Sharing Sunday

Do you realize that I've been in school a total of 8 weeks already? EIGHT! That's two whole months of back to school. This also means there's only one more before the end of the first marking period. Whoa! So fast. It often feels like time is slogging through the quicksand as you go day to day. Before you know it though, you look up and the first marking period is over.

Life is definitely in fast forward and it's hard to find time to just breathe. The fine folks over at Primary Peach have come up with a solution to the Merry-Go-Round this month. I am linking up with their Sharing Sunday to help you plan out the month ahead. Give you a little time to do those things you love - eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, read a book.

I've got some fun ideas for your ELA and Math blocks below.

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*Click on the image below to get to the file where you can click each link.

 One of my favorite books to read to the class in Frindle from Andrew Clements. It shows them that there are possibilities to change the world if they have a little ingenuity. I am so sad that third grade taught it last year and I can't use it with my students this year since they know all the answers. Gah! Maybe you can squeeze some fun out of this one!

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*Scroll down to the second file to see the links for this page

 

We are currently knee-deep in our intro to multiplication. But we aren't to teach the basic algorithm. School rules. Instead, we look at the relationship between addition and look at strategies to solve these problems. Area model, commutative properties, and arrays are just some of the methods we use. Good thing I've got my Factors, Multiples, Arrays Oh MY! packet ready to go in my TpT store.

Hope these help you out this month as the holidays start approaching. Maybe  you'll have time to carve a pumpkin, or start that early Christmas shopping. Who knows!

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Check back here for more information about the Primary Peach Link Up

Organizing Math Stations

Hey there, I am linking up with one of my favorite blogs of all times, The Primary Peach, to bring you a Sunday organizational tip.

If you're like me and have finally caught up with the digital age you have all of your files on your computer now. Our school lets us directly connect to the office printer so that we can send the stuff that we need printed off multiple times right to the 'big' printer and not have to waste the ink on our classroom printers. This is so helpful when you forget are planning for the week. I can send it immediately to the printer and just walk over and pick it up. So quick!

To get back to my point, I began to realize that I have not opened my filing cabinet files for at least two years. Everything I use is on the shared drive whenever I need it.

Another problem I had was trying to keep my math stations organized. They were everywhere. I tried to keep them in a fun fabric drawer like thing I found at Walmart, but they always got mixed up and I could never find what I was looking for when it came time to switch out the stations. I needed a way to keep them in order by subject.

So guess what I did? I went through my entire Language Arts and Math drawers and threw everything away. Yep, I did it! It was so freeing. I had things from when I first started teaching first grade in there from 1995. It was time. Total purge.

Now I had a space in the room where I could coordinate math stations by strand. I put each station into a folder inside of a gallon Ziploc bag so I could grab it when I need it. If you looked inside you'd see all of the Place Value games together, all the Multiplication stations in one place, and all of the Geometry ideas close by.

I am fully advocating the need to go through you filing cabinet and purging stuff you haven't even set eyes on in the past year or so. Then you can use that empty storage unit however you want. Believe me, it's a wonderful feeling!

P.S. I left my Social studies and Science drawers alone because some of that stuff is hard to find on line.

I've just been Boo'ED

Boo ed

I woke up this morning to find my Facebook feed splashed with pictures from my sister's Halloween Party she held last night. Sadly, I could not be there since she lives in Maine and I live in Georgia. It got me thinking though, about how the holiday of Halloween has changed.

When I was a kid, I don't recall my elementary school holding costume parades or even allowing us to wear costumes to school on the fateful day. I do remember being pent up the entire day, vividly. That anxious anticipation of all out fun started about a week out when the Halloween shows began. My favorite to this day is It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. There were others like Fat Albert and Scooby Doo Halloween specials. Am I dating myself here or what?

One year I remember sitting on the couch watching the animated showing of Gulliver's Travels and just waiting for my mother to announce, "It's time." That meant I could finally put on my Darth Vader costume and grab my pillow case off the bed to scour my neighborhood for the best candy. We had to wait until it got dark before we could go out Trick or Treating. Then we had to hear the dreaded news whether or not we had to wear our jackets over our costumes because it was too cold outside to run around in paper thin plastic capes. My 'neighborhood' consisted of four streets packed with homes that ran along two main streets. My house was on the front busiest street so we had to start there to hopefully avoid the traffic. But the rest were a free for all as we ran hither and thither collecting sugary goodness until we couldn't carry out pillow cases without dragging them.

Nowadays schools have put a Stop Gap on anything Halloween, canceling all parties, worksheets, movies, and mentioning of the holiday. It saddens me but I understand that we need to respect the religion and beliefs of all the children in our classrooms. My principal has found a way to still throw some fun our way during this time. We are having a Book Character Dress Up Day on Thursday, October 31. My grade level has talked about going with a common theme for the teachers, but nothing has been solidified as of yet. I don't think there will be any candy passing, but there might be a parade through the halls. Should be fun!

That's me as Harry Potter for last year's parade. 


So, here's what this post is all about. I am BOO'ing two of my BBB (best blogging buddies) through their email and challenging them to BOO two others. Then they are to write a post about what they do during this time of year. Now I want to hear all sides, from those that still celebrate Halloween, and those who don't believe in it. I'm really interested in how Halloween is taken around the world.
 

Once you've BOO'ed and blogged, come back here and LINK up with this thread so I can read all about what goes on for you as October nears its end. Make sure to use my BOO Logo up above in your posts.

As some added fun, however many folks link up between now and October 31 will determine the sales percent I throw up on my TpT store. So if 100 people link up, I'll have a 10% sale from November 1-3. If 200 people link up, it'll be 20%. So make sure you encourage your BOO'EES to link up! Does this mean if 1000 people link up, I'll have a three day long FREEBIE sale at my TpT Store? (Yep, can you see my freaking out face right now?)

Thanks for playing!

Friday Fun - 100 Follower Giveaway

I've been dreaming of this moment since July. I wasn't expecting to have it happen so soon though. I owe thanks to so many amazing people for this honor. But most of all to BBBB (Best Blogging Buddy Beyond Infinity), Jivey. She has held my hand through this entire process and shared her talents and tips and tricks to help me get to this point. I can't thank her enough!

I can thank y'all though. I can thank YOU a lot. Actually I think I can thank you 10 times over. I have scoured the ends of the Blogosphere to find ELEVEN of the most amazing people to ever set their fingers to the keyboard. And each one of them was completely generous enough to donate a prize to my little giveaway.

Can you see the grin on my face? Uh-huh.

Here is a list of the ELEVEN prizes that one Grand Prize Winner will receive!

PLUS

The Grand Prize Winner will win TWO items of choice from my TpT Store. 

Is that all? 

Of course NOT. 

There will also be two more winners. I will have a Second and Third Prize Winner. 

The Second Prize Winner will get two products from my TpT Store of their choice. 

The Third Prize Winner will get one product from my TpT Store of their choice.

***Make sure you leave me a comment below to let me know what you've got your eye on in my store.

Whew! I'm tired from just typing this all. 

Here's a set of links for each of the Prize Donations so you can go and check them out yourselves:

Hunter's Tales from Teaching is offering up her Pilgrim dice.

Collaboration Cuties is offering up

-->one item- winner's choice from their TpT store. 

Ideas by Jivey is offering up her Knots on a Counting Rope Mentor Unit.

Head Over Heels for Teaching is offering up her Character Analysis Posters. 

Sweet Rhyme&Pure Reason is offering  up his Monster Math.  

Fourth Grade Flipper is offering up any item from her TpT store.

Pinkadots Elementary is offering up her Stop, Note, Notice.

E-Z Class is offering up some exotic goodies all the way from New Zealand.  (I'm so jealous!)

Comprehension Connection is offering up her unit on The Fall Festival.

Covered in Glitter and Glue is offering up one item from her TpT Store.
Digital Divide and Conquer is offering up one item from his TpT Store under $10.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As an added bonus, I've asked all of the fabulous souls to link up here with a blog post about what it felt for them to reach that first 100. Since some of them are far beyond the 1,000 Followers mark, I'm definitely going to be taking notes! Make sure you visit their blogs to find out how they achieved their success.

Thanks for playing! See you next Friday with the winning announcement.

Must Read Linky - Graphic Biographies

Our unit on the Native Americans is winding down and those shelter projects are starting to flood in, but my brain is already turning to the next unit.

EXPLORERS!!

This is such a fun topic to teach because I get to tell the kids how totally off the wall the explorers were. How frightfully wrong, and completely clueless they actually were. It makes my students laugh, but then realize that every great idea has to start somewhere.

We usually begin with the guy who started it all, Marco Polo. His journeys and tell-all book created the frenzy that was exploration. Without him, North American would be completely different today. Yes, there were already tons of people living here and the Ancient Siberians and even the Vikings had already stepped foot on the wild lands before this Italian ever was a thought in history. But it was Columbus that brought it to the attention of Europe and the race was on.

A huge part of me wishes that the Europeans had dealt with the native inhabitants of this new land in a much more diplomatic way. So many of the hurts of the young nation would have been healed before they even began, but I digress from my topic.

I am linking  up with those Collaboration Cuties for their Social Studies lesson idea post. Head on over and see a great book that I also just bought to use during my Native American Unit. If you Lived with the Hopi is a perfect resource to help you answer those tons of questions students will ask about this tribe living in the dry lands of Arizona. Check it out!

My choice of books is moving beyond the Native Americans and turning towards those explorers that had a desire to learn more about their planet. Christopher Columbus is so well known, but so much of his journey is shrouded in the past. My kids are shocked to learn that he it took six years to convince King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to fund his expedition. They also find it so intriguing that his crew wanted to throw him overboard and  head back home shortly before they sighted land.

My fourth graders, especially the boys, are in love with graphic novels. I am constantly seeing them check out Star Wars, Hardy Boys, and Baby Sitters club done up in this style. Even the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Tales of a Not-so are graphic novels of a sort. So, why not bring in some dealing with our history topics?

This is one of a series of books that cover the history of our nation. I love them because they have other titles that match our Fourth Grade curriculum perfectly - History of Jamestown, the Boston Tea Party, Sutter's Mill, etc. What's great about them is they don't sugarcoat anything. Kids can see that a lot of greed, ambition, and selfishness tied into exploration. Plus they definitely don't overly romanticize the first meeting between Europeans and natives of the Americas.

I am trying to get our librarian to order the set, or even get some money to buy six copies of some of them to store in our book room teachers use for small groups. We shall see!

Friday Fun - Linky - Remembering Names

{Grab this button by right clicking and choosing "Save Image As" to add to your blog post}

Today is the day. I get to meet all my brand new fledgling fourth graders. I am so happy that our county has gone to an online registration system. This completely frees up this day to actually chat with my students and their parents. I don't have to rush around checking paperwork, collecting forms, and handing out money orders. It is such a more relaxed session than it was in the past.

My room is pretty much ready and I am already lining up stuff I need to print out for the first day of school. Shh, but I already have names on forms and stuff and I haven't even met them yet! There's always a chance that someone has moved over the summer. For some reason I always get ahead of myself and end up redoing a bunch of stuff. That's okay, right?

There are 27 students on my list and I have some interesting names to remember this year. As I was typing the list up three ways to Sunday, I was already practicing who would come next. It was  kinda hard this early. I need to see them to really get a handle on who they are. It usually takes me a week of interacting with them to really get all of their names down. What helps is that I greet them at the door every morning with a choice:

Do you want:

A. A Five High

B. A Firm Handshake

C. A Finger Jazz

D. A Fist Bump

Most of them go for a high five (I had to change the name up a bit to fit with the other choices), but after doing this a while they start getting creative. I had one teach me several different cool handshakes last year. It's a great way to see who is shy, who are the more boisterous ones, and which ones might need some work on the social interactions. 

Each morning I try to greet them by name and ask them something about themselves. It doesn't always get great responses at first, but they eventually come out of their shell. Some of them a little too quickly, if you know what I mean.

What are some ways that help you to remember their names in the first week? Add your post links below, I'd love to read them!

  

Currently - Oh' Boy August

Fun Linky! Fun Linky!

Farley over at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade is throwing this party together. Go there to grab your chance to link up!

Listening: Frozen, by Madonna. Well, now it's Georgia Rose by Queen Latifah. Just my 'Jazzy' playlist while I work at playing blog catch up. NO tv on during this time, or I will zone out and forget what I was doing. Then it will take all night to catch up. 
 
Loving: All that time I spent getting my classroom put together after moving into a room with windows AND a bathroom, has paid off. I wasn't stressing (too much) this week getting back into the swing of things. I even had time to think about lesson plans for the first day. Ha!

Thinking: Urp, it kinda messed up my workout today. I was going along just fine but then started feeling the acid from the spicy sandwich creep up on me. It is not pretty to jump up and down at such a time.
 
Wanting: I've been eating so bad as school gets closer. Trying to grab onto the idea of freedom. Must stop this now! It's back to Greek yogurt and lean ground turkey for me...starting tomorrow. For now, that blizzard is calling me NAME!
 
Needing: Okay, I went and got the water to curb my appetite. Sitting here sipping away while I finish up my blog work. I wanted to put up a new product in my TpT store. Something simple, but I can't decide on what just yet. 
sip sip
 
B2S Must Haves:  That bleeping pencil sharpener continues to elude me. After all the blog contests I've entered and the begging and pleading to get people to follow me on blogloving so I can reach the 100 quota to 'review' one for the company just isn't happening.
I went through my class library and noticed the sad state of my Native American bucket. In Fourth we teach all about six different tribes. I ordered a couple of great books from Amazon and got an email today that they have shipped. Yay!
Sanity. Meet the Teacher is tomorrow and reality will set in. Let's not have any breakdowns, or trying to open the window so I can escape and go fishing this year, k?

Back to School Goals 2013

Hi again. It's me. After my first full day of work school. It went pretty well with only a few down moments during those long coma inducing meetings. by the way. I had a few moments to check my Blogloving and saw that Jess over at I {heart} Recess had a really fun Linky going on.

Had to jump in and get the positive juices flowing again.

Personal: I have been saving up since January to make that huge airplane trip to Australia! I'm so excited, but a little anxious as well. I've never been there or spent that long in an airplane. I can't sleep on board, so that should get a little interesting.
 
Organization: One of my colleagues, Laurie, went above and beyond to find me this really cool rolling cart with ten drawers. It was only $25 at Sam's Club and they didn't have them at her regular one, so she went out of her way to try another one and was successful! Now I have the perfect organizer for my Reading and Math groups. 
 
Planning: I became obsessed with TpT this summer. I can spend all day making stuff to put up for others to enjoy. Now that school is back, that is totally going to cut into my TpT time. What am I to do?

Professional: I have so many resources that I buy after taking a staff development or someone mentions how great it is. Then I am so bad at looking through them. I stick them into a file cabinet and forget them. I want to drag a few out and see what's between the covers. 

Students: Speaking of, I attended a great session during out county's Summer Literacy Institute that discussed having Academic Conversations on a much deeper level. I am committing myself to making this work in my room this year. 

Motto:  I found this quote and made a poster of it last year. The rest of it says, "Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it." I tell my students this all the time when they are all chatting away during a fire drill.

Thanks, Jess. This was fun!

Friday Fun - Math Literature Linky Party

You may use this title icon on your posts as well. Just right click on the picture and "Save Link As" to your own post so that it links back to this page.

Here's the fill-out form for your book to post on your blog:

As promised, here is my first Linky Party EVER!

For this section of Friday Fun, I am going to ask y'all to share your favorite Math Literature connections. Last year we had an amazing Math Coach at my school that loved tying math and literature together for students to further their knowledge of both topics.

One of the books she used in her series of Math Literature was the Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns.

Now for my write up:

After you read this book to your students, you can pass out the following sheet for them to fill out on their own. (It's available here The Greedy Triangle Write Up)

 The students get to choose one of the shapes the Triangle goes through and apply it to shapes that they've seen around them. Encourage them to think of some really unique uses for their shape, like the shape made by people bending their elbows! This lesson will get them thinking about how the author gave several creative ways that geometric shapes can be found in the world around us. Their unique minds will think outside the box and show you some insight into their personalities. Be prepared.

Go ahead and click on the link below to add your Math inspired literature ideas. Can't wait to see what everyone posts. Thanks for joining my party!

OH, if you want to add the links to the bottom of your post as well, there's a neat little "grab the code" button underneath the Add your Link button below. Just stick this HTML code at the bottom of your post and Voila!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thursday Tutorials - Linky Party

Happy Independence Day y'all!

I heard the history of this day put into perspective by my niece's FB status this morning:

"Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes." ;)

 She's so cute.  Love that she used the word brouhaha, it's such a throwback to seventh grade English class with Ms. McGovern.

 Today I thought I'd focus on providing a little tutorial. This is going to focus strictly on technology and not specifically for use in your classroom. Once I got the idea settled I had to think what I wanted to share on this day of Independence. The problem I've been trying to solve in the past few days for myself was the mysterious phenomenon known as a "Linky Party." A ton of the blogs I've been visiting through the TpT community seem to have conquered this strange method of binding themselves together into a tight knit group. 

 Never wanting to be left out of the loop, I want to decipher the code that surrounds the Cool Group. As I struggle to get it working for my blog, you are coming along with me for the ride. Are you ready? Got a cool drink and a cookie? Let's go!

1. The first thing I always do when trying to create something is to head over to Google. So I typed in: How do I create a linky party. The first site it took me to was It's a Blog Party that claims to  know the secrets behind linkies in the post "Building your Blog: Host a Linky Party." We shall see. 

2. One of the things you definitely need in order to host a linky party is a 'button.' This is a little image that acts as a link back to your blog. You can see mine off to the right under the Grab My Button heading. You can add this to your Blogger site by adding the gadget HTML to your blog and sticking the code you see under my button into the gadget box. Just make sure that you change the information between the parenthesis over from my blog site to yours and then change the information between the second set of parenthesis from my image location to yours.

You'll have to load your image up to a separate  sharing site such as Photobucket and grab the direct code from that site in order to plug into the HTML code above. 

3. Next you'll need to build your own linky platform. There are two choices that I looked into Inlinkz and Linky Tools. Both are free to join, but if you want the real benefit from the program, you'll need to pay about $2 a month for the upgrade. YES! There's money involved. Just wanted you to be aware of this before we move forward. 

I think I'm going to go with Inlinkz. Their website just looks cleaner and they offer a discount of $20 for the year if you pay at once. Save yourself $4 for some Starbucks, right? Once you are all logged in and confirmed your subscriptions through your email (there will be two, one for newsletter and one for the site itself, make sure you confirm both or it won't let you log in) you'll have two choices: Go to Dashboard, or Project Manager. 

Your first Linky Party with thumbnail images is totally free. After that you are allowed text only Linky Parties. If you want thumbnails (much more fun for me) you'll need to change your subscription over to the paid service. Let's do that first. Click on "Account" at the top and click on the blue "Extend your Plan" button next to link-up tool subscription. You'll see payment options there. I chose the $19.99 for one year - save 18% option and paid it off. 

If anyone also wants to join this site, here is My Referral Number

4. Now you're ready to start your very own Linky Party, or "Collection" as Inlinkz calls them. Click on the "Create New Collections" button and give your Linky Party a name. 

5. Give it a duration of time that you'd like it to run:

6. Then set up the information for how you want the links to display:
(here I am going to go with the suggestions provided by It's a Blog Party
since they seem to know what they are doing).

7. Finally, you have the option to be emailed when someone links up. This way you can check for spammers and such to delete that mess right away. Also, if you are going to repeat this type of collection again in the future and want to save the settings, create a "Meme" name for it and it will show up under the "Add new based on" pull down at the beginning of your dashboard. Save yourself some time.

SUBMIT!

8. You'll get this gobbledy-gook HTML code that you can include in your post. When you're ready to start the Linky Party, create a new post and go through the motions of explaining it all to your loyal readers. Then when you are ready to include the Inlinkz information (usually at the end of your post) you can switch the post content "Compose" to "HTML". I see it sitting at the top left of the screen underneath the Blogger icon and my blog name. Once in HTML, just insert the Inlinkz HTML code you saved earlier at the end.

9. Preview your blog to see the actual link box happening to see if it all looks perfect.

10. Then you are ready to publish your first Linky Party.

I really hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me (that icon is at the top of the page in the far right corner, just click on the little envelope icon).

Stay tuned tomorrow when I release my first ever LINKY PARTY! Hope to see you there. 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Writings - Mentor Text

TWO LINKY Parties for me in one day! 

I love writing. Words fascinate me, especially how several different people can take a handful of words and put them together is such different ways. Writing is a way to express your soul and connect with others through visual experiences. Writing opens up doors and gives people impressions of you before you even walk in. I love writing.

For this week, I thought I would try up a LINKY party with those Collaboration Cuties. They are compiling a list of great mentor text to use at the beginning of school. Check out their site for a terrific list of books to use when those fresh new faces wander into your room.

My book choice for the sheer fun of it is definitely:

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Orloff and David Catrow is a personal favorite. The letters written between an overeager son trying to convince his mother, and a mother having some serious doubts is wonderful. I think it's the illustrations that really grab me about this fun little nugget. They just so fun and goofy that the kids love looking at the book over and over.

I would use this text to get them started thinking about the Opinion Genre (Persuasive in another life). They have to express and opinion and back it up with proof, just like Alex in the story. He does do a little begging, which is a trap we don't want students falling into when writing this genre. Rather, backing up your ideas with evidence will convince your reader to agree with you. The students would write to me or another student in regards to something they feel strongly about. Then that person has to write back to give the author that sense of communication, just make sure to remind them to be positive with their responses.

If you like this one, you'll love the new edition to the series: I Wanna New Room. Check them out.

For my second Linky of the day (last week, I didn't even know what a Linky was, ha!) I am linking up with Ideas by Jivey for her ideas on setting up a workshop in your classroom. Since my topic today is Writing, I will stick with that.

One of the things I do before the kiddos arrive is to create a Steps to Good Writing board. This is an area in the classroom where the students come up and move a clothespin from each of the steps to show where they are in their writing. This way I can quickly see who is spending too much time in the Drafting stage. Now I've used tons of things for this in the past. I've had separate pieces of paper, plastic plates, one long wall chart, etc for the students to show where they are. None of these has worked perfectly for me. The chart gets ripped, or the clothespins don't stay on the plates and they fall behind my bookshelves (GRRR). If anyone has the perfect method for this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment below!

The Steps I use are Planning, Drafting, Revising, Editing, Peer Editing, Final Draft, Publish. Each has a little reminder about what to do at each step. I am going to try and provide you with what I remember for each of the steps. Since I'm not at school right now, I don't have easy access to my files. So bear with me.

Planning: (15 min)
*Get your ideas down
*Jot down everything you know
*This is not the time for complete sentences

Drafting: (1-2 days)
*Choose one idea from your jots
*Jot everything you know just on this topic
*Choose one main character and two supporting
*Don't worry about spelling
*This is your Rough Draft
*Skip lines

Revising: (1 day) I usually attach a colored pencil to this step so they remember to use one for revising
*Make your verbs stronger
*Add sensory details
*Organize your thoughts
*Look for moments to EXPLODE (give more information to your reader)
*Take away extra ideas

Editing: (1 day) A different colored pencil is attached
*Check all spellings
*Watch your punctuation
*Have you capitalized correctly?
*Does your story make sense?

Peer Editing: (10 mins)
*Read your story outloud to a partner
*Partner is allowed 3 suggestions
*Make changes with colored pencil

Final Drafting: (1 day)
*BEST handwriting
*Don't skip lines
* INDENT

Publish: (1 day)
*Create a cover for your story
*Think about new ideas

Hopefully this helps you out as you get started in your Writer's Workshop!