Showing some LOVE!

It is almost Valentine's Day, one of my favorite holidays to celebrate!  Who doesn't love love!???   Hopefully, your kiddos will SHOWER you with some love this week!  

But we wanted to show some LOVE too!  I've teamed up with some amazing teacher-authors to show one special teacher some LOVE for their feet!  

A $200.00 Tieks Gift Card!!!!!!!!!

Teachers all across the country are talking about how stylish AND comfy these shoes are!  You can enter the giveaway up to 27 times!!!  Yes, you read that right 27 times!

It is EASY to enter!  

Use the Rafflecopter below to enter! 

The giveaway runs February 11th-16th.  The winner will be announced and contacted on February 17th.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Open House Success

Open House came out from NO WHERE!  All the sudden I flipped my calendar page and there it was!

How did that happen?  I always feel like I am scrambling to get ready, but not this year!  I had planned a little better and learned from my past mistakes!

Since I use flexible seating the kids don't have a desk, so I set up some stations that they could visit with their parents.

We had just made a really cute book to sort asking and telling sentences with our Rooted in Reading story the past week.  The kids just loved sorting them, so I figured that would be a great activity for them to do with their families.  It was amazing to watch them interact with their families.  

We also had our reading/writing notebooks on display.  This has been a labor of love for us this year. We have really worked hard to putting good quality work into our foldables.  The parents especially loved seeing their hard work in action.

This year I have saved all of the great work we do each week and kept them in a manila folder for each child.  At the end of the year the kids will have this enormous folder of their second grade year to keep forever.  So many of the parents were excited to hear that all of these masterpieces would be coming home in May.  The kids reactions to seeing all their work made it worthwhile.  They sat with their families in a flexible seating option and shared everything in their folders.  I heard so many parents compliment their writing and their directed drawings that we have been doing!  Having them get positive feedback from their parents was worth a MILLION DOLLARS!

Hands down the best part of the night was GO NODDLE!  (Can you believe I didn't even get a picture?)  I set the computer up on my screen and the kids could select a GoNoodle to do with their families.  They LOVED it!  I was amazed at the kids ability to use the computer and encourage their families to join in with them.  Watching them dance and laugh with their parents was spectacular!

So this year..... NO STRESS!  No last minute coloring and gluing!  

It was so wonderful that I know this is what I will do for years to come!  

Happy Teaching!

March means MOTIVATION!

My kiddos and I are being Motivating in March!

We have taken a pledge to be motivating to not only each other, but ourselves!  Here is one of my favorite sayings....  I mean who doesn't LOVE confetti?

Last week we celebrated Dr. Seuss and we dressed up, read, and even had the pleasure of the Superintendent visit our class to read to us!  What a treat!

I tried to create as many fun activities as I could to go with our skills during the week and the Dr. Seuss stories we read.  Here are our TRUFFULA TREES!  We have been working on adjectives and we filled the trees with five adjectives to describe our tree.

We have been working on timelines and I pulled out facts from a Dr. Seuss biography that we read to let the kids create a timeline.  Some of the facts had dates and others they had to use the text to put them in order.  We worked in groups and had lots of fun making our timelines.  If you don't have the biography Dr. Seuss The Great Doodler, I highly recommend it.  The kids loved it and it will FULL of interesting things about his life.  I read it as a class read aloud and then we went to WORK!

Here are some pictures of us HARD at work!

Each group had 12 events from the text.   The kids had to work together to sort them into the correct order.  Each group had a copy of the book to use for help.

Then they had to double check their sort using the text.  As they found each fact, they glued it on the timeline.  I bought a roll of blue paper and didn't think about it rolling up while they tried to work.  PLAN B (as I call it when things go wrong) We grabbed some dictionaries to keep the ends down.  That's what I get for being fancy with my paper!

The groups did amazing and even came up with Dr. Seuss Themed titles for the top.  All in all it was a great project and the kids had a blast.  You can see that it was wear red day or dress up like the Cat in the Hat.

So our March is off to a MOTIVATING start!

My teaching BBF and I couldn't decide who would be Thing 2...  we both wanted to be Thing 1.  So we compromised on this.  Lee makes everyday fun and I'm so glad I get to share this teaching journey with her.   Find your teaching BBF and watch how much fun each and everyday will be!

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Happy Teaching!

Getting ready for testing!

April is right around the corner....  let the testing count down begin!

No matter how much we try, it always worries us!  Will those kiddos do good?
OF COURSE THEY WILL!

I really want to make this year as fun as I can while we spend time reviewing.  We are going to have table contests daily.  I'm using little cheap buckets from the Dollar Tree and every time someone from the table gets a correct answer their team gets a coin.  I'm going to use the plastic coins we have in our math kits. At the end of the day we count up our money to see who has the most.  The winners get a treat on the way out the door!  So simple and they love it!

We also made an anchor chart for answering multiple choice questions.  We went over this everyday this week and it made a big difference for my low kiddos when we took Friday tests.

I have been working on some big projects and tonight with the help of my teaching buddy who did the editing for me, they are finally ready to go!

I wanted a set of games that my on-level kids could play during RTI time.  I only have one student in RTI, but I pull a few friends to his small group time who need the extra practice.  So that leaves about 15 friends that need something to do.  It is always a challenge to keep everyone on task and a little quiet.

The packet has 4 pre-made games and one blank game.  I am planning to use the blank one for my advanced kids.  A few weeks ago I had them make a math game and they loved it.  So, when I was creating this packet I made a set that they could use to create games.  We are learning all about pronouns next week, so their first challenge will be a pronoun game!  I can't wait to see what they come up with!

The pre-made games cover phonics, story elements, language, and reference book skills.  All of the stuff on SAT10 that we need to keep fresh in our minds!

The game boards come in color and black and white!

These are the game cards.  One from each of the different games!

Story Elements!

                    

Phonics!

Reference Books!

Grammar!

Differentiation is a big deal for my class!  I want everyone to be engaged.  I knew that my advanced kids would enjoy the pre-made games, but I knew they would finish quickly and might need a challenge.  These are two of the projectable pages to use to make your own game.  It also has blank game boards and cards.  I will review the directions with them and the leave the example page up for them to refer back to while they work.

We also had a great time this week playing SCOOT!  My kids love it!  They are always so quiet and on task when we play.  We practiced contractions and telling time.  I print off the cards and laminate them. I let my weekly helper tape them all over the walls of the classroom in the morning before we get started.  We grab clipboards and away we go!  They jump right to work and move so quietly! SCOOT might be the best game I ever learned!  Here is a picture I snapped real quick when 2 kiddos were at the same card and using their pencils to count by 5's.  LOVE IT!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Happy Teaching!
Tracy

Testing, Mother's Day, and Gifts Oh My!

Well it has been two crazy weeks for us.  We had state testing, had to get ready for Mother's Day, and celebrated my student teachers last day.  So here are some pictures of what we have been up to.

To get ready for state testing, we created a "Let it Show" book.  We played the song from Frozen and decided that our theme would be Let it Show.... a little play on words, but it worked!  We made books and copied bunches and bunches of these charts I made.  I wrote one on every standard that was suppose to be on the test.  The kids took the books home to study and I made up some little quizzes to go with them.  Kids that earned at least an 80% on them got a treat!  It was a huge success!

To motivate us to work hard during testing we had an Earn your way to an Ice Cream PARTY!  I divided the picture into 8 sections and each time they worked hard and showed effort, they colored in a spot.  It was amazing how excited they were.  I found the ice cream picture online.  Just google ice cream picture and pick one out.  I am happy to report that every child enjoyed a BIG HUGE ice cream treat after testing was over.

Mother's Day was here before I knew it.  We made one of my favorite presents to send home for mom. We made flowers and on each stem the kiddos wrote a reason they loved their mom.  We wrapped them up like flowers from the florist and wrote the note in CURSIVE!  Yes, we have conquered cursive.  I have to admit that teaching cursive to third graders is so much easier than when they are in second grade!

Last week we had to say good-bye to our student teacher.  His time with us went so fast.  I searched online for the best gift and I decided that a little bit of everything would be nice.  So I made a tub full of recess toys, pens, sticky notes, folders, games, chalk, and anything else I could think of.  It looked so cute all arranged on my kitchen table.  I wish I would have taken a picture before it took a ride in the car, but I didn't even think of it.  I really think he liked it and I know he will get lots and lots of use out of everything.

My last two pictures are of new ideas....

Paint in old glue bottles, well that is just genius!  I don't know why I haven't ever thought of that!  We made two projects using the paint in a bottle and it works like a charm.  No puddles of paint and barely any on their clothes!  This is a winner!

I love to do a project at the end of the year.  This year I decided to do a 50 state project.  The kids love learning all about the states and it isn't in our standards, so the end of the year is perfect.  I found these great books at Michael's Craft Store....  only a $1. They had lots of different titles and subjects!  You never know what you are going to find.

That's about it for tonight!  I only have 8 1/2 days until summer!  I can't believe how fast it has gone!

Enjoy those last few weeks!

Happy Teaching!

Tracy

It's Testing Time Already??????????????

Where has the year gone?  I can't believe we will begin state testing in two weeks.  Did I get it all covered?  Are they going to bubble and not get lost in the answer sheet?  I am starting to have those testing nightmares already!  Ha Ha!

This post will be all about test review.  YIPPPPEEEEE!

We reviewed conjunctions with a quick activity.  Each child picked out two sentences that they could join together with a conjunction.  They wrote each sentence on a sentence strip.  Next, they glued a "glue bottle conjunction" to join the two sentence strips.  This really helped them understand that they had to "glue" the sentence together to make it correct.  We still are working on capital letters and punctuation, but they basically have the idea.

I had to share some other Pinterest finds that another teacher on my hall found.  She made this cute replica from a picture she saw on Pinterest.  So cute to help them remember the difference between area and perimeter.  I'm going to made this to my charts for next week.

 They made some "pledges" for testing time.  "OWL" use my BEST Test Taking Strategies.  Adorable!  Each child made their own owl and write their favorite strategy on it.

We made a BRAG BOARD on the chalkboard to show off good work from our review activities.  The kids LOVE to see who's papers got picked and we make a huge deal as we put new stuff up.  Here is a picture of the board from one day this week.

                           

We reviewed magnets and made these flipbooks.  They turned out GREAT!

We have been using several packets from my TPT store to help them review.  At this point in the year I don't have time to spend with a lot of prep.  Most of them are just print and GO!  Which I LOVE!

The first one is no prep to review sentences that don't belong.  It's a project on my board and use product.  No copies at all.

Elapsed time!  Holy cow is that a hard skill.  We have been much more successful since we started putting it on a number line.  Here is something that we will be using next week to review.  It is another SCOOT game that is a simple print and go.  Nothing to put together.

We are also reviewing place value with a SCOOT game.  Can you tell we love to play SCOOT!  My kids LOVE to see the cards hanging up when they come in.  It's so easy and it gets them up and moving.  

It has an answer sheet and key, as do all the games.  Since paper is a little hard to come by this time of year, we are going to just write our answers on notebook paper.

We will also being using one of my newest products for math test prep.  All you have to do is project the questions on the screen.  It comes with answer cards that you can print off for the kids to use or you can use whiteboards.  

I also have math and ELA test prep available in my TPT store for my 1st and 2nd grade friends.  It is aligned to common core and SAT 10.  All of the test prep bundles are on sale right now.  : )

So that's about it for today.  I am getting very close to my first goal with my blog and TPT.  As soon as I hit it look for some very special "thank you" giveaway and a sale to celebrate.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Happy Teaching!

Tracy