Tracy Davis' Blog

Reading the article about the pirate lesson made me really excited about beginning it.  The idea of combining different genres of books about a particular subject is a great way for students to learn about that topic. This way they are exposed to all aspect and points of view about the subject.  This lesson plan also includes a notebook to encourage students to write.  The pull out section has the entire lesson broken down into different parts which is great for teachers.  By breaking it apart into different sections, students have the opportunity to spend time exploring one aspect of the lesson.  When they are focused on only one part, then tend to learn more.

This is a picture of my sun cathcer.  It is extremely special to me because it was made from the flowers that were placed on my papaw’s grave.  My papaw passed away last year, a few days after my 21st birthday.  He had lung cancer and had struggled for months.  On the back there is a paper inside the glass that says “In loving memory of Dean Davis”.  When I see this I think about him, and the vibrant colors of the flowers helps me to remember all the good times.

This is my personal cook book!  I love to cook! When I was preparing to come to college, my Grandma decided to make me my own cook book full of all my favorite recipes and a few others.  This is special to me because I know how large my Grandma’s recipe collection is and she went through all of it and hand wrote this book for me.  Not only did she include the recipes, but she also included some cartoon drawings and funny quotes.  Because it is a notebook, she left room in the back where I could add recipes, and I have.  It is now full and I will be moving to a new notebook.

“Love that Dog” was an interesting book. I really like the way that the author wrote it in a journal style.  The main character Jack started out hating poetry and claimed to not be able to write it, but by the end of the book, he loved poetry and was the best poet anonymous poet in the class.

In “Brown Angels” I like that the author included all the pictures that he loved to collect and look at.  I think that it added to the poems.  There was a variety of different poems with different feelings behind them.  Some were joyful, some were humorous, and some were more sorrowful.

In “all the small poems and fourteen more”, there were a numerous poems about animals.  I love animals, so these drew my attention.  There were also poems about nature and then there were poems about random objects.  All of these poems were unique in their own way.

I enjoyed this section of Notebook Know-How for many reasons.  Going on what I said earlier, I really like the way this book is written.  I like how Buckner adds specific examples from the children’s notebooks when she is explaining her meaning.  This helps me to understand the reasoning behind her methods better. 

In this section she discusses how she tries to get her students to write more about certain topics.  She also talks about how she tries to get students to expand on their ideas and to do some research on topics that they are writing about.  She was trying to get them to add more detail to their writing to make it more interesting.

I did a name project when I was in eleventh grade, and just like then, there isn’t much information about my name.  Tracy is short for Teresa and Davis was derived from David.  I did find it interesting that there are 1,502 people in the United States that have the same name as I do.  I also thought that it was interesting how the name Tracy is the 154th most popular name in the US.  Even though it is both masculine and feminine, 80% of people with the name are female. I was surprised to see that Davis is the 7th most popular surname in the US because I didn’t realize it was so popular.

To my parents, my name wasn’t anything special.  They were hoping that I was a boy, so they only had a named picked for a boy, Andy Dean.  When it turned out that I was a girl, they didn’t have anything in mind.  My mom named my older sister, so to make things fair, my dad came up with my name.  Neither one of them knew another Tracy at the time, so they agreed on the name.

I really enjoyed the first two chapters of this book especially because it was written by a teacher.  The book itself was easier to read and understand because it wasn’t full of statistics and facts but just useful information from a fellow teacher.  Someone who is working in the classroom, tried an activity and decided to share her adventure with other teachers.  I love that she included things that worked for her and things that didn’t.  She wasn’t afraid to admit to her downfalls, which really to me shows her strength and passion for what she’s doing. 

This book also reminded me of the movie Freedom Writers.

Hot Blogging was a good informative article about how to incorporate technology into your classroom assignments.  In order to do so you have to be aware of the different resources available to you as a teacher to use.  It’s a great idea to ask your students what they would like to use a blog for and to allow some flexibility when it comes to the blog.  Your overall goal is to stimulate HOT skills, and there are many ways in which you can do this.  One way is to create an open discussion about certain topics where every student can freely express their opinion and comment on other students ideas.  By doing so, it will cause the students to have to think critically about statements made before they can comment.

Title:  I Wonder Why Camels Have Humps and Other Questions About Animals

Author and Illustrator: Anita Ganeri

ISBN #: 1-85697-873-7

Publication Date: 1993

About:  This book is full of questions about animals.  With each question is a picture, an answer to the question, and other fun facts about the animal.  Although this is an information based book, it is still written with easy words for beginner readers.

Uses:  You could use this book with a science lesson on animals, or just keep it in your classroom library so that students can find out interesting facts on their own.

Title:  Tigger’s Family Tree

Author: Isabel Gaines

Illustrator: Studio Orlando

ISBN #: 0-7868-4367-5

Publication Date: 2000

About:  Tigger wants to go bouncing, but no one will go with him.  Tigger is really sad.  Roo tells him to ask someone in his family, but Tigger doesn’t know who is family is.  So they go to Owl’s house where Owl explains that everyone has a family tree.  From there they go in search of Tigger’s family tree.

Uses: This book really explains family and the family tree, because it sorts out the confusion of the “family tree” and an actual tree. Also included in the back of the book is a few activity pages with vocabulary words to review with beginning readers.

Title:  Owl Moon

Author: Jane Yolen

Illustrator: John Schoenherr

ISBN #: 0-590-42044-5

Publication Date: 1987

About:  This story is about a little girl and her dad that go out on a snowy winter night to go owling.  The story is written in the little girl’s point of view as she tells about the adventure of walking along through the snow in hopes of spotting an owl.  She describes the sound that her dad makes, calling out to the owl in hopes of a return sound so they know which direction to travel.

Uses: You can discuss the winter season or owls.  Because the little girl and her dad went looking for owls, you could discuss owls and their habitats.  Also this book is written in verse form, so you could use this book with a lesson on verse.

On day five and day six, I just continued with my assessments and working with the students.  The students are really excited and know when we come in.  Back during week one, Mrs. Ross told the students that each one would have an opportunity to work one-on-one with either Danielle or I, and they havent forgotten it.  They constantly remind me, “Ms. Davis, I haven’t gotten to read to you today,” or “Ms. Davis, when do I get a chance to use the computer with those words.”   They love to have someone to sit and listent to them read their book during independent reading time. 

I started working on my math assessments this week, to see what students know and understand about subtraction.  It was interesting to watch the way students solve problems and the way that they explain how they worked the problem.