Teaching about Archaeology with the Magic School Bus (Quiz and Assignment Freebie)

I will be teaching Ancient Civilizations this year.  I am working on trying to plan out what I will teach next year, and how I will teach it. In so many of the classes I have been taking as a doctoral student, we have discussed the idea that in order for students to engage in deep learning that stimulates creativity, students need opportunities to learn in authentic ways the represents how professionals in those fields think.

For Ancient Civilizations, this means that I want to teach my students to think like historians, archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, art historians, etc. To introduce what it is to think like an archaeologist, we are going to watch the Magic School Bus "Show and Tell" episode.

I have made a quiz for the video and an assignment.

You can get a copy HERE. Do you have a favorite way to introduce students to the field of archaeology.

Freebies for Back to School Night or Meet the Teacher Night

Thursday night we had a great turnout for our back to school/parent night.  I made my brochure with my classroom policies.  I copied it on blue paper, too.  It turned out really cute!  You can read about the template for the brochure at this post.

I also wanted to have a parent contact information for parents to fill out to make sure that all of the information I had on file was up-to-date.  You can get a copy of the Parent Contact Information form HERE.

Lastly, I wanted to have something interactive for the parents to do for their student.  I decided I wanted the parents to be able to write their student a note of their wishes for their child for the school year.  We will give the notes to the students on the first day of school.  Some parents wrote a note together for their child, and a couple Mom and Dad both wrote a note. You can get a copy of the Parent Wish handout HERE.

For both of these files the fonts and clipart came from:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DigitalBakeShop
http://imlovinlit.blogspot.com/
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/

How did your back to school night go?

Website Tracker - Free form to track usernames and passwords for websites

I hope I'm not the only one who feels scattered at the beginning of the year. Today I got up all ready to go to yoga and drove to the wrong studio location. Then, a few hours later I drove almost all the way to a friend's house for her son's birthday party before I realized it is next Sunday. It was not my day!

I spent the afternoon and evening trying to organize and get ready for the week.  I am starting my PhD this fall, working, and trying to work out/eat well.  I am still working on the best way to organize it all and allocate my time to get homework done, reading, and still have time for blogging and products. Apparently today, I was scattered and had too much swirling in my brain.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the orientation for my PhD and heard all about the dissertation process and the different qualifying exams I will have to take along the way. I essentially need to take notes in every class with the assumption I will see the information on a test in a couple years.  I need to take careful notes on all of my readings with the same assumption. I am planning on using Evernote to organize my graduate notes since I can access it from my iPad, my PC at home, and my Mac at work.  At the same time, I have to take notes on paper. I just do.  I was trying to toy with the idea of just using my iPad to organize me and let the paper planner go, but I'm not sure I'm there yet or ever will be.  For today I put all due dates in my Erin Condren Life Planner and my iPad.

I do want to utilize my iPad a lot more this year, though.  I like to use www.planbook.com for lesson planning, and they have an iPad app now.  Mastery Connect makes it so easy to pull up the Common Core Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards with their apps.

We'll see how it goes.  Hopefully as each week goes by I will feel a little less scattered. I am going to be using www.edmodo.com with my students this year, and Edmodo has an iPad app.  My students will use Edmodo on their laptops as their planner. I will still probably offer a paper planner if any students prefer to use paper, but we are going to start with Edmodo.

We actually use a lot of websites all the time, and many of them have lots of different usernames and passwords.  Last year I grabbed a little freebie form from a blog to help keep track of those usernames and passwords. It came in really handy to keep in the front of our binders, so I made one for this year.

The Website Tracker will help us stay a little more organized. You can get a copy here for free.

How do keep from feeling too overwhelmed and scattered at the beginning of the school year?

Biomes of the World Webquest Freebie

Today is Tuesday, which means it is time to link up with Techie Tuesday and Tried It Tuesday.

We have been studying biomes.  I have been loving loving this unit!  My students are reading nonfiction books on biomes and practicing the different nonfiction Common Core Standards for Informational Text while reading.  It has been a great end of the year project and fabulous interdisciplinary unit.

I decided I also wanted to try a webquest with my students.  I decided to create my own.  We have been working on it the last few days for Science, and it has been really fun to watch them engaged in student-centered learning, practicing reading and note-taking skills, as well as being creative. We used the Biomes of the World website for our research.   They had to take notes on each of the biomes and then come up with their own idea for a zoo to represent all of the biomes.  They will then create a brochure for their zoo and a map of their zoo.  We are done with the web research and still working on the zoo projects.  (I will show you pictures of the maps and brochures when we are done).

You can get a copy of the webquest here.

You can get a copy of the notes form I made here. There is a note page for each biome.

Here was a post from about a week ago from Technology Rocks Seriously with lots of different online games for kids to learn about animal habitats.  I plan on checking them out to have my students try some of them.

Have you used webquests?  This was my first time to make one, and I have really enjoyed watching my students work on this project.

Dear Children of the Earth Freebies

I was looking for some ideas for Earth Day. While linking up my biomes book suggestions at Collaboration Cuties, I saw this suggestion to read Dear Children of the Earth by Schim Schimmel at The Balanced Classroom.

I had picked up this book at the library when I was searching for books on biomes and looking for possible read alouds. I decided after Tammi's post that this would make the perfect read for Earth Day. It has beautiful illustrations and is written from the point of view of Mother Earth.

Today we will read the book, discuss the theme, answer some questions, and then my students will write their own letters from the point of view of an animal or plant on Earth.  They will have to choose what message they want to deliver. Click here for your own freebie copy of the activities.

Freebie - Story Map Lapbook

Today I have a freebie  for you.  I created a little foldable/lapbook based on the traditional Story Map with some analysis questions built in.  You can get a copy here.

We are going to use it with the book The Trees of the Dancing Goats by Patricia Polacco. This is a really sweet story on Hannukkah and helping others. This would also be a great story for discussing theme or moral of a story.

Earlier this week we watched the video version of My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother on Storyline Online.  While reading the story, we discussed character traits and examples from the story on why they are that trait. This is also a great book to discuss character development and how a character can change through the course of a story, as well as how characters' views of other characters can develop throughout a story.

Both stories involve the same characters.  Next week we are talking about point of view, and we will refer back to these two stories.  My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother is written in 1st person point of view and The Trees of the Dancing Goats is written in 3rd person point of view.  Since both stories involve the same characters they make a good contrast for the different ways stories can be delivered.

Freebie note-taking organizer for fiction and summarizing

So my goal for thius week is to get my 400 follower giveaway going.  It has been in the planning stages for like just about forever, but I have not had the time to sit down and setup Rafflecopter.

My brain is so tired.  I have so much respect now for self-contained multi-age classroom teachers.  I have previously taught mainly ELA and Social Studies. I am enjoying the advantages of seeing the same kids all day, but also drowing in my goal to get organized and wrap my head around the best way to plan for multi-levels. I think the blogging world has and will keep me sane...if I still am.  I know I overdo it and overthink and over-research and overplan.  I need to focus and simplify and take it one step at a time.  But I am an analytical list-maker who likes details and big-picture plans and contingency plans.

I have revised our weekly schedule and am figuring it out as I go...which I know is what we all do.  We are currently reading No Talking by Andrew Clements. In the book, a group of fifth grade boys and girls have a No Talking contest and can only speak if an adult asks them a question.  They only are allowed to respond in 3 word sentences or phrases. 

There is an activity in the book where a teacher has them create a story by jumping around the room with each student saying 3 words of the story at a time.  It is a fun activity if you can get your students to cooperate.  I would probably model it with a few sentences and then either try it in small groups before trying it as a whole class. A responsible class can handle it, but the stories get silly and students keep interrupting because they get confused. It is also fun to have one student be the scribe and write the story down.

I also had my students write about their weekend using only 3 word sentences.  We created an example together like "I got up. I brushed teeth. I ate breakfast. Then got dressed."  The sentences are choppy and not always completely correct, but it is a fun activity to get students to thinking about being concise and choosing words carefully. 

I started really looking at the CAFE book more closely.  So we have been working on self-monitoring and checking for understanding.  We practiced creating questions on what we read using the question words and then answering the questions.  I want to introduce my four-box note-taking strategy to my students as well as talk more about summarizing. So I created an organizer to give them that I am sharing with you. This is a reading note-taking I strategy I use where students make four boxes.  Three of the boxes are for before, during, and after reading and the fourth box is for visualizing.  I like having students draw what they visualize during read aloud.  This helps the fidgety kid who can't sit still.  It is a good way to regularly review prediction before reading, monitoring comprehension through questions or description or connections during reading, and summarizing or answering questions after reading. Click here to download.  

Freebie Activity menu on the Scientific Method

To follow up my post where I recommended 11 Experiments that Failed, I wanted to share something I created today.  I wanted to make a little menu of activities that my students could complete next week to demonstrate understanding of the Scientific Method.  I thought I would try out Dropbox as well.

I am going to keep looking for experiment ideas, but next week we will work on our menu and start our lesson on the Oceans.  Any great books on the Oceans and Oceanography?

I have some products I received this week to review for you.   That will be this weekend.  My technology tips giveaway ends tomorrow.

I am going to watch Snowhite and the Huntsman now on "On Demand." Never thought about it before... Is Snowhite spelled Snowhite or Snowwhite? 

A Giveaway and a Freebie for Long Term Planning with the English Common Core Standards Grades K-5

So, I wish I could say the last three days had been as successful with my fitness goals.  Oh, well.  I did walk the dog a few times though.  Thursday was a long day with work all day and the "meet the parent night" in the evening.  My classroom is almost complete, so I look forward to sharing some pictures with you.  I enjoyed meeting some of the parents I had yet to meet.  The kids start September 4th;  I am really excited about this year and having a small class (about 10-15) and the ability to utilize technology.

Last night I went to a Greek restaurant with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law and enjoyed a relaxing evening out.  Wednesday and Thursday evening were crazy between trying to make sure I had my classroom ready and my house clean for house guests.  The gamer hubby's LAN party started last night.  He came home at 5am and crashed and is yet to waken.  I am about to leave and run some errands. I need to pick out the paint color for the legs of my new farm table that is being built. I also need to find some games like Scrabble and Chess for my classroom.  I am going to head to Toys 'R Us just to see what they have.  Any fun board game recommendations?

Later this evening and tomorrow I am working on completing my partially-done classroom decor sets.  I really appreciate the great suggestions and comments I received the last couple posts.  If you are interested in possibly winning a free classroom decor set, leave me some feedback here. 

I also appreciate those that have emailed me expressing interest in helping out with my 400 follower giveaway.  I am going to keep working on planning a big giveaway.  In the meantime, I want to do a small giveaway to show my appreciation to all my followers.  Enter below in order to win 3 items of your choice from my store in order to help you with Back to School.  This giveaway will run from now until Wednesday. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I want to focus next week on some long term planning by looking at what novels I want to use this year for whole-group and small-group.  I can't fit them all in.  I also want to make sure I cover the Common Core Standards for 4th and 5th when using novels and various non-fiction texts. (I am in Texas, but my school uses the CCS).   I created these charts awhile ago with the intention of putting them in my store.  I never quite finished adding the Language Arts and Math Standards.  For now I have decided to share these charts with you as a freebie to link up with Freebie Friday on Saturday.

  It includes 27 pages of charts to help with long-term planning for most of the English/Language Arts Standards for Grades K-5.  I hope you find them helpful.
Long Term Planning With ELA Common Core Standards Grades K-5

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

Monday Made It and a couple Freebies

I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for another Monday Made It. 

I have been working on some more products for my TpT store.

Safari Classroom Decor - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

Pirate Classroom Decor  - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

I did make a couple things for myself, too.  (Next week, I hope to finish some more beach decor and paisley decor as well.  I can't decide if I want to decorate with a beach theme or paisley and owls).

Claire at Live, Laugh, Love, Teach made these plastic bag dispensers out of Clorox wipes containers for a previous Monday Made It.  I thought this was a genius idea.  We always use plastic bags for all sorts of things since we have pets, and we have the bags stored all sorts of places. The original tutorial calls for using fabric and mod podge.  I covered mine with my Xyron and scrapbook paper.  It works.  It dresses up the container a bit.  I want to keep one here at home and one at school.

I wanted to make the bucket labels for sharpened and dull pencils.  I know there are probably lots of these labels out there, but I made my own.  You can get your own copy below if you like. I used the Dollar Tree containers again.

Pencil Sharpen Labels

For keeping track of grades, I found I hated using a gradebook because I did not want to write students names over and over.  Plus, the little boxes were too tiny in my opinion. For me, I found it works better to make a little table and either write or print the students names and then copy it.  I use one each week and record the grades on the paper while grading and then move it over to the computer system as I have time. I keep the sheets with the grades in my teacher binder in folders for each six weeks. You can get a copy of this little grading recorder below.  It's simple, but effective.
Grading Recorder

Currently in July and Manic Monday

Excited to link up with the Farley's Currently.  I will have to finish reading everyone else's tomorrow.

Yes, I was listening to Miley Cyrus - I love the message behind the song "The Climb."

I am addicted to sweet tea right now.  I'm trying to eat more salad and eliminate alcohol, soda, and dairy as much as I can, so for right now sweet tea is my vice.  I like cold and sugar when it is 100+ out.

I'm super excited to be able to announce I'm going back to teaching.  I gave my two week's notice on Friday.  Technical writing has helped me improve my writing and technology skills, but I am excited to have been offered a position at a private school 15 minutes from my house. 
I want some new books to read, but I need to stop blogging long enough to curl up with a book.  I'll get there.  I consume books and then take a break.  I do things in cycles.

The last few months I have been going to hot yoga 2-4 times a week.  The last month I have started interval power walking and running.  Trying to get in some sort of routine with yoga and running.  I want to get a new bike, too, for the days it is too hot to run.

I love No Talking.  It is the perfect light-hearted story with a good message.  It brings up some great conversations on communication as well.  Appeals to boys and girls both.
If I am being honest, my go-to resource has been Laura Candler's website.  She was my jumping off point for Reader's Workshop and organization and scheduling and seasonal resources and literature circles and foldables. Should I keep going?

For those of trying to get organized, go ahead and download my freebie binder covers and spine labels for the holidays.

Blessings on this Sunday evening/Monday morning,

Quick Reference Teacher Planner Freebie

I know I never could find the right planner as a teacher.  I tried some of the ones you purchase, but I never felt like it had enough space or was organized in a way that worked for me.  I usually ended up typing my detailed lessons in Word and a quick reference in Excel.  For today's "Monday Made It," I decided to make a cuter quick-reference planner I wanted to share.

I made one for if you teach all subjects:

And then I made a departmentalized version for if you teach Math/Science or ELA/SS:

I just updated it to include one for if you do small groups or pull out:

Click here to get a copy.  There is the blue polka dot background as well as one with just a white background.