Friday Link up and My Very FIRST Freebies!

So I am linking up again with TEACHING MADDENESS and DOODLEBUGS TEACHING for their Friday linky parties. Click on their names and link up with us!

1. Well the first thing I am sharing is completely not teacher related. Today is the anniversary and mine and my hubby's first date 11 years ago! We were going to go to dinner and a movie with another couple to celebrate but, like a lot of bloggers out there, today's weather was less than travel worthy ( although no early release or snow day here) and so just the two of us went. We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's ( turkey avocado burger = SO GOOD!) and then did a little shopping before coming home. 

Kelly (aka The Hubs) is laughing in this picture. He doesn't like it, but I look best in this one so this is the one I am using. Haha!

2.  On Monday the kiddo's had no school but the teachers did. We had all day PD on math. The speaker ( David Coffey) gave us an "alien" math problem that we had to solve. He slowly gave us more pieces to it and thankfully one of my grade level partners is ridiculously smart and has a head for those sorts of things. He was able to explain it to us and it definitely made more sense. The whole point of the excersize was to put us in the shoes of our students. This made us see that we really need to give our students time to talk through problems with each other and that we needed to be more explicit in our teaching. 

 

Each grade level made a poster about what we did, what it meant, and what can we do now. I wish I had taken a picture of the 4th grade teams poster. They had this really funny narrative about their experience. Very clever. 

3. So after that math day I have been trying to give the kiddo's more opportunities to chat with each other about their math. We have been doing some whole brain teaching strategies ( mirror and teach in particular).  I am also working on coming up with a how- to writing for solving a math problem, as our speaker also talked about getting the kids to explain their thinking and also writing, writing, and more writing in math. 

The pictures I have are not of that though, it's of a few of my peanuts during math station time. 

 These are the wrap ups that come with our math curriculum. ( We use Saxon math.) We have a new fact focus every 5 lessons. We start with addition facts and then move to subtraction. When we get there we have these awesome wrap ups to help our students practice their facts. 

On one side are numbers through 0- 13 ( or higher the higher up the number you are subtracting). I call each one a key because its kind of shaped that way. They start with the first number on the key and subtract the large number in the middle from it and pull the string over to the answer. On the back side of the key are raised areas where , if done correctly, the string should match up. When they have answered each one they flip it over and self correct. 


Another thing they LOVE is to play BUMP. I think everyone knows about BUMP, but in case you don't, it involves students rolling dice and then adding ( or multiplying if you teach a higher grade) those numbers together. They use a uni-fix cube to mark their space. Its called BUMP because you can bump your opponents cube off their space if they only have one on the square. They love this game and I change the board out seasonally so it's almost like they have a new game every month. The one they are playing with is from Sunny Days. It is a free item and you can get yours HERE. One of the best things about BUMP is that a lot of them are free, including this little gem here. I get most of my BUMP games from her. 

4. Today we made our winter stained glass. We make these every year. You can check out my original post with instructions HERE. They turned out beautifully I think. 

The final product ( minus the 3 who were absent today). And yes, you can see me in the window. 

5. FINALLY! I am SUPER excited to share with you two freebies! My grade level team and I went through our common core standards during our PLC time in the fall and came up with 5 priority standards. One of them was to retell a story using the main idea and 5 key details in order. Another was to retell a story using story elements. We use Open Court for our reading comprehension program. The tests that they have are not conducive to those priority standards. So I made us some to use. Then I actually got around to putting them on Teachers Pay Teachers today and, do you know the most exciting part?! Each one has already been downloaded 5-6 times! I used a border by Krista Wallden which you can find HERE. 

NOW! I am obviously a newbie to this. SO if you see something that I should do differently PLEASE let me know. I pretty much figure out this stuff on my own through trial and error. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out how to add a border in the first place and now I have forgotten so I will have to re-teach myself. *Sigh* 

These are the posters that I made to help teach these concepts. We went back and forth with our assessments for awhile so they could get the hang of them. Now we discuss both, but "surprise " them with the one we assess with. To make these I took colored chart paper and laminated it. Nothing too fancy but it gets the job done and I can reuse them. 

You can check out these freebies  HERE!!!!!!!!! 

PHWEW! What a LOOOOOOONG post. It also took me a ridiculous amount of time ( must be the theme for the day) to post this because I was looking up and listening to GLEE performances on youtube at the same time. Oh well, at least it will still really be Friday when I link up. 

Enjoy your weekend bloggy friends!

Happy, Happy Friday!

Well, this was our first 5 day week after break ( and even before break) and I felt every minute of it! So, I am thankful for the weekend and some time to relax! ( Although not too much relaxing for me, we have plans for the next 3 weekends. Geesh, it makes me tired just thinking about it!)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday linky party AND Teaching Maddeness for The Friday Flashback. And look at me! Actually getting to it ON a Friday! :)

1. Tuesday we had our Christmas party after having to reschedule it three times. It felt very anti-climactic to me ,but the kid's had a good time. At Christmas time I like to stick with lights and gingerbread men as I feel they are very uncontroversial. I mean who doesn't love a good gingerbread man. :) I found these foam gingerbread men at the dollar store in October and bought them and some foam stickers to decorate with. I thought they would be a fun craft to do at our party as the kiddos could be creative and independent. We did a turkey glyph at our fall party that required WAY too much direction from me. 

 Aside from all the little paper backs to the foam stickers it also fulfilled another party requirement of mine...little mess! :)

 Aaaaannnnnd then I broke that requirement by frosting and sprinkling cookies. The kids had fun ,but our poor janitor! :)

2. I recently purchased Swimming Into 2nd Grade's Winter Wonderland Literacy Centers for use during station time. You can check it out HERE AT TPT. This is one of my peanuts at our pocket chart station matching up synonyms.  

 3. Speaking of station time, one of my Literacy Work Stations is the computer station. Our school has purchased a subscription to Reading A to Z for the second year in a row. I really love using it for my guided reading groups. One of my teaching partners started using the Raz Kids portion of it this year and then showed me how to set my kids up on it. Let me tell you, they are OBSESSED! I will admit it's pretty cool. They listen to and then practice reading leveled stories. Then they take quizzes on them. For each listen, read through, and quiz taken they earn points which can be used to " purchase" things for their spaceship. 

This is one of my peanuts listening to her story. I thought I had gotten a good picture of the spaceship to share and I did. However, I got her name ( first and last) in it and didn't want to be posting that! So I'll add that to next week's Friday post. :) 

4. Today we finished the last of our Christmas-y festivities. When they came in this morning they each had a present to open at their seat. I always get my kiddo's books for Christmas. I order from Scholastic so it's a double win for us. They get an awesome book and I get bonus points to get more awesome books for our room!

Isn't this wrapping paper ADORABLE! I used it last year too and I think I have enough to use it again next year too! :)

Then this afternoon we combined the 3 classes and gave them a choice of watching The Polar Express, Finding Nemo, or comfy reading. We usually do this on the Friday before break but the darn snow days kept us from it. It is always so magical to be in the library, with the twinkling lights on and the kiddo's in their jammies, watching The Polar Express on the last day before break. Watching it today was still fun but lacking some of its magic. I really feel like I should be going on Christmas break again! 

5.  This is what I am working on this weekend. I got a bunch of picture frames for Christmas and have a HUGE pile of pictures I want to frame. My goal is to turn my dining room table back into a place for eating and get all of those pictures framed AND hung. 

PS: If you are wondering why there is a knife on my table it is for opening and closing the little backing tabs on the picture frames. :)

There are my 5. Link up HERE and HERE and have a GREAT week! 

                                               

5 for Friday and I'm Back!

Well! Its been a LONG time since I posted. As you know (because I mention it in every other post), I super LOVE Christmas and I get really involved in decorating at home and in my classroom, planning fun activities for my family and my " teaching kids" as my 3 year old calls them, and lots and lots of wrapping! Needless to say, the blog got put by the wayside in all of that. I meant to at least do Farley's Currently, buuuuut obviously didn't. :) Several of the blogs I follow were doing this fun linky about our week's and while it is now Saturday and not Friday, I thought I would link up too. :) You can link up HERE. 


Last week was our first week back after our Christmas break. I was preparing myself for a lot of behavior and rules review but my kiddo's came back like they had only been gone for a weekend! It was a great way to come back! Before break we had 2 snow days, so we missed out on our Christmas party and our PJ day/ Comfy Reading day. They were both scheduled for yesterday ( Friday) BUT, we had ANOTHER snow (ice) day. Poor kids. :( Hopefully we can reschedule all of that stuff for next week and it can ACTUALLY happen!

Thing number 1 I HAVE to share is that I got a laminator for Christmas! I am SO excited. My super awesome hubby ALWAYS does a good job with my gifts and this year was no exception. I squealed so loud when I opened it, and then promptly made him take a picture of me with it to brag about on Facebook to all my teacher friends. There was much jealousy. :)

This is me and the peanut with our piles of loot to open. :)

2. This week we have been hard at work on adding 2 digit numbers with regrouping. Our curriculum really covers it hard for several days but I purchased Amy Lemons' DOUBLE DIGIT ADDITION PACK as an extension activity to use my kiddo's. On Friday we were going to do a sort of " write the room" with math problems instead. Buuuuuuut, see the above, that didn't happen. I'll post pics of it when we do get to it. :)

3. I am also working on finishing my very first FREEBIE!!! to put on TPT. Technically it is ready, but I wanted to "juj" it up a little bit so I am going to put a couple of cute borders around them and then I will post them. They are for summarizing/retelling and story elements.  Hope to have those ready by this Friday. 

 4. Thursday we went on a scavenger hunt that we were supposed to have before break. I got the idea from Fun in First Grade. It was supposed to be a back to school activity but I modified it. I used the clues that she came up with but used a different book. You can see the clues HERE. I used the book Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett since she was the author that we were studying for the month of December. 

FIFG said that Little Debbie made a gingerbread man cookie. The store that I went to did not carry them, so I decided to just use my gingerbread man cookie cutter and sugar cookie dough that I flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. 

After we got done reading the story I told the kid's I had a gingerbread treat for them. Then I had them each get a napkin and put it at their seat. They were salivating. :) I made a big show out of getting the tin from my desk and opening it. Inside of it was the first clue. Their eyes got SO big when I had that in my hand instead of a cookie for them. Our first clue took us to the library. I had it worked out with Mrs. V, our librarian, to take the tin that actually had the cookies upstairs and put them out at their seats (hence the napkin) after we had visited her. The clues took us all over the place and they very quickly got each clue. I had our principal, secretaries, lunch ladies, and specials teacher's in on it. When we got back to our room Mrs. V. had crumbled one up a little leading into our room. It was great. The fact that I was with them the whole time made it quite magical for them. They kept saying over and over " How did these get here!?" It was so great and I am glad I did it. We will DEFINITELY be doing this again next year. 

5. And last thing,  today I got my hair cut. It was driving me nuts and I love me a good stacked bob. :) 

So, there are my 5. I am hoping to be more on top of things now and post more regularly...maybe even get to a Fab Five on an actual Friday! :)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmtojckk10mb42r6Jj-dLif40Zp3Deg6kToiJyfnqfR397GK26NcY0_Z8ELOwkipMw_S7hCTEswzLhO_auktCGqXdG_Xd7GP9inwWEXAORtMBN8_W5TQd2ak8cy0RMAzGRXbWa2jbO_is/?imgmax=800

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. :)