by Alice Nine | A9 Journal, In My Classroom |
#SOL16. No.9. Having fun with a Bed-to-Bed Free Verse Poem* It’s Tuesday Sunrise and coffee with my man –Treasure these moments when I am home Reading and answering emails Keeping phone appointments –One lasted 1.5 hours, we should have Skyped...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
#SOL16. No.5. In the Appendix of Things My Mother Used to Make (1912), there is an article titled “The Proper Way to Sweep a Room.” Since it is March and spring cleaning is on my mind — notice I did not say on my calendar — I decided to read...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
#SOL16. No.4. I shared a great laugh with my daughter today. For you to fully enjoy the humor, you must know that her brother-in-law’s name is Will. Her boys are free writing daily in their journals –they are loving it because free writing is rough, rough...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
#SOL16. No.2. Some of you know me well enough to know that I love old books. I mean really old books, like over 100 years old. I like to visit the online library Forgotten Books, and browse the books I find there– mostly educational books but occasionally old...
by Alice Nine | Featured |
It was between winter and spring. Day had ended. The evening was becoming night when I heard the telltale chirp. My daughter and I began to text. We can talk either by phone or in person since she lives next door. But we often choose to text. When texting, it...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
A child was reading In second grade hall I leaned in She continued I stood still My coat still on She read to me Because I stayed Because I asked A child is reading . . © 2016 Alice, a found poem Inspired from Twitter post by @DalilaE on...
by Alice Nine | For Fun |
We made a mini-marshmallow catapult cannon. You need a balloon, toilet tissue roll, and a few marshmallows. Tie the mouth of the balloon in a knot. Cut off the bulb end of the balloon. Stretch it and pull over the toilet tissue roll to assemble. If you have a wide...
by Alice Nine | For Fun, In My Classroom, Literacy |
Materials: 26 colored craft sticks, 6 inches by 3/4 inch. 18-inch felt chalkboard eraser (of course, one that’s never been used to clean boards) a Sharpie marker a pair of old scissors that are strong enough to cut the craft sticks Directions to make With a pair...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Chameleons. Fascinating creatures, changing their color based on surroundings. Words are sorta, kinda, a little bit like that, changing their spelling or pronunciation just a bit based on their sentence surroundings. Here is an example. She didn’t have much hope...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Think to Spell™, a key learning routine of Johnny Can Spell, is a strategy for sounding out words in both reading and writing. In brief, it begins with oral language and moves to written language. The student isolates a word he speaks or hears. Then in an...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom, Literacy |
Stand up. Hands up. Pair up with phonograms. Here’s how we do it. Each student is given a mini-phonogram card. Students stand up, put a hand up, and pair up (Kagan) with another student by putting their hands together. The paired students share with each other...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
Each year as Christmas approaches, I always want to have the kids in my class make their own Nativity. But the ideas I have always are too elaborate and we just don’t have enough time with Christmas play practices. This year, though, I found a really cute,...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal, For Fun |
For our preschool class, I try to come up with a story craft that is something they can easily hold. They really seem to like those the most. Sometimes it has a handle, sometimes it’s on a craft stick or slips over their hand or fingers. Sometimes it fastens on...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
We were well into the morning session of the first day of professional development. It was a summer Monday, kinda laid back but with an undercurrent of eagerness–the kind of eagerness teachers have at the beginning of a new year. Most of the 30 plus...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
Two weeks ago in Sunday School class, I was told, the kids had tons of fun acting out the Triumphal Entry. They even had a “real” donkey, thanks to Jim and John. (Even though it wasn’t Palm Sunday yet, Jim and John asked to tell the story early on...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal, In My Classroom, Literacy |
A couple weeks ago I was going through some binders on a top shelf in my office, trying to purge in order to have space and stay current. Anyway, I ran across three black binders filled with my transparencies of the pages of the Grammar Notebook. Years ago, during my...
by Alice Nine | A9 Journal |
March is National Reading Awareness Month. March is also the month when we change our clocks, springing ahead for Daylight Saving Time. I love early morning daylight hours, and every spring I grumble about moving my clock ahead an hour. I hate losing that hour. So...
by Alice Nine | In My Classroom |
Looking for multi-letter phonograms in words. Today in kindergarten, we began our lesson by hunting for multi-letter phonograms in the date. As we found them, we underlined them to show the letters work together for one sound in the word. Our phonogram dictation. I...
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