Chevrons/Tropical Colored Teacher Binder Covers, Dividers, and Calendars Giveaway

So I would like to try out the number generator tool. I have been working on lots of stuff lately for my classroom and TpT store.  I also am really excited to see that I am getting closer to 300 followers.  I am planning my next big giveaway, but in the meantime I would like to do some mini-giveaways.

Corinna at Surfin' Through Second has been making some of the cutest digital papers.  I had already started making my own teacher binder/lesson planner, and I decided it was the perfect item to try out her papers. I think it came out pretty darn cute, but I love color.  Leave me a comment of what you think, any other dividers you might need, or how you use your own teacher binder.  I am going to use the random number generator and choose a winner Thursday morning. It normally will be $4.00 at my TpT store, but until Friday it is 50% off.   It includes 59 pages.

Made It Monday: Back to School Writing Prompts

I am excited to link up for Monday Made It. 

I have been inspired by Katie's writing prompts in a jar for awhile now.  So I decided to make some back to school writing prompts.  (You can get them at my TpT store here.)

I really want to create different prompts and cards for all sorts of themes and types of writing.  This started the search for the right type of container or jar.  I have looked everywhere and so far I am thinking of using these mini-canister plastic jars at Dollar Tree.  They also have these plastic stackable baskets that two of the jars fit perfectly.  I think then I could stack them up and have a whole little writing prompt area.

I wanted my writing prompts to reflect different types of writing so I created 100 prompts with 10 prompts for each of the following types of writing:

Persuasive Writing

Expository Writing
Newspaper Articles
Descriptive Writing
Personal Narratives
Creative Writing – Stories
Creative Writing – Poetry
Responding to Quotes
Letter Writing
Comic Strips
Here is a little preview.  I just need to print, cut, and laminate them.

I also made jar labels:

Word Wall Letters, Baby Shower Decorations, and a Flooded Washer

So yesterday I did some shopping at Dollar Tree, Big Lots, Target, and Ikea.  I found some great stuff and want to share some ideas.  Tomorrow I will share my finds for a belated "Fantastic Find Friday."  I also want to link up with the classroom theme linky. 

Well, my plan was to write this post three hours ago while getting laundry done, but the washer decided to malfunction and flood my laundry and kitchen.  So we spent the last 3 hours cleaning that up.  That was super fun.  Luckily, I procrastinated and shopped yesterday instead of mopping.  If I had found myself mopping two days in a row, this post would no longer be suitable for children...or maybe even young adults. 

This is Mr. Gamer-Hubby shopvac-ing it up and moving the washer out. The washer was super uber full, and so he found a way to use the garden house to suck all the water out of the washer.  You see using the shopvac would have taken like 20 trips so he had to find the more efficient way to do it.  Mr.  Gamer-Hubby always strategizes and does things in the most efficent and logical way possible.  Me - I would have probably been using towels and buckets.

So I did want to share with you some things I have been making because I am proud of them.  I have been working on some classroom decor inspired by various people.  I want to make more things to accompany them like center signs, labels, welcome signs, clip charts, etc.  It has all started with word wall letters, but what do you think?  You can get the various word wall letters at my TpT store for $2.00.

Pirates

Beach

Owls and Dots

I also have been working on some baby shower decorations for a friend. The graphics are from Print Candee.  I love how they came out!  I am in love with digital clip art, let me just say!

Anyway, that's been my fun little weekend.  Hope all is well with you. Tomorrow I will share my fantastic bargains so check back.

Literary Nonfiction on Space and a Mystery and some freebies

Thrilled with Science Thursday: 

This is a few hours belated because I fell asleep at 8pm and woke up at 1am.  (I think my favorite time of day and night is 12am to 3am after a nap.  I always feel my most inspired after a nap.  As a kid, this was when I would clean my room on the weekends.  I love night time.).

The text I would like to share with you is Messages from Mars by Loreen Leedy and Andrew Schuerger. I found this book at the library.  It is a super cute book that takes place in the year 2106 with a crew that is going to Mars.  Your students can learn about Space and the planets from a crew in the future reflecting back on what it would have been like to live a hundred years in the past - now.  This is what I would consider literary nonfiction. The AR level is 4.3.  I think you could use it even with a 1st or 2nd grade class though.  This would be a great story to infer what it would be like to live 100 years in the future or even think about 100 years in the past.  This is a great addition to any space unit.  What about even making a class time capsule as a fun extension activity?

Fiction and Freebie Friday

I did not get to participate in Fiction Friday last week, so I have been looking forward to this all week. I love using mysteries with students.  They are engaging stories that offer lots of room for analysis and inferencing. 

One of my very first posts I reviewed the books Chasing Vermeer and The Wright 3 by Blue Balliett.  Both are great mysteries with interesting characters, but fairly simple stories to follow.  You could read these with a grade 3 class and above. 

My absolute favorite children's mystery is The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin.  The AR level is 5.3.
 

It's a murder mystery (where you find out no one actually died), but there are around 13 characters and lots of plot lines to keep straight.  This is the best book for inferencing, character traits, and probably every reading skill under the sun.  With all the characters, it is a complicated read.  I would recommend it for probably grades 5-7.  My favorite activity for this is to have the students make detective journals.  They have a page for each character, where they illustrate a picture of the character and record clues about why that character might be the murderer.  End the unit by playing Clue.  We also usually make Wanted Posters somewhere mid-unit where they predict who the murderer is and why.

Here is my freebie for you.  I love using note-taking with my students.  I created a four box method of note-taking to use with Fiction.  The first 3 boxes are for Before, During, and After Reading and the fourth box is for visualizing.  In the first box, we make a prediction before reading.  In the second box,  students record questions, connections, thoughts - whatever skill you are focusing on.  In the third box, they would write a summary, answer a question, or record an opinion depending on our skill focus.  The fourth box students drew what they visualized while they were reading.  The first few times I introduce it I give the students the ready-made handout.  Once they get the hang of it, they drew the boxes in their journals.  For students who need accomodations you can keep the handout.  It really is a very easy and effective method for practicing multiple reading skills on a daily basis.  Use it for whole group, small groups, and independent reading.  It gives you a consistent way to teach students to monitor their comprehension, but also allows for flexibility.  Sometimes we even used the same form for a couple days if time was limited.

My note-taking organizer for nonfiction was my own spin off of the Cornell method.  They wrote main ideas on the right, vocabulary and questions on the left, and a summary at the bottom.  You could use this with Science, History, or even Reading.  Same thing after awhile students can draw it themselves.

I also usually either drew a big one on an anchor chart or a small one that I displayed with the document camera.

Happy Friday!  Going back to bed now. 

4 or more on the {Fifth} and Teaching Smart

So it’s the fifth, but I love this idea of four on the fourth.  So I am going to give you my list of what I want to try.  I’ll warn you – it will probably go over four.  I also will give you my advice for teaching smart, based on lessons I have learned.

What do I want to try this year?  Lol…Blog-stalking is awesome.  The real question is what don’t I want to try?  Some people are afraid of change.   My dad thinks I’m like my mom – I embrace change.  My mom loves adventure and new experiences.  We moved a lot…all the time.  She still does.  I hate moving.  I don’t move, but I seem to keep changing jobs…and careers.  I love that with teaching though I can be creative and flexible and still have structure.  I might love change, but I also love organization.

My first year of teaching I changed the desk arrangement every week.  The first time the students freaked out.  By the fourth time or so, they couldn’t wait to see what it would be the next time.  My third year of teaching I was at a new school and exposed to Reading and Writing Workshops for the first time.  I read everything I could find, tried to be like the videos at our teacher in-service, and tried every possible arrangement of schedule humanly possible.  I have tried Reading one day and Writing the next day.  I have tried spending 45 minutes on Reading and 45 minutes of writing.  I have tried spending 3 weeks primarily focused on Reading and 3 weeks primarily of Writing.  What’s my point?  I’m sure I have one somewhere.  There are so many wonderful ideas in books, tutorials, professional development, blogs; however, the thing is just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you.  Trust me – If you can read about it, I’ve probably tried it. 

I think the hardest lesson I have learned as a teacher is to be myself.  Well, myself likes change.  But when I am myself I am excited about learning and the day.  When I try to conform to someone else’s way of doing, I get overwhelmed and frustrated and frazzled.  Kids respond to our moods and the emoticons we pervade.  So I have decided to accept that I like change and trying new things.  You can establish routine by always starting or ending the class the same way or having a consistent way of taking notes or assessing or by how we establish what our expectations are.  I love writing and literature, but the scheduling of a Reading/Writing workshop drives me nuts.  There are way too many things to fit in and not enough time.  So maybe the answer is to get rid of timewasters.  I love the idea of getting rid of Spelling Tests.  They take up a lot of time and most kids don’t really get much out of them.  I want to teach Spelling lists based on the Spelling rules.  I want to teach Greek and Latin Roots, Poetry, Grammar in a way that it has real application to writing, critical thinking, and a love of literature.  I love doing novel read alouds, but I find it hard to fit in a novel read aloud and literature circles.  So I think I will try mainly using short texts for read aloud while doing literature circles and use smaller texts for reading groups when doing a novel read aloud.  I have digressed, so I will return to what I want to try this year.

1)       Daily 5 – I just bought the books and want to do the book study this month for upper grades.  I have skimmed most of Café; I just need to start reading Daily 5.  From what I have read about on other blogs though, it seems like it would be worth trying.  Why not?  I’ve tried just about everything else, right?  I will have a much shorter block of time for Reading/Writing though than is always recommended in any book, so like anything else I am going to have to find a way to adapt it to fit my needs. 

2)       Keeping up with my weekly writing inspiration wall consistently.  I started this and never quite was as consistent with it as I would have liked, but I love it.  You can check out my post from yesterday.   I have found this weekly writing inspiration to be a great way to work toward being a literacy rich classroom.

3)       I will actually have a classroom where the kids will have access to laptops, so I want to use more technology.  I have labeled every technology related post I see in Google Reader with “technology resources.”  I need to sit down and do some more research on these awesome, amazing technology resources to figure out what I really want to use.  Who am I kidding?  I will probably find a way to try as much as possible.  Maybe have your students help review different types of technology?  See what they think is better and why.  I want to check out Weebly, Edmodo, iRubric, Kidblog, edublog, all the Read/Write/Think interactive writing organizer things…and whatever else Google Reader tells me I thought I wanted to try.

4)     Interactive notebooks – These seem like a great tool. I first saw them mentioned on A Teacher's Treasure.  I love teaching note-taking.  I think kids need to learn how to put thoughts down and learn to evaluate their own thinking process and how they best learn and study.

5)       Class writing notebooks – I think this is a great idea.  It’s like kid-made anthologies.  I think  I first saw this idea here on I Love My Classroom's blog. That is Emily's picture below.

6)       Teaching thematically – This is part of why I am excited to gather Science and Social Studies texts to share on my blog.  I feel like gathering good texts will be a good starting point for building lessons around any theme. 

7)       Not worrying if students don’t finish every piece of writing.  I got caught up in the mistake of grading the product instead of the process.  I start new projects all the time and it takes me forever to finish them.  We all think differently and work at different paces.  It took me a while to figure out this applies to students as well.  I have always focused my writing instruction more on writing a solid paragraph than completing a larger piece of writing.  However, there are those students who can’t finish any piece of writing.  Either they’re a perfectionist or they never start.  I would like to focus my writing assessment more on the quality of ideas and the coherency than getting too focused on the polish and sense of completion.

8)       To live and learn and teach with authenticity, joy, curiosity, and consistency.  (These four values have stuck with me ever since reading a post by Ann Voskamp back on March 30th when she explained why she homeschools.  I do not have kids and I don’t plan on homeschooling, but I love the idea of living my life with these four principles in mind.  It appeals to me on a deep level.)

So my advice to teaching smart? 

• Be yourself.  

• Learn from others and don’t be afraid to adapt.

• Try to be aware of your own attitude and the moods you are emitting.  It sets the tone for the room.  (I am actually also curious about Whole Brain Teaching and Conscious Discipline.  I haven’t read much yet; I just have seen them mentioned on blogs.)

• Find ways to be excited about learning instead of overwhelmed with the to-do-lists.  (This is the hardest part for me.)

• Don’t grade everything.  Assess consistently, but don’t try to grade everything.

• When you can, take the time to get to know your students.  (I don’t remember what my teachers taught me.  I remember the teachers who took the time to get to know the booky, overly mature loner who never fit in and thrived on adult conversation.)

Thanks for reading! J