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!

Five for Friday... A Day Late!

Well, I'm finally back with a post! I'm going to try to start posting more than once a month! :) Last week grades for first quarter were due, and that basically consumed my life... So now that that's over, there's a bit more time to take pictures, blog, and breathe.

I'm linking up with Five for Friday (a day late!) to share with you what we did this week!

1. We've been working hard in guided reading! We use the second half of our reader's notebooks to write about our reading during guided reading. With my below level students, we spend a LOT of time doing guided writing, where we work together to write a sentence or two about our text each time we meet. While I help model the writing, the students are sounding out and writing in their own notebooks. (Note: I have gotten VERY good at writing upside down!) I've also made little on-the-fly word family flip books with my students (within their notebooks), previewing a word they'll see a lot in the text. It's good reinforcement of a sight word, understanding how to use a chunk we know to figure out new words, and this is a quick tactile way for students to practice making words.

2. We've started learning about Pilgrims and Native Americans in social studies. I started the unit by providing students with photographs (from the Scholastic First Thanksgiving website) of a Pilgrim homesite and Wampanoag village (through their Virtual Field Trip resources) and artifacts from the Lakeshore Native American Resource Box. Students worked in groups to record their observations and inferences about what they saw. They didn't know we were going to be learning about Pilgrims and Native Americans before we did this, so I also had them guess what we'd be studying based on the photos and artifacts.

3. In reading, we focused a LOT on using schema when reading nonfiction books. I know a lot of people use a T-chart (What I Know/What I Learned) to track prior knowledge and new learning, but I really like using a web. It gives the opportunity for students to more easily notate corrected misconceptions (see the "have gills" part of the web in the upper right corner) and to add to schema by branching off of a part of the web (like the "have a blowhole on their back" portion on the left).

4. We are adding to our CRAFT menu with our new reading strategies! I used Ladybug's Teacher Files' CRAFT board as a modified version of the CAFE menu. I also reworded some of the strategies we've added to be more first grade friendly. (I wish my bulletin board was a bit wider... Those are too close together for my liking!)

5. I am FINALLY feeling better after a rough week with little to no voice. How cute is this letter from one of my sweeties?!

Have a great weekend!

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!

Back with a Teaching Blog Round Up Post

Hey readers! I'm sorry to be so MIA lately. I told myself that I'd blog only if caught up on everything else, and... well... I'm behind in life, I think! :)

Anyways, I did stop by and post on Teaching Blog Round Up, all about my homework notebooks for this year (which are working GREAT)... Click below to check out my post!

Have a great night!

I'm BAAACCCKKKK! With a Little Five for Friday, Too!

Oh boy! I just looked at the date on my last post and cringed.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind! I thought I'd stop by and share some of the things we've been up to during the past three weeks of school! And I'm linking up with Five for Friday to do it! (I'm very exclamation point happy tonight... Probably because it's Friday!)

We have been launching the Daily 5 in our classroom! I've been using Daily 5 for several years now and I just LOVE it. My students have already been building stamina for Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone. I wanted to recognize students who were making good choices in Read to Self, so I put their photos on one of our anchor charts!

Next week, I'll introduce our Word Work choices. I wanted to be able to easily rotate our materials in each bin out as my students move into more advanced materials. I used to have bins labeled with a photo of the game or puzzle. This year, I made numbered tags for each bin, and a poster with matching number tags. Each tag has a clear adhesive pocket next to it that holds a 4x6" photo. Those will house pictures of what's in each bin, and I figure they'll be uber-easy to change out as materials change!

(Love the FREE posters from A Year of Many Firsts!)

As part of our community building unit, we've done a lot of work with rules and how to deal with different types of scenarios. We made this chart (again, a big shout out to A Year of Many Firsts):

We also read Julia Cook's The Worst Day of My Life Ever and Tattle Tongue, as well as Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and The Recess Queen. We role-played scenarios and talked about how bucket fillers would handle the situations. We have award-winning actors on our hands! :)
 
My kiddos made mathematicians from Amy Lemons' "Let's Get Started" packet... Aren't they just too cute?!

This year, we really focused on launching the math workshop. We previously used Everyday Math but are now moving to a more workshop-based format aligned to the Common Core, and to get students to be more independent problem solvers and mathematicians, we worked on several skills, such as building stamina for math games, how to work as partners, and what mathematicians do when they're through solving a problem.

Well, I'm off to have a late dinner and head to bed... We're off to Disney on Ice in the morning! Good night!

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!

PHEW! Revised Kevin Henkes Writing Unit... Sale and Giveaway!

Well, I feel like I've slaved over this for FOREVER, but it is finally done!

I have majorly revamped this unit! I made each lesson a full page, with mini-lesson format (connect, teach, active engagement, link, share):

This will give new and experienced teachers alike a little guidance in how to teach using the workshop format, and how to teach this specific unit.

There's a unit overview to help you organize your planning. I typically teach one lesson a day, but you can always extend lessons as needed to meet your kiddos' needs.

I've included a mentor text list and sample anchor chart:

You'll get a student sample:

And rubrics (two versions, one with and one without CCSS, plus a celebration rubric):

And finally, you get some final draft paper for your kiddos' final pieces!

I've taught this self-created unit for several years now and it's one of my favorites!

In honor of finishing this unit, I'm putting my whole store on sale for 20% off for today and tomorrow only! Click the picture of the cover above to go to that item, or click HERE to go to my store!

And if you're still reading, and you're the first two to comment with your email address, I'll send you the unit FREE!

Have a great Monday!