TPT Awesome-ness!

Please tell me you all took advantage of the HUGE sale today on Teachers Pay Teachers?! What a great deal! I got A LOT of loot today for less than $20! Needless to say I am spending a good portion of my night tonight cutting out my laminated station pieces, while flipping back and forth between The Voice and Dancing With the Stars. :)

Check out what I purchased today: 

( You may note that they are mostly Christmas activities...what can I say? You need only read a post or two of this blog to know I LUH-HUV Christmas!!) 

The picture is a little fuzzy but the first one I bought is called How to Make Hot Chocolate. It was created by Jeannie Hunter. You can check it out HERE.  My grade level team has been really working at making sure we understand what is expected of us with the new common core standards. One of the writing pieces we are responsible for is informational, including how-to writing. So this piece will be perfect to assess that as well as make a cute craft. :) ( Oh! And drink some hot chocolate!) 

Next up I purchased Full of Cheer, which is 10 Literacy Centers. It's by Swimming into Second. ( Sidebar: One of my favorite blogs and TPT stores.) You can get yours HERE. This is the one I am working on cutting out the lamination for tonight. :) I love the different Christmas-y ways of practicing skills my kids need to work on. There are synonym activities, cause and effect, and ABC order among others. They will go along well with some of the fall stations we have been working on. Can't wait to start introducing those into our station rotation next week. 

And of course, what Christmas would be complete without The Polar Express? On the last day of school before break we have " The Night Before Christmas (Break)" at my school. Everyone come's in their pj's and we have comfy reading day. In 2nd grade we watch The Polar Express in the library. I thought this would be PERFECT to use that last week of school. So excited! This was by Christine Statzel and you can get your's HERE. 

I am REALLY excited to do this Secret Santa activity with my peanuts this year. It's such a fun idea and I think they will really have a good time with it. Every Friday we do a project and I think this will be this Friday's project. This was created by Across the Hall in 2nd Grade and you can get your copy HERE.

I pinned this Find, Tally, Graph activity and also a winter one a couple of weeks ago. So I KNEW this was going in the cart today. It's such a simple, but great, idea and will help my peanuts with their graphing skills. I printed off enough copies of this so they could have their own packets. I don't have much space in my classroom so I look for activities that will be fun, interesting, engaging, purposeful, and PORTABLE! :) This definitely fits the bill! You can find it HERE. It was created by Renee Dooly. 

Finally, I have the LONE non- Christmas item in my cart. Again, going back to the common core standards, one area that we need to do more of is opinion writing. This is perfect for that. It was created by Surfin' Into 2nd Grade ( another fave blogger) and you can get your own copy HERE. 

I don't know how to do a linky party ( YET anyway). Everything I have done on my blog is all my own trial and error. Someday I will sit down and figure out how to do one. In the meantime I would still love to hear from you if you also purchased a goodie today on TPT. 

Now, I am off to cut out piles and piles of lamination. :) It feels a little like the beginning of the school year again. 

A Special Visitor

For those of you not familiar with CCA ( the school I teach at), you should know that in terms of schools and districts it's very small. The middle/ high school is right across the street from our elementary building. So my mom, who teaches math at the high school, has come over to my classroom frequently in the time that I have taught 2nd grade. My dad has seen my classroom before ( when I first got hired) but that was 6 years ago! 

I mentioned before that I have a pre-student teacher in my room this year. One of her professors who came to observe her knows my dad. She told him he should volunteer in my classroom. ( She kind of gave him a hard time about it.) So he asked if he could come read to my kiddo's some Wednesday afternoon. ( His day off.)

Well, today was that day. He came in after lunch and read Arthur's Thanksgiving to them. ( We are studying Marc Brown this month for our author study.) The kiddo's loved it and I think he really got a kick out of meeting them. We invited him back next month to read us a Jan Brett story since we will be studying her then. I think he will come back! :)

( We wear uniform shirts at my school but these aren't it. This morning we went on our annual field trip to a local dentists office. He pays for the gas and bus driver so it is completely free. He and his staff show the kids around the office, show them how to take care of their teeth, give them a shirt and a tooth brush. They make molds of their fingers and he put's on a magic show. It's great!)

Election Day at CCA

I have worked at my school through 2 elections now. During the one four years ago, one of my grade level team members came up with the idea of having the school vote and then reporting the results in an assembly. He figured out how many electoral college votes each class would have based on number on students, and then explained about the popular vote and the electoral college. It was really cool. So this year we did it again. 

Before we voted, we read a Scholastic News magazine about the candidates and about the election process. Then one of our 5th grade teachers sent her students around with their essays on who they thought should be elected. The read their papers to our classes and gave the students some good information on each candidate. 

Our school is 3 stories. On the 2nd level is 2nd and 3rd grade ( plus our academic center, computer lab, and music room). So the 2nd floor was our precinct. The 3rd grade team made this uber cute voting booth for our floor

Outside of the booth

Inside of the booth

We sent our kid's out of room to this lovely lady here. This is Miss G. my pre-student teacher. She ran our precinct. Each class had a color assigned to them. She checked their voter identification cards to make sure they were who they said they were. :) Then she crossed their name off of the list and gave them their ballot. We had some that had Mitt Romney listed first and some that had Barack Obama listed first, just to be fair. :) She also gave them an " I VOTED" sticker afterwards. 

 Then they brought their ballot over to this box.  The big box behind it was so that Miss G. could dump the little box out because it filled up FAST! 

This is one of my peanuts putting her ballot in the box.

This is where the pictures end because I forgot to bring my phone with me to the assembly! After all the kiddo's had voted, my teaching partner tallied the votes and created a power point presentation. He pointed out some information from last time and compared it to the way the votes were going this year. ( For example, our kindergarten and first graders voted more for Obama both years than the person he was running again. However, our 4th, 5th, and 6th graders tended to vote for Obama's opponent. Interesting.) He taught them again about the popular vote and the electoral college and when it was all said and done CCA had elected Mitt Romney as president. However, just like last time, CCA did not predict the winner. So apparently, pollsters need to start checking out our school. LOL. 

The kids loved it and I think they, and I, learned quite a bit in the process. Sorry, this post was not the next day as I said it would be...busy, busy, busy. :) Hoping to get a few more posts in over the next couple of days. I take a bunch of pictures intending to post and it doesn't always happen. I'm clinging to the fact that I am posting WAY more than I did last year. Going to go enjoy the rest of The Voice and Dancing with The Stars. I get to attend a conference tomorrow so I get to sleep in a little! :) Enjoy your Monday night friends!

November: Currently

Happy Election Day friends! I don't care who you voted for so much as that you DID vote. We held a mock election at our school today. It was quite fun. I've got pictures and a post ready to go for that for tomorrow. But for tonight I am linking up with FARLEY to do November's currently. Next months currently goal is to be in the top 50. :) 

Motivational Monday

Anyone else have a true case of the Monday's today? My peanuts and I really did today. I super love my kiddo's ,but at one point today I thought someone had snuck into my room over the weekend and removed the battery from my clock! While perusing facebook I found a new post from Smiling in 2nd Grade about her linky party: MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY. SO perfect. I am hoping to be inspired for tomorrow ( and the rest of the week) and hope I help to jump start you as well.

Let me start with something funny and lighthearted. Who doesn't feel motivated by these Ryan Gosling pictures. At the very least they make you giggle. :) 

This next one I love because it is all about getting back on the horse or back in the fight so to speak. Yes, there are going to be frustrating moments and times when we get down on ourselves and want to give up. But you can't. You have 22+ peanuts who need you to fight for them. Who need you to be strong for them. You have to be their voice. You have to love them and do the very best job for them that you possibly can because they deserve that. 

And for all those perfectionists out there like me, there is this little gem. :) Also, good to keep in mind when you are working with those struggling students. See how far they have come, not how far they still have to go. 

There you go friends. Some motivation to keep you going this week. :) You can do it! Link up and motivate the rest of us!

Currently ( My First One!)

Ok! My first Currently! I've been wanting to link up and do this since July when I really got into blogging. Unfortunately, I don't have Power Point on my home computer ,which is where I usually do all my blogging from. But since I do at school I decided to struggle through today and figure this thing out! And only 19 minutes later, I have my very first Currently. Now to go link up HERE with Farley and follow the three rules. Happy Friday everyone!

I'm Alive! and Reveal Part Deux!

Well, as you can see I have not posted since September 16th! Basically what happened, in terms I understand, is something went wrong on my home computer. My husband had to take all the photo's and video's that we had on our computer off and save them to a thumb drive. Then fix something on the computer so that we could actually get on to the internet. There is more to the story but not being the computer geek whiz that the Hubs is I didn't understand half of what he said when he explained it to me. :) Anyhow, I am BACK and ready to do some more revealing! 

These are views in what I consider the front of my room. Mostly because it is what you see when you first walk in the door. I have some close ups of this area below. My Listening and writing station's are in this area, as well as part of my library. Gotta love a basket full of gym shoes. :) 

 This is a close up of my "Meet Mrs. Robinson board". I put out pictures of myself and my family doing things that I/we like to do. In the middle is a Meet The Robinson's movie poster that I got when I was still working at Family Video. Back before I got my " real" job as a teacher I rocked it as a video store clerk. : ) I put my face over top of one of the characters. It is the highlight of the board. Also, don't you love the bulletin board border I have this year. I love the polka dots. I think I am slowly going to replace the ocean with a polka dot theme. :) 

 This is my Where I am Chart. Each student has a seahorse with their name on it. When they are in our room their seahorse stays at the top. When they go somewhere in the school they move their seahorse to a new spot. ( Funny story, two years ago I decided to change it up and use snails and seashells for the tags. But ALL YEAR LONG I called them seahorses. So I went back to those.) 

 I made that chart my first year of teaching. It was obviously pre-pinterest so it is not as cute as I might like. But I love it for sentimental reasons. I have replaced many of my things from my first year throughout my time in 2nd grade, but this one will live on for as long as it can.  

 These are close ups of the area of my room I love the most. I am obsessed with the little nook with the blue Adirondack chairs and the poster. I LOVE IT!!!

This is one more view that I SUPER love. My AR reading progress tracker. Each student has a worm ( clothespin  that moves along the fishing line as they take AR tests. When they get to 100% of their goal I let them read any level they want and also go for extra listening station time. I just LOVE the colors in this picture. It all looks SO pulled together and teacher-y I just love it. 

Next to my reading corner is my carpet area. This has my rolling white board that my hubby brought me from work ( So thoughtful!) and this is where we do most of our directed teaching time. You can see the cute chair that I decorated over the summer as well as my teacher chair. ( My friend Mrs V. found it for me my first year of teaching!) 

 At our school we follow the CHAMPS behavior program. ( CHAMP's is an acronym for CONVERSATION, HELP, ACTIVITY, MOVEMENT, and PARTICIPATION. It really helps to make expectations clear.)  My grade level team and I worked on making different CHAMP's codes for different times in our day. Since we all use them it helps us to be on the same page when we work in each other's classroom's and also just makes us that much more of a cohesive unit. The red is for presentations, the yellow is for direct instruction, the green is for independent work, and the blue is for group work.  

This is our character traits bulletin board. Every month we focus on a different character trait. Last month it was respect and responsibility. This month it is self control. We give awards to the students that demonstrate those character traits. My winners will be going on a fish in the pond. I am pretty excited about my arrangement this year. I am able to have a standards/ I can statement board ( when I take down the Meet Mrs. Robinson board this weekend), a word wall, a board for student work, and a place for our character education. This has not happened before this year. :)

This is a shot of my back wall with my limited cupboard space. Since some classrooms don't have this little gem I will not whine about what I don't have but celebrate what I do. :) A couple close up's of this area follow.

This is a close up of our " Whale" Done Work board. Sometimes I pick what goes on the board and sometimes they get to pick what goes up there. I like to change it out every couple of weeks or so. 

These are my student mailboxes...nothing fancy. I just wanted to show off my seahorse light from IKEA. It was hanging up on the wall but the screw that it was resting on is too big for the hole and the shape of the light is too awkward to keep it up. I need Mr. Robinson to come in and hang it up for me, but we have been so busy he hasn't had a chance. All in good time. 

 Here is a close up on the bookshelf and rainbow trout from the last post. You can see my teacher toolbox here too....Just realizing that they trout kind of looks dead in this picture. I'll have to make sure to prop him up more tomorrow! 

AAAANNNNDDD, I leave you with one last view of my cute-y, cute, cute, reading corner. :) ENJOY! 

 Well, that's all folks....I was noticing that I have hit 77 followers! ( WHAT?!) For only having 1 at the start of the summer that is not a bad haul of people! If I can hit 100 by the end of this month I'll think of something cool to give away as a thank you. :) SO encourage your followers to come check me out. I promise to never be gone this long again ( computer willing!)