Catching Up

It's been a different year so far.  To quote one of my newest favorite characters, Iva Honeycutt, not "bad-different, interesting-different."  In my second year in the library, things are falling into place but I still find myself staying late, coming in early, and spending part of my weekends at school.  Granted, I have two kids with me loving to use the high-speed wifi (and sometimes a dog for companionship!), but I just wonder when I'll catch up!

This past week, we had a two-day visit with Candice Ransom, which was AWESOME!  She was able to come two days (Thursday and Friday), so we could work with smaller groups in the library (roughly, two resources classes per day for K-5).  I guess the "bad-different" part was that I was so engaged with her talk and the kids' writings that I completely forgot to take pictures!  I'll instead share some of the display and the two books I've been reading with my 2nd-5th graders in preparation for the visit (all the sticky notes are bookmarks for the different classes - we're still working on the books!).  I have to say, if you've never read Rebel McKenzie, it is now one of my favorite books!  Excellent for older elementary as well as the young adult audience.  Read it and you'll see :)

We've had some great lessons this year, but I still feel behind where I should be.  Have I introduced "Adopt-a-Shelf" yet?  No, and my shelves and the treatment of them shows that!  I JUST got the teachers to agree to send my former library helpers in this past week (we've been in school since August 12) due to the earlier start of the academic day (they only come 1 day/week).  After I "refresh" their training, I'll open up applications for new helpers for 3-5.  I also haven't introduced Virginia Readers Choice to my 4th and 5th.  I know they have until the beginning of April to read the books and vote, but the books are in and waiting on them! :)

What HAVE I done?  I think I did a pretty good job of introducing/reintroducing Dewey Decimal System to 2nd-5th, refreshed 3-5 and retaught 2 how to use our online catalog, Destiny.  We've done an author study in anticipation of Ms. Ransom's visit.  The first week of school we did a refresher on library rules and book care.  Why do I feel like this isn't enough for almost the beginning of October???

Ah well.  I sit looking at my "to-do" list and realize I need to get to the point!  One thing I've been working on today is uploading some of my younger students' lessons/activities.  We have 3 Autism classes and a 4 yr old PreK and a 2-3 yr old PreK.  Not exactly a Dewey audience!  However, I realized I had 6 lessons I had done with them that were pretty fun and successful, covering different skills, that I hadn't shared!  Please feel free to peruse them using the link to TPT (they're also on my TN site as well).  Be SURE to download "Gus, the Dinosaur Bus" since that is a freebie!

If you'd like to know more on what Candice Ransom did with the students (the focus was on writing - wish my teachers had sat in, it was amazing!), please let me know and I'll do a separate post on it!

The Busy Life of a Teacher Mom

Hah - that needs no explanation, right?  

I had promised myself to blog at least once/week during the school year, because there's tons of time on the weekends, right?  I have to confess, that is NOT what I'm thinking Sunday night or getting up Monday morning!  It usually is more along the lines of "Where did that weekend go?  One more day!  One more day!"

I've signed up to do several blog hops/freebies that are coming up that I wanted to highlight before I get to share what we've been up to this week in our classroom. :)

Be looking for "Friday Fall Freebie" starting October 4!  Several bloggers, including myself, are sponsoring a freebie each Friday (I think there's 13 of us?).  So be sure to hit the blogs Friday/Saturday AM to check it out!  The theme won't necessarily be fall for all of us, but I know my first one is a cute Fall writing prompt that my class did on Thursday that I can't wait to show you pictures of!  Think 4-square and q-tips! :)

The second is less of a hop and more of a giveaway and linky!  I'm linking up my best-selling "Basic Fraction SCOOT" as a prize with Table Talk with C and C's linky, "Best Selling Math Activity Giveaway and Linky!".

We all love those SCOOT games!  It's a fantastic way to get your class up and in motion while reviewing a concept.  This is one of my early SCOOT creations, but a goodie.  I named it "basic" because it follows our second grade standards where students need to identify the fraction and are just starting comparing.  So, it's good for end of unit first and second graders, and a refresher at the beginning of unit for 3rd and up!  

I'm currently having an issue with Publisher to load up my original (and I have no idea how to pull pics from PDFs), so I'm sending you my link to go check it out (sorry!).  Click {here} to check it out in my store!

Okey dokey....what have we been up to lately?  These are some of the activities we've been up to in September, since I just realized I submit more on Instagram than blog!  Whoops!

Our Eric Carle Unit - our Harcourt Trophies has the story of  The Mixed-Up Chameleon, so last year I wanted to take it a step farther and make it into an author study with the books I had available, as well as some borrowed from a teacher-friend.  I plan this year on binding the projects together in a book for my students to take home!  Because of pre-testing for our district, it's been lasting over a couple of weeks....we have not painted nor read The Little Cloud, but it's on for next week!

Our school participated on September 18th in the United Way Day of Caring and each child, during resource time, got to put their handprint on the wall in the front hallway of our school!  Our walls were a drab gray before.  I know there's plans to decorate the whole school (we have colored tile scattered throughout the school which is what made up the colors of each square).  Doesn't it look cute?  Teachers and staff got to put their handprints on later in the day!  We had UW workers that are (somehow) connected to UVA (which is 30 min from us) to help out for the day!

Constitution Day - got to read my favorite We the Kids and we made our own class Preamble, which now hangs outside in our hallway! If you've never read or heard of that book before, it breaks the Preamble down to kid-language. 

Matter Ice Cream....every year at the end of our Matter unit, our 2nd graders create ice cream (liquid to a solid!).  Can you tell my kiddos were excited?  

Story Problems - we use Investigations series at school....if you've read my earlier posts, you know I am NOT exactly a fan.  In Unit 1, it has students adding 2 digit numbers with the strategy of drawing pictures, which is FINE except for my struggling lil' ones.  So, in order to assess their learning, but using smaller numbers, I created "From Apples to Bananas" which tests the same skill of understanding story problems but in smaller chunks!  Always a fan of clipart to make items more visually appealing, the kids really liked these and loved the variety that matched their interests.  I even have some "challenge" ones since my class ranges from below to above.  It's at my TpT store, if you want to check it out {here}

Finally, I wanted to share with you a Whole Brain Teaching strategy that has gone over so well in my class - the "Genius Ladder"!  As you can see below, you start with a "blah" sentence and add details, extend it, and make it into a story.  After doing this many times with my students whole group, I made one for my students' writing journals and we've done it together, so far.  My goal is to give them the "blah sentence" and have them do it independently.  To learn more about Whole Brain Teaching, their website is www.wholebrainteaching.com.  They have a ton of free stuff, but if you're interested in doing it in your room, I highly recommend buying the book.  I'm leading a PLC in our school about it (we are a very small group), so I'll let you know how it goes!  Since I'm a newbie at it, but have implemented it the last 32 days, I get to lead it!  Hopefully, I'll be able to post some information on here as I go.  You should definitely check it out!

 

So, that's been September in my room (or at least what I've taken pictures of!).  I fear I've been more loyal to my classroom blog than this one :( except for one Friday, so be sure to take a peek there as well at Youel Soar High in Second Grade.

One more plug - Limeades for Learning!  Sonic sponsors this along with Donors Choose, so if you have a moment, head over there and check out the great projects that are posted.  I hope you'll consider voting for one of my 2 projects.  I am VERY easy to find - type in "Youel" as keyword (I'm the only one in there!).  Thanks! :)

Adios for now - hasta luego!

Currently and Eric Carle

Okay, so this week in our Basal we are reading The Mixed-Up Chameleon.  Technically, its the first story but I held off, thinking I wanted to do a big author study on Eric Carle.  Okay, so now it's a four day week and I'm doing it.  Sigh.  If you do Harcourt Trophies, you'll understand this next part.  

We actually do guided Reading groups, so I use the basal on Mondays to introduce a new story and vocabulary each week.  My focus wall is well, focused on this story and vocab for the week.  In their homework, they are working with the vocabulary as well.  In this way, even my lowest readers are being exposed to second grade skills because of course, the standards are soooo friendly towards kids not reading on grade level, right???  (yeah, that was sarcasm).  I do find some useful phonics/phonemic awareness tips in the teacher manual (remember at college how they said to NEVER use the teacher manual???  I finally opened mine a few years ago and thought hmm..these aren't some bad ideas!).  Also, when I have higher readers, its great to use the books that come with the series in our "Reading Comp" literacy center, complete with activities (you can check this out on one of my wiki pages which is all about my reading focus wall!).

Anywho, I have put off doing ol' Eric because I wanted to plan something spectacular. This summer, I even devoted a Pinterest board to him.  It was going to be a bang-up, blow-out type of unit!  

Well, life gets in the way (doesn't it always) and so, I borrowed some Eric Carle books from a Kindergarten teacher friend of mine (because I have maybe two!) and came up with some read-aloud activities to do with each one.

Oh, and have I mentioned how in our schedule this year, just by moving our lunch time, it messes up the whole day?????  If Math runs over, there goes my read-aloud time because after lunch, its full speed ahead with writing, content, and reading!  So, I also had to do things that would either a) relate to a GREAT conversation, but maybe not too time consuming or b) could be incorporated with writing.

Okay, so here is my Eric Carle read aloud activities.  I wanted to include one of my faves, The Very Quiet Cricket, but alas, my book is broke and my head is out of ideas.

If you're interested, email me for a copy.  I'm going to throw it up on TpT and TN, but for those of you reading the post, just comment below with your email and I'll send you a free copy! :)  

Sorry...Pandora's playing pretty slow, depressing songs no matter what station I'm hitting, so I'm a little bummed...that and my lovely three days "I'll get so much work done this weekend!" is coming to an end with a still-unfinished to-do list.  Sigh.

So, on that note, let's try to cheer up the post a bit (besides the freebie) with Farley's September Currently.  I love the blog posts that are like "really?  It's really September??" over to the side.  Hah hah.  Feel the same, and we're going into fourth week of school (yikes! Interims!).

 

Okay, just to explain a few (I always try to fit it in the frame...mine never looks as cute as others!).  Internet:  the wildblue people say its because things are trying to update....and the fact that we have too many devices that use Internet! My solution? Turn the router off when we're not home/at night.  We have 15G a month for satellite internet.  Here's hoping things get better when it comes back on Sept. 11!

Favorites:  the iPod touch I haven't had as much time as I'd like to play with it, but we were funded for it through Donors Choose!  Woo hoo!  I'm going to try to get a few more through a PTA grant so that I can use it with more than one student at a time! Haven't introduced it to them yet, but it's coming soon!  Think reading groups would be best.

Sleeping in this past weekend...'nuff said :)

Another favorite:  our PTA  is hosting a yard sale (we live out here in the boonies....so yard sales can be hard to find) and I have a TON OF STUFF to get rid of!  I'm hoping it'll make our house look less cluttered as well as the garage...not sure if that'll happen, but maybe make a few bucks off of it as well! (to pay for my daughter's birthday party!).

As for Maggie's birthday party...I have kinda sorta planned it.  Fortunately I don't have to clean the house for it...we're using our church's fellowship hall (good thing since it's the day after the yard sale!).  We're doing a cupcake themed party...you know, decorate your own cupcakes, etc.  Found some cute ideas and started a board on Pinterest if you're interested.

Okay, well, don't forget the rule of 3!  I'm off to do that and then get back to work since I told my husband I'd be back by 2...whoops! :)