HUGE TPT Milestone Giveaway

Hi everyone!

I've been gone for FOREVER, but guess what?

Recently, I hit a TPT milestone! It took roughly forever (I've been on TPT for years!), but it CAN be done. I am so excited to share the news with you, that some fellow bloggers and I decided to throw a GIVEAWAY!

Want to enter? There's TONS of great goodies to be had!

Just enter through the Rafflecopter below, and be sure to share with your friends!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Halloween Math Freebie!

Hey everyone!

It's been FOREVER since I've blogged. Literally, two months. Yikes.

It's been a tough start to the year. But I'm enjoying a rainy Columbus Day off with my kiddos after a trip to the children's museum, so life is good! :)

I posted on Teaching Blog Round Up about a Halloween freebie I just posted in my TPT store. Click below to go to my post and grab your free ten frame print-and-go center!

Enjoy the day off for those of you who have a nice little three-day weekend! :)

What a Slacker... And a Valentine's Day Freebie!

I kinda cringe every time I look at the last time I posted... Geesh. My New Year's resolution was to be better about posting here, but alas, things get in the way!

I don't know about you all, but all these snow days and testing have left me feeling so behind at school! But we HAVE been doing some awesome work with the Civil Rights Movement, and we are venturing into studying slavery next. A couple years ago I started doing research projects on famous African-Americans, and those always turn out AMAZING! I'm excited to get those going in a week or two.

We studied Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the ways in which he's shaped how we live today.

We started out by making a schema map about MLK:

We completed the I Have a Dream craftivity by A Cupcake for the Teacher and they turned out awesome!

I just love the writing my students did to go along with their art:

We read about MLK, Rosa Parks, and Ruby Bridges, and created webs about them:

Tomorrow we are going to a theatre performance about MLK, Rosa, and Harriet Tubman. Can't wait!

We also got a few DonorsChoose projects funded... Amazing! This is the cover one of my kiddos made for our thank you letters:

(We had many hardcover copies of favorite books donated... Hence all the book characters. Can you tell my kiddos love Mo Willems?!)

And, if you're looking for something to use with your students for Valentine's Day, I have this freebie in my shop for you!

Just click the picture to grab it for yourself.

Happy Wednesday!

What Does the Elf Say?

Can anyone else believe that the holidays are sneaking up on us so fast? I certainly can't! I'm not totally ready - okay, not even close. The UPS guy is going to get to know us REALLY well during the coming days, since online ordering is my new BFF with two kids 3 and under.

Speaking of kids, we went to see Santa... And we got the classic one happy kid/one screaming kid picture. I love it. :)

Anyways, my kids have gone... well, how can we put it nicely? Umm, nuts. Ever since the calendar turned to December, they've been WAY more energetic than their usual selves. And this is with 19 boys and 7 girls, which is already a pretty energetic mix.

So, I've been looking for a quick, easy, and low-maintenance way to help encourage good behavior. I'm too cheap to spend $30 on an Elf on the Shelf, and couldn't find a knockoff, so I did what any thrifty teacher would do... Make a printable!

Each morning, my students walk in to find a couple of students with one of these notes, a York peppermint patty, and a bit of glitter on their tables. Uber low maintenance, quick, and the kids are loving it. Click the image above if you'd like to grab a free copy for yourself!

Off to grade some papers... Don't be jealous. :) Goodnight! 

Free Perfect Attendance and Honor Roll Signs

Tomorrow I'll be seeing (hopefully all!) of my students and their families for conferences. We hang signs outside our door noting which students have earned honor roll (all As or Bs) and perfect attendance (100%... no tardies either!). I thought I'd post some editable signs I made for this year on TpT to share with all of you!

You can edit these PowerPoint files simply by inserting a text box over the slide and typing your students' names in the box. Easy peasy!

Just click either image above to go to the download.

Have a great Veteran's Day!

FREE Halloween Gift Tags!

My daughter is now preschool-age, which means lots of fun parties at school... And bringing treats to school! I remember my mom always making these awesome treat bags to hand out on Halloween, and I'm determined to continue the tradition with my own kiddos!

I wanted to make a cute little gift tag for the treat bags (crayons, Goldfish, and bubbles) my kids will be passing to their classmates, so I whipped up a little something. I'm also printing copies for my gifts to my students (a $1 Scholastic book and some Play-Doh), and thought my fellow teachers might like to have a copy. So here you go!

It's nothing fancy, but it has adorable Creative Clips clip art, and how can you go wrong with that?!

Just click the image above to download for FREE!

Dog Days of Summer Giveaway... And a Freebie!

Hey everyone!

I'm part of an awesome collaborative blog with some lovely teacher bloggers over at Teaching Blog Round Up, and we have an awesome giveaway for you all!

I've teamed up with these bloggers for an awesome Dog Days of Summer Giveaway!

The Dog Days of Summer Giveaway Grand Prize

Winners Choice from these TpT Stores

HoJo's Teaching Adventures, The Phonics Phenomenon, KFUNdamentals ($12 or less), JD's Rockin' Readers, Always and Adventure in Kindergarten, Little Miss Primary, Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings ($12 or less), Primary Junction, The First Grade Scoop, Fun for First, Fun in K/1, Miss V's Busy Bees, You Might Be a First Grader...

and

Vocabulary Work for Literacy Centers from Primary Inspiration

Lemonade Stand Craftivity from Teaching in the Tongass

Backpack Bonanza from Fantastic First Grade Froggies 

All you need to do is enter by clicking the giveaway button above!

I also have a FREEBIE for you all!

 

I've created a cut coloring page for each grade kindergarten through fifth! I plan to have these at my students' desks for them to color as I deal with supplies, parent visitors, students moving into my class at the last minute... You know the drill! 

Here's a close-up of one of the pages:

 

This will be an easy activity for my firsties, and will also provide a little sample of their coloring for a portfolio or simply to take home that first day. You can get it by clicking the cover image above!

Stop on by Teaching Blog Round Up and TBA Freebie Friday for more FREE goodies!

Next Year, I'm Definitely Going To...

Hello everyone! I'm back in action here. :) It's been just a tad bit cuh-RAZY at work, as you all well know. We aren't out until June 20, but with testing, assembly prep (my students are singing "Surfin' USA" and are cute as all get out, although I don't think I ever want to hear that song again after Wednesday afternoon), end of year filing, etc... It's all kinds of crazy.

But I was blog hoppin' a bit and found this great linky from Finding JOY in 6th Grade...

 

I just had to partake. :)

At the beginning of every quarter, I swear up and down that I'm not going to fall behind with grades, that I'm going to enter them in our electronic gradebook the day I give an assignment... Then life happens, and I have a pile of papers roughly the size of a phone book to grade! That's my life this week, anyways. I really MUST make sure I set aside time to grade each day... And I think part of that will mean spreading out the days I give assessments. Does anyone else give a million on Fridays? Anyways, something that I have found helpful when it comes to report card time is keeping track of the end-of-quarter grades so I can see at a glance how kids are doing from quarter to quarter. I know, there's probably some way to easily see that electronically, but I like to have a paper version in my gradebook that I can use to check very quickly. I made the form below (click it to download FREE) to help me track those end of term grades:

I find the process of forming guided reading and even writing groups to be a pretty easy thing, but for math, that's a whole new thing. We're moving away from Everyday Math next year and making teacher-written units, so perhaps it will be easier to group kids based on a particular skill. I need to make sure we have more of a mini-lesson/guided practice/independent practice and conferring set-up... and more math games, too.

Our school district is becoming pretty big on UBD, but I'm definitely guilty of not having a unit entirely finished before I start teaching it! My goal is to get it together and have those units totally done before I start teaching them... Printables, rubrics, and all.

Well, I'm off to grade and laminate some more before bed... Have a great week! :)

Teaching Blog Round Up!

Just a quick check in here... I had a PD for my school's area today, and it drained me even more than 29 six and seven year olds in the last month of school do!

Anyways, I just wanted to let you all know of a great collaborative blog that I'm so excited to be participating in...

There's tons of great ideas, freebies, and more. Check it out by clicking on the button above!

Happy Tuesday!

Five For Friday... On a Saturday, and May Currently!

So, I've been meaning to link up for Five for Friday for for.ev.er! But of course, time seems to slip away, and on Friday nights, after getting the kids to bed, this happens:

I know I can't be the only one this happens to. Right? RIGHT???

So, I'm a day late, but here goes!

1. We have FINALLY started getting some warm weather! First it was cold, then rainy, and finally this week, we hit the 70s!

We enjoyed a little time at the park. They both look so big in this picture!

2. We finished up our plant unit this week. This is the awesome work of one of my kiddos. (Check out that handwriting!)

If you're interested in this craftivity and the other experiments, reading responses, and other goodies from my unit, check it out by clicking below:

3. This week marked the beginning of our end of year testing. What?! We go until June 20 (gulp!) but we started testing our kids with BAS already.

Which, of course, necessitates lots and lots of this:

(Iced, french vanilla, cream and sugar... Yum...) 

And maybe this is a weird thing to notice, but on the cups in the ads, there's always like the flavor above the "coffee" (like where "iced" is on this cup), but that's never what it has at the store... Hmm...

4. I posted my Friday Folder comment sheets a few days ago, and came back to tell you a little more about them. First of all, a sweet reader notified me of a typo on the Spanish version, so I fixed it up and it's available to redownload on TpT.

 (Click the image above to download for FREE)

I was asked about how I used this form, so hopefully I can give a couple helpful hints!

For several years, I've used the communication folders from Nicky's Folders. They are awesome... I've used the same ones for about the past three years and I'll definitely be able to use them again next year. (Plus they're only about $1 a piece... Totally worth it.) They have a view pocket on the front, like a lot of binders do, and I slip the sheet inside. I print them on cardstock - it's easier to slide in and out that way.

I fill out the date, behavior and work habit codes, and make notes on them about any tests, things to work on at home, etc. Then, I fill the inside, which comes with printed labels on each pocket:

Any work that needs signed goes on the left, and other work to keep at home goes on the right.

My students bring the folders home on Fridays and back on Mondays, and it works like a charm!

5. Finally, I gotta brag on my own kiddos a bit... Check out my daughter's drawing (she'll be 3 in August):

(That's a face with hair, eyes, a circle nose, a smile - which is hard to see - and the straight line up is a tongue! Plus an A in the corner for Avery.)

And as an added bonus, in being even later than usual even for me, here's my May Currently!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Oh' Boy Fourth Grade!

Friday Folders Made Easy - Free Download!

This week, I printed out my last Friday folder cover sheets of the year (sniff sniff). I've used Friday folders for the past few years and LOVE how it helps improve communication with parents while minimizing the random graded papers in kids' backpacks. I used to have these really intricate behavior and classwork forms and comments for each student. I typically run about 30 kids a year, which meant slaving away over those forms each Thursday night.

The form I used this year has been the easiest yet (I found something similar on Pinterest and modified it to fit my students, although I can't find the original post to save my life!).

I have many Spanish-speaking families, so I use a bilingual version, but one in English is available in the same download.

Just click the picture above to get this form FREE!

Also, I hit over 300 followers on TeachersPayTeachers and I'm ALMOST at 150 here... Maybe it's about time for a celebration? Check back soon!

Have a great start to your week!

Finally! Updated Clip Chart Calendars

Well, I thought I could outsmart this whole flu thing that had been going around. I didn't get a flu shot and ended up regretting it... BIG TIME. I was totally out of commission for like four days, and I'm just FINALLY starting to feel like my normal self nearly two weeks later. Sigh.

But now I feel back to normal (almost), and I've finally finished something I've been meaning to do - updating my clip chart calendars for parents! I use a clip chart in my classroom (I have two for free downloading in my TpT store), and I have been using these charts to communicate how students do each day with parents. It has worked WONDERFULLY! The students have poly folders with prongs that we use for homework folders. I print one calendar per kiddo each month on cardstock (easier for the kids to slide in and out) and slip it into a sheet protector in the prongs. If you don't have access to color ink, I've included a black and white version that the students can color in the key for. The kids color the calendar themselves as I circulate to make any little notes, and BAM! In about 2 minutes my 28 kiddos have their clip chart colors available for parents to see and sign off on.

It has been GREAT for documentation, because each month I pull the calendars and file them away for each kiddo. Plus, it's rewarding to see good behavior (or improving behavior) charted out for the kids in a visual way.

This is what each calendar looks like:

Click the pic below to snag your free clip chart calendars:

I'm linking up with Manic Monday!

Plants Unit, Currently April, and a FREEBIE!

Well, spring break is over.

Sad.

On the bright side, we started new units in ALL subjects today... Holla! Well, I love our plant and Kevin Henkes units, which we began today, so I'm in a happy lesson planning place. :)

I worked away during my break to get my plants unit updated.

 

This is what the old unit looked like. It makes me want to throw up a little. So I did a little PowerPointing, and this is the result:

MUCH better! 

What's included in this unit:

- Unit planner for 10 days of lessons
- Suggested books to read aloud
- Instructions for all activities
- Plant life cycle mini book
- Labs including observing soaked bean seeds, fruits with various seed types, growing bean plants, and water transportation
- Root, fruit, and leaf sort
- Flower facts craftivity (NEW for April 2013 update)
- Original plant song
- Unit assessment (NEW for April 2013 update)

If you'd like to grab the unit, click on the picture above to take you to my TpT store!

We did the first activity today, a RAN (a form of a KWL that allows for misconceptions... Which we all know firsties can have a LOT of!):

(Those kiddos are inquisitive - our Post-Its of questions spilled into the misconceptions box! Gotta get smaller Post-Its!)

Tomorrow, we're going to start talking about the life cycle of a plant. I made this little freebie for you to snag:

Click the picture above to go to my TpT store to download the freebie. It is a short reading passage with a brief five question true/false quiz to check comprehension.

Also, I thought I'd post my Currently April. :)

It's about time to call it a night... I am in for a LONG day tomorrow!