool you can:
- Add existing titles
- Import your student roster
- Enable students to check out and return books
- Run assessment reports on student and title activity

Update 9/1/12: Joanna has been using this in her 7th and 8th grade Reading & Language Arts classroom for the past month, and she loves it! I think you will, too!