Shameless Plug of the Week!

Here is my shameless plug of the week....Alicia T! (click her name to go directly to her TpT store.)

I have worked with Alicia for the past few years and she is full of amazingly creative ideas. She is actually the one who convinced me to start a Teachers Pay Teachers store. Although all of her products are great and very professional, her Mega Packs are amazing.

One of my favorites is her First Grade Math Mega Pack. It is incredible thorough....click here to view it. It includes an activity or two for every first grade Common Core math standard.

And for my shameless plug of myself- I just added two new items for common core language standard L 2.2. My goal is to have a packet for every ELA and writing standard in the common core. It is hard enough switching standards- I want to make it an easier transition.  I have many items completed but like to use them with my students before I post them. Kid tested I guess you could say :) Check to the right of your screen for a link to my TpT store.

Reading Week 2014!

I love reading week...maybe because it is the week before vacation....maybe because I love books.....

This year we continued our tradition of a Miss Alaineus parade.  If you haven't read the book by Debra Frasier, put it on your list! Check out her website here. It is a great book about a student who mistakes the word "miscellaneous" and it leads to a classroom catastrophe! It is a great book for vocabulary studies.  For the parade, all of the students pick a word and represent it in some way. This is one of a few things we do at school where the kindergarten is as excited as the fifth grade! Unfortunately, I can't put up their pictures but you can check out other parades on Debra Frasier's website. This year our staff decided to pick characters from The Wizard of Oz and then choose a word that represents that character. I was the yellow brick road and my word was journey. These pictures I can post :)

We also added the "Guess the Young Reader" board this year.  Teachers and staff provided pictures of them reading as youngsters with their favorite book. Students had to put a name to a face. It was a blast! (I'm number three!)

Mini Note Takers

I don't know about you all, but my students love to do things that they "older kids" get to do. During our recent Solar System unit I taught the kids how to take two column notes. We started slowly and with a ton of modeling but they loved it! (I should remind them of this when they get to middle school. hahaha)  As a reward for "class compliments" my students chose to watch a Magic School Bus movie on space. I was correcting papers when I noticed one of the kids not on the carpet sprawled out like the others. He was taking notes!!!! How adorable is this? I asked if he wanted to join the others but he told me "I have to study and go to college. I can watch movies at home."  Can't wait to see where this kid goes!

My Creative Ma!

Since I can remember my mother has created things; cloths when we were kids, cabbage patch kids because the demand was so high, beautiful woven scarves, amazing quilts, and most recently these amazing art quilts (and cards too!).  I hope that her creative gene rubs off on me!

My sister-in-law is a school librarian in MA (MrsLodgesLibrary.com) and she is incredible! My mother made us these alphabet letters for our classrooms.  I use them for for centers and decoration. Each letter has fabric that represents the letter. X has xray, Y has yellow and yoyo.  If you want your own, she sells them in her Etsy Store - To Keep Ewe Warm.  We have spent many trips to fabric stores trying to find fun fabric~

Math Manipulatives

Our current math program calls for the use of a lot of manipulatives. I am a firm believer that students at this age and developmental level rely heavily on the use of manipulatives.  I do find about 25% don't want to use the materials because they know how to solve the problem in other ways or as they say "faster ways". I usually have these students show me they know how to do it and then allow them to use their own way to solve.  It is important that students learn many ways to solve problems and then independently choose the strategy that works best for them. 

For this particular lesson, students were just starting to learn about arrays, making rows and columns, and understanding that this represents multiplication.    On a previous worksheet, the students were asked to draw lines to represent the rows. I thought this group was so creative. Although I didn't ask them to draw the rows, they used their pencils! So creative. Just another reminder that allowing students to be creative always leads to something great! (my apologies for the crooked picture...looks like columns here :-) )

Poetry Week

With the new Common Core there are so many standards we are responsible to teach. Luckily, I found a way to fit in poetry! Reading Literature standard RL.2.4 states that students will describe how words and phrases supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song. With the kids surrounding me on the carpet,  I started our week by reading poetry by Shel Silverstein, Ken Nesbitt, Eloise Greenfield, Jack Prelutsky, Roald Dahl, and many others.  For thirty minutes straight my students sat in anticipation of the next poem I would read. Some made them laugh, others made them wonder, and still others brought out emotions that I don't think my students knew the written word could bring out in them.

I am still completely shocked that my students sat for a half an hour! It was such a lesson in how much children want to learn when provided with something interesting or new.  We discussed how the written word has so much power.  The words one writes can make someone feel a certain way.  My students were so excited to start their own adventure in writing poems.

Brainpop Jr. has a great short video on poetry. It introduces a few important terms and types of poems.  The kids and I made a KWL chart and picked three types of poems to write this week. On Monday we wrote acrostic poems using our names, Tuesday we wrote shape poems and on Wednesday we wrote Haiku's. Throughout the week students could add to the KWL chart themselves.

The new standards put a lot of pressure on teachers and I felt as though I had started to lose a bit of that freedom in flexibility.  I had started to lose those teachable moments that take you away from your intended lesson only to fall into a better lesson because of student curiosity and interest.  Yesterday I had one of those moments when you sit back and realize that your students were enjoying learning.  They got so into their shape poems. They started to naturally group each other by image and helped each other complete their poems.  I heard children asking each other questions, complimenting each others' pictures and poems, and generally working in cooperative groups.  I stood back and just watched for a few minutes. This was one of those moments that reminded me why I became a teacher.

It was all about ice cream for these girls! They came out great. I will post a few soon. 

School Is In Session!

Another great year has started! I have a wonderful group of students who are so ready to learn.  They have learned our classroom routines in record time and I feel like they have been in my classroom for weeks!  This year has brought a lot of changes to my district from leadership to curriculum.  It should be an exciting year...

I started a new board this year. The Target dollar spot last year had these french fry containers that immediately made me think of Fry words! I bought them all up and put them in a storage bin until just a few days ago.  I am not 100% sure how I will use them but here is my idea. My students are on various Fry word lists and gain new words at different rates. I have always put their individual words on rings but they tend to get lost in the shuffle.  This year I will test the students, put about 10 words at a time on their ring and they can keep them in their Fry containers.  When they have free time or need their words for center work, they can easily grab them.  We will see how this works! :-)