FRIES... read on

Many of my "blog buddies" from UMUC are feeling overwhelmed and I am right beside them. I'm struggling to stay above water in my classroom, but on top of that I have two extra duties at school: ELA Department Chair and the FRIES club.

Let me explain FRIES... For CSI (Continuous School Improvement) we have to come up with a common problem and an intervention and two years ago, the school rightfully agreed that our students struggle with including supporting details.  I knew of the acronym FRIES (Facts/Figures, Reasons, Incidents, Examples/Expert Testimony, Sensory details) and we chose that as our intervention and it became "my baby." You know how sometimes your suggestion becomes your burden, I mean baby?  Well, that was me with FRIES.  My principal wanted me to roll out this in a BIG way. Please watch this embarrassing video... I say writing about 4 times in 20 seconds. I HATE this video, but it does explain things... And it was a successful roll-out after 40+ hours of me and my ISS writing lessons for every discipline.

Now, I will say that FRIES has been a successful intervention. Even the Naval Base McDonalds has contributed 600 free fries coupons to our school and teachers give them as rewards for showing support (FRIES) in their writing. Students are showing improvement. But, I was tasked by my new Principal to host a FRIES club SY2014, of sorts, to ensure that every student is understanding our intervention.  I have put this on the back burner and then suddenly I had an idea!  In our 620 grad school class, we wrote projects for for our students and I planned to do this one with my 6th graders: a teen's guide to Yokosuka.  But then (Thursday)  I thought: what if every ELA teacher did this and our ENTIRE school wrote a review for a website.  The students would be writing a meaningful project and my FRIES "club" students could put together the website.  I'm going to attempt to sell this idea at my Department meeting on Thursday. Here's my page with the rubric and the instructions I wrote for my 6th graders.  It's password protected: yms . What do you think?  I am super excited!

So you know how I value my social life, I am going to get out in town this weekend to create some examples as models.  I hope I have teacher buy-in.  I finally feel like I'm climbing out of my hiding spot under this extra duty.

In other news: some super typhoon is headed this way.  America is making it seem worse than Japan is letting on. Is it bad that I'm hoping for a Tuesday hit so we have a 4-day weekend?

Paint Strips in ELA

I've been borrowing Pinterest ideas for two years now. However, I don't always have access to the supplies needed to copy the pin. Yet, I pin away and hope I'll remember when I stumbled upon it.

This summer I created a reminder on my phone. I was in the States for 6 weeks so I needed to accomplish the task of getting supplies for this certain pin: paint strip writing. My sister, a kindergarten teacher, and I walked confidently into HomeDepot and gathered about 300 paint strip samples. I kept asking my sister, Christie, if it were illegal and she assured me it wasn't. When we walked out, paint strips in hand, without so much as purchasing a paintbrush, alarms did not sound. I guess HomeDepot doesn't know that paint strip are high demand for teachers, or maybe it's their silent contribution to the education system.

Nevertheless, I smuggled paint strips to Japan. Why? Well, mine (if even an option) would be in kanji. And the ones in America have such creative names.

I chose a variety of strips to, umm, take. I'm only highlighting one activity using one type of paint strip. Believe me, there's many more.

This is the activity I used for setting. All these colors sounded like someplace, meaning it could be a prompt for creating a setting.

Here's my example that I modeled for students: silent fog





My hope is that students can introduce a setting, using descriptive details. They must use the paint strip title.

Yes, I know I have a spelling error. I'll post my kids progress soon!!!

AG

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New to Blogger

I am new to blogger, but not new to blogging.  I have used blogs via weebly in my classroom and I blog my adventures on a weebly as well.  I've always been sad (ok that's too dramatic) that no one seems to use my weebly blog, so I'm hoping that blogger is better received.  When I created this site for UMUC, I went ahead and created a personal one, too.  I'm already noticing that there are a lot of apps that go with blogger, so I can post from anywhere.  I love that.  I'm excited, however I am already frustrated.  One: I can't figure out the pages.  I have created a few pages, but everything posts to the home page.  I also am struggling with adding the RSS feed.  I think our instructions are outdated.  I'm not following my groupmates and they have no way to follow me.  I found weebly to be much, much easier.  (However, I'm still excited that blogger is connected to Pinterest).  Anyhow, I sent a shout out to my group, so hopefully we'll be in business soon.  Another frustration is that the YouTube videos seem to be outdated leading me to believe that there have been recent changes with blogger.  So again, frustration.