Weekly Homework Routine in my 3rd Grade Classroom

When I first started teaching, I was all about giving homework. I truly felt that homework helped to reinforce what was learned in class and that it gave parents the opportunity to see what their child was learning in school and the chance to help them with things they were struggling with. 
Little did I know, homework would become the bane of my existence. I spent so much time tracking down assignments that weren't turned in, talking to students about the importance of them doing their own homework (and not their parents doing it for them). I also became frustrated with parents trying to teach kids the 'easier way' of doing math, the way that we all learned when we were younger when I was trying so hard to build conceptual understanding during school.
 Homework was becoming a waste of time for me because my intentions of assigning it were not being met. Those students who needed the extra help at home, were the ones not getting it. 

I also began to reflect on the amount of time my homework was taking up. I began asking parents how long it was taking their child to complete homework. What I imagined would be a 30-40 minute homework routine, was taking up to 2 hours for some kids. This is NOT what I wanted. My students work extremely hard during the day and I want for them to have time to be a kid and unwind after a long day at school. 
Since I knew that my purpose of assigning what I assigned was not having the outcome I had hoped for, I decided to scrap it all. I came up with an entirely new homework routine that worked amazingly well. 

Each Monday I assign a new reading log. Students are required to read a minimum of 100 minutes per week. They can choose what days they would like to read and for how long. Reading logs are due every Monday morning.

The reason I stuck with a reading log is that I felt it was important that my kids actually read. If they want to become better at something, they need to spend time practicing. 

I also spent time stocking my classroom library up with TONS of books to help encourage my students to find new books. I never wanted not having anything to read to be an issue. For ideas on how to grow your library on a teacher budget, click here.

Before assigning these reading logs, I always model what a quality response looks and sounds like. We practice writing responses together as a class before I send these home. 
I believe that reading should be enjoyable, and I highly encourage my kids to read books that they love and are interested in. I require just one response because I do want to hold them accountable for their reading and I also feel that this helps them with their writing and provides me with check-in on their comprehension. Logs are collected on Monday mornings and a new reading log is issued. 
You can find these reading logs here. The product contains 4 different reading logs AND a digital option  You can give a different log each week so that students are not always answering the same question. 

Photo from Luckeyfrog's Lilypad

On Tuesday and Thursdays, I assign Text Evidence homework. I hand out a double-sided sheet every Tuesday. One side is a fiction reading and the other side is a non-fiction reading. On both sides, students are practicing finding text evidence to answer 5 different questions. 
These text evidence passages are quick, simple, but effective. When my littles come to me at the start of the year, locating text evidence is always so difficult for them. These sheets as homework really help to build proficiency with locating text evidence. Here is a GREAT post from Jenny, the creator of the Text Detectives product I use on how to get kids to refer back to the text. 
Students are given the option of how they complete these assignments. They can do one side and turn it in on Wednesday morning. This will get returned to them by Thursday morning. Thursday night, they can complete the other side and turn it in for credit on Friday morning. The other option is for the student to complete both sides on Tuesday night, turn it in on Wednesday and be done for the week.  To see how I manage collecting homework assignments, you can read all about it here.
The only other homework that I assign on a weekly basis is online homework. The first is Kidbiz3000 (only because it's a school requirement) and the other is typing practice. 
The reason I assign typing practice is that at the ending of the year, our 3rd graders are required to take the SBA. It is so important that students know how to type as they are required to give many extended responses for their answers. I started to practice giving my students their weekly Reading Wonders Assessments online and I found that the quality of their typed responses for #21 were so weak compared to their handwritten responses when given a paper-pencil assessment. I realized that the reason for it was because it took them way too long to type, so they wrote as little as they could. 
I don't collect anything to check that they did their typing homework, no do I have them log minutes. I can tell who has practiced typing by watching them on the computer during class. I just continue to encourage them to practice on their own as it will truly benefit them in the long run. I also used to try to schedule lab time so that students could practice playing games on various typing programs. This is key as this is often a 'hook' for them to realize typing practice is fun! 
What does your homework routine look like?? I'd love to hear about it in the comment section below! 

Reading Wonders Weekly Teaching Plans

Hi, Friends!  Last year, I blogged about how I organized all of my Reading Wonders leveled readers and resources….Many people requested for me to share my weekly plans that I used to teach the series. Today, I am finally back to share that with you all! If you'd like to go back and check out that organization post, you can find that here.  When we first started using this program..I was just so overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done. The plans in the TE completely stressed me out because there was NO WAY I could do all of that in that amount of time. I'd like to think that I'm a pretty tech savvy kind of gal, but the online component also overwhelmed me. There was so much offered online, but I felt that things were just all over the place. To help myself out, I ended up creating resources for myself to use to teach each week. 

I created visual anchor charts so my students could refer back to the skills and strategies that are taught throughout the week. Also included in these packs are various worksheets to use throughout the week.

Creating these resources really helped me to know and understand what I was teaching each week. It forced me to read all the stories and understand the content I was teaching. I ended up creating a generic skeleton for my weekly plans. I mapped it out days 1-5 and listed all the things I would do each week. 

I also created my own comprehension checks based on questions I wanted my students answering about the text they read. There are comprehension questions for the Reading Writing Workshop story as well as the Literature Anthology story. Practicing writing constructed response answers truly help my students with their writing and to prepare them for question 21 on the weekly assessment. 

For planning purposes, it was really easy to stick to my schedule and pull out the resources I created.  I would stick my weekly plans in a sheet protector and use the same plans week to week. In my planner, I'd just write down specific page numbers or activities that I would be doing for that week. In the afternoons from 12:00-1:00 I teach writing and grammar. I use interactive notebook pages  when introducing new grammar skills. 

I hope this post was helpful to you. If you're new to the Wonders program, give it some time. It can definitely be very overwhelming at first, but it'll get better once you've established routines, procedures and become a little more familiar with it. 

Monday Made It {Teacher Plan Book}

Happy Monday!

Today I'm linking up with the fabulous Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made it!

I finally got around to putting together my Plan book for this upcoming school year. 

So far, I've created a new plan book every summer. You can check out my past planner post here and here.

This year I wanted to go for a bright and colorful book with some awesome Melonheadz clipart! 

I am soooo happy with the way this book turned out- My heart feels happy every time I look at it :) 

It took me quite awhile to print, but it is definitely worth it to print on your own! Once I was done printing, I took it to Office Max to get bound. It only cost me around $4.00!

If you are interested in purchasing this planner, I will have it on sale for the rest of today in my TPT Shop!

Monday Made It #2: Lesson Plan Book!!

Hey Everyone!!

I'm so happy/proud to be posting my second Monday Made it...2 weeks in a row! Hopefully I'll also have something to share next week as well. Linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for this week's Monday Made it! 

I've been busy at work tweaking my plan book for next year. I currently have one up in my TPT Store  from last school year. Last years book was a black and white version..because I wanted to save my ink for all of the other wonderful things I had purchased and printed at home. This year, I decided to update the plan book because I wanted it to be fun and colorful, like my classroom theme for this coming school year! 

I took it to Office Max yesterday and got it bound..I LOVE how it turned out. I was so shocked that it cost less than $4.00 to get this book put together. 

Last summer, I decided to create my own plan book because I couldn't bring myself to paying an outrageous price at the teacher supply store for a plan book that I really didn't care for. The prices of those plain and not cute books are so expensive...so I decided why not create something that i like, and that has everything that I want/need in it?! 

I will go through each of the sections in this book. 

I had a few more sections that I had planned for...but unfortunately, I ran out of paper to print with and I was so anxious to just take it to get it bound...otherwise, I'd keep obsessing and adding things and this would be a never ending project!

The first section is this student information sheet. 

Behind are pages where you can fill out the following:

• Student and Parent's name (for those students who have different last names from their parents..it's always good to have it down just in case)
• Email address
•  Cell phone and home phone numbers
•  Allergies
• Extra Notes
• and a place where you can circle if the child is a bus rider, parent pick up, after school care, or other...

Next up is the Long Term Planning Section.

Here is where I will plan out what big ideas/standards will be taught during what month. 

This is always helpful for me to keep up with my pacing as I teach...and to make sure that I cover everything!!

Next comes the Monthly Calendar section...

I decided to use circles so that each year you can just go ahead and fill in the numbers for each month. 

This year, I've also decided to add a quote for each month. This is a very basic and plain calendar template but I plan on jazzing it up with colorful pens as I fill in all the gazillion things that teachers always have going on in their busy lives

Then comes the Grade Book

This is pretty self explanatory. The little line up at the top is where you can write down the date of the assignment/assessment..and then below you can either write down the assignment title and/or the standard. 

Lesson Plans

This is the template that I like to use for my lesson plans. The top has a spot where you can jot down the subject area. I like to leave this blank because sometimes my math block may take up 2-3 boxes depending on the day. This gives me some flexibility. 

I've also decided to add a Things to Do box at the ending of each lesson planning week.

I'm constantly making lists of all the things I have to do each week....but I am also constantly losing those lists and am having to remake them. This way..I won't lose them and it'll be all right there! 

The last section in my book is where I keep a list of my CC math and ela standards. 

Please note that when this product is uploaded to TPT, I will not be including standards for each grade level. You will need to find your own copies and add them in. 

I had planned on having one final section which would  have been Parent Communication. I ran out of paper so I couldn't include this in here but I'll probably bind another little book to keep track of my parent communication. This is where I wanted to document all the phone calls/emails that I made to parents and the purpose for the contact...Documentation is key and it's always a good thing to record when you do contact parents!!  

That's it for this week's Monday Made it!. I'm really happy with how my plan book turned out this year!! Hopefully I'll get this uploaded to TPT soon. I have a few more things to tweak on here and have to add in a credits page.

**Planner is now up in my TPT store!  It is marked down to $3.50 for today only!

My black and white version of this is also marked down to $3.50 until midnight Hawaii time :D  

Printable Plan Book

As I was going through the teacher supply store yesterday, I couldn't bring myself to paying $14 for a plan/record book that was so simple and nothing to my liking. I'm sure for those of you who live in the mainland, plan books aren't as much as they are here..everything seems to be way pricier here in Hawaii. Anyways, I made the choice to not purchase a plan book this year and create my own!

The plan book I created has 144 printable pages for you. The pages itself are very plain, because personally, I enjoy doodling in my planners and adding cute stickers :D Here's my first attempt at taking screen shots..I still need to work on positioning haha.

Anyways..this planner includes the following:
-Cover page (However, I will probably create my own with my new handy dandy cricut) :)
-Student information sheets
-2 different types of monthly calendars
--long term lesson planning pages
-40 weeks of lesson plan pages
-student grade book and record keeping pages

The awesome thing about this planner is that you can print them again and again. I originally started with numbers in the monthly calendar but decided to leave them blank so people can hand write them in. This way, you never have to purchase another teacher calendar from the rip off education stores :P  haha.

If you would like a copy of this plan book and want to get started way early before the year starts, head over to my tpt store! First 2 to comment and leave your email address for me can have a FREE copy of this :)

PS: I must say, with all of the fantastic quality products that all of you make and sell on tpt, I find myself being totally disappointed with the quality of workbooks and supplies at teacher supply stores. Am I the only one who feels this way??