Silence for Sandy Hook

Cyber Monday!!

Hello friends! I will be having a 20% off Cyber Monday sale at my TPT shop. TPT will also offer an additional 10% off items purchased using the code below. Click here to be directed to my little shop! Happy shopping! 

Just In Time

Hello friends! Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year! This is our first Halloween in our house and I am so excited to see all the little trick or treaters in their costumes tomorrow night. I also cannot wait to use Abby's Candy Corn Bandit unit tomorrow. My second graders are going to love it!

I created this little freebie to add to my Halloween fun!

Stop by my TPT store to pick it up! I am also putting my Bats! Nonfiction and Fiction Mini Unit on sale through tomorrow! 

This week is also Red Ribbon Week at my school. My sweet room moms decorated my classroom door for me.

How cute is that!! 

My kiddos wrote their pledges on their hand prints.

Happy Halloween to all!

It's My Birthday!

Well actually yesterday was my birthday. I was so super busy yesterday after I left school that I totally forgot to get on here to share my little surprise. :(

But... I'm throwing a sale in my TPT store! This is my first sale and I have put everything up for 20% off.

Please drop by and check it out by clicking on the link below! 

Happy Belated Birthday Sale to me!

Going Batty!!

These past two weeks we have been working on informational and literary text. We started off by reviewing what we already know about informational and literary text and made a venn diagram anchor chart to compare and contrast the two.

Then I introduced the kiddos to our new unit, an informational and literary investigation on bats! They were so excited to share everything they already knew about bats! I did more informational and literary text comparisons by using what we know about nonfiction text features to sort a stack of books (On bats of course!) into an informational book pile and a literary book pile. Then we discussed what good readers do before reading an informational text and made this bats pictograph to show our classes' feelings about bats. Hands down the majority of my class thinks bats are cool! I also took a little time to give a brief introduction on pictographs and how we use them to display data.

 Next we made an anchor chart listing all the questions we have about bats that we want to find out during our study. They were able to come up with so many questions! I loved how they were using the 5Ws and How words to develop their questions!

 Now for my new unit! I'm so excited to share this bat nonfiction and fiction mini unit! My kiddos loved using this to enhance their understanding of literary and informational text! This unit goes along with Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and Bats by Gail Gibbons! Don't you just love those books! You can check out my new unit at my little store here! Here is a little preview.

 We also completed this bat craftivity (pattern and response sheet available in my bats unit) to show our understanding of determining main idea and key details in a multi-paragraph text.

Please stop back by tomorrow for a little surprise!! Happy TGI almost F!

Quick Update and Freebie

Next week in spelling we are reviewing long vowels a, e, i, o, and u. As part of my literacy station rotation my students always work on a phonics related word sort or cut and paste activity. This week I created a simple read and write the room chart for my kiddos to complete as part of their phonics station. This will give my kids the opportunity to apply what they have learned about long vowels during these past 7 weeks of word study. If you would like a quick activity to be placed in your literacy station, word work station, or to have everyone complete at the same time you can click here for a copy.

We are also finishing up our bats informational and literary text study this week. I'm making finishing touches on my unit and will put it up on TPT soon! I'm so excited about this unit! It has truly been a labor of love and my kiddos have had a blast completing it!!

In the meantime... I hope y'all enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

More Classroom Pictures

Oh my word, it is seriously taking me so long this year to get the hang of things. Is anyone else having this problem? Hopefully everything will turn around soon!

Here are a few more pictures from my classroom...

Reading Corner

 Computer Area

 Work on Writing Area (The writing tri-fold was purchased from A Cupcake for the Teacher. This is an awesome resource! My kiddos seriously use it everyday during Work on Writing.)

 My desk and a glimpse of my Smartboard (I got the idea for the Bravo Board from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. I use it to award table points.)

 Class Meeting Area

 Math and Literacy Stations

 Close up of my Math and Literacy Station organization

 Pinterest inspired clocks! Love! No more "When do we do this?"

 View of my Word Wall (Popcorn words and boxes from The Teacher Wife. This is the first year my kiddos actually use the Word Wall as a resource!)

There you are folks... my home sweet home away from home! I hope to be back soon with an addition strategy freebie, but now off to get ready to watch the Falcons game! Rise up!

Classroom Pictures Part 1

I wanted to share a few picture of my classroom. I decided to do it in a couple of parts so that the post wasn't too long. Here we go....

small group meeting area

doorway and student cubbies

I use the hundreds chart as a way to reward whole class behavior. We draw numbers for compliments and one student turns over the number drawn on our hundreds chart. They are working towards getting a whole row of numbers! The green, yellow, and red pocket chart is my individual behavior management system. Students start off on green and move to yellow or red depending on their choices for the day.

bulletin board (Love, love my pinterest inspired border made from butcher paper!) I hung chart paper from book rings for each subject. It makes it so easy to display concepts that we are currently learning!

 I have five student tables. Each table has a bookcase along the back wall that holds ALL their journals, book baggies, workbooks, etc... One of the popcorn buckets on the top holds extra supplies. The other popcorn bucket is for their snacks. The Banker's Boxes hold incomplete work and spelling folders. Math vocabulary is placed next to the math chart paper.

This is how I organize and manage Daily Five. Each Daily Five rotation has a little bucket that is hung from the side of a cabinet. I place little "tickets" in each bucket for kids to place in the red pocket chart next to their number to show what Daily Five rotation they have chosen for the day. I got my Daily Five signs from Ladybug's Teacher Files. She is awesome!

Lastly, we made a edible map of Georgia today to wrap up our learning of Georgia's rivers and regions. My kiddos had a blast, but boy were they on a sugar high!! Here is the picture of the map I made as a model.

The blue gel icing represent the rivers we have studied. The M&Ms represent the Piedmont region. The chocolate chips represent the Appalachian Plateau, Valley and Ridge, and Blue Ridge Mountain Region. You can't really tell from this picture, but there is green coconut over the Coastal Plains.

I'll be back soon with more pictures. Sorry for the picture quality; my camera is not cooperating with me at the moment. 

TGI almost F y'all!

Hallway Display and a Freebie!

This year my classroom theme is Circus/Carnival. Think lots of red, white, yellow, popcorn, and stripes! I'm not crazy about clowns, but I do have a few here and there. You know all things circusy! Yep, I know, circusy isn't a word! :) 

I wanted to share my student work hallway display. I found the pennants at Target in the party supply aisle. I bought two so that it would be long enough to hang above my entire hallway display. I then took foam sheets, legal size, and taped them to the wall alternating between red and white so that it would look like a circus tent. The longer red and white pieces on both sides of the foam sheets are long strips of butcher paper that I cut to make the size I wanted. Student work is hung by clothes pins that I hot glued to the foam sheets.

and... A close up

The small popcorn piece accents are from the teacher supply store (here it's called The Schoolbox). This little craft we made is from Abby over at The Inspired Apple. I just love her! It's part of her Super in Second unit. Totally adorabs! I'm so excited to be in primary this year so that I can incorporate some of her fabulous ideas into my classroom!

Now for the freebie. My kiddos have been studying place value. More specifically, ways to write a number. I made this kite to use as a quick assessment. This is TOTALLY not my idea. One of my sweet teamies gave me hers, but I changed it up a little to suit my needs. I completely forgot to take the pics of my kids work. Darn! Anyways, I hope y'all can use it!

Click here to download from Google Docs.

Happy almost hump day friends! I'll be back soon with more classroom pictures. I'm finally starting to get my groove back. SLOWLY, but surely!

Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day and happy long weekend friends! These past three weeks of school have just flown by. I can't believe I'm approaching a whole month with my sweet second graders! I've been busy creating lessons to implement the Common Core into my classroom. Thank goodness for all of the wonderful resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers, Teachers Notebook, and on all the amazing teacher blogs out there. Without the help from my teamies and my teacher blogger friends, I would not of been able to make it through these past three weeks.

I wanted to share with y'all that I finally created a shop on Teachers Pay Teachers. I have posted a button on the side of my blog that links to my little shop. I have also created a new mini unit that I'm in love with! I couldn't wait to share it!

Click here to link to my Teachers Pay Teachers shop! This mini unit includes many reading response activities for A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead (I love, love that book!!), narrative writing prompts, and a "ick"/"uck" word family sort. I'm using it during our Fudge-a-mania by Judy Blume novel study and narrative writing unit.

Next week I will upload pictures of my classroom. I think I just about have everything where I want it! I hope! Who am I kidding, I'm never completely satisfied with ANYTHING! Stay tuned!

Pinspired

This post is totally non-teacher related, but I thought I'd share my latest Pinterest inspired crafts for the 4th of July.
Here is my complete 4th of July display...

These are individual pictures of my crafts that I found from this wonderful, creative blog http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/.

This fun little craft can be found at http://www.brownpaper--packages.com/.

Finally, my adorable wreath on my front door that was inspired by http://ssbuffat.blogspot.com/.

I hope this helps you to become even more "pinspired" than you already are!!

New unit and a freebie!

It has been FOREVER since I've posted. I'm determined to not make that a trend. I have created a new noun mini unit for sale on my Teachers Notebook shop. I'm super excited about it! I've been working on it for quite awhile now and I am so glad it's finally ready! You can find it here!

Does anyone know how to take a screen shot on a mac in Adobe without the black background?

I have also uploaded a noun sort freebie! You can get that at my Teachers Notebook shop here!

I will be back soon to share a couple of Pinterest projects I've been working on!

Wrapping up the end of year

Phew, our state standardized testing has FINALLY come to an end. Now it is coming to that time of the year when we start to wrap everything up. I wanted to share a couple of things we have been working on including how I have set up math tubs for a little end of the year review.

I only have 8 kiddos in my small group math class, so I decided to break them up into groups of two and have them rotate through 4 math stations. They spend about 15 minutes at each stations and my parapro and myself float around to assist when needed. My stations include a math game, computer, word problem practice, and computation practice. Besides reviewing concepts we have learned throughout the year, these stations will double up as a way for me to collect data on key math skills for end of the year progress reports. Here are a couple of pictures of my math stations.

Stations listed for each day and the names of who starts at what station.

4 math tubs with ALL the supplies they need for each rotation. I wanted to prevent them from wasting time trying to find a pencil or a piece of scrap paper or manipulatives.

My fifth graders began a response to literature unit today. I am doing a Judi Barrett mini author study that I picked up from Jessica Winston's class website. Love it!! We started with talking about vocabulary words found in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I wrote each word on a half sheet of paper and had the students brainstorm what they thought each word meant. Then, we looked up each word in the dictionary and I wrote the actual definition on each sheet. The words are currently hanging on my whiteboard for my students to refer to when we read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs tomorrow (which I won't be there for because I have 2nd grade common core planning).

Off to watch last week's episode of Revenge on the DVR. Obsessed! Happy Wednesday friends!

Missing in Action and Exciting News

Oh my word! I kinda just realized that I hadn't posted in a looong time. This was our first week back since Spring Break and we are gearing up to take our state assessments that begin next Wednesday! EEKK! Next Wednesday! So, my kiddos have been reviewing, reviewing, reviewing all the concepts we have learned throughout the year. They are truly in CRCT boot camp because I have been pushing them this week (and giving them some motivational words of encouragement)! My third grade small group writing students have been working on persuasive writing and after A LOT of modeling... we are finally writing our own persuasive pieces that were Pinterest inspired of course! I hope to share those pictures soon!

Now for exciting news... I was told this week that I will be moving from special education into general education!!! Next year I will be a second grade teacher!!! I'm all kinds of excited!!

Now off to work on master's work and get ready for our first kitchen/couples wedding shower tonight!

TGI Freebie Friday and some ramblings

All week we have been gearing up to take our state mandated standardized test by reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. There is only one more week until Spring Break and even more scary, two and a half more weeks until testing begins. EKK! My fifth grade kiddos are in full blown grammar boot camp mode. We have been reviewing every grammar tidbit that could possibly appear on the test. First, we started reviewing nouns (again). I had them complete a little St. Patrick's Day writing prompt and we tied that into common and proper nouns. I then had my kids create four leaf clovers and write four nouns that represent why they feel lucky. It was so, so sweet. They only mentioned family, friends, and pets. Not video games or clothes, but people (and animals)!

Speaking of animals...
I just had to share this picture of my baby. She is in DESPERATE need of a haircut! Does she not look like an Ewok right now?

Oh dear! She is so going to the groomers tomorrow.

My fifth graders have also worked hard on persuasive writing this past nine weeks. They decided to write a persuasive paper on whether students should wear uniforms to school or not. You can imagine the position they took... NOT! They wrote their final copies on t-shirt shaped paper and I hung them outside the classroom from clothes hangers.

Now for the freebie...
I created a Spring ABC Order Word Sort. You can find it at my Teachers Notebook store.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Oh and did I mention that Spring Break is in one week!! Thought I might just say that again!

My First Mini Unit

I just posted my first math mini unit to my Teachers Notebook store. This math mini unit is all about volume and capacity. I've been using this with my fifth graders to introduce and reinforce measurement concepts. To grab your copy head on over to my Teachers Notebook store.

Here are a couple of pictures of what comes in my mini unit...

What we've been up to

I wanted to share a couple of activities that my students have been working on lately...

My Language Arts kiddos have been working on a creative "Angry Birds" writing project that I had found through SmartChickTeacher. They absolutely loved it and were engaged throughout the entire writing process. Through this project, I was able to incorporate narrative fantasy, expository, and persuasive writing skills. I told my students that their purpose for writing was to inform, persuade, and entertain. We were also able to incorporate descriptive and figurative language mini lessons into this unit.

Here are a couple of Angry Bird warning notices that my kids created...

Each one of these were so, so cute and creative. I love how the red Angry Bird looks so much like the real Angry Bird from the game!

My math students have been hard at work learning all about finding the area and circumference of a circle. I had them make this visual to reinforce these concepts. I also attached a copy of "The Pi Song" from Super Teacher Worksheets to the back of these circles. The song is sang to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus and is a super fun way to help students memorize the formulas for finding the area and circumference of a circle.

If you haven't checked out Super Teacher Worksheets, you should. It is a great go to resource!

Happy Wednesday! We are halfway through the week teacher friends!