Holiday Blog Hop With the Grapevine

Welcome to our holiday blog hop here at the Elementary Grapevine!  We are so happy to have so many wonderful new friends here with us, and wanted to take a minute to share a little holiday cheer (and maybe even a freebie or two) with each of you.  First up is a darling Christmas cookie mat craft that is perfect for students to make right before Christmas.  You can check out the post and snag the freebie by stopping by "Good Enough Teacher"... keep hopping along from blog to blog and pick up a few holiday goodies along the way. 

Click on the image below to start hopping through the grapevine.  Thanks so much for stopping by today :)

Parenting Conferences {A Few Helpful Tips & A Freebie}

Hi y'all! It's Sara from Miss V's Busy Bees.

I hope you had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving with your family and friends! How many of you braved the crowds and went shopping, as well? Too crazy for me!

I did, of course, hit up my favorite stores to get some supplies for my craft room for cheap - Hobby Lobby and Michaels would be out of business if it weren't for me! ;)

Anywaaaaays, on Monday, we resume our normal school days with our kiddos for 3 weeks until we hit a break again.

During those three weeks, in my district, we are required to hold parenting conferences. Who has already had conferences once this year? Twice? THREE times?? You lucky duck, you.

I held a few conferences before the Thanksgiving break so as to not bog myself down after the break.

Doing that, I learned a bit about my students and their likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses, but also learned a bit about my parents and their likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses.

It's true, conferences are for you to tell the parents about the students and how they are doing (or how they are NOT doing…). But, little did college let you know, during these conferences, you get to know and see why your students are the way they are.

The saying the apple does not fall far from the tree is SO true. I have some of THE best students. The only reason I have THE best students?? Because I have THE best parents.

But I digress.

I'm here to talk to you about some tips and tricks when holding conferences with your parents, regardless of the time of the year.

Start out with the positives! Every parent finds GREAT joy in hearing how fantastic their child is. Even if the positive is that Johnny can sit in his chair for 30 minutes at a time, a positive is a positive.

In my conferences, I've found that they go MUCH smoother and parents are more willing to listen if you tell them the positives of their students and then follow it up with ways to take the negatives to positives.

That leads me to tip two. Instead of saying "negatives," use the words "opportunity for improvement." This is a much more positive light to shed for parents, because we all have opportunities for improvement. Yes, even us teachers have opportunities for improvement!

I liked to refer to the places my students could work on (multiplication, comprehension, vocabulary, phonics, main ideas and details, etc.) as opportunities for improvement and plan to take that jargon back to the daily classroom with me, as well!

Take notes! Whatever you tell your parents as to what YOU are going to do for their child, write it down. Then, when parents tell you what they are going to do, write it down. Document, document, document.

That way, when your student improves tremendously, you can credit yourself and the parents for working together to get the student to where they are. When your student goes downhill or even plateaus, you can also back that up by stating what you and the parents agreed to do in order to help students.

Document, document, document!!

Have a short list of resources that parents can utilize at home with their students. Whether this be a list of websites to help students practice skills, a list of books to read to or with the students at night, or games that the whole family can play, which in turn help the student, provide it for your parents! They WILL be thankful, trust me!

More on this tip in a few… :)

Finally, tip 5. THANK THEM. Thank your parents for taking the time out of their busy schedule to meet with you. Thank them for helping their students at home. Thank them for working with you to make sure their child succeeds. While we, as the educators, would LOVE to hear a thank you ALL day long, imagine what these parents might feel.

They DO thank you as educators. They thank you for all that you do for their child. They may not show it nor ever say it, but they DO thank you! So, return that thanks to them - thank them for helping Johnny remember his multiplication facts, or subscribing to Spelling City so that their child will get better grades in spelling. Or for helping Carla work on her typing skills using the program Word on a Sunday night.

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Do you have any tips to give for parenting conferences? I hope that when you DO have the conferences at your school that they go as smoothly as possible and you hit ZERO bumps!

To help with your conferences, I have included a link to a freebie for some of MY favorite resources for students. A list of apps, websites, books, and games for kiddos to play and practice at home with their families.

Grab the freebie by clicking the picture below!

Thank you for all that you do, teachers! You ARE appreciated!

Skeleton Book Reports and a Freebie!

Hi everyone! Gina here from Third Grade Tidtbits Teaching With a Touch of Pixie Dust. If you follow my blog you may have realized I change my name and design. Teaching a new grade (4th for those that aren't aware) I decided I wanted a blog name that was more "me" and less grade specific. And if you "know" me, you know pixie dust was a perfect choice. But enough about that, back to the point of this post...

Do you have your students complete book reports? Up until this year, I never did. For many reasons. But the main reason being that either students wouldn't do it, parents would do it, or the students who did in on their own had no help/support, thus not being quality. Imagine my surprise when I sent home a book report this month in my new school and every single student brought it back... and they were AMAZING.

Here is what happened... another teacher mentioned book reports. I said I never did them. She seemed shocked and made it seem as though I HAD to do them. Panic ensued and I had to figure something out FAST. I didn't want to do boring old book reports or the same things kids do every. single. year. Being that it was an October book report I knew I wanted something that was fall or Halloween-ish.

And I narrowed it down to two ideas... character pumpkins with a little more rigor added for my 4th graders, or a skeleton book report. I am sure you have seen (or maybe even done) character pumpkins. I was going to do those and have students complete a character analysis including character traits, motivations, how the character changed, and why. But I decided I really didn't want 12 pumpkins in my room.

So I went with the skeleton book reports. I had never done this before so I spent some time trying to find some images of completed projects to show my students. I didn't find EXACTLY what I was hoping for, but I came across something that was pretty good (a school had posted pictures on their site... no project description or anything, just the pictures). I was fine with them not having posted the project description because I knew what I wanted included in the book report, so I just had to figure out where the students would include each element of the report. So I got to planning it out.. and making a little diagram with basic shapes.

I also created a simple scoring guide and a letter to send home with students so that parents and students knew exactly what was expected of them from the start.

Students had a little under a month to complete the book report and were able to pick any book. I originally said it had to be fiction, but one of my students really wanted to use a book about Derek Jeter. I told him that as long as he could complete every element required that would be fine. And he did really well. Students have been presenting their reports a couple a day and I am just so amazed at how good they turned out.

The best part... students are finding more books to add to their want to read list. Any of the books that came from my book shelf, after students present, we put the book on the chalk tray. This way other students can grab the book to read it if they are interested. One of the books flew off the tray as soon as students were able to get out of their seats again.

I typically hate book reports. HOWEVER, I think I have changed my tune. I don't make them too difficult for students and I definitely don't make them difficult to grade. I am not too particular on how I grade them... I am an easy grader for these ones. And my students are jumping to get new books into their hands!

If you would like to use this with your class, you can click the image below to grab the 3 pages you will need. Feel free to use these pictures to show your students examples of finished products as well! And you don't have to use this ONLY in October. It would be fun any time... October, during the body systems unit, or just because you want to try something new for book reports!

Disclaimer: The reason I am not a picky grader on these is because I care more about the fact that the students were engaged in the comprehension of their book than I do about the "extra stuff". As long as the students do what I asked, how I asked, they are getting full credit for that part. The only place students are losing points is on spelling and/or neatness. And we are all loving it!

Rounding to the Nearest 10 & 100 {interactive math journal freebie}

Hi Everyone, Krystal here from "Good Enough Teacher"... So I have officially been a third grade teacher for a month, and I can officially say that I LOVE IT! I can't even begin to tell you how much anxiety I had when I made this decision.... I second guessed myself multiple times, and wondered if I could really handle it or not... But I truly love it! I never would've believed that 28 students would feel more manageable than the 22 I had last year, but we have gotten off to a great start and I am so happy with the change.

Color-coding a hundreds chart to teach rounding!

The hardest part for me is the "flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" feeling that comes with switching grades. After 8 years in second grade, the curriculum was really second nature to me, and I had all the resources I needed for every lesson. This year, I can barely stay two steps ahead... And since I've never taught the lessons before, I don't know what the kids will grasp right away and what they will struggle with. I quickly discovered that rounding does NOT come naturally for third graders. My team had warned me, so I bought a packet on TPT and thought I was good to go. HA!! Two weeks of rounding practice and my kids STILL didn't get it. I had tried everything. I was out of ideas. Then I saw a picture on facebook of kids coloring a hundreds chart and light bulb went off in my head!! I ran to my computer and started making a hundreds chart that the kids could color-code to assist with rounding. The next day at school, we pulled out our crayons and started coloring away!!  Because I am just barely staying afloat right now, I haven’t had time to make a cutesy TPT packet for rounding (though I totally have a few ideas to add to my never-ending to-do list!) so I thought I would share the pages with you as a little freebie.  I have included a variety of hundreds charts for you to choose from, as well as a full-color sample for your reference (or to display on your projector as you work through this with your class).  The basic concept is that the ten or hundred that each number rounds to is circled, then every number that rounds to that ten or hundred is colored the same color.  Just like my light bulb went off when I saw the idea online, all of the little light bulbs in my students’ heads started going off too!  Each day as we worked on rounding and estimating, my kids would pull out their math journals and refer back to this little chart and they were good to go. Here are a few pictures of my kids working on this in class earlier this month: 

Using one crayon at a time, we color-coded our hundreds chart as we rounded to the nearest 10

I displayed a blank copy of the hundreds chart (with only the tens circled) and colored it along with my students using the iPad app "doceri" -- if you have an iPad but no smartboard, doceri is a great alternative!

when it was time to round to the nearest hundred, we started by coloring 0 one color, and 100 another color. We then used the same color for 100 to color the number 50, which I tell my students is "the magic number" -- they write this on their assignments now when it asks to explain why they rounded a certain way... it's so cute!

another example of a hundreds chart while color-coding

this is one of the blank charts included in the download -- I explained to my class that if it rounds DOWN to zero, that means it rounds to the current hundred we are already in. If it rounds UP to 100, then we add 100 to whatever hundred we are working with... there is also a  blank chart if you want your students to write the numbers for a specific range that they are struggling with.

 In addition to the rounding pages, there are also a few pages for "compatible numbers" since Go Math (which is what I teach with) uses.... because, you know, rounding isn't already confusing enough to 8 year olds! LOL!! I hope this is helpful as you teach your students how to round.  Click {HERE} to download the pages. Also make sure you're following me on facebook, instagram, and TPT for all the latest happenings in 3rd grade this year. Enjoy!