Daily Five

I've had a couple people ask how I organize Daily Five in my classroom. I thought I would do a little post to explain. It always help to have pictures! :)

First off, I have four pocket charts that I picked up at Target last summer hanging on the doors of my large black cabinet. Gotta use every stinkin' space available! Ha! I use these pocket charts to display Daily Five choices.

Each student is given a number at the beginning of the year. They use their numbers for EVERYTHING, including Daily Five. Next to their number they place their "ticket" to show their Daily Five choice for the day.  The "tickets" are from Ladybug's Teacher Files.

The "tickets" are hanging in small containers, also from Target last summer, on the side of my black cabinet. Each choice has a different container. Before Daily Five begins I pull popsicle sticks to call on students to choose their Daily Five station for the day. I limit how many students can go to Work on Writing, Word Work, computer, and Listen to Reading due to space constraints at each of these stations. One station I don't have a "ticket" for is computer. When students visit the computer station they can go to Education City or Tumble Books. I write down their choice on a Daily Five tracker chart I got off of TPT for free. I usually can only get to one round of Daily Five each day. I would like to do more, but I can't find the time. 

Listen to Reading and computers

Work on Writing (writing board from A Cupcake for the Teacher)

I have a separate table for Word Work, but I can't find the picture... boo! Word Work is the only station, besides computer, that I have my kiddos working on a specific assignment. During Word Work my kids work on Mountain Language before they choose a spelling task card. I got my spelling task cards from Amy Lemons. 

My system is by no means perfect and I already know about a bazillion things I want to change next year. Hopefully this gave you some ideas. I would love to hear how you organize/manage your Daily Five time!

Happy Mother's Day

I wanted to share really quick my Mother's Day gift for my sweet momma. 

This is also my first project with my new Cameo! Love!

Hope all the mommas out there had a wonderful day! I'm off to spend the rest of my evening with my two fur babies!

Show Me What You Bought!

Hi friends! I wanted to drop by and give a little love to some of my most favorite purchases from the big sale. I may have gone way slightly overboard, but it was worth.every.penny. I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' to show off a few of my purchases.

Let's start off with some things I bought to help get me through the rest of the year...

2nd Grade ELA 100 Days to CCSS Success Daily Review from the wonderful Christina Bainbridge

Michelle's Dollar Store Superlatives End of the Year Awards

Super cute!

Next year I'm switching to an apple theme, so of course I had to load up on clip art and digital paper...

Colorful Apples from Krista Wallden

Harvest Apples from Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah

Keeping with my chevon and apple theme... I just had to have a new word wall...

Darlin' in First

Link up and show off some of your stuff!

Five For Friday

It's Friday!!! Can I get an amen! This has been the longest.week.ever. I'm also excited that it's Friday because that means another edition of Five for Friday! 

Disclaimer!!! I did not bring my camera to school this week, so please excuse the fuzzy I-Phone pics. Sorry :(

1. First up... Happy Teacher Appreciation Week friends! I hope everyone felt super appreciated by their kiddos this week! I know I sure did! 

I just love fresh flowers! They make me smile!

 Speaking of Teacher Appreciation Week... did you hit up the BIG sale?! I can't wait to share my awesome finds with y'all tomorrow!

2. Look at my new toy!

So excited to finally join the Cameo world! I will be working on a little Mother's Day project for my sweet momma tomorrow! Check back Sunday for a little peek!

3. We've been busy learning about the life cycle of a chicken this week. We made this life cycle on a string craft.

They turned out great! 

Speaking of chickens... I had some visitors today...

One of my kiddos and his brother got chicks for Easter. Look at how big they have grown in only a month!

4. We started our all about book this week. I used Sarah Cooley's Sticky Note Research Projects to help my kiddos organize their information. They have been researching information on an animal. My kids chose an animal and completed a KWL graphic organizer before they began their research. After they collected all their information, I modeled the process of how to take their information and create a book.

You can find the book I made in my TPT shop. Just a little freebie to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week! I hope you find it useful!

5. Are any of y'all trying to cram as much last minute information in these last few days of school? That is totally me right now! I've been having those OMG I haven't taught this yet moments. Mostly because our standards based report cards do not assess every standard... at all... during the year. Completely crazy! Anyways... we are cramming learning about plural nouns right now. I used a couple of activities from my Noble Nouns unit to get us started. We did this plural noun endings sort as a class and my kids recorded the plural form of the nouns in their plural noun endings flip book. Monday we will be creating noun crowns from my unit!

Link up with Doodle Bugs with your Five for Friday snapshots! It's so much fun! I promise!

The Big Sale and a New Unit!

Hi friends! I'm just a little late posting about this, but my little store is on sale today and tomorrow!! I know I have my cart packed FULL of awesome products. I'm ready to buy, buy, buy! I can't wait to share all my purchases later this week. 

Thank you Hope King for this cute picture!

If you'd like to check out my store, you can follow the link here!

I also posted my brand new unit last night... just in time for the sale of course! 

This unit was designed to supplement your Little Red Riding Hood fairytale study. I used three versions of Little Red Riding Hood and my students spent time looking at story elements, character traits, point of view, and comparing and contrasting the different versions. Here's a little peek...

Class anchor chart (labels included in the unit). Excuse the messy handwriting!

Character Case Files... Have your students be the detective and decide who the REAL villain is! 

Basket Sequencing Activity

Two craftivities

If you want to check out this product you can find it here!

Happy shopping!

Instagram (Teacher Talk Tuesday)

Hi friends! I'm so excited to share in this fun linky about Teacher Talk Tuesday on Instagram! Teach Dream Inspire is new on Instagram!! My Instagram will have both personal pictures and teaching pictures. If you'd like to follow me, click on the button below or search for teachdreaminspire!

You wanna join in the fun?! First, go link up with What the Teacher Wants and Apples and ABC's. Then, each Tuesday use the hashtag #teachertalktuesday to find all the amazing teachers out there sharing on Instagram!

Here are some screen shots from my Instagram...

Can't wait to add more!!

Five For Friday

It's that time of week again... time to link up with Doodle Bugs for another Five For Friday! 

1. A couple days ago I blogged about our life cycle study... today... look at this little guy...

He's our first caterpillar to hang upside down! So excited! Before I left school today I saw two other friends climbing to the top to join him!

2. This week we have been learning about adjectives and adverbs. I decided to incorporate the life cycle theme into our writing. After a little School House Rock (my fav!), I had my kiddos brainstorm as many adjectives as they could to describe a butterfly and a caterpillar. I wrote each adjective on a Post-it and stuck it on our anchor charts.

Then we talked about adverbs that could be used to describe how butterflies fly and how caterpillars crawl. After giving my kiddos A LOT of examples of adverbs, they wrote a creative story using a butterfly and a caterpillar as their main characters. They were to include as many adjectives and adverbs into their story to make it as detailed and interesting as possible. They turned out too.darn.cute! 

I used Amy Lemons' butterfly template and writing paper from her life cycle unit. It's fabulous! You can grab your copy here!

3. Speaking of Amy Lemons... I also used a couple of her patterns to make our butterfly life cycle model.

4. My sweet hubby helped me to put the final touches on my new earring holder.

5. My pile of stuff to do this weekend...

My two final projects for my Master's classes this semester are due Tuesday. I'm so dreading this!!  At least the weather here is gonna be yucky and I won't feel bad for staying indoors for two days. Ha!

Happy Friday! 19 days!!