Our Classroom Blog

I created a classroom blog at the beginning of the year because I wasn't able to post digital photo albums or videos on my classroom website.  I also wanted a place where students could comment on what we were learning together and our celebrations.

At first, I didn't require students to write anything.  In fact, I had hoped to encourage them to participate by offering them extra credit for sharing thoughts that asked questions, made thoughtful comments or going into the topic even deeper.  When I evaluated this recently and saw that only a handful of students were participating, I began to require it for homework once a week. 

There are many great reasons to use this:  I can have easy access to the thoughts of my students on topics we're currently studying.  I can assess if they are actually answering the question and giving details to support their answers.  Spelling, grammar, and punctuation can also be assessed, in addition to me being able to hold them accountable for doing their homework. 

I've made 3 observations so far.  Students don't think about spelling, grammar and punctuation when writing on the blog for some reason.  We will have a discussion about this tomorrow as we look at our most recent blog entry.  Also, not all students are actually reading and answering the questions, which is something I also see on reading tests.  Finally, some students continuously are not doing their homework so I can contact parents right away about this, and you even have access to proof that it was done late because the time and date is stamped on each entry. 

Feel free to check out our classroom blog.  It has been a lot of fun, and tomorrow I'll be posting a Photo Story we made about our ABC book on Minnesota.

Miss Shaw's Blog

Education Minnesota Foundation Grant: Franklin Talking Children's Dictionary

Last month, I received a congratulatory letter telling me that my Continuous Progress team had been awarded a grant to purchase 28 Franklin Spellers for our CP students.  I chose to write this grant on behalf of my team back in December based on all the observations I had been making in my classroom:  students staring at a blank page, students asking their friends how to spell a word, and students asking me how to spell a word.  Also, the survey that I conducted at the beginning of the year indicated that some students would have more desire to write if they had a tool to help them with their spelling.  I wanted to have a tool where students could independently find out if they had spelled a word correctly, and if they didn't, it would help them find the correct spelling.  It is also a unique tool because of the sound function, which has made it very appealing to use in special education classrooms, but rarely has it been used on a large scale in the regular classroom.

28 Franklin Spellers means we could have one entire class use them at a time when working on a project, or they could be split among 5 classrooms (meaning most rooms would have 5 or 6 for their students to use when editing a rough draft).  I am so excited about the prospect of using these in the classroom, especially because it also has a thesaurus function to help students revise their writing.

Yesterday, the 39 grant recipients were recognized at the annual Education Minnesota Representative Convention, and then we received 2 hours of training.  The training was focused on identifying outcomes, indicators that showed if a method worked and methods used to evaluate those indicators.  I really felt like I got a great understanding of what my action research will look like as I continue it next year, and this is all a result of the action research I am doing as a result of our class.  Only next year, it will have an impact on 130 students rather than the 24 in my own classroom. 

I have a working plan, which I will attach at a later time.  For now, I will identify the 4 desired outcomes I came up with:

Outcome 1:  Students will change their attitudes about writing because they are confident spellers.
Outcome 2:  Students will independently spell words correctly with the use of a Franklin Speller.
Outcome 3:  Students will improve spelling skills.
Outcome 4:  Students will be excited about using the electronic spell checker to improve word choice in their writing.

The project will take place over the 2011-2012 school year, and the resources will be purchased this summer.  I am so excited to be continuing the work I've started this year in my classroom, and it will be great to have the entire team on board.

Prefixes Un, Re and Sounds for "J" and "S"

As always, there were two spelling lists:  one for the 3rd graders and one for the 4th graders.  The 3rd graders had a list that focused on the prefixes "un" and "re".  The 4th graders' list focused on using "dge" and "ge" to make the "j" sound and words that had "ce" to make the "s" sound. 

To try and meet the needs of all the students, I divided the students up into 4 groups:  2 3rd grade groups (one for "un" and one for "re") and 2 4th grade groups (one for the "j" sound and one for the "s" sound).  I told them to start by looking for words in their spelling lists, but they were also going to have 10 minutes to find as many words that followed the rule or pattern that their group was responsible for.  They could use anything in the classroom to help them find the words.  It was interesting to watch many students using the dictionary while other students walked around the room to see if any of the words posted on our walls matched the rule or pattern.

In addition to using the dictionary, it was interesting to observe the other strategies students used.  Some of them tried rhyming words to make more words like mice, ice, nice, rice and so on.  Some 3rd graders just started adding the prefixes to words they thought the definition made sense with.  For example, the "re" group had "relook", thinking it made sense when they put "look again" together. 

After 10 minutes, we had each group present their list.  The words had to be spelled correctly, they had to be words, and they had to be capitalized correctly.  If a student wanted to challenge a word they could.  That student would have to win the challenge by proving the other team wrong by using the dictionary.  If the challenge was successful, then the group would not get credit for that word.  They would have to spell it correctly or cross it off if it wasn't a word.  Then each group counted up the number of words they got correctly and wrote the number on the back of the poster.  These posters will be posted around the room, and students will be encouraged to add words when they find others that fit these rules, just as they do with the other spelling posters we have posted around the room. 

Today, one of my 3rd graders asked if she could add a word that fit one of the rules we did a couple months ago.  I was thrilled because she was finally understanding the value of having as many words at our fingertips as possible.

Here is an awesome website I found on prefixes, suffixes, root words, silent letters and spelling.