Goal Setting with Superdog: The Heart of a Hero

I LOVE this fabulous book, Superdog:  The Heart of a Hero by Caralyn Buehner, the author, & Mark Buehner, illustrator.  They are the husband & wife team of Snowmen at Night and the rest of that wonderful series!  

This story is about Dex, an adorable dachshund who wants to be a hero, but starts out as the little dog who is bullied by a giant tomcat named Cleevis.  Dex decides to start training (and studying superheroes) and gradually builds up his strength and endurance, despite continuing to be picked on by Cleevis and his friends (showing perseverance).   One day Dex helps a puppy across the street and earns the name Superdog.  This is a great story to help teach students how to set goals, to make a plan to achieve them, to work towards achieving them, to monitor their progress, and to evaluate their results.  I especially love the ending because it helps students learn that once they meet a goal, they can help others achieve their goals, too.  

I created a simple goal sheet to help students learn how to set their own goals using this book.  You can download it by clicking on the picture below.

After completing our goal sheets, I took photos of my students & printed them out.  Then, the students had to turn themselves into Superkids!  We posted our Superkids with our goal sheets.  It is a Superfun project! I will add some photos of the finished products when I am able to edit them for sharing.  Enjoy!

  

Happy New Year!

Hooray for 2013!  One of my goals for this year is to actually give my blog some time & attention.

I have recently started creating items for TpT and I found it has helped my instruction a ton because I have a huge spread of levels with my class this year. So far I have been concentrating on creating items to support our Everyday Math program since we teach small groups and centers to differentiate our instruction. Right now we are preparing for our Mid-Year Assessment, so I have created a few centers to support my students' learning goals:

  Completing Patterns (Continuing repetitive patterns)

  Telling Time to the Half Hour: (coming soon) I bought sets of blank clocks from the Dollar Tree, cut them apart & laminated them, then made a class scoot game at each level (telling time to the hour, half hour, quarter hour, and all three mixed together). I will take pics to post because they have really helped my students. I also bought a GREAT set of blank clocks with space to write the time on the bottom. I numbered them, laminated them, and gave one to each student. We use them often and it has really helped my kids tell time much better this year!

 Measuring to the Nearest Inch: I am using centers created by other TpTers and am working hard to help my students learn to measure from the zero line and NOT the end of the ruler!

 Analyzing Tally Charts FREEBIE:

Counting Coins (Money): All of my students have sets of coins for counting practice. We use them frequently with our white boards to practice counting mixed groups of coins. Making the jump from counting set groups of coins (all nickels or all dimes) to mixed groups is a very difficult skill for many students. I always teach my kids to line up the mixed groups of coins from greatest to least to help them with their counting.

I hope you find these activities useful!  Thanks for checking out my blog!

This next school year will be my third year of teaching first grade. I am very excited to be staying in the same place next year and working to improve my craft. I am looking forward to taking time to plan and organize this summer after the whirlwind of this past year which included a cross-country move. I am really thinking about how to best manage my centers or stations during my Literacy Block and Math Instruction. I am also going to find a better way to teach writing because I really have a hard time balancing small groups with stations or centers and the direct instruction or workshop time my students need to become great writers. Not to make my wish list too long, but I'd really like to plan more integrated STEM or STEaM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) projects. I'll start sharing ideas soon. Right now I'm learning how to make my blog look cuter and having fun doing it!

Why Teach Forward?

I believe our mission as educators should be to prepare our students for the world of tomorrow by teaching them the essential skills they will need to be successful in our dynamic, global society.  I have taught grades K-4 over the past 15 years in both urban and suburban regions from coast-to-coast in English Language Learners (ELLs) and General Education settings.   

My goal is to help educators work together to achieve the important task of providing all of our students with rigorous and relevant instruction that builds on the work of those who came before us.  By working together and sharing, we can help more students set and achieve high learning goals. 

I have wanted to start a blog for years, but was waiting until I felt I had something new and amazing to share.  I'm not there yet because I'm still learning and I think I always will be.  If something I share here can help an educator reach their students in a new way, encourage teachers to try new and different ideas, highly engage their students or just be inspired as so many others have done for me, then I will feel successful.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  I hope it will be a wonderful adventure for us all!