New Name!

Hey all!

I wanted to share that I have officially changed the blog from 5th grade and fabulous to Teaching Coast 2 Coast.  The reason for this was that I have decided to move down to 2nd grade this year.  As much as I enjoyed the 5th graders (the last group I had I looped with almost 3 times!) I really don't enjoy their grown up behaviors.  I am a kid at heart and love to be silly and dare I say "corny" (is that even a word anymore?!) but the 5th graders just looked at me like I was nuts.

My first 3 years of teaching I was in 2nd grade, and I LOVED it!  However I am coming back to 2nd grade after CCSS, and now with new testing systems (even though 2nd grade doesn't take PARCC I still want them to be ready!) I am a little overwhelmed.  The great thing is that in the last few years I have learned that if I don't know how to do it someone in the blog-o-sphere knows!  I am so grateful for TPT and I hope that some day I can be as amazing as these teachers and create all my own stuff to share with new teachers!

I also wanted to change my blog name because last year I got to share my class with the most amazing co-teacher in the world!  Now she is interested in sharing the blog with me but she is moving a lllllll the way to California!  Lucky for me she will be coming back after a year :).  So welcome Jess to the blog!


I am sure she will share about herself, but she is super excited to be on here sharing about her year in Cali and her responses to the book clubs we have planned.  I know that she is very pumped to share about her Together-ness she got while reading The Together Teacher.


Later this week I am going to share about my latest Stitch Fix and some bathroom passes I made for my classroom this year!


Best,

Phonics Phones

Hey all!

This past week I was at my mother's because she was having knee surgery.  Since she was pretty much stuck in a chair we decided to tackle a DIY for the classroom that she could sit down for.  We decided to make the DIY Phonics phones that you see all over Pinterest.  The link shows where I found the materials needed.


First, I went to Lowe's and purchased what I needed:

(1) 5ft long 1 inch PVC pipe (I know the link above says 3/4 inch but I really wanted them to be a little bit thicker/ sturdier)

6 bags of 1 inch elbows (My Lowes only sold bags with 5 elbows in each, but online they sold 10 in a bag)

PVC glue (my mom already had that)

Duct Tape (Pink and Green)

We started by measuring and cutting the PVC pipe.  We cut it so that it was 3 1/2 inches long.



Next, I used the glue and swiped it around the inside of an elbow.  Then I pushed it into the end of the long pipe.  I did the same with the other side.  Now the PVC glue dries SUPER quickly, so you need to make sure that you have it lined up with the other elbow so that you can actually use it as a phone!

I didn't capture too many pictures but here is what they looked like when we were done gluing.

Next we needed to use the duct tape to cover the middle.  Most were long enough that the tape fit across no problem.  Obviously some were longer than other because we needed to slim down the tape.

And there you have it!  The phonics phones that I will be using for my classroom this year.  I am going to also make a job where someone is responsible for cleaning these with a wipe daily and ensuring that they are back where they belong.  Overall this took me about 45 minutes total to make (keep in mind my mom was helping).  I can't wait to tackle some more DIY projects with PVC pipe-  Maybe I'll go for the Anchor Chart Stand?!  Or this site that shows how to make lots with PVC!!!!!

Best,

Stitch Fix #1

Hey all!


SO I have been obsessed with my fellow bloggers who use stitch Fix- like Maria at Kinder-Craze.  So I finally decided to check it out for myself.  I was really just interested in seeing other clothes besides the same stores I shop at and my first fix didn't disappoint.  If you are interested check out the site here.


What is Stitch Fix?

Stitch Fix is an online service that picks different fashion items based on a style profile you complete.  IT is pretty extensive too.  It asks you for the normal things like your top size, bottoms size, how tall or short you are in relation to pants or arm length.  Then they ask you to look at a series of pictures with different styles of clothing and decide whether you would love that look or not.  Last they have you decide how you prefer your clothes to fit.  Do you want them to be fitted or loose.  If you have anything important about the fix you would like them to know (you have an important meeting, an anniversary, just want more relaxing clothes).

When your pick is ready to be shipped they will charge you $20.  However that $20 is used as a credit towards what ever you would like from the fix.  And if you choose to keep the whole fix than you will receive a 20% discount.

Here is the box that it comes in.  I love that it has the name all over- makes it feel different and special. :)

Here is my letter from Paige!  Notice in her letter to me she makes sure to explain why she chose the different pieces.  She tried really hard to make sure that it matched with what I wanted (pieces for going out on dates).  

Here is the beautiful inside of the box.  I really do love the way they present the clothes so it does not feel like you just mail ordered the clothes.  I hate when they show up in plastic bags- feels very warehouse like.  I also like that the inside also explains how you choose the clothes.  I didn't take a picture of this but they give you a self addressed return bag so that you can just put the clothes in the bag and stick it in the mail.  I LOVE this feature because it really does give you ease to return the clothes.  I knew you had 3 days to return the clothes and I was very concerned with how you do that.  I didn't want to have to run around to the post office and mail it back myself every time I had a fix.  They really do think of everything!

Now onto the clothes!  This is the first thing I tried on.  I looked at the card first and then tried on the clothes.  The card made this shirt look almost maroon.  I thought I would hate it but when I saw it in the pile I was in love!  Then i tried it on and it was a little too boxy and big.  While I thought I could get away with it I knew deep down that every time I put it on I would feel fat and take it off.  I wanted to be sure I only kept the things I knew would fit me well.

(PS don't mind the bathroom- I don't have a full length mirror next.  Don't worry I will get one for the next fix)

With the shirts I had I tried on the pants they had.  These pants were super comfortable, but I am not really a fan of black jeans.  So I had to return these too.

Next the blue dress.  This dress really looked super cute and comfortable when I held it up.  I was very excited to try it on.  Unfortunately it wasn't as comfortable as I hoped.  In the center where the top and bottom were attached, it was very tight and wasn't a really soft binding, so it rubbed on my stomach.  Not really ideal.  Back it went.

Last I tried on the henley knit shirt.  Before I tried it on I was afraid this one would also not fit well, but it really did fit nicely.  It is also a super comfortable fabric that will be great in the classroom and great out at night with the husband.  This was definitely a keeper!

I really loved the earrings too.  I didn't take a picture of them on but they were super cute and I love earrings so I kept these too :)

Here is the final receipt of everything.  Notice that they not only gave me the $20 styling fee towards the final bill, but they also show you how much everything would have cost if you purchased it all.  Even though I didn't purchase it all I still was able to use the $20 styling fee towards the clothes.

Now that I have had my first fix I am hooked!  I can not wait for the second one to come right before school.  I made sure to let my stylist know that I wanted clothes that would be appropriate for back to school.  I like to dress up for school so I am hoping that I get some more professional looking pieces.


Can't wait for my next fix!

Angela's Review of Falling in Love with Close Reading

I have finally finished reading the book :)  (better late then never right?)  I am ready to share my opinions on the book and how I think it will impact my students.

Monday:  Overall thoughts on the book  Would you recommend?  Why?

Overall, I really enjoyed reading the book.  While I do know that research matters, I struggle to finish books that solely rely on just data.  I was able to finish the book easily because it relied not just on what they know what works, but how we can best use it in the classroom with concrete steps and real world examples of lessons taught based on the different ways we can close read a text.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants their children to start to slowly read a text.  Sometimes we often push a high quantity of texts on our children because  we need them to be able to read more/longer passages for tests.  But we never take the time to dissect the passages so that not only do they understand more, but they can get in the habit of understanding a passage better. 

Tuesday:  Favorite passage/quote

My favorite chapter from the book was Chapter 3:  A Way with Words:  A Study of Word Choice.  I loved it because it really starts to show how we need to expose our children to not just what is being said, but how it is being said and what the choice of those words could mean.  My "aha" moment came when the authors wrote:  "One way to invite students to live looking for word choice is to study television advertising, those thirty-second spots that flood our screens, day after day.  We can help students see that in all media, as well as in daily life, everyone chooses their words for a purpose."  This section on page 35 starts to explain how you can teach understanding word choice through advertisements.  It encourages you to not just look at the overall product, but to look at the words they use to describe the product.  It wants you to stop and ask:  How do those words influence you the viewer?  How do they give us insight into the author.  

Wednesday:  Didn’t care for didn’t understand

There wasn't much I didn't care for.  The beginning was a little wordy, but it's how they planned to bring the reader in.  It did take me a few pages to get into the groove of the book, but once I started to read the chapters that gave real world ways to bring in the different ways we can close read, I started to enjoy reading it more.  

Thursday:  How can you apply this to your every day practice next year?

This past school year we opened our eyes to close reading but never did any research or learning behind how to effectively close read.  This year I plan to use a chunk of time (maybe my Friday centers) to really dive into close reading.  I would like to say that EVERYDAY we will close read, but I gotta start somewhere ;).  I hope that if we focus on a new close reading objective, that by the end of the year we will be close readers.  I would also like to then make close reading happen during morning work time.  I like to have something independent for my students to do daily so that as other children are arriving we are not wasting time.  I was planning to create something similar to the Rise and Shine Binder's that Ms. Tunstall has, but I wanted to also include some time where students repeatedly read a passage for understanding, not just for fluency.  Still just a thought though.

Friday:  Final Thoughts
Overall I really enjoyed this book.  As I said before I am not a huge fan of books that just rely on data, and don't really show you how to apply it- but this book really does a great job of showing you how you can introduce close reading to your students.  I love the exact steps that are given to show students how to close read- and that the same steps can be used no matter what you are close reading for:  word choice, point of view, text evidence, etc.


I am so glad that this book study has kicked off!  I can't wait for next month when we read, The Together Teacher by Maia Heyck-Merin. 



Best, 

June's Book: Falling in Love with Close Reading

Hey all!


Towards the end of the year a few of my coworkers as well as the most amazing co-teacher in the world decided to start a professional book club.  As the year wound down we realized that all of us are most likely going to be in different schools and even different states next year so we decided to bring the book club to the blog.  If you want to see the original post click here. To kick off our book club we read Falling in Love With Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts and life by Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts.  The book is completely dedicated to ways you can effectively teach close reading to help build a deeper meaning of fiction and nonfiction texts our students encounter.

You can purchase it on amazon.com 

We have decided to take a question a day to tackle on the book.  The questions are:

Monday:  Overall thoughts on the book  Would you recommend?  Why?

Tuesday:  Favorite passage/quote

Wednesday:  Didn’t care for didn’t understand

Thursday:  How can you apply this to your every day practice next year?

Friday:  Final Thoughts

Be sure to check back each day as we all share our reposes to the different questions!

Best,

All Around the World

Hey All!

We are 4 weeks away from our 5th graders promotion and the end of the year!  I can not believe that my time has flown by this quickly.  There is not way I would have survived this year without my amazing co-teacher.  In reading our scholars are finishing the year by reading Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. This was my favorite book in 4th grade so I am super excited to bring it to them in 5th.  I even had my old copy from when I was in 4th grade.  My mom was so kind to ship it to me so that I can share it with my children.  They LOVED seeing my handwriting in the book from when I was about their age.

Here it is!

In Math since we are at the end of the year we are working on our adventure around the United States just like Sal!  When we started this unit it was very clear to me what little our children knew about the other states.  In our school we spend very little time focusing on Social Studies (I know I will get better next year, hopefully this summer I can map out a Social Studies Unit!- Any advice please send it to me!).  Some of our children really had no concept that there world is so large!  

We have started the unit with our scholars looking up where they are going to visit by car.  They needed to know that if they wanted to go to California that they needed to travel through lots of states to get there.  At each state they needed to identify at least 3 places they plan to stop.  Each stop will include an attraction (beach, park, racetrack), a place to eat, and a place to rest.

Then they will need to calculate their distance to each place to think about how much gas they will need in their cars.  Finally, they will determine about how much money they are going to spend in each state and decide how much money they will need in all.

This unit has been AMAZING!  I used a rough skeleton of a product I found on Teachers Pay Teachers.  You can find it here.  Then I added in more organizers that they could use to track their trip.  They are LOVING working on this- I have a hard time pulling them away!  I posted my templates from the unit on Teachers Pay Teacher.  I will update if I add any more!

I will update as we start to work on preparing our trip for our presentations at the end of the year.  

Here are a few pictures of our students looking at a map and determining the college graduation rates in each state.  They enjoyed seeing that in some states, more students are graduating college.  We started to make some inferences about what the causes could be.

Book Clubs **UPDATED***

Hey all!

Hooray testing is finally over!  I am finally getting a chance now to think about what I "wish" I did this year around routines for myself and the kids.  I love to use this time to test out new ideas I have for the following year.

I was talking to the most amazing co-teacher in the world about what are some things we took the time to do for ourselves and we both agreed that we wanted to do book clubs this year for ourselves.  Here are the books we have planned to read / re-read

June:  Falling in love with Close Reading*
July:  The Together Teacher ( help us start the year off organized with our time)
August:  The Mindful Child
September: Teach Like a Pirate
October:  End of Molasses Classes ( a great quick read to demotivate us in that usual October slump where you start to realize you are no where near summer!)
November:  Leverage Leadership*
December:
January
February:
March:
April:
May:
June:

*New additions based on what I have seen online!*

As you can see we are missing a book for a few months.  If you have any suggestions let us know!  What have you read that really excited you and changed the way you taught/ran something in your room?


Best,

Test Prep Fun!

Hey all!  I don't know about you but all this testing nonsense really has me stressed out.  I can not stop thinking about how I can ensure my kids go from not knowing to mastering skills in days.  While I recognize that it is not possible- I do know that there are simple things that I can fix.  Lots of times my scholars have a hard time deciding what "trick" to use to add, subtract, multiply, or divide fractions.  Or when they set up a line plot they never put the fractions in order.  Or worse yet- They STILL don't use a place value chart to answer any question about place value- they would rather guess.

So I talked it over again with the most amazing co-teacher in the world and we came up with a GREAT idea!  We decided to take away our children's special (before you kill me hear me out.  I work at a school where 4 out of the 5 days of specials have a sub, and in the last week we have had 2 physical fights, 1 student embarrassed and parents calling mandatory meetings, and 5 days of NOTHING done).  We wanted to make it fun and NOT stressful at all because when we stress them out they obviously don't do well.  We make 6-7 centers depending on the week that reinforced or taught simple skills the scholars are getting wrong.  My kids would graph each day how they did and would work towards getting better at the skill,


It was AMAZING! Attached are some pictures of them working on the centers skills.  I included all documents I made.  Please feel free to use them or change them based on your needs.



Here is the graph that my students used to plot how they did:






Here is an example of the direction cards I made:

Here are the different pieces needed:

The Cover Page

The Centers Page the students write on

The task Cards I used

This is for the first week- I will gladly attach the centers we did for the 2nd week if you like!




Love,

Science?!

So in DC, our 5th graders take a Science state test.  They don't actually count towards our state goal, but it is still something our students need to learn.  In a chart school where making gains on ELA and Math are the sole focus- Science will sometimes get pushed off to the side.  Last year we never even put it in the schedule.  We've tried to hire science teachers as a specials, and have spent lots of money on kits to make life "easier" for the teacher.

Over the holiday break I really tried to figure out what I was supposed to use as a guide for 5th grade science, and what I needed to ensure my kids were ready to answer questions about.  In comes:  The Next Generation Science Standards.  These standards are supposed to become the Common Core of Science.  The one thing I love- THERE ARE STANDARDS! I was just pulling out of a hat what to teach.  

Right now they are just in the stages of producing the standards, but as always I go to my favorite teacher research site aka pinterest and I clearly see that there are lots of teachers already trying to create things to make the NGSS understandable for teachers like me (who have no idea how to teach science!).  

The first site I wanted to showcase was:  Jason's online classroom.  There I found some posters that I actually bought because they helped me break down with pictures the standards into some type of objective.  I wish that they came with some type of plan- but that is where I am trying to fill in the gaps!


So I am asking you- do you have any ideas on how I can easily integrate science?  I have about 45 minutes 3-4 times a week.  Any advice would be great!

Customary and Metric Units of Measure

Hey everyone!


So the past two weeks we have been talking about customary and metric units of measure.  We just did a basic understanding of how to convert and I am trying to think about ways I can extend my children's real world connection.  They are very familiar with the obvious "we measure things like a house, or our height, or our weight."  And they have always done model homes- what else can we do?!


Also, I wanted to attach a sheet I found about the metric system.  It really helped my children understand the metric system.  I do not know who this came from- so if it's yours please let me know so I can give you credit!!!!!!

Metric Conversions