Conquering the Wiggle Fidgets: 7 Inspiring Books for ADHD Kids and Their Parents by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.

Original Source
Read More Here  on the summaries of each book as well as some books for parents too!

Conquering the Wiggle Fidgets: 
7 Inspiring Books for ADHD Kids and Their Parents

by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.

Mrs. Gorski, I Think I Have the Wiggle Fidgets

by Barbara Esham, illustrated by Mike Gordon and Carl Gordon

This Morning Sam Went to Mars: A Book About Paying Attention

by Nancy Carlson

Last to Finish: A Story About the Smartest Boy in Math Class

by Barbara Esham, illustrated by Mike Gordon and Carol Gordon

Good Morning Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Wake Up Story and Good Night Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Bedtime Story

by Mariam Gates, illustrated by Sarah Jane Hinder

Read More Here  on the summaries of each book as well as some books for parents too!

Lit Circles - Great blog post with some new ideas to try

I love doing lit circles and have done them in a number of grades and schools, adapting over time to what I find to be a perfect set up now, though with every new class comes new ideas.

Even still, I am always finding new and innovative ways to improve lit circles and try new things and that is what this post is about, sharing some of those ideas.

This is taken from this blog post which you should check out.

Background

I divided my 29 students into six groups, and the students were allowed to decide with whom they worked. Throughout the year, each group read chapter books of their choosing, one after the other. All of the paperless work was completed in Schoology, our learning management system (LMS).

The students met for literature circles twice a week -- Mondays and Fridays -- for about 40 minutes per session. Here's what happened on each of those days.

Mondays

All six groups met, with four in the classroom and two in the hallway. After the groups came together, students confirmed their jobs for the week, which had to be completed by Friday. There were eight job descriptions:

• Connector: Go into detail regarding a specific text-to-self or text-to-text connection.
• Passage Picker: Find one or two paragraphs that are moving in some way. Write why you picked each passage and describe your thoughts.
• Plot Twister: What exactly would you change in the chapters that you read for homework to make them go the way that you would have preferred? Why?
• Wonderer: As you read, create a list of relevant statements starting with "What if?" or "I wonder."
• Predictor: Based on what you read for homework, explain what you think is going to happen next. Also explain why you made your predictions.
• Psychologist: Give advice to one of the book’s characters. What would you tell him or her to do, and why?
• Journalist: Pick a character and, based on what you read for homework, write a passage in his or her personal journal.
• Student Choice: Decide how you would like to respond to the chapters that you read for homework. If you aren't satisfied with any of the jobs, create your own idea.

Here are the directions that accompanied every job:

1. Your homework (at least 6-8 sentences) should be posted to your Literature Circle group as a new discussion.
2. Name the discussion "Job title, pages." (e.g. Connector, 1-52)
3. For extra credit, attach a completed Role Sheet to your discussion. (The Role Sheets were from Literature Circle Role Sheets for Fiction and Nonfiction Books and Literature Circles: The Way to Go and How to Get There.)
4. Quality comment on the discussions of others. Post your discussion early to leave time for others to comment.

After the students confirmed their jobs, they started their reading for the week, which consisted of about 40 pages from their book. They read with each other's jobs in mind, as they were encouraged to continually pause, discuss the book through the lens of their individual tasks, and take notes on what they learned from classmates.

Fridays

Students met to discuss the week's reading through their Schoology discussion forum posts (and optionally the role sheets). However, on a weekly basis, before everyone separated into groups, we investigated as a class how their posts could be used as conversation starters, but not as the conversation itself. As Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels explain, when used improperly "these role sheets quickly become mechanical, hindering rather than empowering lively, spontaneous book talk" (p. 248).

To promote in-depth conversation, we were constantly coming up with sentence starters that would assist in uncovering a deeper understanding of what was read through rich inquiry and debate. (As a starting point, we called upon prompts from Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design and Embedded Formative Assessment.) In the end, the goal was for students to collaborate through the use of their own "thick" questions and without assistance from the teacher, outside resources, jobs, or role sheets.

During both the Monday and Friday sessions, I simply traveled from group to group, helping them to stay on task and facilitate conversation. As the school year progressed, the majority of the groups no longer needed my assistance.

During each Friday session I let all of the groups know when five minutes remained. At that point, the students individually completed and handed in either the Individual Rating Report (adapted from the Literature Circles book) or the Progress-Process Person form (adapted from the Literature Circle Role Sheets book). We alternated which handout was used on a weekly basis.

On the Individual Rating Report, students graded themselves on a scale for such statements as:

• I was responsible and brought my book to class.
• I encouraged others to share group work.
• I shared group time by building on the ideas of others.

There were also a few open-ended questions involving what was learned, what questions existed, and what could be improved upon for next time.

On the Progress-Process Person form, students rated all of their group members on a scale regarding whether or not they were prepared, how much they contributed while also encouraging others to contribute, and if they remained focused.

In the End

My process represents one of countless ways to facilitate literature circles, so feel free to take it, argue with it, or adapt it to fit your students' needs.

If I were to return to the classroom and revise this process, it would be interesting do away with the jobs and role sheets altogether and have the students "take full responsibility for capturing their during-reading responses using Post-its, text annotations, bookmarks, and journals" (Harvey & Daniels, 2015).

How do you or could you run literature circles in your classroom? Could literature circles work across all content areas, and not just language arts?

Source:http://www.edutopia.org/blog/almost-paperless-literature-circles-ross-cooper

Monday Quotes are back...

I haven't posted in a while, but feeling recharged and ready to keep sharing.... especially as I work more and more with new teachers, I really value having a space to share and store ideas I come across.

Less of my own adaptations and more a collection of others amazing ideas... at least for now.

KABOOM twist - Great game for class

Here is a twist on the vary popular KABOOM GAME

Instructions at SOURCE

20+ Cool Plastic Bottle Recycling Projects For Kids

I love these, especially the penguins! Check out the link for more ideas and specifics!





Some great ideas here!


Source: http://notedlist.com/plastic-bottle-recycling-projects/

5-10 minutes of class... what activities can you do?

What to Do With That Awkward 5 or 10 Minutes of Class You Have Left

Read the entire article here: http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2014/09/25/what-to-do-with-that-awkward-5-or-10-minutes-of-class-you-have-left

Create fun structured conversations. Give the whole class a sentence stem that they have to fill in themselves, and then make them go find at least 10 different partners to practice it with. The repetition of both speaking and listening will help cement it in their brains, and the not-sitting-in-their-chairs will make it fun. 

• "One thing I will remember to tell my future grandchildren about differential equations is _____"

• "I shall uphold the honor of my English teacher, Ms./Mr. _____ and never mix up 'you're' and 'your.' I will remember the difference by _____."

• "I'm going to go straight home and tell everyone on Facebook how the most important thing I learned about cells is ____."

• "If I made a modern-day movie about the Shakespeare play we read today, I would cast _____ as _______ because they are both ______."

Have students face off in Trashketball to decide which half of the class gets dismissed first. For Trashketball, first divide the class into two teams. Each team sends a representative to the front (or you can choose a representative). The representatives are then asked a review question. If the question is answered correctly, the representative's team earns two points. Then the representative has a chance to earn another two points for his/her team by shooting a ball made of trash (see the featured image) into the class trash can from a set distance. Then, a new set of representatives face off. Whichever team is in the lead when the bell rings gets dismissed first.

Read whole article here:
http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2014/09/25/what-to-do-with-that-awkward-5-or-10-minutes-of-class-you-have-left