Be More Awesome

Oh my goodness this kid had me cracking up at 3am when I was having trouble sleeping. I knew I had to tuck this video away for a day when my kiddos needed a pep talk! And what do you know....today was one of those Mondays where the kids were just struggling to get moving! So I told them we were going to have a pep talk! We watched the video and I swear it changed the day around. They were looking for ways to be more awesome!

Watch, enjoy, and save for a day when your kiddos might need a pep talk!

Gotta Love Post-Its!

As I was making room for our non-fiction work on our walls today I remembered this activity from a few weeks back and thought I'd share:)

We brainstormed character traits to describe Lilly and Mr. Slinger from Lilly and the Purple Plastic Purse. If you use this activity you can also have students give you evidence from the text to support the trait they chose on a different color Post-It...I'll be doing that when we revisit character traits!

Tell me how you really feel

 Does anyone else refer to their Sunday as lesson plan day. It's really sad. But my Sundays have been spent in front of my computer writing up my plans for the past few weekends. I usually have a pretty good idea of how my week is going to be planned long before Sunday but it's the "putting it down on paper" part that is soooo time consuming!
I really do have a love/hate relationship with lesson plans. My school requires that they be turned in weekly. They are also expected to be fairly detailed. I am going to give you my thoughts on lesson plans and to thank you for "listening" to my rant I will share an AWESOME resource:)

So I very much love and appreciate the time thinking about and mapping out my week. I feel so much more organized and ready to go to work after writing my plans. So what's not to love? I don't like the fact that I am typing them up for someone else. I feel that lesson plans should be for me.  I feel like a perfectionist at times when I spend all my time making my plans look good. Sometimes I have to stop myself and remind myself what's REALLY important. I want to spend the majority of my time on what's going to be useful to my kiddos. That means I would much rather be preparing, creating, or searching for resources.....NOT typing lesson plans. BOO.

Okay I'm done. Now for one of my favorite finds.

Planbook is an AMAZING lesson planning resource. I just started using it after a friend shared it with me and I am hooked! It is so easy to use. You create your schedule which it saves for you and you can enter your plans for the different subjects. You can extend lessons to other days. All your plans are saved for you. Planbook already has the standards so all you have to do is click on them and they are in your plans! You can try it out FOR FREE for 30 days. After that it is 12$ a year! 12$ what a deal!

It took me awhile to set it up and familiarize myself with it but it was worth it. I just send the link to my plans to my principal and Voila! She can choose to print or just view. I love Planbook. It almost makes my reevaluate my love/HATE relationship....almost ;)


Now it's off to spend the rest of my Sunday with my boys!

Why didn't I think of that?

  Seriously though, why didn't I think of this?  I went to a MAC-Ro math training and they had us use these giant white boards for a few activities. My class LOVES I mean absolutely LOVES using these giant white boards.

These are a really great tool for group exercises. I've been utilizing these boards for problem solving...students work together to make a plan and solve a tricky math problem and they just adore it! In fact this picture was taken during our Friday free choice time after a group begged me to use the big white boards to create math problems. Adorable...right?!

I went to Home Depot asked them for dry erase board and had them cut the board into 24x36 pieces. The man asked if I was a teacher and gave me 50% off! I think I spent a total of 12$ and that includes the cute duct tape I bought to cover the edges so that they last longer. Okay confession....I actually did it because now the boards are super cute with the duct tape design!

Happy Saturday!

Hellllllllooooooo Friday!

I absolutely adore my kiddos this year but boy have I been waiting on today! I was OUT the door and on my way to pick up my own little munchkin from daycare as the bell rang today. My little one hasn't been sleeping much at night so I have been daydreaming all day about coming home to curl up and nap with him. Now he is snoozing and my mind is racing thinking about all the things we did this week and all the things planned for next week. So much for a nap!

This week we finished up our chapter book study and we are moving on into NON FICTION books. I raided my bookshelves, the school library, and the public library for an assortment of non-fiction books, magazines, newspapers etc. so that they students can learn all about non fiction text features.

We started our non-fiction anchor chart. I would show them a feature, then we talked about it, and then I gave them time to find the text feature in their set of non-fiction books. We didn't finish it this week BUT here's what we have done so far...

                                                    Click here to download the text feature cards.

I don't know about you all, but my students have been going CRAZY for non fiction. They are learning so much and want to share with you every exciting fact they find! I remember seeing this idea on Pinterest awhile back and knew that it would be perfect. Whenever a student finds an interesting fact that they just have to share they write it down and turn it into the new Did You Know section of our room. Each day I pick one awesome fact and the student who submits it gets to write it on our Did You Know board so it can be shared with the whole class. On their card they need to write where they found the information in case anyone else wants to go read more about it!

                                                   You can sort of see the bag where I keep the cards to the right.

Well it's time to go RELAX....Hope you all get to do the same!

Great website alert!

We've been working on character traits and my kiddos had a great time using this website to describe some of the characters we've been reading about. They have a blast creating the character's appearance.I suggest having them write the traits first BEFORE they get to the picture....otherwise they may never get to the typing part!

You can also describe appearance and challenges faced by the character as well. Great literature response potential utilizing technology!

 Click here to check it out!

Tomorrow is Friday! Wahooo! Hope it's a good one!

I'm using this little vocabulary book for the chapter book we are reading this month. It's working out so well I will definitely be reusing it throughout the year! The kiddos keep them handy so that they can be used often. I offer rewards to students who can use this vocabulary in conversations throughout the day!

It's yours if you'd like...

Story Vocabulary Book