Monday Made It: Paisley, Owls, and Harry Potter

Hopefully, everyone has had a restful and productive weekend.  I got lots of sleep this weekend.  I also made a couple trips to Ikea to get the Samla boxes to organize my classroom library.  I purchased these thanks to suggestions via my Facebook page.  I love having a Facebook page for my blog.  It's very helpful. 

Today, I need to purchase the items in my TpT cart.  I need to add some more Science and Math items to my cart first though.  Have you found any good Math and Science stuff? Thanks to everyone who has been purchasing from my TpT store during the sale.  My word wall letters are very popular.

For my Monday Made It this week, I made a cursive alphabet for my room and some Daily 5 signs.  (I'm not sure I will do all 5, but for now I made all the signs).

Since my classroom is named London and comes with some London art, I decided to incorporate some Harry Potter.  I found some cute Harry Potter Owl clipart on Etsy, so now I get Harry Potter, Owls, Paisley, my favorite color green, and some of that "flipped sign" fun all in one.  I love it!

Back to School Sale

So by now you know that there is a big TpT sale going on for the next couple days.  Everything in my store is 20% off.  Here are a few of my favorite items from my store for back to school.
Reading Graphic Organizers for 5th Grade

Reading Graphic Organizers for 3rd Grade

Writing Graphic Organizers for Grades 3-5

Shared Journal Covers

Back to School Writing Prompts

Persuasive Writing Prompts

Teacher Binder, Calendars, and Lesson Planning Pages

Binder Covers for Teacher Organization

Planning and Balancing Home and School

How do I plan?  (First of all,  I want to say I am excited about this giveaway because I really want an Erin Condren Life Planner.)

I am an extremely analytical, detail-oriented person.  I love lists and lists about making lists.  However, I also love change, new adventures, and inspired tangents.  I like to start with a big picture that inspires me and gives a jumping off point.  I enjoy using novels for read aloud because it gives me a tentative plan for about a month or so.  I will sit down and think about logical breaks in the chapters and possible reading skills.  If I am trying to follow a particular scope and sequece, I might use a genre or something as my guide for the month or six weeks.  This year I will be using more of a thematic approach, so I am excited to see how this will manifest itself.  I like to start with a great text.  I think a great text gives me great ideas for activities and discussion. (I am also aware I started way too many of these sentences with I, but I'm too tired to over-edit.)

Beginning by thinking about objective is a good way to approach planning.  Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how with high school students your goal should be to help them be prepared for college, for middle-schoolers it should be to help them be prepared for high-school, and with elementary we are trying to prepare them for middle school. I like to cover a lot of note-taking skills and explain to my students why certain skills are needed even if they are not the most exciting in the world.  Sometimes giving kids a why goes a long way.  I think it helps when planning to even think about how to activate kids prior background knowledge. 

I like to type out detailed lesson plans if I am leading a whole-group discussion/lesson.  I rarely follow them to a tee because the lesson itself and student questions always guide lessons to a better place than I planned.  I also often get last minute inspiration.  However, having detailed lessons helps me feel more prepared which allows me to just enjoy the moment and give into inspiration.

I like to also type out a sketched out breakdown of my week in Excel.  So for example, when I taught two classes of English and Social Studies I might have one typed out lesson, but two Excel sketches of the week.  In Excel, I like to show more of a schedule, like 15 minutes read aloud, 10 minutes journal writing, and 30 minutes independent reading, etc.  Here I would also list what groups I want to work with and who is in them.

Here are a couple posts I did awhile back on planning and organizing time:

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-to-organize-time-in-reading-and.html (This was a post where I talked about how I organized time in Reader's and Writer's workshop).

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-would-ideal-planner-for-home-and.html  (This was my post from when I first discovered Erin Condren's website where I debated if I wanted to buy one of her planners.  I have since decided I do).

http://ideabackpack.blogspot.com/2012/06/quick-reference-teacher-planner-freebie.html  (These were my teacher planner examples I made to share.  I made these because most teacher planner books just have a box for each subject or period.  I wanted to have three boxes for each subject or period - one for objective, one for lesson, and one for activity.  I find this to be more helpful as a quick reference.)

Now for my Balancing School and Home series. 

(Fonts from Kevin and Amanda and the Background Graphic from Graphics at the Pond.)

I think most teachers right now are excited about their newly setup and hopefully clean classrooms, but sad to see summer go. I thinking balancing home and school is always tough.  Balance is my new outlook on life.  (This is part of why I really want the Erin Condren Life Planner).  I am an overly serious individual.  I will never be truly free-spirited.  My mom got that trait. However, I can work toward balance and enjoying life.  My hope is to share a post on a weekly basis with balance tips.  I am hoping that some of you will link up with me, so spread the word.  Please!  Consider how you find time to eat better, spend time with family, get enough rest, keep your house clean, leave school at school, etc. Teaching is a tough job, and as much as teacher bloggers are helping each other become better teachers.  Let's help each other be better balanced teachers as well.

This week's balance tip - Food:
I have found I eat better if I cook a bunch of stuff on Sunday and we heat up leftovers throughout the week.  With trying to keep up with blogging now and exercise more, I don't have the time or energy to cook every day.  I am inspired by the people who plan out their food for the week and stick to it.  I am an emotional eater, and I have come to terms with that.  I can only plan for about 1/2 a week's worth of meals.  If I plan more, I will waste it because by mid-week what sounded good Sunday does not appeal to me come Thursday. I am inspired by people who eat pretty healthy with a low grocery budget.  I am not that person.  I'm just not.  I love Whole Foods.  I absolutely love their produce and already cooked foods.  I enjoy over-paying for containers of already precut fruits and vegetables.  If I buy it and have the best intentions of cutting it myself, it will go bad uncut and uneaten.  So I have embraced my vow to be healthy by overpaying for convenience.  It makes me happy.  So there, those are some of how I find ways to eat healthier without losing my mind.

Exercise:
I have been going to hot yoga for about three years now - not always consistently. However, I love it.  It is relaxing, envigorating, detoxifying, and exhausting all at the same time.  I also wanted to try and encourage my husband to exercise more, so I decided to try and suggest things I knew he enjoyed.  When it wasn't quite so hot, we started running.  I can only interval run/walk, but I am making progress and it is something we can do together.  We recently bought nice bikes and have been bike riding.  That has been more pleasant than running when it is like 108 out.  Overall, I have found I exercise more consistently when I have someone to hold me accountable.  So maybe try and pick something you can do with a spouse or friend. 

I hope you will consider linking up with me with some balance tips/suggestions/recipes for your fellow teachers.  I am thankful for all of you and the joy that blogging has brought back to my life and my passion for teaching. 

Guest Blogger - Ideas for bulletin boards and anchor charts

Hey guys!  I am excited to have a guest blogger today: Sara from Mrs. V's Busy Bees. She has been kind enough to share some awesome ideas with us.  Check back tomorrow.  I am finally going to post about my back to school balancing linky party.  Be thinking of ways to make balancing life and school easier.  It might be easy recipes, tips for organization, exercise ideas, etc.


Hi y'all! It's Sara from Miss V's Busy Bees here! April was kind enough to let me guest blog on her blog today! I'm here to provide you with some bulletin board ideas and anchor chart ideas - especially ideas that I will be using in my future classroom! I hope you enjoy these!

Think Tank from Monarch Madness: What is a think tank? Well, Mrs. McComish explains it well. She said that a "Think Tank" is where students have a week to answer a problem. This problem can be surrounding any topic in grammar, mathematics, reading, social studies, or science. It's used to help students develop their problem solving skills. Students write their name and their answer on the blue fish in the corner, and then staple it to the board. At the end of the week, the teacher reads the responses and puts the correct answers in the fishbowl on the bookcase in front of the board. Every once in a while, the teacher draws out 5 names and those 5 names get to eat lunch with the teacher (what student does NOT like eating lunch with the teacher?!). I think this is a great board to assess your students quickly and efficiently without taking up a lot of classroom time.

100s Anchor Chart from Google: Throughout the year, you (as the teacher) and students add something each day that you've learned. By the 100th day of school, you will have 100 things that you have learned written on the board. This is a great tool for teachers to use to reflect upon what they've done the first 100 days and how they could change their routines or figure out what they would keep the same. I plan to use this in my classroom for exactly that - reflection and for my students.

Synonym & Antonym Anchor Charts from Julie Ballew: These are great anchor charts when showing students the differences or similarities of words. It's also a great introduction to teaching students what synonyms and antonyms are. A great activity might be having students come up with their own words and putting those on another anchor chart that's under or behind the current anchor chart - gives them practice!

Fiction vs. Nonfiction Anchor Chart from First Grade Wow: This is a great introduction to what fiction and nonfiction are. This would be good for the younger grades, but you could change this to fit any grade. You could do all sorts of genres, but this is a great starting point for the younger students. Using a book at the bottom to show the differences, even using the same topic (for this example, a fictional book about turtles and then a nonfiction book about turtle senses), shows students the differences.

Connections Anchor Chart from Finding JOY in 6th Grade: This is an AMAZING anchor chart to have up in the classroom. Children should be able to make different connections from text to things. This anchor chart includes something that I absolutely LOVE - media. There are so many different things that students can connect to media now, especially text. The world is evolving and we are continuing to progress in technology each and every day. Giving students the opportunity to see the connections between text to self, text to text, text to world, and text to media is perfect and allows each student to grow in his or her own way.

Asking or Telling Anchor Chart from First Grade Fever: This is an important chart in the early grades. Even in 2nd grade, my students had trouble identifying what type of sentence they were reading if they did NOT see the punctuation mark. Even then, I had a few students that did not register the punctuation   marks so this chart would have been very helpful.

Main Idea Anchor Chart from Google: This chart is PERFECT for students (and myself!). I remember when I was younger, I had trouble identifying the main idea of a text or story. I would always decide the wrong thing and make myself more confused. I saw this in my students during Internship, too. This anchor chart provides strategies for the student to understand how to find a main idea. The chart includes the before, which is kind of like reviewing the book before you read. During is also included, which is important. What words do you see constantly appearing? What about what kind of ideas are repeated? Finally, after you finish, what do you think is the most important idea throughout the whole text? This is your main idea!

Math Matters Anchor Chart from Working 4 the Classroom: This chart is great for mathematics learning. Some students cannot understand problems (especially word problems) that contain a lot of information. This is the perfect solution for those instances. Having students circle the key numbers allows them to see what they are looking for. Then, having the students underline the question allows them to get rid of all the unimportant information that they do not need. Then, boxing the action word lets students know what kind of operation they will be performing. They then evaluate their process to make sure that they do the problem right by taking the proper steps. Finally, they solve and check their answer to make sure that the answer makes sense! I love CUBES and think it was a great invention to whoever made it up!

 

Adjectives (Step into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons) Nouns (Google) & Verbs (Step into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons) Anchor Charts: These charts would be GREAT to have up throughout the year. Not only do they help your students when trying to figure out what a noun, adjective, or verb is, they also give your students ideas of different words that they can use in their writing. Throughout my internship, my students CONSTANTLY asked what a noun was or what a verb was. My mentor had posters up in the room of different types of words, but they never really explained what these types of words were - a noun is a person, place, or thing - a verb is an action - an adjective is a description - and so forth. So, my students were awfully confused. I will absolutely be making these charts for my classroom - and they would be great in yours, too!

I hope that you got some inspiration to make some charts for your classroom from this post. I found many of these charts from Pinterest, but there are also websites out there that have HUNDREDS of anchor chart examples. Teachers Pay Teachers also has lots of different ideas for anchor charts, so make sure you check that out, too! But for now, that's all I've got for ya! I hope that you all have a great year this year!

Have a good day, y'all!

Social Studies Texts to help introduce economics

So for my Social Studies texts for this week, I have two related books for you by Marjorie Priceman.  Both books introduce some basic economics concepts and ideas of trade and how things are made.

1) How to Make Cherry Pie and see the U.S.A

(For this one, no picture was available on Amazon.) This book goes over all the components that would be needed to make a charry pie and where you in the U.S.A you would have to go find them if the market was closed.  I like how this story shows how things are made and how the different parts come from different places.  I think most kids are used to just going to the store and they may not have wondered where it all came from.  It also shows how different parts of the country grow different things.  So this story could be used with discussions of trade, economics, production, US regions, etc.  It really can tie into lots of Social Studies topics. 

2) How to Make Apple Pie and See the World 

This story is similar to the US story, but looks at different countries.  I think I would have students follow this up by studying some different cultures or maybe trying foods from different cultures.  You really could do some fun activities with both of these books. 

Students could become different countries or states and tell you about the products they are known for.  I like the idea of instead of just having students make an entire book or project on all different facets of a state or country, maybe just focus on components like food or domestic products.  Let them learn one thing well and present it. 

With my Social Studies instruction this year, I want to narrow topics a bit instead of always covering huge encompassing topics and periods.  I want to chunk the learning and ideas into more manageable parts like trade, transportation, food, etc. 

Monday Made It: Book Bin Labels (Freebie)

I had a great weekend.  My ex-workspouse had her baby shower today.  I spent a lot of the weekend trying to help get ready for the shower and the other part resting and getting ready for the week.  I am not going to apologize for taking a couple days off from blogging because we all need rest.  On a side note, I wish others would stop apologizing for taking a break for a couple days.  We all are working on balancing life, teaching, and blogging.  We all understand.  Actually, tomorrow I am going to be posting about a linky party for the Back to School Balancing Act.  I would love to have others link up and share how they find ways to balance school, family, blogging, and health. So be thinking of ideas you would like to share on how you try and balance back to school.

I am behind on commenting on people's blogs.  The last two weeks I have kept up with reading the blog posts, but haven't had time to comment.  I am going to try and do better this week.

For this week's Monday Made It, I didn't think I would get anything made. 

I am struggling a little bit with how to decorate my classroom.  I am teaching at a small school where all of the rooms are decorated with Ikea furniture and art work from different cities around the world.  I stole the London artwork and made my room the London room since my first theme is going to be the Olympics. This will be our first year to have an elementary age group.  Prior it was only middle and high-school aged students.  I want to use my welcome sign and put up a cursive alphabet.  I will have a bulletin board once we get it ordered.  I want to do something like I have seen by Clutter Free Classroom and Pinterest where you have a designated spot for each student and use a clip to hold up the work.  I think it looks very clean and pleasing to the eye. 

I will have some of my books for my classroom library displayed, but I don't have enough room to display all that I have so I plan on rotating them out.  I was just going to alphabetize the books because I believe students need to be able to find books at a real library, but I have decided to use genre baskets again. I normally mainly decorate with blues and greens.  To go with the simple/ more steamlined look of the school I want to keep things very clean and simple that I put up. I love Kristin's Flipped signs at Ladybug Teacher Files.  Her cursive alphabet signs and genre posters with the bright colors on the black background are on my to-buy list.  They look fabulous.  I have seen pictures of them floating around in the blogging world as people share pictures of their classroom, and I love them.  I would attempt to make a cursive alphabet myself except I can't find any fonts for D'Nelian or Zaner Bloser cursive.  Anyone know where to purchase cursive fonts?

I normally am not one to use black, but the combination of the black with the bright colors is clean but has a lot of impact.  I still want to use my owls with dark colors welcome sign and incorporate some black, maroon, blue, and green into bulletin board eventually. I actually saw some Harry Potter owl clipart on Etsy I thought about purchasing since the theme of my room is London.

I love Kristin's genre book bin labels, but they are black and white.  I needed some other labels besides the ones she had.  I also wanted the text on mine to be blue and green so I made my own.  I have decided to share them with you for free below.


Book Bin Labels

Books on the Rainforest and Jungle

I am trying to share texts that tie into Social Studies and Science each week.  This week for my Science related texts, I chose books related to the Jungle and Rainforest.  I have had this stack of books from the library for like 3 weeks, so I am glad to finally have time to sit down with them.

On a side note, many of you are familiar with Accelerated Reader.  If you are not, it is a program that many schools participate in where students take computerized tests over different books to test comprehension.  I no longer will be at a school that utilizes AR, but I do like to still use AR Bookfinder.  AR Bookfinder allows me to search a book title to get an idea of the book level of a book and the interest level.  These can be helpful tools if you are trying to determine if a book might be the right level for your students.  At the same time,  I do not always agree with the AR book level, but I still find it a useful ballpark.

1) Over in the Jungle by Marianne Berkes
 This book is written in rhyme and describes animals who live in the jungle.  The pictures are very vibrant.  Students of all ages would enjoy this as a read aloud.

2) Rainforests by Nancy Smiler Levinson
 This is an easier nonfiction read on the Rainforest.  This would be a great choice for 1st and 2nd grade readers.

3) Defying Death in the Jungle by Gary Jeffrey
 This is a graphic novel. This book begins with a more nonfiction jungle survival section and then has the graphic novel story. It is an adventure story with some historical context. I would have this book in my room for my students who like graphic novels while we were doing a unit on the Rainforest. 

4) Amazon Boy by Ted Lewin
This is a realtively simple read, but it could lend itself to some interesting discussion.  It is about a boy who lives deep in the Amazon and travels to a market town.  He comments on the things he observes.  His father gives him reasons he is saddened to see changes to the Amazon River.  You could use this book as part of a discussion on responsible use of nature and balancing progress with preservation.

5) Rainforest by Edward Ricciuti
This is a pretty straight forward nonfiction text on the Rainforest.  There are plenty of similar books.  Essentially, if you are studying the rainforest, it would be helpful to go to the library and check out a stack of nonfiction books on the rainforest or jungle for students to explore on their own. You can find these books at the library in the Juvenile Nonfiction section under 577.

6)  A Walk in the Rainforest by Kristin Joy Pratt
 I like that this book begins with a world map and illustrates where in South America the rainforest is.  I like this book a lot.  It is a nonfiction ABC book on the Rainforest.  I believe students of all ages might like this book.

7)  Rain, Rain, Rainforest by Brenda S. Guiberson
This book is very descriptive and would be great to integrate figurative language.  This book has some great examples of onomatopoeia.  I think I would follow this book up by having students write some poetry related to the rainforest.