First Week Positives

I've been doing a little bit of reading this week on my vacation. It's called Kids Deserve It! by Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome. They have talked a lot in the book about making that connection to students and building a positive relationship with students and parents. This is not anything new to me as an educator, but sometimes we all need a little reminding of how important the little things are in building successful relationships with students and parents.

Those tough students can be the hardest ones to reach and sometimes all it takes is someone to believe in them and find the positive in them.

My first year teaching someone shared with me the importance of reaching out to parents during the first week to share how their week has gone. So I made myself a little first week notes checklist so that as the week went on, I could jot down the positive things I saw in each child so that I wouldn't forget. Then, at the end of the week, I could sit down and call every parent to share those positive things.

It was so powerful for starting our year off on a positive note, especially for those challenging kids. It was hard to find something positive for some of those little gems, but you have to get creative and find something that every students shines at.

I have to be honest and say that I have been sort of awful these last few years at my first week positive phone calls, but reading this book has inspired me to create a little checklist to help motivate me this year to make this happen and start my year on the right note!

Just click on the image below to download your free copy of the checklist! I hope this helps you start your year off on a positive note as well and see the good in each and every one of your sweet kids!

And I would recommend reading the book Kids Deserve It! It is very inspiring!

You can head over to my blog and check out more of my ideas for back to school as well! Click my blog button below!

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MLK, Jr. Poetry FREEBIE!

Hey there! It's Nicole from Teaching With Style!

I just LOVE using poetry in the classroom! 

Each year, I make poetry books for my students and we add to them each week.  {Check out this post to see how I make them and a freebie!}  Poetry is an awesome low-pressure way for students to gain familiarity with using academic language.  

The poems that we add to our books always have little blank boxes at the bottom.  So do all the poems I make for my products I sell on TpT.  Why, you ask? It's a GLAD strategy that works so amazingly well for ELL students! When they sketch or write in the box, it helps them process and remember the vocabulary and content.  

Today, I made you a poem freebie about Martin Luther King, Jr.  I used to use this poem with my first grade team when I taught back in Oregon.  Here is our routine for teaching weekly poems:

• Write the poem on chart paper and introduce whole group, on the carpet.  
• First, read the poem in entirety to the students.
• Then, have the students echo you, line-by-line.
• Then, practice reading the poem altogether and in pairs.
• Write the poem on two sets of sentence strips for a pocket chart center.  Cut up one set of the sentence strips word-by-word.  The students practice reading the poem, then they match the words to the full poem in the pocket chart.
• Last, pass out the paper version of the poem.  Have students sketch what they learned and highlight important words in the poem.  Glue the poems in their poetry books.  

Are you ready to try this out? Grab this poem and get started! 

Click either picture above to download from my Google Drive!

Happy reading! :)

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Close Reading With Wonders

Aloha! It's Nicole from Teaching With Style!

The entire State of Hawaii adopted the McGraw-Hill Reading Wonders basal program this year.  I'm now waist deep trying to figure out whole group, small group, technology, and how this all relates to the Common Core.

I recently read this article 5 Things Every Teacher Should Be Doing to Meet the Common Core State Standards.

The article outlines these 5 practices as the biggest shifts in teaching CCSS:

1. Lead high-level, text-based discussions
2. Focus on process, not just content
3. Create assignments for real audiences and real purposes
4. Teach argument, not persuasion
5. Increase text complexity

A lot of these shifts can be taught using a close reading technique.  However, it seems that everyone has different ideas about what close reading means - and that's ok! To me, close reading is reading the text more than once for different purposes each time.  The Wonders program outlines a close reading structure with their leveled readers, which are Lexiled for text-complexity.  With each step, have the children re-read the story.

To better facilitate the first step, I taught my students how to annotate with post its.  I made them bookmarks to write their ideas on, then they flag the correct part of the book with a post-it.  

Here is a freebie for you to try it out! 

Click the image to download! 

If you are teaching Wonders, as well, I have some units for sale in my store to help you implement the program! 

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Pocket Charts on a Focus Wall

Hi everyone! It's Nicole from Teaching With Style!

My school is implementing the new Common Core aligned ELA series called Wonders.  We are required to teach the program as-is this year, then can make tweaks to it next year.  We are also required to have a focus wall to display the week's information.

I decided to use pocket charts so I don't have to staple things up each week. I hung them on thumb tacks, so the chart itself is easy to take down. And during my spelling test, I just have to turn the chart around! I even tacked up mini binder clips to hold my Essential Question sentence strip! My comprehension and genre posters are inside dry-erase pockets that I accidentally bought too small.  Perfect use for them! 

I was inspired by Nicole from Rowdy in Room 300's post about close reading last year. I loved the simplicity of her labels and that Hauracherell font is just so cute! She sweetly gave me permission to make my own set using her design! 

If you are teaching Wonders this year, too, you can grab a copy of my labels. I backed them with rainbow paper that matches my Bugs theme from Schoolgirl Style. There is also blue watercolor chevron, green/teal watercolor ombre, and plain white so you can glue to any paper you wish. 

Click the photo to download your copy!

And SURPRISE! Nicole A (so you don't get us confused, I'm Nicole H) gave me permission to share that cute banner that is on my focus wall in my classroom (that she made for herself, but then didn't have room to put up!) It's now an EXCLUSIVE Owls freebie! Thanks Nicole A! 

Click the photo to download your copy!

You can look at all of my focus walls in my TpT store.

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