Tried It Tuesday - Tagxedo

A very unassuming website but BOY is it fun!  Tagxedo works off the same premise as Wordle but provides some fun shapes to fit your word clouds into. I found this last year when I was getting my Pinterest on and made an apple shaped Welcome to Fourth Sign for my new class using their names. I also created a school bus filled with words and concepts that we teach in Fourth. This year I did the same, but I changed it to a star shape to fit with my outer space theme. The kids love looking for their names in the shape.

Give it a try!

Blog Hoppin' - 10 Things About Me

 

 

I'm just going to dive right into this. It's been a long week and it's only Monday! HA

1. One thing you don't know about me is that I have a bonafide super power. Yep. I have bionic glasses. 

They act as hearing aids for me and have a built in bone conduction receptor that sits right on my skull so I can hear all those lovely students talking when they aren't supposed to. 

2. My glasses are not currently working properly. I have been losing reception on the right and after many times of them 'repairing' them it's still not working. Plus, now the left side pops up with this annoying crackling noise that drowns everything else out. 

3. I scheduled an audiologist appointment to talk about options to fix these dang things. I'm about to go crazy! Keep your fingers crossed that they don't suggest cochlear implants (can you say $25,000?).

4. I am not going to talk about glasses in this one. I like to travel. A lot. I love to jet off to foreign lands and immerse myself in completely different cultures. I've spent a week in a Tuscan castle, climbed Mexican pyramids, and lived in Paris for a month. My next trip is set for Australia in December. Whee!

5. Both of my parents died young. I am almost the same age now that my father died at. It's sort of nervewracking. 

6. I've been teaching at the same school for the past 12 years.  This is my 13th group to come through my little room. I am actually teaching the baby brother of a boy I had in third grade back in 2002. He's now a junior in college. OY.

7. I have eclectic tastes while picking my favorite tv programs. I love watching Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Downton Abbey. But I also love watching The Walking Dead, Grimm, and Once Upon a Time. Heartwarming and Heart eating. Can't get enough. 

 

 8.  I love to cook. I blame the Food Network for this craze, even though they wouldn't let me in for an episode taping when I was last in New York. 

9. I walk to work almost every day. The school is literally right behind my house and I have a gate in my backyard that leads me right to it. It's wonderful. Probably one of the main reasons I've stayed at the same school for 13 years. 

10. My favorite season is Summer, but my favorite holiday is Christmas. I just realized that's probably why I want to go to Australia in December. Best of both worlds!

Mentor Monday - Landform booklet

Something we do in Fourth Grade every year is sneak in a little geography. There are several terms that the students are responsible for knowing. But with all the other content we need to cover, it's hard to get this little unit in. We usually slide it into the other content areas. Take our unit on Native Americans, for example. We study the Inuit, Kwakiutl, Nez Perce, Hopi, Pawnee, and Seminole. As we are discussing each of these we can talk about the locations they chose to live and the landforms that surround that area.

I'll go through the Kwakiutl for you, since its such a fun word to say. They settled on the Pacific coast in the Washington - Oregon areas. I can cover oceans, continents, coast, gulf, and bay throughout my discussion of this tribe. When I mention one of the landforms I have them pull out this little booklet that we handed out at the beginning of the year. It's just 3 regular pieces of 8.5x11 paper that have been folded width-wise and stapled to form a book.

Each page can fit up to two different landform definitions and pictures. Since it's the beginning of the year I have printed out the text to glue down, but I want them to draw the pictures to get a clearer sense of what the landform shapes look like. I've had them copying from the board everything including the text, but they took 4-EVA to get it done. I want to see if this helps them get it done faster. Any extra text pieces they can slip into their binder baggie I talked about here.

When I need them busy for a bit while I conduct the reading records we are charged with every year, I will run all of the pictures they need to know into a powerpoint presentation that I have running on a loop with a slide separation of 7 minutes for now to see if this is enough time for them to draw and stay on task. That's 27 students that I need to sit and listen to read complete books while I take notes. So I need the others to stay busy with something. This is a great project for them to complete individually.

I have placed the ppt and the text printout into my TpT store for free. So make sure you take advantage of that. I'd LOVE it if you leave me a little comment there on how it works for you.

Have fun!

TpT Product Swap Results

A few weeks back I asked folks to join in on a TpT Product Swap for Grades 3-5. Bethany from Hunter's Teaching Tales and Julie from Math is Elementary were all over it.

I asked them to each pick a product from the others store to swap. They were to review the product and then write up a critique of how it would be useful in their classrooms. I think they both did amazing with it. I wanted to buy both products right away. Bethany's Graphing QR code task cards would be perfect for my class. And Julie's Math Sub Plans for August and September were such a great packet jammed with fun ideas to leave with your sub. Imagine how happy they would be to have all their work done for them?

Thank you ladies for joining in!

Back to School Swap Results

Can you imagine me doing a little dance in my car as I pulled up to the mailbox to see a HUGE package sitting there?

I knew exactly what it was all about as soon as I saw it. Bethany Hunter from Hunter's Tales from Teaching sent me a chunk of cool stuff.

Look closely and you'll see what I am talking about. From right to left can you see those awesome Super Hero erasers? Oh, yeah. My boys are going to fight over those! Always have room for more Expo Markers. Especially since I plan on having the kids use white boards more often. There is a very large pack of pens in a multitude of colors, so no fear that I will be grading papers with the dreaded red pen.

At the top are some super large push pins. How did she know that I bought a few of these to use on my anchor charts for the bulletin board? Now I have plenty! Umm, there were some tictacs in there as well. Is she trying to say something??

The list keeps going. A oversized pack of sticky notes, which I think I'm in love with. Never saw them this huge. There are two different colors of Washi (ish) tape. My newest craze. Some great sharpie colors for me to get creative with.

Finally, there are some fun stickers for my kids. I ran out last year after using all mine for the AR goal chart. Now I am replenished AND have some star stickers to use instead. Yay Yay Yay!

I can't thank Bethany enough for thinking of me. Plus I need to thank those two fabulous brains of Covered in Glitter and Glue and Adventures of Ms Smith for putting this whole idea together. It really was great getting to know a fellow blogger better!

Friday Fun - Bingo Board

A bunch of my colleagues use a Positive Reward chart in the form of a Bingo Board. Kids who portray great behavior get a chance to put their name in one of the spaces on the board. Then on Friday, the teacher calls out one (or two, or three) squares. Whoever has their name in the square wins a prize.

I'm about to try it this year to get my kids excited about behaving well. I thought this would be a perfect thing to try out with y'all. You can earn ONE square by leaving me a comment below with your choice. You can earn a SECOND square if you bring a friend to check out this blog. Your friend just has to mention you in their post and then you can leave me another comment with your second request.

Sounds easy, right? Oh, wait! I haven't told you the prize yet. How about this?

Here's the Bingo Board. I will fill in with those folks who leave their comments below. Make sure you aren't a No Reply Blogger. If you are, you can check out this tutorial by Jivey, or make sure you leave me an email in your comment.

Since there are 24 (plus the Free Space) it would be awesome if I could fill all of them by next week. So spread the news around. If the entire board does get filled EVERYONE will win my set of I Have-Who Has Synonym Antonyms Set 01.

Annnnnd GO!

What I'm Loving

I'm a day late, but for some reason I feel that is going to be the going trend now that school is back in full swing.

Covered in Glitter and Glue has her Linky going on about three things that she is loving on this week.

Thought I'd jump on board.

1. I'm loving my class. I wasn't on Tuesday, the day before school start. I was hearing all sorts of things I didn't want to hear about my new kiddos. I was anxious and nervous for the year to begin not knowing what to expect. I've had some doozies before. Was not looking forward to a repeat of any of that mess. Once I had them all assembled in front of me and could watch the actual person for a bit, I was able to let the tension go. They have their challenges, but overall the entire class is really really nice. YAY.

2. The Big Bang Theory. I love this show. It is so hilarious and the characters are such fun. It's the only show I've watched that continues to get better every season. I just realized that Sheldon and Leonard are a modern day Bert and Ernie. hee hee

3. Fridays. Over the summer I kind of forget the importance of this day. Tomorrow will be the first Friday of the school year and I am loving it! I get to hang out with my teacher Peeps once school is done and just veg. It's wonderful. And then I have a whole two days were no alarm clock is going this guy!

Thursday Tutorial - MS Word Picture Align

I was plugging away on my Common Core Wall Chart idea for Tpt and I started noticing a disturbing trend. Every time I would cut and paste an image to a new page it would place it in a completely weird spot. Well, that can't happen! Everything needs to be neat and pretty, right?

I needed to find out how to make sure that the slides were in the same place every time. I noticed  on my toolbar were these two extra tabs called 'Drawing' and 'Picture' Tools that would pop up whenever I was working with a picture. So I clicked on the drawing one to see what it could offer towards a solution. 

 

Over to the far right were these two cryptic numbers. After ogling the visual rectangles next to them for a bit, I realized that they were telling me the size of my image both its vertical height and horizontal width. Ahh, so now I know how to make sure that the image is always going to be the same size. 

 

Also if you closely, you'll notice at the bottom right of this area is a tiny little fly-out triangle. If you click on that a new box appears like MAGIC! You can change the size proportions here as well. If you need to change it up without having both numbers change as if they were joined together, uncheck the 'Lock aspect ratio' box under 'Scale.'

Now click on the 'Layout' tab.

It's in here you'll find how to reposition your images on the page. Down at the bottom of this window is the 'Advanced' key. click on that and come to another menu. If you change the 'Horizontal' and 'Vertical' alignment choices over to Centered, your image will slide perfectly into the exact center of your page.

VOILA!

Wednesday Writing - Writer's Notebooks

First day of school. After a night of tossing and turning I wake up with butterflies in my stomach. Yes! Even after 23 years, I still get them. I enter my classroom and flick on the lights. It is quiet now but the room has a certain tension this morning. An air of expectation. The pencils are all sharpened, the chairs are all pushed in, and the floor is clean. I take a deep breath and glance at the clock. It's 7:15. I have another 20 minutes before the bell will ring and those eager little bodies will bounce down the bus steps and stream in the front doors. 20 minutes to make sure I have everything in place and go through my mantra, "I may be as prepared as possible, but never prepared enough for reality. I must trust in my ability to handle all things as they come. Today I will make a difference. Today I am a teacher."

I am ready.

We will be setting up our Writer's notebooks this morning. Another composition book to put in their desk. I want thing one to be special to them. So I'll let them decorate to their heart's content and then go home tonight with homework to gather more things to decorate it with. Then tomorrow I will mod podge everyone's covers so they stay perfect. I got the idea from one of the bloggers I follow and I am truly sad that I can't remember who the genius was. If I figure it out, I will definitely update here.

But for today, we are going to fold down the first two pages of our notebook to act as the Table of Contents. In the past I have held off having them write things here. I would save it as a busy work task during the long week before holiday break. But they do it only halfway, or not at all. So I am rethinking this part. I am going to have them get into the routine of updating their table of contents every few days. Next, we'll separate our notebook into four sections. I am going to have them glue ribbons into each section so we can find them throughout the year. Our county is asking that we allow them to write in all four genres this year instead of just concentrating on two. They believe the more exposure they get, the better retention.  And later the more skilled writers we'll produce. Hmm. There will be a ribbon for Personal Experience (Narrative), Information, Persuasive, and Fantasy. We'll really have to think about which genre to put our pieces in. If we are doing some poetry, are you writing about the weather? Then should it go it personal experience (A Day in the Rain), Information (Cloudless Skies), or Fantasy (The Rainmaker)? Fun, right?

This year I am having them put all of their planning and drafting into this notebook. Once they get ready to move it to the final draft, I'll have them use a legal pad. This move into a different paper is going to make them understand the difference between drafting and final copy. We'll talk about the importance of best handwriting and pay attention to correct punctuation. Always a struggle for us. Maybe the move to a different format will turn their brains into a higher gear. I can hope, right?

Monday Mentor - Setting up Notebook

Last week I showed you how I set up the student binders. Another thing we do at the beginning of the year is set up our Math Notebooks. Like a lot of you, we use the marbled composition notebooks for this purpose. The school provides us one for each student, so I can save a little money there.

The first thing I have them do is decorate the cover with ways they use numbers (photos, stickers, magazine ads, etc). This year I am going to follow the advice of Mrs. Hawk's Nest by hot gluing a ribbon into the back of their books so they can mark their place. So often they just flip to any old page and start working. I am WAY too OCD for that. I want the work to move chronologically through the book, so if I want to refer to something we've done in the past, I have them just open to that date.

I break the composition book into two sections. If you close the book and hold it up so you can see the top of all the pages, you'll notice a definite hole that marks the middle of the book. I have the students open to this page. We dog-ear (fold down) that page and make a chapter header for our 'Calendar' section. This is where they will complete all of their calendar activities during our Math block.

The front section is used for problem solving. I have them paste in a copy of the C.U.B.E.S. method that I found over at Elizabeth's site Fun in Room 4B. You can go to that link and grab your's for FREE!

I then print out a math exemplar related to the topic of study that week and have them go through the C.U.B.E.S. method to help them organize their thinking. You can actually purchase these exemplars by the set in my TpT store.

Math Exemplars Set 01

Math Exemplars Set 02 

Just in case you were curious. 

It helps me to keep all of their work in one place for CRCT review future reference. Plus they can see the progression of their knowledge throughout the year. 

We have a section set aside in our binders for our interactive notes. They can flip through that to help them support their explanations when writing about their solutions. 

Leave me a comment below and let me know how you use your math notebooks!

Tried It Tuesday - Washi Tape

Have you heard of this stuff? Everywhere I turn I am hearing about how awesome this stuff is. I had no clue what it was, so I went to the Shopping Queen, aka Jessica Ivey, and asked. Of course she had an answer. Washi tape is just this super fun tape with designs on them. There are several different brands such as the ones I got called Tape Works, but they all accomplish the same thing.

I picked up three types today.

The Mustache one, A fire brand, and a zebra pattern. They were like $3 each, but you can't put a cost on fun.

I am using the Mustache tape to put on the backs of my behavior clips. This is only so that I can say, "I MUSTACHE you to behave." Get it?

Bethany Hunter must have read my mind because she sent two MORE types of tape. Win!

Catch up - Meet Your Teacher Day

All through yesterday I kept thinking of your encouragement and belief that the day would go well.

Thank you thank you thank you for all the good thoughts. Yesterday was probably the easiest Meet Your Teacher Day in 22 years. Since the county has moved onto having the parents complete all the paperwork online the teacher's job on this day has become almost a breeze. Before we would spend the entire four hour period scrambling around collecting papers, checking medical files, signing forms, and counting money. Yesterday I spent more time hugging on parents and chatting with the students about their summer than I ever have before.

I am recycling four families this year, so that probably helped me be comfortable meeting the parents. They loved looking at all the class pictures I had lined up above my bulletin board. I have a nephew of a student I taught in third grade. He is now a junior in college. Yep, I feel old. But we laughed over the pictures. It was great fun.

I'm already thinking this year is going to be awesome. Sure I will have my challenges. I am actually okay with this because if there aren't any problems to keep me on my toes I can grow a little bored. Lord knows I don't want to be bored at work.

Just wanted to catch you up and let you know that yesterday went very well. Thanks again!

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?

Thursday Tutorial - Securing docs on Microsoft Word

My super newest friend has got to be Jessica Ivey, which I'm sure y'all know her better by Jivey. If you don't, she's cool. You'll like her.

Enough sucking up to my work colleague, let's get to the point of what this post is going to be about. I mentioned Jessica because in her uber-helpful section called Techy Tips she put out a post on how to secure your TpT products using pdf files. It's simple and straight forward, but something you definitely need to be careful with. If you are using other TpT sellers' products such as clipart or backgrounds, you need to check out that post. Most folks are stressing that you must 'secure' your materials if you are using their products. I will definitely be using Jessica's tips from here on out.

The big problem then is how to secure it so that folks can't just right click on an image such as those super cute super hero kids from Creative Clips and use them in Evil Pirate Ways. I don't want that to happen at all. I know how much hard work is put into these products, and to provide a way for some to take them without asking would make me feel horrible. 

As I was creating my new Common Core product for teachers to display which standard they are working on, I started wondering if there was a way to secure documents in Microsoft Word. Lo' and behold, there is. 

I found the answer on eHow. This is going to show you how to create a 'read only' file so folks will only be able to view and print out your document and not be able to click or alter anything you've included. I'm going to elaborate on that (read as 'with pictures') to share what I learned. Their process to secure Microsoft Word documents seems pretty easy, which I am thankful for. So let's get started.

1. Open the document you've created in Microsoft Word that you want to secure.

2. Click on the big Microsoft Office button.

 

 And choose the 'Prepare' option right under Print. 

3. Out of the options you have there is 'Mark as Final'. It will prevent users from editing the file, as they will only be able to view and print it.

Read more: http://www.ehow.com/how_6769257_protect-word-2007-document.html#ixzz2aU3x2eKE

Hopefully this will thwart all of the Evil Piracy Lords and Ladies out there and will protect the amazing work on my fellow TpT sellers.

**Hindsight:
I sent Jessica a file made with this trick and sadly, she was still able to get into it after a simple click.

When you open it a window pops up that announces, "The author has locked this to discourage editing, are you sure you want to enable editing?"

Click... and she was in.

GRRR!

Back to the drawing board.

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!

Writing Wednesday - Writing Conferences

Going through all of my teaching guides (something I should do more often) I came across Carl Anderson's How's It Going? This is definitely one of those books that cemented my teaching style. I love helping students with their writing. Listening to their voice come through and building on their skill set to push them even further is so amazing. Children have unique stories to share and Anderson's book is perfect to help you understand the ideas behind the writing process.

Poking through this book I thought it would be a great idea to develop a product for my TpT store for writing conferences. A writing conference is a once a week meeting with each student about their writing that lasts  maybe 5-7 minutes. The teacher's role in this is two fold. They need to listen to what is driving the student's intentions for that piece on that day. Then they need to pick one point to guide the students in developing their writing ability.

One of the things you need to do with this conferencing is to keep a record of what you talk with each child about. These notes come back into play the next time you meet. They act as a record to see how the child is progressing during the writing block. I have one of the record sheets that I use in my class to show you today.

You can grab this here

In the TpT product I want to include a bunch of different types of record sheets, tips and strategies for the teachers, some posters for your room, and student notebook cards that will remind them what to work on.

Can you think of anything else I might need, or you'd like to see included in this pack? Leave me a comment below and I will be sure to add it to the list. Thanks for your help!

Tried it Tuesday - Cake Pops

As part of my baking duties for my sister's wedding reception up in Maine I set aside some time to make cake pops with her 4 year old daughter. A. was such a big help dropping the balls into the frosting, eating the mistakes, and providing a running commentary the whole time. So I fulfilled my job of keeping her occupied for at least an hour. Yay me!

I made cake pops before using a kit that Jessica Ivey gave me for Christmas. It was a bit of trial using that method when the sticks didn't fit into the holder and I purchased larger sticks than I needed. Plus the shape coming out of the pan looked more like the planet Saturn than a round pop. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the Jivey and love love love my gift. But I wanted to try a different method.

I jumped on the internet and found this recipe from A Beautiful Mess and gave it a whirl. I used a strawberry cake mix and the leftover decorator icing that I added coloring to so I could pipe out some roses for the wedding cake I made. The only thing that I would change about the recipe I used was not to put in 2 CUPS of frosting. I barely used 1/2 cup to  make all the crumblies stick together.

Judging by how quickly these were gone after I put them out, I think they turned out okay. Well, A. certainly enjoyed them.

Back to School Giveaway Winners

Thanks for everyone who participated. It was so cool to see all the entries roll in on that little Rafflecopter readout!

Without further ado, here are the winners of the Back to School Giveaway:

Congratulations! Each of you will receive an email from me about what to do!

Mentor Mondays - School Binders

This will mark the turning point for my Mentor Monday posts. I am switching over entirely into school mode since I have to report for duty at 7:00 A.M. this Wednesday. To help you get ready as well, I am switching to more school related posts instead of blog set up.

For the first topic, I wanted to show you my school binders that my students will use to keep everything in this year. I tried this out for the first time last year and I really liked it. I went with a 1" binder for all the students and it went okay. The only part I didn't like was when I had to pull out the 'chapters' from the Social Studies and Science sections when we were done. Otherwise there wouldn't be any room to add more paper.

This year I am going with the 2" Front View Binder.

They'll put their Homework Agenda notebooks in the front followed by four tab dividers. One for Math, Language Arts, Science. and Social Studies. I provide them with the dividers and the little tabs to write the subjects on. This is a good introduction to how well the class can follow directions as they write the titles and insert the tabs.

I usually give them an Accelerated Reading Log to keep in the front of their Language Arts section. They record the books they read and how they did on their tests on the computer.

You can grab the 2 page PDF file here so that you can print them double sided from here

I am giving each of the students a cardstock 8.5x11 sheet to decorate as a cover for this binder. You'll remember it was part of my QR Code postings.

I also made a little Prezi slideshow attached to the QR Code to help parents with the layout, Binder Covers


The final thing that I put into these binders is a gallon sized ziploc baggie that has been reinforced with duct tape and hole punched.

The students will keep homework papers, unfinished work, and works in progress in these packets. They could also slip in a book to read so that important materials won't get lost in between school and home. Now everything is in a neat package that fits inside their desks. They will also pick up some responsibility skills by making sure that this binder goes home every night and returns every morning.

I'm looking forward to this little bit of organization this year.

Mentor Text - Social Studies

Those two FAB ladies over at Collaboration Cuties Stacia and Amanda are at it again with their latest installment of mentor texts.

This week's theme is Social Studies! They offered up a great text to include in the study of Native American tribes which fourth grade does every year. I definitely added that to my Amazon cart. Oh, definitely go over and grab the freebie. It's too awesome when you are starting up interactive notebooks. It will help students get ready for working with longer texts more independently.

For my installment, I want to share a book I was introduced to least year during our study of the American Revolution. It's called The Scarlet Stocking Spy by Trinka Noble. It's an incredibly moving tale of a young girl who helps craft a code with her soldier brother to pass information around about British ships in the harbor.

Here's Amazon's write up:
Philadelphia 1777 is no place for the faint of heart. The rumble of war with the British grows louder each day, and spies for and against the Patriots are everywhere. No one is above suspicion. Still, everyday life must go on and young Maddy Rose must help her mother, especially since her father's death at the Battle of Princeton and now with her beloved brother Jonathan off with Washington's army. But when childhood games become life-and-death actions, Maddy Rose is drawn ever deeper into events that will explode beyond her imagining. As young America stands on the very brink of its fight for freedom, it becomes clear that even the smallest of citizens can play the largest of parts, and that the role of a patriot has nothing to do with age and everything to do with heart. In The Scarlet Stockings Spy, Trinka Hakes Noble melds a suspenseful tale of devotion, sacrifice, and patriotism with the stark realities of our country's birth.Noted picture book author and illustrator Trinka Hakes Noble has pursued the study of children's book writing and illustrating in New York City at Parsons School of Design, the New School University, Caldecott medalist Uri Shulevitz's Greenwich Village Workshop, and New York University. She has authored and illustrated numerous books including the popular Jimmy's Boa series, which has been translated into six languages. Trinka lives in Berrnardsville, New Jersey. The Scarlet Stockings Spy is her first book with Sleeping Bear Press. Because Robert Papp's childhood drawings of his favorite superheros were such a pleasure, it was only natural that he would wind up an illustrator. Nowadays, his award-winning artwork appears on book covers and in magazines instead of on the refrigerator. He has produced hundreds of cover illustrations for major publishers across the United States. Robert lives in historic Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

I must give you full warning to be prepared for the ending. I wasn't expecting it and was shocked into stopping for a bit to catch my wits.  Just make sure that you read it through for yourself first.

Student Motivators - Traffic cones

Joanne over at Head over Heels puts on this great linky party about motivating your students. She's got a great idea about how to engage students in complementing each other!

This fits in so perfectly with my theme for this year. I want them to pay more attention to what others are doing. This skill is going to help build that Common Core ideal of deeper thinking. Conversations are going to be different in my room this year as well. Instead of everyone just shouting out their connections to a book or a topic, they are going to practice listening to others and responding to their thoughts as well as incorporating their own.

So for my student motivating idea to share, I have my student of the week be in charge of putting out these fun traffic cones with encouraging phrases on them. I get them at the Dollar Store.  As we are working on a lesson I might tap the student of the week to search for someone showing off exemplary skills and they would place the cone on that person's desk. The cones are turned in later for reward points. They like the attention and I get to reward those that are doing good more.

Yay!