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!