At last

Blogging at last....

I've been on a little blogging hiatus because I've been super incredible busy. Let's start with Wednesday. I love to post on Wednesday's because I usually get home a little earlier. Wednesday is a short day where the kids get out an hour early and we have professional development, meetings, or just play catch up. Well we happened to have a boring Marzano (do you know him? he is on my hit list if I had a hit list)  faculty meeting that was made better by PTA having lots of wonderful soups to warm us up with! (They shower us with so many wonderful things it just astonishes me  every time!) After the meeting I went to my room at 3:30 and then didn't leave until 6:00! I know that is pretty crazy but I had to do sub plans, make sure my room was ready, and the million other little things that take up a teachers time. 

Look what my little ones did on Wednesday: 

They LOVE LOVE LOVED making these contraction kids and seeing them posted in the classroom keeps contractions on their mind. They were referring to those kids all day long! :) 

Rewind to Thursday again...I had a sub in my class because I went to a district reading coach meeting which is mostly just professional development and discussion about reading in the county. I was very lucky to go my reading coach suggested I attend one with her since I eventually would love to be a reading coach. Unfortunately my reading coach could not make it cause her little one had to have surgery so I was solo. At first I was a little nervous...I had to act like a reading coach. I pulled it off though! Everyone was super friendly and it was a wonderful day of professional development. I just tell you each session I went to because I'll be blogging about each topic soon. I went to Connecting Reading and Writing (specifically with the Houghton Mifflin series), Common Core State Standards, RTI (Response to Intervention), and Academic Vocabulary with Mary Ellen Vogt. It was crazy to have Mary Ellen Vogt as a presenter because I used to quote her in my graduate school papers and here I was sitting in her presentation! It was such a great experience to go to this meeting. I love good professional development! (Oh and hour lunch breaks at Panera.)

Friday...oh wait it is still Friday! Today was a long day! I had a teacher workday at school which is actually perfect for everything I needed to get done! I have never had to actually work a teacher workday but our principal made us work today unless we had comp time. I got so much organizing, rearranging, and cleaning done today. I'm so glad I went in and didn't use any comp time. My class looks amazing now and is so organized and clean I can't wait to show you! * This would be way too much for this one post and will be it's own post for the Clutter-Free Classroom Project.* 

I also got around to grading my students math mid-terms (everything we have learn in math so far) and I was so happy! 14 students got an S (satisfactory 80-100) and 4 students got an W (working on it) 79-65. I now know who I need to spend some more time with in math and what skills they still haven't mastered. Then I decided to get started on the dreaded report cards and finished entering in all the grades but I haven't started on comments yet. I'll wait until Sunday for comments.

 I also found out today that my kids were wonderful with the sub yesterday according to her note. Then underneath she said *Jeff* (alias-I will never use my kids real names) had to go to see our AP (assistant principal). So I marched up to the AP's office fully expecting he did something ridiculous in class to get sent there. Well he did just not in my class. Jeff ride the bus and on Wednesday afternoon he took scissors home in his backpack and then cut his BFF's hair and his hair. *Angel* was pretty upset that her hair got cut by Jeff while she turned her back to him on the bus. Her mother was even more upset about the hair incident and called our principal. So she had to call them down to the office where Jeff gave a full and truthful account of what happened. He then got suspended from the bus for 3 days. This was not his first offense on the bus. According to AP the hair cut he gave himself and Angel is very noticeable. I was just so shocked that Jeff would do this! Scissors on a bus...cutting hair... someone could have gotten seriously hurt. Needless to say Jeff is in big trouble at home. Just thought this story was a little out of the ordinary and a little funny (since no one got hurt). I can't wait to see these two waltz into class together on Monday.

Happy Weekend! I'll be posting clean classroom pictures soon! 

First Week of December Must Reads!

HO HO HO!

Did you know?

These are some great books

That you should show! 

To fill your students minds

With thoughts of holiday times!

Here is a list of my must reads for the first week of December with my students! There are just so many holiday books I thought I would share them during each week leading up to Christmas. Enjoy! 

Gingerbread Books: 

I love to read a few gingerbread stories to compare and contrast them and see which one is the students favorite.

If you haven't read about the smarter, sweeter gingerbread girl who leaps and twirls I highly recommend you get this book! It is always a class favorite with boys and girls because of the twist at the end!

This little baby is too adorable and it is so fun to build gingerbread houses after reading this book! 

A new favorite that our librarian read to my class this week! 

Happy Reading! 

P.S. I thinking about reading the Hunger Games...is it too much of a teen novel or is it for all ages? I would love to know and hear your feedback about the books! 

Books on Bullying & Giveaway!

 Bullying has become a major problem in schools today. Don't let your students be bystanders empower your students to make a difference! Addressing bullying in elementary school can be a hard task and teachers need all the resources we can get. Maria Dismondy is the author of  three amazing books about standing up to bullies: Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun, The  Juice Box Bully, and Pink Tiara Cookies for Three (coming soon!).f Maria was a teacher for 11 years and then took time off to become a writer and start a family. She has written three books about bullying and friendships with the main goal of reaching as many children as possible to make a difference. I certainly think that she has made a difference because her first book award winning Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun sold over 25,000 copies. Whoa! She is such an inspiring author and her message rings true to problems our students face everyday in school. These books are amazing to use for character education and with bucket filling books. So what are you waiting on? Go pick up a copy of her book and check out her website Maria Dismondy : Children's Book Author from Michigan. She has resources that go along with her books.
                                       

Maria contacted me earlier this week to feature her books on my website and I felt so honored! She was even nice enough to give me an extra copy of her fabulous book Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun. So because I love all my blogger followers sooo much I am going to give one lucky follower a signed copy of Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun!

You have 4 chances to win:
1. Follow my blog and leave a comment or become a follower!
2. Follow my TPT store and leave a comment. It's brand new and needs some love!
3. Visit Maria's website Maria Dismondy : Children's Book Author from Michigan and leave me a comment which book you think you would use and how.
4. Blog about this giveaway and leave the link in a comment.

Let's get the word out about these wonderful books on bullying issues! Good luck! The giveaway ends on 11-11-11 at 11:11 p.m.

Favorite November Books

Veteran's Day Books:

A is for America

This is a delightful alphabet book that features highlights of America's history through thoughtful rhymes a beautiful illustrations. Our first grade play is based off of this book so I love to use it to introduce our play.

H is for Honor

H is for Honor is a alphabet book describing the military lifestyle. This book is a wonderful way to explain to children about veterans, soldiers, and their families who serve in their own special way. This book is a favorite of mine since my brother serves in the Navy. I know I will be giving this to his children one day.

Pilgrim Books: 

You Wouldn't Want to Sail on the Mayflower

This hilarious book gives inside information on what it was like to sail on the Mayflower as a pilgrim chid. It's creative flair and text features keep even your most uninterested readers wanting more. The illustrations are excellent conversation starters on how people lived on the Mayflower.

Sarah Morton's Day and Samuel Eaton's Day

These classic books explain about the day in the life of a pilgrim girl and boy. These are  great books to use to compare and contrast pilgrims chores and daily lives to children now.

This is the Feast

A poetic book that focused on the first Thanksgiving feast.

Native American Books:

Arrow to the Sun

This Pueblo Indian tale lends is self to teach retelling and sequencing events. It's vibrant illustrations will keep your students interested in the hero's quest to find the Solar Fire. This is a Caldecott Honor book.

Tomie dePaola is a wonderful author and illustrated who tells the legend of Texas Indian girls who are brave. These are greats books to use with painting activities, to learn about another state, and to learn about state flowers. 

Turkey Books: 

10 Fat Turkeys

A crazy counting book that will keep your children laughing and having fun while learning. I use this book in my listening center each year and it's a huge hit! 

Turkey Trouble

This funny story is about a turkey who is trying to find his way out of being dinner and how he hilariously disguises himself and out tricks the farmer. This book lends itself to a "Tom Turkey" activity of disguising turkeys for Thanksgiving or a writing activity of what else you could eat besides a turkey on Thanksgiving. 

T is for Turkey

A wonderful alphabet book that tells the Thanksgiving story. This is a great book to use as an overview of the Thanksgiving holiday or as a review for older kids. 

Hope you have enjoyed my favorite books to use in November. 

Happy reading!

Spooky Freebie!

I'm so excited to announce that I just made my first product ever and started a store at Teachers Pay Teachers! Since this is my first product it is a free download! Just head over to TPT here:

I started out with something really easy to make and called it the Spooky Sight Word game. I will be making products for centers, reading, and enrichment time. Please download this freebie, consider being a follower of mine on TPT and give me some feedback! I'm really looking forward to starting something new with my blog and teaching!

Enjoy your weekend!

A Peek at my Week

Hola friends!   Did you know it is Hispanic Heritage month? Also I love saying Hola! We are finding ways to celebrate along with the dozen other things going on this month like Red Ribbon Week, Wellness Week,  character day, Halloween (on a Monday-seriously calendar), Breast Cancer Awareness (the whole town goes pink one day), Fire Safety and fall in general. Whoa I'm tired just typing it but hey let's take a peek into my week at school!


Reading: We read a lot of fall books this week but our main focus was on the story A Party For Bob. It's part of the HM reading series and was our main selection this week. We also have been reading Junie B. Jones Toothless Wonder and it is perfect right now because I have 4 students who are all missing their two front teeth. One just could not leave his tooth alone all afternoon...gross blood was all in his mouth and dripped on his desk! I had to tell me cutie to clean it up and either yank the tooth out or stop playing with it. He yanked it out and I think the whole class was relieved. We read a pome Leaves, Leaves that goes to the tune of Row Your Boat and my kids loved it so much they couldn't stop singing it. It has been in our heads all week! I even woke up singing it this morning! It does get you in the fall mood though!

Centers: We had some super fun centers this week. I'll just tell you about the Word Work ones since it is the only center that changes.
Monday: The students stamped their spelling words. This never gets old to them and I'm happy about that.
Tuesday: The students focused on their Fry sight words and played the game Bang!
Wednesday: The students had to sort short /o/ words into the correct spiders webs. Check this out on The First Grade Parade.
Thursday: The students had to unscramble sentences and then write the sentences. This takes my students forever....which would be great if we had all the time in the world but we don't. Anyone using this that knows how to make this a little faster? I think the more they do it the faster they will get. I love this activity from Made for 1st Grade's Resource Pack- go check it out!

Friday: An array of games we have already played in Word Work. Students got to choose their favorite game and play.

Listening is always a favorite center! I just introduced responding to our listening this week. This little friend listened to The Big Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear one of my favorite books and writing about her favorite part and illustrating a picture.

Writing: We started to write about fall using a thinking map. Then we learned about setting, characters, problems and solutions that need to go into a story. We made our own fall story up together as a class. After the students made up their own fall stories and illustrated their pictures. Today we shared our stories in the author's chair. Some of my kids love the author's chair and reading their writing. Others don't want to share which I'm okay with but it was some of my most outgoing kids that got really shy all of sudden in front of our class. I had to reassure them it was a completely safe environment to read your writing. I have my active listeners name one thing they liked about the story, one way to improve the story (put a title, add more detail, make names for your characters...nothing too harsh...my kids were
really good at saying gently how they could improve), and then another thing they liked about the story.

Math: In math we worked on doubles and near doubles. I think that near doubles is a great strategy for students who really understand doubles but some of my wee ones just did not get it. I explained again but let them use their own strategy to add. This week our math game was Spill the Beans and boy was that fun! I used cans, regular counters, and white board markers so they could do it again and again without making million copies. This was such a hit they want to play it again next week...I have other games in mind though. My students do 4 centers each day in math.
Math facts-on the computer
At your seat-seat work from the lesson
Teacher-come to me to do guided math and take a mini quiz
Hands on-games
This has worked out really well this year! I did this last year but this year I got cute math workshop signs from Clutter Free Classroom check them out here.

Envision Math Games online

Science: We explored magnets this week and talked poles and how they attract and repel. I wish I had a picture of the magnetic hands on fun we had but my phone died so I don't have any. We made predictions on which items: paperclips, marble, penny, soda can, foil, and a button would be magentic. Each student got a turn to use a magnetic wand to see if the items were magnetic. The kids had so much fun with this!

Social Stuides: Our character trait of the month is cooperation and we did a fun lesson on Peacemakers and Peacebreakers- another blog idea to check out and our guidance counselor came in to do a fun lesson about cooperation with my class. Today I told my students to make a circle together and they were so cute saying we need to cooperate together to make a circle and they held hands, stretched out, and made a neat little circle of firsties. Only one student tried to not cooperate and said he wanted to be in the middle but as soon as his friends called him out on not using cooperation with our class he was out of the circle in a second. Got to love first grade!

Mystery Reader: Our mystery reader left us 5 clues that were pretty tough.
1. I love to travel with my family.
2. I have 2 sons and a husband who I love.
3. I love watching college football.
4. I have 2 pets a dog and a hamster.
5. I love to read books!
My kids are great at knowing our staff though and figured out on Thursday and Friday who they thought it might be: our librarian! This week I didn't get any crazy guesses like an elf- just regular guess to who it might be which means we are really learning how to make good predictions and infer!

Our librarian read to our class one of my favorite October books. It was so fun! She came in dressed in a hat and "fall" clothes. If you aren't familiar with the story the lady says she isn't afraid of anything and mysterious items such as boots, pants, a shirt, gloves, a hat, and a pumpkin head follow her and in the end she makes a scarecrow out of them. My students loved following along in the story and stomping for the boots, wiggling for the pants, shaking for the shirt, clapping for the gloves, nodding for the hat, and saying Boo! for the pumpkin head. We had a great time participating in the story and even got reading rocks silly bands at the end!

Check back next week- it will be all about Fire Safety! Have a beautiful fall weekend!

A Peek At My Week

This week in writing my kids wrote about Johnny Appleseed and fall. They also are continuing to work on building their stamina in writing. Today they published their writing into books. I had a volunteer come in to help out and students who wanted to publish their writing got to write in books with assistance and illustrate their pictures. The books came out so cute and the students couldn't wait to share them with their families. One student wrote an adorable story about their dog and another wrote an informational story about dolphins. I can't believe I didn't get pictures but I was so busy in guided reading.

In guided reading this week I worked on short /i/ words with my students and worked on their goals (as you can see from our FACE board) most of their goals are accuracy and comprehension. I taught and reviewed strategies to help them achieve their goals. We also worked on evaluating stories when reading and focused on the story Pigs in Rig from Houghton Mifflin. 

My students are now reading for 20 minutes so I gave them a little treat of gummy bears. The sign on top of the bag says "You are a beary good reader!" My students loved getting these snacks while they read and were super proud of themselves for reading for so long.

We made these adorable apple poems that with apples. I just had to take pictures of these-I love how they came out. I let the students use watercolors and choose which color apple they wanted to paint. We will add these to our poetry journal. 

This is our cute behavior chart I've been wanting to share. Everyone starts off on green "Ready to Learn" and moves throughout the day depending on their behavior. It looks like "Above and Beyond is the top but I let them move to the top of the chart and then they get to pick a pencil or bookmark to take home. We had such a great day today everyone moved to "Above and Beyond!" I just love having great days where everything seems to go right! 

In science this week we explored and observed items to learn how to be a good scientist and use all five senses to take notes. They also worked on sink and float during science centers. 

Last but not least we had our first mystery reader today and it was a huge hit with the kids. Our clues were 1. I love to fish. 2. I am short. 3. I love our school. 4. I am on TV every morning. 5. I am a leader. My students guessed our principal and were correct but also guessed our librarian, an elf (because of the clue I'm short...lol) , our music teacher, and reading coach. Our principal read Clifford's First Autumn and complimented my class on being super smart. She also said it was the most fun she had all week! I'm so happy to have a principal that loves to connect with the students and have fun.

Hope you've enjoyed a peek at my week. Join up with Clutter-Free Classroom to see other bloggers week in review. 

What I'm Loving Wednesday

 I'm so grateful for our early release on Wednesday so my team and I could do some curriculum planning that was much needed. We talked about some really cool science activities and centers that we have for sink and float, Johnny Appleseeds birthday coming up, Open House which is next Tuesday, and lots to do with spelling and spelling city. I think that we are such a cohesive team that works well because we all have ideas to bring to the table. I'm excited about using spelling city this year to help students! This is actually a free resources so go sign your class up! We will be doing a spelling contract for spelling homework.

Click here to get it! 


I am also so thankful that my old team read my blog! You girls are so amazing and I miss you! They gave me a wonderful rubric to use for my goals. I think that it will be a great resources I'm just waiting for my principal and team to approve. We all have to be on the same page here. To check out the rubric- click here.

I am loving that my boyfriend went to Publix after work and surprised me with a car full of groceries and dinner to cook tonight! We are having homemade pizza! Yum...my mouth is watering already. He is such an amazing chef, best friend, and boyfriend. (Not actually pizza...I think his looks better!)

I can't wait for Open House next week! I have a few really cute idea I'm going to be sharing soon! I hope to see a lot of posts about Open House so I have plenty of ideas!

What I'm NOT loving:
Haha well I'm trying to be a positive Polly here but I'm am so NOT loving FAIR right now. To be fair (insert laugh here) I actually have a love/hate relationship with this assessment. If you live in Florida you know what I'm talking about. FAIR stands for Florida Assessment In Reading. It is a wonderful assessment if it doesn't kick you out of the program that is online or not save any of your students work. K-2 teachers have to administer the test one-on-one with their kids and it is A LOT of testing. I have been at it all week and only completed four students. The test has a initial word list to see what their probability of reading success is that is pretty quick because it's only 12 words. Then they move on to a long list of words that start with me and look  and ends with words like unusually and receive.  Based on that list they get put on a certain passage that they have to read and answer five questions on (2 explicit and 3 implicit). But if the student misses 11 words in the passage they get bumped back to the previous passage. This happens all the time in the beginning of the year because some students aren't quite reading and by the end of the first passage they get bumped back to listening comprehension. After all that reading we still have to give a vocabulary part of the test to each student. Then if a student scored low on their probability of reading success they have to do a series of word study activities.  I know you're probably thinking this is a lot of testing and very time consuming....well it is and it isn't the only reading assessment we do with the students. We also test sight words and do HM leveled reading passages. Oh boy...I'm getting tired just thinking about it! In the end though it gives me a clear focus on what my students need to work on and is really helpful.

Hope you're having a WONDERFUL Wednesday and reflecting on what you LOVE and maybe don't love so much about teaching!

Our class is reading...freebie!

One way our school promotes literacy is by posting this sign (Our class is reading..) outside all of our classroom doors. That way when you walk around the school you can see what books each class is reading. It's nice for our principal to know so she can talk to the kids and for the parents too. I put up our chapter book read aloud so I don't have to change it all the time because we read so many pictures books and good fit books we couldn't possible fit them all on there! Right now my class is reading The Magic Treehouse book Dinosaurs before Dark. They are loving it! Click below to get your own sign for your class! 







Doodle border compliments of Hello Literacy and Pinterest.


Our class is reading sign

Hope you enjoy!