Kid Bloggin' Thursday

Koo Koo Kanga Roo from GoNoodle

This is our brain break.

• We dance with the people on the screen.
• We dance with them.
• It has backgrounds.
• After we are done we check how much points we have.
• After we fill up all of the points we get to pick a new person.
• We dance!
• It is super awesome!
• After we fill up to 10 we get to see how big he gets.
• We like the brain breaks.
• We do them.
• We love having brain breaks.

 These are our letters.

• They are special.
• We fill them up.
• One is lunch bunch.
• One is iPads.
• We like getting them so much.
• If the whole class is good the teacher picks one person to fill in one letter.
• One is extra recess.
• When we fill up the whole letters we get a class party.
• The one where we only have 2 filled in is the iPads.
• One is sock party.
• We earn them from being good.
• We earn them from being quiet.

Good Behaviors

This is our good behavior wall.

• It shows us good behaviors.
• It has all of the good behaviors on it. 
• We are so proud of the people that are good.
• Be respectful.
• Some people help other people.
• We hope that people do the stuff on the good behavior wall.
• We hope that other people treat other people how they want to be treated.
• When they are good we like them because they are good to us and we be good to them.
• They have responsible.
• We be nice to our friends.
• We be good to our family and school.

This is our reading table.

• We go to it every school day and we read special books.
• We read Beth's Job.
• It is grey.
• Around the grey there is red.
• We really like the table because it is pretty.
• We like to work on it.
• We can write with a marker on it.
• We sit on the blue cubes.
• We sit on the boxes and inside of them there is books.
• The teacher works with us and we work with her.
• We blend sounds at the table with our teacher.
• We work with Miss Messick at the table.
• Miss Messick calls our names back and we come.

This is our Jan Brett book.

• There is a moose in it.
• We read them.
• There is a stray bob cat in it.
• A lots of animals eat the corn bread in this book.
• Jan Brett is a author.
• She puts pictures on the sides to show us what comes next.
• Miss Messick is in it reading the book.
• Jan Brett wrote this book.
• We like it because it has pictures on the bottom.
• This is a video of one of Jan Brett's books.
• There are pictures on the top and the bottom.

It's a Party!

Well, it was a party.

Let me back up. <insert cool rewind sound effects> This past summer as I was working the awesome Northview Summer Camp I began thinking about what changes I wanted to implement for the coming year. Let's be honest: Our brain never really leaves the "teacher" mode, even during the summer. The big idea I kept coming back to was parent involvement. I wanted to get parents more involved with our class.

In the past I had tried different things. One year we used a flip camera. Students got to take it home. They recorded their parent reading a book and then brought it back to school. We then played the video for the entire class and it was as though the parent was reading the story to us. The kids loved that!

While I thought about trying that again for 2014-2015 I wanted to go bigger. Go big or go home, right?  So I thought, "Why not have a parent night?" That then quickly got bigger. "Why not have a parent night each term?" Which then got even bigger. "Why not have food at the parent nights AND do parent volunteer months during the fall and spring?"

So that's what I decided. I would have a parent night each term as well as host parent volunteers at two different times during the year. That brings us to this past Wednesday......

I hosted our Parent Poetry Night. It was completely centered around my kids and poetry. The students had selected a poem from amongst their poetry that they do daily. We then practiced reading in front of an audience and while wearing a microphone. It was a good chance to practice introductions and speaking so others can understand.

The night of the event students had different centers they could choose from. We had poetry books from the library as well as their poetry binders from class. (We've blogged about them before. You can check out that post here.) I also made copies of different word family poems they could choose from. To finish it off I bought a ton of pizza! Let me tell you, it was all eaten!

Thanks Little Caesars ®

I gave families time to mingle and watch their students work. Families were free to jump from activity to activity. About every 10 minutes I called small groups of students up. Everyone watched and listened as they read their poem. Each student was met with a round of applause when they finished.

This was such a fun event.  I can't believe I haven't done this sooner. Now we are preparing for our Parent Volunteer Month. I can't wait for our parents to see what a typical day is like in our room.

Here's to connections, fun, and parent involvement!

P.S.
Parents: How do you get involved with your student's class?
Teachers: How are you getting parents in your room?