Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and wonderful new year!






Blinkie courtesy of Barb over on Ruby Slippers Blog Designs!

Thinking of Sandy Hook

It's hard to believe that is has been two weeks since the horrific tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.  I wanted to share this photo of the staff at my school as we gathered for a moment of silence, shared our thoughts with each other, and sent thoughts to those families in Connecticut.  We will never forget you!

CCSS Resources

Like all of my fellow teachers, I am always on the lookout for new CCSS resources.  I would like to thank Jeannette Stein for sharing the following CCSS related websites via SimpleK12!


  Teaching the Core is an amazing site! Not only ELA teachers, but history, science, and math teachers will also find this helpful as we integrate the literacy standards into our schools. It gives understanding and real meaning to the Common Core Standards for reading and writing.

     CCSS Math  This site is a collection of math resources from across the internet. It includes videos, lessons, interactive practice and other resources all sorted by standard.

 Achieve the Core is a great tool to help teachers understand the Common Core. 

Whose Child is This?

I want to join with all of my fellow bloggers in this day of silence to honor those families in Newtown, Connecticut.  The following poem as posted by Erica Bohrer does a wonderful job of summing up our sentiments.





Let's keep these dear folks in our thoughts and prayers.

Remembering Sandy Hook: A Day of Silence

My Classroom Blog

Hi everyone!  I just migrated my class blog to Blogger.  You are invited to hop over and check out what we have been up to in my classroom!  The link is below:

J Nelson's First Grade Blog

Vocabulary and "WordSift"

Recently, I attended an RTI workshop emphasizing the importance of vocabulary instruction in the new Common Core State Standards.  It just so happened that I also watched a webinar sponsored by Scholastic and USC Rossier School of Education on adapting to the CCSS which, coincidentally, also included the topic of language and vocabulary.  Then, while searching out some new apps for iPad, I discovered this amazing website that is a perfect tool for enhancing lessons involving complex vocabulary and thought I would share it with you:
WordSift.com 

This website has numerous features enabling a teacher or student to focus on the words that are essential to the understanding of a piece of text.  WordSift is easy to use.  The first step is to cut and paste any text into the text box.  The program quickly identifies important words that appear in the text.  Unlike other word cloud type programs, this program has some features that are important to teachers such as the ability to mark and sort different lists of words.  For example, words can be sorted by domain and appear in color if they relate to that particular domain.  Other functions include visualization of word thesaurus relationships, and Google® searches of images and videos.  In addition, when clicking on any word in the Tag Cloud, the program displays instances of sentences in which that word is used in the text.

Uses for teachers could include, but are not limited to: preparing lessons, previewing text with students, small group activities, supporting literacy, and assessment.

I can't wait to try this in my classroom!  I hope you find it useful!

Common Core Resources for Teachers and Parents

I wanted to share some resources I recently ran across to aid in the implementation of the CCSS.

This five minute video provides insight as to why children need clearer and higher standards.



Here are some links to Common Core Resources:

http://www.gwd50.org/cms/lib01/SC01000859/Centricity/Domain/41/Common_Core_State_Standards_gif.png

South Carolina Department of Education
Additional link:   http://scde.mrooms.org/index.php?page=27565

NYC

Engage NY

Georgia DOE

http://www.smarterbalanced.org

http://insidemathematics.org/

http://illustrativemathematics.org/

https://www.teachingchannel.org/

I hope you find these helpful!