Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed and I Can Statements

It's official. I now have to post student friendly I Can statements in my classroom. Tuesday I had my pre-conference for my first formal observation of the year and one of the things we talked about was posting I Can statements in my room. I was completely honest with the boss man. I said I am really running out of wall space and I think it would be more beneficial to have meaning and purposeful content on the walls rather than something the kids won't use to further their learning.

 

 

Well, he somewhat agreed with me. He said as long as I say it before each lesson and include in some part of our learning that that would be just fine. But after some thinking I just went ahead and posted them today. The only reason I did it was because I figured out a way that it didn't take too much time and it didn't clutter up my walls.

 

 

So here is what I came up. It's so easy breezy that it would only take one 30 minute prep time to complete.

 

 

I used colored sentence stripes to write kid friendly I Can statements on. But of course I had to color code them.

 

 

Pink: Writing CCSS

Yellow: Reading CCSS

Blue: Math CCSS

 

I wrote the I Can statement on the lines and then below in smaller print I included the CCSS. It is nothing special, but it got the job done.

 

In my classroom, I have designated boards for each content area. Back by my reading tables I have our CAFE board and math focus board. In the front of the room I have a writing board used for writer's workshop, a Daily 5 board, and another writing board that is used for Daily 5's Work on Writing.

 

Here are what my headers and I Can statements look like for each of the boards.

 

Now for what we have been learning. This week, just like many others, we have been working on Johnny Appleseed. My focus was to get some science and social studies in with Johnny Appleseed but to also work on identifying facts and writing them done using a graphic organizer and then writing an informational piece using the facts we learned about Mr. Appleseed himself.

 

 

First, we watched a short, animated movie about Johnny Appleseed. While the students were watching the movie they were prompted to write one fact that they learned on a post-it note.

 

 

 

After the movie we gathered on the carpet with our clipboards, post-it notes, and graphic organizer. We began discussing all the new information we had learned. My little ones came up with some really great ideas, but I also had to really prompt them to get them to have the types of facts I was looking for.

 

 

As my little ones shared their facts I added them to the chart below.

 

 

While I was writing they were also writing on their graphic organizer that was organized the same way.

 

This is what our hallway display ended up looking like. It's really simple nothing simple but it really show cases that we are working hard and not just doing the "cutesie" things.

 

 

 

So that was day one. Day two began with us reviewing our chart and teaching them that we can use facts to write an information paragraph about Johnny Appleseed.

 

 

This was our interactive writing piece for the week. I haven't released them with any responsibility to write on the chart. I am going to take it slow this year. They did help construct the sentences.

 

 

I forgot to take pictures today. But I will add them tomorrow.

 

 

The Johnny Appleseed interactive writing that we did today is part of my Clipboard Writers: Fall Interactive Writing packet that you can get in my TpT store.

 

 

So that was just a part of my day. Now I am off to bed because this little guy has been waking up once or twice during the night and I need some good sleep!

 

 



 

Yours in Teaching,