Composting

 This is the blog that inspired me to buy a worm farm. 

https://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/

Provident Living - Education

 I've just started a company called Cynthia's Seeds, Worms, and Compost LLC -- I've been working to save seeds since the Covid school closures. I've learned about heirloom seeds and have been purchasing them from many sources. But, now after 5 years, I have thousands of my own seeds. I've been very successful with Romaine Lettuce, Kale, Mongolian Sunflower, Stevia, and Radish. I'm in the beginning stages of Strawberries, cucumbers spinach, and corn.  

Please visit my Facebook group and business pages.

I've also listed my seeds in Facebook Marketplace. 

My own ads

 Also, I'm making my own ads. It's for the company I'm so passionate about.  You don't have to click on them or buy anything if you don't wish. They are just a simple banner. But, I've learned so much from their course and highly recommend them. #Cashflowacademy

Financial Literacy

 I have been heavily influenced by Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad Poor Dad, and this blog will be taking turn and shift towards financial education. I've been taking some courses related to stock market investing and real estate investing. I've also been delving into what it would take for an LLC to succeed. I'll be documenting my own success in the near future as well. The courses I've been taking that have given me so much knowledge about the stock market are from Andy Tanner's Cashflow Academy. His team is great. They are good at simplifying the investing process, and I've been so privileged to learn from them.

New Job

 It's been a really long time, but I've started a new job in a special class and I'd like to start this blog up again and post some of my creations.

Put Reading First

I think it's important to have personal reading goals. I've been trying to read all of Charles Dickens' novels. I've been at it for a few years. And now look at this progress:

I have a passion for exploring the science of reading through practice. I feel like I've done very well. I have to post a link to, what I believe, is one of the most influential documents of my career. It became the only textbook in my first reading class that I took for my Special Education license/bachelor's program. 

Other really amazing tools include:

gutenberg.org

https://librivox.org/

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/

Because they're in the public domain and FREE!!! Other things I think are useful are the gospel library from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ -- I've used the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon and other religious books to practice with too. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and we are encouraged to read from the scriptures daily. I think that one of the things that actually helped me learn how to read is reading both the Bible and the Book of Mormon daily.

So, besides my progress with the writings of Charles Dickens, I've been using these, plus other books and also my SIOP training to help me increase my ability to read. I started in 2006 with Moby Dick. That was a hard book, and I ended up quitting, but I started it again in 2013 and actually finished it with the help of the free resources above. I used some SIOP techniques as well, like chunk and chew and two-word strategies (summarizing my reading in approximately 2 words). 

I hope you find these links helpful. They've been phenomenal in my own personal reading goals.

Gamify Your Classroom

I love making things. I took a lot of classes this summer. One of them was about how to gamify your classroom. This sparked the idea for a new product:

Gamified Behavior Trackers

I've already started using these in my own class. There's a place for a name and a word or two just to remind the student about what they are working for.

You can use a highlighter, pen, marker, etc. to color them in. It's way easier to incrementally reinforce behavior because you can be organic in the amount you fill this in. 

I think these are really great, and I hope you do too.

Assignment 5 - Peer Review Video Lesson using YouTube

Shoe Tying

I filmed myself teaching basic shoe-tying. Overall it was a great learning experience. I was very quiet in the video, and I re-film myself, but I just have a naturally quiet voice, which works out in the small group instruction. That’s what I do most of the time. I think if I recorded myself teaching I would be able to improve. The basics of voice projection and body language are something I’ve been fascinated with and working on. I’d love to work on that and record myself to see what improvements it would have on my teaching.

In receiving feedback, I think we are all trying to be very nice to each other. I expected more criticism. I know I was too quiet to be heard on my device at certain points. I think it would be good to film ourselves enough that we no longer pay attention to the camera. I think I’d be more natural either without a camera, or if I used it enough that I forgot it was there. In giving feedback, I wanted to point out the good things more than I wanted to critique or criticize what I was seeing. I think feedback can be great, and I also think we can be harder on ourselves than others are--so videoing ourselves can be great for self-critiquing as well. I think I learn something new whenever I am given the opportunity to watch myself teach.

Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/cynstevie/education/

Assignment 3 - Create a Classroom Facebook Page

Assignment 2 - Participate in a Twitter Educational Chat

I participated in the #satchatwc -- a Saturday Morning chat for the west coast. There were a couple of students from Boise State University also there for a chat. There wasn't really a topic to start out with. A professor teaching a grad class called systems leadership at NLU was the first to say he wanted to share about the power of Twitter. He invited everyone to ask questions, so I was the first to start asking questions about Special Education and how inclusion works in each of their schools. That kicked off a really great discussion with teachers sharing what happens at each of their schools. I had the most questions, and the teachers taking the class at BSU talked about what happens at each of their schools. They teach 6th grade at middle school and I teach special education for students K-3.



Our district has been urging us to include a continuum of placements for special education, and I've struggled with how to work a schedule for my students who are self-contained, those who need pull-out for a short period of time, and then trying to then schedule inclusion periods for me to come into their classroom. My principal has been really supportive of constructing a schedule to fit into a master schedule and line up with Title 1 services, but he doesn't urge me to include an inclusion class or set of classes within that schedule. I was trying to get ideas from the group. The chat is scheduled for an hour, I think, but we chatted past the hour. I may participate in another set of chats this week to give myself more experience with using this as part of my PLN.  I plan on visiting #tlap because a couple of years ago our district had the Author of How to Teach Like a Pirate as our speaker for our opening of the school year district meeting. I've since bought the book and have been trying to do more to incorporate what he taught.



I also wanted to check out #edchat and #utedchat, but wanted to do one early just in case they didn't have it this week. I saw an announcement that they weren't having it the last 2 weeks due to the holiday. I was worried that I wouldn't get this assignment done if I waited and found out they weren't having it again next week. I have another class that goes at the same time (Wed. evening). I was afraid I'd miss it. I still want to attempt to participate in those other chats. 

My PLN

Ted Ed - for content
Frontline.org -- for at home connection with parents, for content, and differentiation

Facebook.com - for communication with colleagues, parents, etc.

YouTube.com - For content, uploading videos for communication with parents and students or colleagues

Blogger.com - for lesson content, communication and collaboration with students and parents

Pinterest - for idea sharing with all of the above mentioned

Google Classroom - for collaborating with parents and students, and for connection via professional development opportunities

New Logo and links to posters and other new stuff I've made

Thia's Creations

Language Arts

Schema Poster

Questioning Poster

Synthesizing

Visualizing

Inference Poster

Metacognition
Determining Importance
Parts of a Story

More than Posters -- Questioning response sheets  Determining Importance response sheets

                            Parts of a Story Activity Pack
Fun Letter Tracing Pages

Nonsense Word Fluency - Word Machine
DIBELS Student Trackers through 2nd grade

Mathematics

Place Value Number Island Posters

Large and Small dot cards domino style

Dot card worksheets for pre-multiplication and repeated addition

Organizational Tools

Days of the Week Poster

Days of the Week Flashcards

Before Class Small group routine

End of Class Small Group Routine

Clocks for pull out classes

Small Clocks for DIY schedule

Small Clocks for pull out class 4 per page

Right-Brain Handwriting Experiment

It's been YEARS since I last posted something, but I'm really excited about my new project!


Since I've been working for over ten years in Special Ed. and I also have my art background, I've been playing around with a handwriting project. In my years of teaching, I've notice that handwriting is the one area that my students struggle with the most, it's the thing that they hate the most, and I, for the most part, cope with the problem and hope that my kiddos' handwriting will just get better on it's own.

NO MORE!

I wanted to use art to make handwriting practice fun for my kids. So, I've created a few products on teachers pay teachers (which is where most of my products are now.) But, I have some free items as samplers. My long term goal is to create an entire program/packet. I don't really know if what I'm doing constitutes a "program". I'm not scripting anything, but I probably will work out a script that I use on my own and publish it in the future. For right now this is just a set of worksheets that are CUTE, and I have categorized each set of letters by shape. There are circle first letters, pull-down letters, letters that use slant lines, and curved letters.

I've been having my students practice using Zaner-Bloser methods of letter formation, and right now I'm just focusing on lowercase letters, since those are what my students struggle with the most. I hope you like the samples. I'm going to be creating all of the letter worksheets and then putting it all together in a packet for my store, but here's a link to the samplers:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sampler-Right-Brain-Handwriting-circle-first-letters-2487698

And, as I always do on this website, here are some free posters (which are the same ones as are on my teacher pay teachers website.)

Thanks!

Teachers Pay Teachers

I just opened up an account at Teachers Pay Teachers. Many of the items on this blog will be on there. You can still access the posters here for free in their low bandwidth, jpeg versions, but you can pay to get them in the form of clipart or in pdf form which will give you a lot more options in terms of print size.

Please continue to enjoy the free posters. Some of my posters that were not my original idea will not be on there or will be on for free.

My Alias is Stevie Wonderson

Thanks for following my blog.

Revised Poster -- Reading Routine

More Routines Posters

Reading Routine Poster - 1st draft

I've been wanting to create a poster for each groups' routine. This one is a very basic Reading Routine poster. It's the first time I've created each component of reading into a logo/pictorial representation. You can use the blank space to write in your objective or other content. I love it's simplicity, but I might work with this design some more.

Paragraphs

Here's another sandwich metaphor. Just like stories have a beginning middle and an end, paragraphs also have similar elements: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion.

The introduction introduces everyone to your topic. The Body is Where all of the good stuff is and supports the information stated in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion wraps up what you talked about in a way that the reader feels a sense of closure. It's a way of saying "The End" by using much more interesting wording than "The End".

I know I could really run with the idea of "The Sandwich", and I'm going to play with it for a while. In the meantime here's a poster to go along with this lesson idea.

Repost of Class Rules Poster

The blogs following again go with this poster: