Conference Time!

October is such a crazy busy month  - in the classroom and at home with my own kids!  Our Parent-Teacher Conferences start tomorrow and last for two evenings, so I have been spending a lot of time getting ready for them.  I thought I would share some of the things I do for my conferences:

I always leave the students' journals out in the hall with pens in a cup.  This way, if I get a little behind, the parents can read their child's journal while they are waiting.  I also encourage them to write a little note in the journal - the students love this!

I have a folder for each student.  This folder does not go home until the end of the school year.  I keep a writing page from each month, their number writing page for each trimester, their latest DIBELS reading page, and a Reading Growth Chart to show the parents where they started, where they are, and where they're headed.

Our next conference is in February.  I love pulling out all their writing pages and their reading graph - it always shows tremendous growth!


I count "books read at home" instead of "minutes read".  I like to show the parents how their child compares to the rest of the class.  This is a great tool for those students who should be reading more at home.  Reading at home has nothing to do with a child's ability.  Anyone and Everyone can read at home!  :)

I always keep the conference positive.   If a student is growing than we have success!  Not every child crawls, walks, and talks at the same time.  Every child is unique.  They are not all going to read and write at the same pace.  Each child learns at a rate that is perfect for them.  We can nudge them and push them along, however, always compare "Johnny" to "Johnny" not "Johnny"  to a STAR test score.  I was told my son was doomed in the 4th grade because he could not spell (either can his mother!)  That son is now a straight A student in computer engineering at the University of Idaho.   My daughter scored a 2.8 on her STAR test .... she's in 3rd grade.  Oh the horrors!!!  She is a great reader with great comprehension .  The important question to ask is - Is this student growing?  Are they learning?  

I always send the parents home with a little treat for taking time out of their busy schedules to meet with me.  I found this idea on Pinterest and came up with my own way of doing it.  I used small brown bags I found at Sam's Club, a spider stamp, kite string and tiny wiggle eyes.  I then stapled a little note that says, "Thanks for dropping in!"    It took me less than 40 minutes to make them and fill them.   They turned out cute!

I also put a supply tree up!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Supply-Request-1415091

Happy Conferencing to you!  Have fun!

Bat Week in Mrs. Gentile's Class!

Well the bats arrived and we had a blast learning about them!  

These are some of the books we read:  

We did some creative writing and pretended we were bats.  But before we got started we first thought of some great word choices.  As a class we came up with adjectives that described bats.  We described tiny Bumblebee  Bats  as well as giant Flying Fox Bats.  I wrote the students ideas down onto a large bat that I had cut out.

The students then chose eight words to write on their individual adjective page.  They needed to choose two of their adjectives to use in their writing about bats!

We also wrote three nonfictional details about bats and made a mobile that we hung in the hall.  Here's a picture of our upside down Into the Night fictional stories as well as our mobiles.

A better picture of the bat mobiles are in last weeks post.   Another fun activity was playing our echolocation game.  We went outside and formed a large circle.  We chose a bat and four insects to be in the middle.  We blindfolded our bat so that he/she had to use their ears to catch the insects.  The bat would call out "bug" and the insects had to answer with "bat".  They continued to call back and forth to each other as our bat tried to tag one of the bugs.  We watched various clips on different types of bats and ended our bat week with Magic School Bus Going Batty.  You can find a lot of the fun adjective activities and other fun pages in my  Bats! Into the Night!  - just follow the link to my TpT store.

Next week ... bring on the spiders!  I will be using a lot of things from my packet Spiders!  Into the Web!