Quick Middle School Link Up

I promised myself that I would stay off blogger today... but I stumbled across this link up specifically for Middle School blogs and I had to join up!

(There's usually a big black hole for middle school things... so I can't help myself!)

Sixth Grade Tales is having a Middle Grade Bloglovin' Hop - so all my Middle School readers, head over and check out the other Middle School blogs.

In other news, I'm busy finishing my Lesson Plan book for 2013-2014.  I built it mostly from scratch and I CAN NOT WAIT to bind it to present to everyone.  Ms. OCD got a sneak preview of it yesterday at our work afternoon meet up.  

Here's a peek of the cover!

I'm including two - just in case anyone wants to pin it.... It has my logo!  Pin that picture please! :)

It's silly how the little things make me happy, but it really does!

Now, I have to break myself from blogging to finish some school work ideas.  Then, we are meeting up with some friends for dinner and Despicable Me 2!

Lesson Planning Format

It's almost hard to believe that this is my 8th year of teaching... and not ONCE in all those 8 years of teaching have I been required to submit my lesson plans.

Crazy, right?

This year, probably because all the other middle schools in my district do so, my principal required us to have lesson plans out on our desks.  All the teachers at my school wanted to make sure that we're on track with his ideas freaked out, because our principal showed the basic 7 step lesson plan format that we learned back in teacher school.  (Don't you just hate those long things?)

I've been using a template similar to what Ms. M (What the Teacher Wants) sells on her blog.  Her templates are geared for the K-3 grades and I needed something that works for middle school, so I toiled away and made my own.

I showed this format to my principal and lucky for me, he said it is okay to use in the place of the other (evil) lesson planning format that the other teachers are using.  So here is what I use:

I mean, it's not like you have computer elective lesson templates just laying around all over the internet!  I have my ELL strategies on the bottom on the page as a reminder, along with my NETS standards and the Teach like a Champion strategies on the bottom right.

I really do have to thank Ms. M for the Assessment idea of circling which assessment you're doing.  Really saves time and paper.

NETS and Assessments.  I also like having the colors up at the top.  Yes, small things make me happy.

My To Do list is usually a mile long... but I try to write in my most important things to do over the week.

So, this is my lesson plan format.  What do you think?

I'll be back later this week with my No Opt Out results! :)

Story Mapping Plan

In 7th grade, one of our main Standards is good old Literacy Standard 3.2 - Identify events that advance the plot and determine how each event explains past or present action(s) or foreshadows future action(s).

What this translates into is a lot of work in my classroom talking about Plot and how events happen in the story that make the story happen. My most repeated phrase, "Think to yourself, if this DID NOT happen, could the rest of the story happen? If the answer is no, that's a plot point." To practice this skill, we draw Plot Charts and guides, talk about the climax and foreshadowing over and over and OVER.

What I like to do in the middle of each story is have that "crayon break" - separate out an activity that allows my students to still do the standard, but to do something fun with it. So we take the story and make our story maps. I have my students take their Plot Maps, pull the events from it and make their story map. They usually have a good time creating their pictures to match the scenes. I'll designate a few boxes to be certain items, like the climax and resolution for example.

If you Google "Story Map" you'll find so many options. My favorite by FAR is the one found in this book:

25 Quick Formative Assessments by Scholastic

I've found SO many great things in this book, than any other book I've found. Usually, you can find

one to two types of forms that you can do. In this book - EVERY SINGLE form is fantastic. I frequently have my other teachers borrow this book to copy almost every page in it! If you have Scholastic Bonus Points and you can order this book, I highly recommend it.