Lesson Planning Made Easy!

Hey, all! I just posted on The Collaboration Connection about how I do my lesson plans. I've tried MANY different ways of planning, but I think I finally found what works best for me! Check it out :-)

Happy Monday! I hope the weather where you are is as nice as the weather in Central PA! It's gorgeous today!!

Guest Post from MRS. First Grade: Recording Your Own Audiobooks!

Mrs. First Grade recording Green Eggs and Ham

Hello, all! This is Mrs. First Grade (that's right, I'm the lucky gal who gets to hang out with Mr. First Grade every day), dropping by to show you how to create your own audiobooks for free! As a songwriter who frequently records demo tracks at home, I've had the opportunity to play with multiple programs that can record audio, but I want to show you a method that's easy, intuitive, and works with the built-in microphone on your computer.

The first time I tried this method was when I took a graduate class on new media and literacies. I had to create a sample book talk on The Lovely Bones that included two voices and music, and it worked like a charm! Here's how to make your own.

How to Record Your Own Audiobooks

First, go to the Audacity website and download the program-- it's free and doesn't take up much space on your hard drive.

Then, follow the instructions to download the LAME MP3 encoder, which allows you to export your Audiobooks as MP3 files-- which you can easily open on any computer, tablet, or phone!

Once you've finished those two easy steps, you're ready to start recording! Watch my screencast below to get a glimpse into how it works. I take you through the whole process, from beginning to exporting.

It really is as simple as it seems! I hope you decide to give it a try-- your students will go nuts for these recordings (especially if your spouse helps you record some books-- I felt like a celebrity when Andrew's students listened to mine!). It's easy to keep your listening centers up to date with the books you really want them to listen to, not just the ones that are on sale for 99 cents!

Drop a line in the comments section if you have questions, and we'll do our best to help you troubleshoot any issues you might run into. Happy recording!

~Mrs. First Grade

Cori is an eleventh grade English teacher who works with economically and socially disadvantaged students. She is pursuing her masters in English education and enjoys spending her rare moments of free time with the two men in her life-- her husband, Andrew, and their adorable dog, Charlie.

Mentor Sentences!

Hello friends! We had a faculty meeting about teaching grammar the other day... Our director of elementary education shared with us the idea of using a mentor text or sentence to teach grammar. I was like a kid in a candy shop. She said something along the lines of "these ideas are great for grades 2-5..." Womp womp. My heart sank. But then I started thinking. Obviously, at the beginning of the year, it would be very difficult to do this, as we are JUST introducing parts of speech. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my little firsties were ready for something like this.

Last week, I read Bear Snores On as a read aloud and the kids loved it. Since we use Reading Street, we've been talking about changes and how animals do different things in the winter.

*Click the picture to find this book on Scholastic*

This week, Reading Street was focusing on adjectives, and while I never use the grammar worksheets every once in a while, I decided that I wanted to beef up my grammar instruction a bit. I chose the first sentence of the book as my mentor sentence:

"In a cave in the woods,

in his deep, dark lair,

through the long, cold winter

sleeps a great brown bear."

I chose to do this in guided reading groups this week, as I was TOTALLY unsure how my students would respond, and I sort of wanted to be able to compare their reactions based on their reading levels. After I read the sentence to them, I asked the students WHY they thought I had chosen this sentence... I was blown away.

One of these was from my below-level reading group... I won't tell which one! They blew me away. By the end, they were practically BEGGING me to tell them WHY I'd chosen this as a mentor sentence. After we talked about how adjectives make a sentence more descriptive, I had the students complete this little worksheet.

I had the students first circle the nouns in the sentences. After that, we talked about different adjectives that could be used to describe those nouns. They rocked it. Made my day.

Do you use mentor sentences to teach language arts?