December Happenings

December was a fun month for Miss Woodward's Class.  We had a lot of fun doing winter-themed projects.  Here's the run-down of our busy month!

1.  Polygon Snowflakes

The kids traced and cut out polygons to create beautiful winter snowflakes.  On the back of their snowflake, they wrote about which polygons they chose and the properties of each polygon.  Remember these green polygon foldables?  They were a great resource when it came to writing about the snowflakes.

2.  Holidays Around the World

Each student made a passport in preparation for their travels around the world.  The week before Winter Break, the students traveled to a new country every day.  The country in my classroom was China, and we learned about Chinese New Year.  We made lucky dragon puppets.  :)

We even had a special visitor one day!  My good friend from high school, Tracie, came to visit and help out with making dragons.

The students also traveled to India with Ms. Meredith.  There, they learned about Diwali and made beautiful Rangoli designs with glitter.

In Ms. Tarah's class, they traveled to Israel to learn about Hanukkah.  They made dreidels and learned how to play the game!

In Ms. Eichhorn's class, students traveled to Sweden to learn about St. Lucia.  While there, they made ornaments for their trees.

The teachers taught the same lesson four days in a row.  The students traveled in groups and went to one country every day for the week.  After the lesson and craft, we wrote facts we learned in their passports, and we stamped their passports so they could exit the country and return to the United States.  It was such fun!

3.  Gifts!

Also in December, I wrapped 19 blankets for my students for Christmas.  I got them on Black Friday for $1.50 each.  Many of my students share beds with multiple siblings or sleep on the floor.  :(  It's heartbreaking, so I try to give them something that is useful and that is their own.  

4.  Feeling Crafty

I found my crafty side again and made some cards for coworkers.

I also made some treats!

5.  Wacky Wrapping

One of my students gave me a gift wrapped in this paper.  I'm just trying to picture all the presents under her tree at home in Justin Bieber paper. (ha!)

6.  Watercolor Resist Paintings

We did some watercolor resist painting, too!  It's so easy!  Draw your design in white crayon on paper, then use watercolors to paint over it.  The watercolor paint will not work over the crayon, displaying your pretty design!

A finished watercolor resist.

7.  Cookie Monsters...

… That's what you get when you give 19 third graders a tub of frosting and sprinkles.  Ms. Teresa made a few appearances in Miss Woodward's Class last year, but had only been in once this year!  So she decided to bring in some sugar cookies and all the decorations to let the kids create some edible "masterpieces".  I have never seen so much frosting and sugar piled up on a single cookie...

After decorating, some of the kiddos taught her how to play dreidel!  In Ms. Tarah's class, they used candy, but with Ms. Teresa, they used colored pencils.    

8.  A Happy Holiday

I had a nice and restful Christmas.  The Woodward's celebrated the weekend before Christmas, and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Mr. Wolf's family.

Top: brother Clark, brother Dean, boyfriend Kendall, Dad
Bottom: sister-in-law Elise, nieces Ramona and Marianne, me, Teresa

Mr. Wolf and I on Christmas Eve

Overall, it was a productive month!  But I sure am glad to have another week before heading back to school.  How was your December?

Until next time,

-Miss Woodward

Happy Hmong New Year!

Happy Hmong New Year!

In the Hmong culture, the New Year is celebrated to mark the end of the harvest season.  People celebrate with traditional clothing, music, and food.  Read more about the Hmong New year here!  The Twin Cities has a large Hmong population, and both Minneapolis and St. Paul have large celebrations that are free for the public to attend.

The last day before Winter Break was our annual Hmong New Year celebration at school.  The actual assembly wasn't until the afternoon, but the morning was busy with students getting dressed in traditional Hmong clothes and gearing up for the assembly.  

Students worked for months in their Hmong Literacy class (a special- like gym, music, or art) to perfect dances, songs, and plays.  Middle schoolers auditioned to perform in the show.  It is such a crazy hectic day, but always a fun one!

The Hmong staff at school are so generous to let us borrow their traditional clothing.  Before school, teachers got help to put on traditional clothing.  I loved my outfit this year!  What do you think?

Ms. Meredith, Ms. Eichhorn, Me, and Ms. Tarah

Me and Mrs. Elbert

The Hmong clothing is very elaborately decorated.  My whole skirt was hand-embroidered.  My jacket had hand-embroidery and sequins, and my apron was beautifully embroidered with thread and sequins.

The apron on the front of my Hmong outfit.  The yellow and orange designs
on either side of the sequins were all hand-embroidered!

Hand-embroidery on my apron

My class in their traditional Hmong clothes.  If students did not have Hmong clothes
at home, they could wear nice clothes (hence the gray suit in the back row)

Me and a student from last year

All of the performances at the assembly told the story of a girl who was having trouble remembering her Hmong culture, despite her parents' efforts.  In the end though, she knew the importance of her culture and was excited to continue the traditions her family has been celebrating for many years.

These kinders were just adorable singing and dancing!

Nyob Zoo Xyoo Tshiab!

Happy New Year!

Until next time,

-Miss Woodward

2014 Resolutions!

Hi everyone!  Remember me?  You might not, since it was November 14th that I last blogged!  Isn't that awful?!  Well, now that I have a few weeks to catch my breath, you'll hopefully hear from me more often.

2013 is coming to a close, and it is time to welcome in 2014.  I am excited to see what the new year has to bring!  I am linking up with A Peach for the Teach for a linky all about New Year's Resolutions.  Here are some things I hope to accomplish this year:

Personal: Last January, and over the summer, I was really good about exercising and eating clean.  Thanks to the motivation of Allison at Adventures in Room 204, I was eating clean and getting in shape!  And then…. School started.  I am ready to get back into a routine!

Professional:  We had a workshop at school about differentiation, and one of my teaching partners is really good at differentiating materials.  As we all know, it takes time to come up with quality activities at different levels.  We have some good traction with differentiating reading and Daily 5 stations, but I want to really dive in with differentiating in math.

Classroom:  I like to think of myself as an organized person.  Even though my desk may look like a mess, I know exactly where what it is you're looking for is.  I call that skill (kidding…).  I have been trying to be better about staying organized this year, but with it only being my second year, I still haven't found a system I like yet.  I'm getting there though.

Blog/TPT:  2013 marked the start of Miss Woodward's Class!  In 2014, I look forward to blogging more regularly (again, I'm sorry for being MIA for over a month!).  As far as TPT, I haven't had as much success (yet).  My goal is to create more products, and get them onto TPT faster.  I have about a dozen products that are just waiting to be uploaded!

Just for Fun:  Over the holiday season, I rediscovered my craft supplies.  I dug out my kitting needles and yarn, and crafted some cute cards for friends and family.  I forgot how much fun it was to be crafty (and not for school-related projects!).  I hope to complete more craft projects this year, just for fun.  :)

What are your New Year's Resolutions?  School related or not, I would love to hear about them!

Until next time,

- Miss Woodward

Five for Friday- November 14

It's Friday again, so I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the weekly Five for Friday!  Here's what happened this week in Miss Woodward's Class.

1.  Celebrating!

A good friend and coworker, Mrs. Elbert, celebrated her birthday this past weekend!  She is such a special lady, and I was excited to be able to share in her special day.  And now she is expecting her first child, so we had even more to celebrate!

Me, Mrs. Boos, Ms. Eichhorn, and Mrs. Elbert celebrating Mrs. Elber't's birthday.

2.  Pushing through the Polygons

 We started our unit on polygons in math this week.  For my ELL students, learning polygon names and characteristics is really hard.  One of the first things we did with polygons was create a foldable to help remember polygon names and qualities.

On the outside flap, we wrote the name of the polygon (triangle, square, rectangle, rhombus, parallelogram, pentagon, hexagon, octagon).  On the inside flaps, we cut out an example of the polygon, and wrote characteristics of the polygon.

The only materials we needed were large 11" by 17" paper, some shapes to cut out, scissors, glue, and a pencil!  It was a simple project to introduce polygons!

3.  You've Got Mail!

For writing this month, 3rd grade is working on writing letters.  My team and I decided to make the task into a grade-level project.  We set up each student with a pen-pal in one of the other classes.  Their job is to write a letter to their buddy and address it to the correct class.

Each classroom is going to have a mailbox outside their class.  Once students write their letters, they will give it to the "mail carrier" of the class.  The "mail carrier" will deliver the letters to the correct mailbox.  The "mail carrier" will then collect the mail from their class' mailbox and distribute it to the students.  

Here is my class' mailbox.  I made it out of a cereal box covered in paper.  I used velcro squares to attach it to the wall in the hallway.  Isn't it neat?!  Can't wait to see how this writing project turns out!

4.  Dia de los Muertos

At the end of the day, we mix up all of the 3rd graders and have an intervention time.  Some groups get extra help in reading, and some in math.  In my group, we have been reading about Dia de los Muertos lately.  A middle school teacher saw the book laying on my desk and offered to bring in some authentic sugar skulls.  The kids went nuts for them!  Lots of "oohs" and "ahhs" were heard.

5.  Best for Last… Curriculum Night!

Thursday night was Curriculum Night at our school, and I was the representative for 3rd grade.  The idea behind the event was giving students and parents ideas of reading and math activities to do together at home.

Time and time again at conferences, parents tell me that they don't have access to the public library, and don't have books at home.  In my room for curriculum night, I printed off a variety of books from Reading A-Z for parents and students to take to read together.  I made sure to have a variety of levels available.  Some parents took four or five books!

I am also a firm believer in having kids talk with their parents about what they are reading.  To get the conversation going, I had students create a "story cube".  I found it on superteacherworksheets.com.  I printed it on card stock for durability, and had them cut and tape it together themselves.  I also showed them how their parents can roll the cube, and the students can answer the question on the cube using the book they just read together.  I printed off 50 of these cubes, and I had less than 10 left at the end of the night!  At some points, my room was so busy that I couldn't even greet everyone in there!  It was awesome!  I really hope that parents and students start to read together at home.

What happened this week in your class?

Until next time,
-Miss Woodward

Tried it Tuesday- Putting Daily 5 Together

It's time for Tried it Tuesday!  I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper to fill you in on something I tried this week.  

As you know, I am using The Daily 5 to manage my literacy block this year.  It took us over a month to build the habits and behaviors needed for independent reading and writing.  I have been really reluctant to put it all together and give students a choice in what independent work they get to do.  I was also a little slow in putting together reading groups and a reading groups schedule.  Now that I have groups and a schedule done, I decided to mesh the Daily 5 together!

Here is my new Daily 5 Check-In board.  After each "round" of group work (for me) or independent work (for kiddos), we meet on the carpet to "check-in" and see how it went.  We talk about who showed "model behavior", and also share about what they read or wrote about.

On the left, I have my list of reading groups (sorted by color).  Below it is my schedule for the week.  I see each group twice.  But, my lowest group I see every day, and my highest group I see once a week.

Each student has a magnet with their name on it.  When we check in, I first move the students who will be working with me.  The other students tell me where they want to go and I move their magnet for them (eventually, they will move their magnets on their own).  Their choices are: Read to Self, Buddy Read, Word Work, or Work on Writing.  Listening Center is currently closed for repairs.

I'm not crazy about how this board looks (it's just painter's tape and white board marker), but so far, it is functioning well.  I eventually want to make a cute title and picture for each choice.  For now, what I have will work.

The kids were super great about making a fast choice and getting started with their work right away!  AND, when I was working with students, I didn't have to micro-manage from my table!  Everyone was focused and working quietly around the room!  Daily 5 at it's finest!  :)

Tried blending the Daily 5 together… worked!  

Side note:  It is currently snowing here in the Twin Cities… We are forecasted to get 4-7 inches.  Welcome, winter weather!  I missed you so much…

What did you try in your classroom this week?

Until next time,

-Miss Woodward

Feeling Inspired

Last week, I came across this TED Talks Education video.

In it, Rita Pierson discusses connecting with students.  The message is so powerful.  Take a peek for yourself, and enjoy!

What did you think?  Tell me about it in the comments below!

Until next time,

-Miss Woodward

Five For Friday- November 1

Okay, okay, okay.... I promise this was typed up and ready to go on Thursday night.  And then a caught a cold.  And slept all evening on Friday.  So here I am, posting on Saturday.


It's Friday!  You know what that means.... I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!  It was quite the busy week in Miss Woodward's Class!

1.  Mix-it Up Day

Our school hosted Mix-it Up Day on Tuesday.  Students were encouraged to sit at other tables at lunch to  help to identify, question, and cross social boundaries.  The kids went through the line and got their food, then grabbed a number that told them what table to sit at.  At each table, there were conversation starters.  Many of the teachers joined in for Mix-it Up Day, and it was so fun to hear the conversations that were going on across grade-levels!

2.  This is what it's come down to...

Yep, we still have lice at our school.  Ick.  To try and prevent the lice from coming to school from home, we have resorted to keeping the students' backpacks and coats in plastic bags.  Who knows if it helps, but we can at least try to prevent kids from bringing in lice from home.

3.  New 'Do

I bought a new "bun form" for $5 at Charming Charlie, and tried it out on Tuesday!  I had a little trouble putting it in myself, but others that have used one have said that they are super easy to put in!

4.  Halloween Fun

We had so much fun on Halloween!  Read about it here!  Here's one of the highlights:

Four FAB superheroes!  :)

Yes, those are metallic spandex bodysuits.

5.  End of Quarter

Today marks the end of Quarter 1 for us... which means no kids!  It was nice to have no students today, to recover from a busy day of Halloween fun.  We did have some PD, but also had (much needed) work time to enter grades and wrap up some loose ends.

How was your week?  Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share!

Until next time,

-Miss Woodward