Top Ten from Ed Expo 2015

I just got a surprise in the mail today. More about that in another post. But it reminded me that I haven't posted my top ten FAVS from the selling floor at this year's #edexpo2015.

In no certain order, here goes:

1. Redispace from Pathways - not only were they giving away samples of great pencil grips. They also had these European inspired composition notebooks that have pages filled with graph paper. This way students learn to write their letters in each box and properly space out their words, rather than these sloppy messes I've been seeing in my classroom lately.

2. Goldiblocks - a super cool Kickstarter project that finds a way to engage girls in engineering pursuits. You go, Girl!

3, Capstone - this leading distributor of educational literature has a brand new list of titles that perfectly meshes with my curriculum.  Almost every book I looked at elicited an "OOOH."

4, Essentials - Great writing titles to help kids understand the different genres and their nuances.  LOVE the Stella Writes series.

5. Kagan - if you aren't already familiar with this fun product line for the classroom, go check it out.

6. The Pencil Grip - they had so many different and progressive grips for kids I couldn't stop playing with them all.

7. Roylco - they had this super cool lightbox that students could play with color combinations, look at x-rays, and even a moving one that could seriously change my lessons on erosion.

8. The Reading Game - a great set of vocabulary sight words that builds into a child reading a correlated story independently.

9. Say It - a fun card game where students create stories from random
phrase cards.

10. Learn in Style - super fun multiplication wrist bands to help friends remember their facts.

I'm still trying to track down what the official top ten were from the entire expo.

Anyone know?

Leave me a comment~!

Edexpo 2015- Guest Blogger

Sometimes things just fall into place. 3PM on Saturday I just happened to catch a post from the GA Bloggers about a meet up. Not sure how I missed this in the first place, but okay. We met downtown at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta with about 50 other bloggers from around the country.

Turns out they are in town for an Educational Market Expo. They had been invited by the incredible Sherron to attend as guest bloggers at this dealer and exhibitor exclusive event. HOW do I miss these opportunities?? I wanted in!

I got up at the monkey butt of dawn and drove down to the Ga World Congress Center to see if by chance they had any open slots for people who didn't show up. My newest blogging buddy, Felicia McAtwell, already had an invitation but wasn't able to register yesterday, so I waited for to ride on her coattails if possible. The registrars were more than accommodating and I had a bonafide name badge and entrance to all the goodies within minutes.




I then spent the next eight hours walking up and down the aisles of the brightest, newest, most exciting products available in the educational market today. Oh, it was awesome.

Sherron asked us to list our ten best products witnessed during the event so they could announce the 'Best in Show' on Tuesday. Here's my list in no particular order:

1. Redispace composition notebooks from Pathways
2. Goldiblocks - engineering toys for girls
3. Capstone - their newest list of non-fiction was so spot on with my curriculum it was scary
4. Stella Writes series from Essential - perfect for different writing genres
5. Kagan - classroom management tools
6. Pencil Grip People - so many of my students have weird motor skills this year
7. Roylco Light box - just fun idea
8. Reading Game - sort of a memory match to build vocabulary then move to reading context
9. Say It - fun party game
10. Learn in Style - multiplication wristbands, better than flashcards

I will be sharing more reviews of specific items later. I just couldn't believe how awesome this weekend turned out to be and had to share!

R.A.C.E.S. booklet

Sitting in staff development classes is kind of a conundrum. The information is usually good, but if you're like me your mind is thinking of all the OTHER things you could be doing right now. As the county guy was hitting us with the scoring guide associated with the upcoming GA Milestones test, my brain was thinking, "How on Earth am I going to get my students used to this test formatting?" It's so different than the CRCT with all of its multiple choice questions. That in and of itself has its issues. But this new format asks students to write comprehensive essays in the FOURTH GRADE! I'm still struggling to get them to remember to put capitals and  punctuation, forget paragraphing.

Since my other lesson on Close Reading slowed the process down for students, I began to think how we could do that again with another article. The county guy shared (another) acronym to use with students in helping them prepare for these essays.

This sparked an idea to create a booklet for my students that broke down the process for them. We have this time during our morning schedule called DBQ (Document Based Questions) that I could use to have them conduct this lesson.

It starts with them reading an article I wrote about using electronics in school and how it helps improve your academics. There is a question after the article that asks what they think the main idea would be. So they brainstormed some ideas for what it might be for this article. We shared in class and looked for a common theme amongst them all.

Now I 'sound the gun' and they are off to the RACES! There's a page for each of the letters of the acronym as students build up their response to the question.  Citing evidence and explaining how it fits with the main idea puts meat on their essay bones.

The final day (or two) has them writing the essay with an introduction, their answer, evidence and reasoning behind it. They cap it off with their conclusive summary and we are done.

Right now, we have gotten up to the 'E' page. I'm happy with what I'm seeing them produce. Hopefully we are well on our way to preparing to knock out that essay come testing time.

Oh, you can find this booklet at my TpT store. Hopefully you can get some good practice out of it as well.

The Author is Coming! The Author is Coming!

I am so very excited! My good friend from college has managed to become an oft published author in the 20 or so years since we've graduated. I am so proud of Kristine Asselin , and yes, slightly jealous. With the upcoming release of her first YA novel, Anyway you Slice It, I thought it would be cool to have her come visit my school and talk to the kids about her process.

And she said YES!!

 

It took some finagling with my school's media specialist, emails and about 19 phone calls on Kris's part to other schools to secure two elementary sites for her to visit while she is down here. I mean why fly for three hours and only visit one school when you can grab two?

 

Right now Kris has a ton of non-fiction titles available through Amazon, Capstone, Barnes and Nobles, and even Walmart online. I love that so many of them fit perfectly with my Fourth Grade curriculum. I've managed to acquire some great titles.

 

 

The first one I bought was this:

 

 

 

 

I use it to start off every year. As it addresses how our great nation began. It's a perfect way to lead into our unit on Native Americans and how they arrived here 12,000 years ago. I can also see how their minds open up to new ideas as we take what they THOUGHT they knew about who discovered America and add new knowledge to their memory banks.

 

We also cover the Solar System each year and the students can't get enough of books that show actual photographs of stars and celestial bodies light years away. Shouts of "Look" and "Wow" always follow sharing this book. Kris also has a title just on the Sun that I want to pick up soon, so I can have her autograph them for me.

Later in the year we move into our unit on the American Revolution and what better way to start it off  than with something cool.

The boys especially think this title is way cool. It has great information about the War for Independence that we can't find in the history text. Such as the fact that arrows were much more accurate and deadly than the guns they had at that time.

Once our nation was established they needed to create a governing body. I always find this such an obscure section of history to teach to 9 year olds, but this book helps:

It adds some spice into a very dry curriculum. It has taken the information and presented it in a straightforward manner that the kids can easily understand.  This title has been reviewed for the School Library Journal, and Hornbook.

Kris is going to be conducting five sessions working with our Fourth and Fifth graders on writing informational pieces in her talk titled: Just the Facts, Ma'am. She has designed a couple of other great presentations that you can take a look at on her website. If you're interested in having her at your school let me know, I can put in a good word for ya!





Close Reading - A Beginning Lesson

 We've been doing a lot of staff development training at my school about Close Reading. Having more exposure and scenarios to draw from, it's starting to make more sense now. Getting the students to dig deeper into their understanding of a piece helps them practice picking out details and responding in much more elaborate ways.

 

I've tried the strategies of having interact with pieces for the past two years now. As they read a new piece they highlight certain information throughout. I have them draw a box around any key vocabulary, underline main ideas, put question marks next to statements that confuse them, and to draw a 'cloud' around any words they don't understand.

 

I've now learned to slow them down. Have them pick things out piece by piece and read with a purpose rather than try to make them accomplish it all in one go. We read an article from the Chicago Tribune about bullying through independently once just to get the 'flow.' It can be found on the Georgia Department of Education website in the Third Grade packet.

 

 

 



Then I had them write down what they thought the main idea of the WHOLE piece was about. We had talked about not picking out details from one section, but really thinking about what all of the information was saying together. I drew this chart and had the first student come up and read out his sticky note. Then he placed it in Quadrant One of the chart. Student two came up and read her sticky note, thought whether hers was similar Student One or did it warrant placing it in another Quadrant. We went on from there until all the stickies were on the chart. Not one of the ideas shared was wrong as to what the main idea could be. That was interesting.

 

By the end it was quite clear what the majority of the class thought the main idea of the piece was.

 

 

 

 

 

In the next lesson, a Second Read if you will, the piece was broken down into smaller sections already so we looked at each and discussed what we thought was the main idea of those. Once we had all of the section main ideas, we thought about how each were used to help out the overall main idea and wrote out explanation sentences.

 

For the Third Read, I set the purpose to be looking for the author's opinion. What words did they use to let the reader know how they felt about bullying. Students responded in the margins as to whether they agreed or disagreed with the author's opinion. Then we used this information to write a constructed response sharing our opinion as to whether we agreed or disagreed with the author.

 

Having the students go through the piece more than once with a set purpose allows them to focus on one big idea at a time rather than asking them to comprehend everything about it.  

 

Next week I'll be sharing a booklet I made with another Close Reading strategy. I'll have more to share once we've worked through that.

 

But for now I am pleased to see them thinking and paying attention to the passage in a more aggressive manner. That's sure going to be helpful come testing time.

Currently - January 2015

Starting the year off right. Joining up with Farley from Oh Boy, Fourth Grade for her awesome Currently blog linkie.

She's added in some rules, so make sure you read the fine print!

Okay, I'll just tell you:
- Once you link up your blog you go to the two blogs who linked up before you and leave MEANINGFUL comments ***Great idea for finding new blogs!***
- Visit the blog that links up AFTER you and leave some love
- You must link directly to your blog post for the January Currently, not to a store or something


So here's my first CURRENTLY board of 2015:

Listening: This is my newest addiction. I can learn right along with them.

Loving: It's only one more day, but I need it! Traveling across the country and visiting for the holidays takes it out of me.

Thinking: I finally have time to work on some new stuff and where is that extended text I need for it? Sitting on my desk at school. AAAHHH!

Wanting: My prime rib and bean soup has been cooking all day. It's time I ate me some!

Needing: Money, it always comes down to money. If you have any hanging around, would you send it my way? Please?

Yes: I've gotten so far away from the routine that helped me lose all that weight. Time to get back on it.

Maybe: I'm halfway through my supernatural thriller, Temple Hall. The outline is complete. I just gotta dig in and finish it.

I wish: My family is increasingly spread out every year. Wish I could get them all in one place. We've already set up some time throughout 2015 when we can get together. But it's usually only one or two other people at a time.

How's your January shaping up?

2015 - New Year's Resolution #1

Hi guys,
Remember me? It's been a while...again. I'm making my first New Year's resolution to be more committed to my TpT blog. You'll have to keep me honest with this one. I'm counting on ya!

I started off the year meeting up with some fellow Georgia Bloggers at a local restaurant. It was great getting to match some names with faces and picking up some great clues to try.

Just so you know, check out Plickers and Cahoots as some possible apps to share in the classroom. Thanks Deanna!

Here's a picture of my newest friends in 2015!

From left on back to right on back:

Natalie, Amanda, Jessica, April

Meghan, Felicia, Deanna

Georgia Bloggers Unite!

Sadly, I had to get back home and didn't take any cheesecake from the factory with me. So many sweets already waiting at the homestead.

Look to the Stars! Earth Science is such fun

My students always love talking about the universe. They come to me knowing tons about it already, and that's great. But as I slowly move through our curriculum guide I find that they aren't exactly clear how it all works. I have to stop every five minutes to answer the waggling hands in the air.

They have questions like, "Will a black hole suck up the Hubble Telescope?" Nope, kiddo. That telescope is in a low Earth orbit it isn't anywhere near a black hole.

"What will happen when our Sun dies out?" Our planet will more than likely wither away and become a cold barren rock.

Which leads to my next answer...

"No, you will not be around in the 10,000 years it will take for our Sun to burn itself out. Don't worry."

We usually take a look at our universe from the outside in. Starting with stars, moving to planets, and finishing with our Moon. I separate it into two sections of stars and planets and then the Moon. This way I can get more grades for the ole report card. Oh, and I've only got two weeks to cover all of this information. Don't you love it? We just took our stars and planets test today. I haven't graded those yet. I'm saving up all that fun.

I planned ahead for our Moon stuff this year. I had them start the Moon calendar as soon as we started talking about stars. This way we can at least see some of the phase changes for ourselves. Getting them to conceive how this happens on a cyclic pattern every month is difficult to say the least. But as we were filling in our Moon calendar they had tons of questions which will definitely help us later on (I hope).

Oh, and did I mention that we are doing our Moon Phase chart soon? Why am I excited? Because we use Oreo cookies to do it. YUM! It's a guilty pleasure to walk around showing them how to scoop out the cream to represent various phases while nibbling on a chunk of chocolatey goodness.

I've got some task cards up in my store that we use to quiz each other before we take an assessment. But my biggest fun is when they start bringing in their Solar System models. Who would have thought I'd get so excited over Styrofoam and poster board?

But that's just me.

Literal Conversations with Fourth Graders

I've been trying to get my Fourth Graders to have more conversations. No, not that kind. They definitely have NO trouble talking to each other.

I'm talking about more in-depth conversations where they take what another person has said and respond to it in a positive manner. Sitting in a group, taking turns, using good eye contact. All of that good stuff. This kind of skill can only help them with college work later on in life.

I started by posting some Sentence Stems around the room such as "I agree with ____ because," "I disagree with _______ because," "I see your point, but," "I can piggyback off of _________." I refer to them heavily as I model responses to what they say. When they get ready to respond to me I remind them to think about using some of these stems.

Next we created an anchor chart that brought out even more stems to use with each other. Plus I added in some reminders on good conversation behaviors. Here's what we came up with:

Then, through some staff development I learned some new techniques to help them move into writing their responses and then responding to someone else written response. I started using this 'Literal Conversation' sheet with my whole class as we read an integral part in Sign of the Beaver.

Students write down their own response then pass it to a partner. Partner has to read it and respond with either agreeing or disagreeing and adding their own take on it. Then they pass it back to the owner who reads and responds as well. They loved it!

Next I'll be trying something called a Discussion Roundtable with a group of four students where they respond to a posed question. Taking turns they each read out their response as their team members are taking notes on what they said. After all this, they take all the information they heard and write a summary of their final response.

After nine weeks of this stuff, I have witnessed them using the vocabulary and techniques on their own without any prompting. Does an old teacher's heart good!

Mentor Sentence Set 02 is up!!

I finally got off my tukis and started looking through some old projects. I couldn't believe it when I saw that I had four of the ten lesson sets done for my second Mentor Sentence pack. Why haven't I finished this already?

So I cracked down and got all the materials together. I listed several lessons I am currently trying to get my kiddos to comprehend. Then I pulled my current favorite books down off the shelf and figured out which ones fit which topics. It took me a couple of hours to seal up the final six, and it felt awesome! Too long I left it stagnant.

Here's a list of materials I used:

Week 11: Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson articles
Week 12: Miss Rhumphius by Barbara Cooney prepositions
Week 13: Sweetest Fig by Chris van Allsburg clauses
Week 14: Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown poetry – repetition
Week 15: Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg proper nouns
Week 16: My Brother Dan’s Delicious by Steven L. Layne compound subjects
Week 17: Trevor’s Wiggly Wobbly Tooth by Lester Laminack compound predicates
Week 18: Encounter by Jane Yolen figurative language
Week 19: Enemy Pie by Derek Munson Quotation Interrupters
Week 20: The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt Comparative Adj/Adv

One of my favorites that I was introduced to last year and can't wait to use again is

 

 

It's a clever little story giving those very erratic coloring utensils separate voices. And they have no qualms about using them either. I like these kind of cheeky stories that make me laugh. The kids love them and get so creative when I ask them to write their own letters as writing tools. Hilarious stuff indeed.

 

For this book I included the usual lesson plan - that you can read more about here - that is broken down into five day sessions. Here's a couple of screen shots of those plans.

 



 

I just posted Mentor Sentence Set 02 in my store which was in dire need of some fresh stuff. This made a total of 51 items in my store. There's always room for more though!


My brain is already thinking of some great stuff to work on next. If you want to see a sneak peek go check out my TDQ Reading Log homework.

I taught teachers!

Our AP (assistant principal) sent out a request for anyone willing to teach a staff development session. Choice was ours. I immediately thought of that awesome session I attended over the summer. You can read more about it here: Comprehension and Technology

It's a lot harder to plan for teaching teachers than I thought. I had to do a lot of research and testing things out to get ready for the big day. I made some mistakes and spent too much money on stuff before figuring out that there was a free way of doing the same thing. I had some thoughts on what to do, but I needed an overall theme for it to actually work.

That moment came on September 19 when Patricia Polacco announced on her Facebook page that her brother Ritchie had let go of the grass. I love her stories, and her older brother figures into many of them. I felt like I knew him and was saddened to hear of the loss.

But it got me thinking about how social media is enveloping our children on a daily basis. They need to be prepared for acceptable use. Some teachers are creating bulletin boards and using sticky notes to introduce their kids to the idea of posting and replying.

That got me thinking of how to approach such an idea and remembered using Kidblog in the past. It's a closed system that allows the teacher to control all of the postings. The teacher must release posts before they appear on the website so rude comments, or inappropriate responses can be filtered out. Through my research I found edmodo and that led me to Backchannel, a paid app to use through my account. This program will allow students to have a running commentary open for instant response to the teacher's lesson. I later learned that Todaysmeet.com does exactly the same thing, but for FREE!

So I put these things together in a prezi and was ready for the day. I was so technologically prepared, I was gonna knock their socks off!

My confidence wasn't solid though. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't have enough material to make it through the entire hour. But that fear proved baseless once we got into it. There was a bit of a struggle getting everyone onto Backchannel so they could see the last picture of Ritchie before he died. I didn't tell them anything about it and asked them simply to respond to what they see.

Then I put up a picture of one of Patricia's illustrations of her and her brother and most of them got that right away. Finally, I posted up Patricia's Facebook status to connect it all. All the while they were typing thoughts and connections and responding to each other's posts. It was great.

I read them My Rotten Red-Headed Older Brother from Patricia so I could use it later in my piece on how to use KidBlog to increase literacy. Everything went very well and I had many smiling and nodding their heads. It is such a great feeling!

I wonder if they need any other staff development taught??

Sunday Scoop - Only it's Monday

I just found a fun new Linky Party over at the Teaching Trio. It's a short and sweet kinda way to get ready for the week ahead.

Oh Snap! Rounding Card set

At our last grade level meeting we were trying to brainstorm some great ideas to help our students with rounding. We were trying to figure out a way to have the students play a card game that might include some rounding. It wasn't working out exactly how we wanted.

I went home with Rounding on the brain and started googling some fun kid card games and found one that might work called Snap. It was pretty basic having the players turn over a card from a draw pile until a match was made. Whoever yelled, "Snap!" first won the hand. It got me thinking.

The idea for Oh Snap! Rounding version was born.

I brought the card set with four different colors and levels into the classroom the next day and let the kids play around with it. They immediately took to it and wanted to put in each of the higher, and harder, levels.

I videotaped them playing a round here if you are interested:

The card set is up for grabs at my store here.

The red card set is the first level where the numbers are written to the hundreds place. The students have to round to the nearest tens for each card. The second level is up to the thousands and rounding to the hundreds. There are two more levels that add more place values as you go.

The higher the levels go the more closer some of the numbers round to. So you really have to be paying attention in order to win the hand.

Fun times!

Place Value Stations Check Up

Hi y'all,
I told you I would be back once I had used all of the Math Place Value Stations in my room.

The kids seemed to take well to the idea of playing 'games' while learning math. I had introduced a few to them and then showed them the rest.

Each group go to pick one and play it until Math Workshop was over. A lot of them asked for the 'Go Fish' style game, Rustle Up Some Vittles. I did have to explain what Rustle and Vittles meant, but they got it. You should have seen how large their eyes got when I said that the Red Level card set had numbers in the Millions Place. You'd think they'd never seen a number that high before. I'm afraid to share what the National Debt is with them.

All of them are now in a separate bucket and many want to take stuff out when they've finished their work. Snake Bite is a huge hit for some reason.

They caught on quickly to the concepts and are enjoying them. That's what I wanted most when I set out to create this pack, so color me happy. I like that I can pull these games out further down the road, but on the higher levels once they master the concepts. Or not. We'll see.

Made it Monday - Donorschoose Project 2

I was so thrilled and honored that my Donorschoose project from last year got funded. The children loved using our new cameras and many would 'forget' to bring their regular one to class so they could have a chance to play with the really cool features.

Well, I'm at it again. This year though I want to go Tech Heavy in my classroom and get kids thinking on a much more interactive level. I went to a staff development over the summer that showcased how to incorporate tablets into your classroom. The speaker, Kristin Ziemke, spoke about having her first graders using it to conduct web cam reviews of material they were studying. It was mind-blowing. You can read my earlier post here.

When my principal announced that our school was going BYOD (Bring your Own Device) status, I was doing a jig. But when school started and not one of the 26 students brought a device, I was worried that all my ideas would fizzle out.

So back to Donorschoose I go. I put up a new project just in time because Bill Gates and his wife are doing a special offer where they will fund HALF of the project if we can get the other half funded. Wow! A free tablet for my classroom? Yes, please!

The project link went live early Sunday morning and I've already raised $250! That leaves me with only about $300 more to go. If you could find it in your heart to donate, even a little bit, to our classroom my students will have access to top notch applications and no one will have to fight for who gets to use the tablet next.

Here's a great letter that Donorschoose puts out to give you all the details:

Hi Friends,

I want to make sure my students have the materials they need to succeed, so I just created a request for my classroom at DonorsChoose.org:

iDonate for the Future

Give to my classroom by August 31, 2014 and your donation will be doubled thanks to DonorsChoose.org. Just enter the code INSPIRE on the payment page and you'll be matched dollar for dollar (up to $100).

If you chip in to help my students, you'll get awesome photos and our heartfelt thanks.

Thanks so much,
Gary

P.S. If you know anyone who may want to help my classroom, please pass this along!

Place Value Stations and a TpT Second Chance Sale

How sad were you to see the annual TpT Back to School Sale come and go? That meant that school was starting and life was about to descend again. If you're like me summer came and went way too quickly. I was mired in a home remodel that took up way too much of  my time. I really wanted to spend some idle time creating some killer stuff for my TpT store.

Yeah, that didn't happen. It was too frenetic so I didn't get much anything done. But the workers are gone and the house has been officially released back into our hands. With that pressure being released my mind could get back into the groove of things and start creating again.

It felt so great coming up with ideas for my Place Value Stations pack. One of the areas I struggled with our new Math Workshop model last year was not having fun and engaging activities to help my students extend their knowledge. I wanted this kit to be something I would really use.

I created six Math games that deal with Place Value - reading, comparing, and rounding larger numbers. This is usually our first skill of the year and I wanted to crank it out to test run them in my own room. I have a broad spectrum of abilities in my room so I definitely needed to differentiate these stations. Each of the 6 games has three different versions, so essentially there are 18 games in all.

And I have them all done! Whoo HOO.

I am thankful that I have a test group to run these games through. They found that ONE mistake that I know y'all appreciate me fixing before sending your way. They had a lot of fun running around the room to play the Round Up Them Doggies. I posted ten posters around the room that have a rounded number at the top and a question at the bottom. Students are given an answer sheet and their small group was given a card to start with. They were to solve the problem on each card, record it on their sheet and then find the card in the room that has there answer on it. Then solve the next question and so forth until they had answered all ten cards.

The next station is called Around the Corral. Students play against one other person. They roll dice and each move that number of spaces around their game board. Both compare their numbers written in standard, word, or expanded. Whoever has the larger number gets to pick up a counter. The person with the  most counters at the end wins the game.

My group is having difficulty reading numbers that are larger than thousands place. They really do have the basics for reading numbers and I know they will easily pick up larger values. These games hopefully will give them added practice in a fun engaging way.

I'll be posting how they respond to the other four games, so be on the lookout.

For now the games are already up at TpT and you can get them here:

Place Value Stations


OooOoOOh, but hey, if you wait until Wednesday, August 20th, TpT is having a Second Chance Back to School Sale for ONE MORE DAY!!

You can grab this pack for 20% less, or not and I can finally afford those extra Oreos for my class and our Moon Unit.

Leave  me some comments below to let me know how you plan on using this pack.

Saving Fred - 4 out of 5 ain't bad

If you don't know who Fred (the amazing Back to School Ice Breaker) is, check out my earlier post here.

I really wanted to do this activity much earlier in the school, but there was so much to do Fred was a little forgotten.

Today we had our county mandated pretest in Language Arts to supply base data for the year. After an hour of testing, my little ones needed to get up and move around to release some pent up energy. This is where Fred came in and saved the day!

I had five groups all working to put Fred's lifejacket on before he drown. I tried to tie it into our Social Studies unit on the Inuit tribe by making Fred be the bait to lure seal and walrus in so the Inuit could survive a long winter. Fred, being Fred, thought he was just too good for a lifejacket and even went so far as standing UP in the boat. Of course it capsizes trapping Fred's lifejacket underneath. Silly Fred.

We are still working on using our Inside Voices, but for the most part they did a great job working together. There were no arguments, no tears, no one sitting off in the corner by themselves. Only one group lost Fred to the swift Arctic currents.

I tried something else this year in order to get more of them interacting with each other. I had each group split up and go sit at someone else's desk so that there was at least one  person from each group together in a brand new one. Then I had them share how their group managed to save Fred. The technique was amazingly similar and they were all participating.

Once again Fred revealed a lot more about my group than I would have learned without him.

Thanks Fred!

School starts TOMORROW!

A good thing that came out of the whole kitchen remodel dilemma was that I wasn't able to stress out like I normally do about a new year starting.

Kids arrive tomorrow! I think I'm in a good place with materials and lessons for the week. But if you are a teacher you KNOW there's no way to really be prepared for everything that happens on the first day.

I plan on reading First Day Jitters and do some activities with that. I found a great ice breaker activity Kristine Nannini called Body Graffiti where the kids break up into groups and pick one person to trace out on butcher paper. Then they write down things in different parts of the body.

• Head = Things we are excited to learn about this year
• Arms = Activities we do this year (writing, drawing)
• Stomach = Things we like to eat at school
• Eyes = Books we like to read
• Ears = Music we like to listen to
• Legs = Places to go in Fourth Grade (PE, field trips, Nature Trail)

 

You can find other great activities in Kristine's packet

 

 

 

 

The rest of the day is definitely going to spent trying to figure out how everyone is getting home, organizing supplies, and going over procedures.

 

 

So what are your plans for the First Day? Send me a comment below. I would love to hear how you are preparing for that new group of fresh faces. 



Blogality - Home Makeover 5

You'll be happy to know I have just cooked an entire meal from my very own kitchen. It was wonderful. There are just some tiny little detail jobs left in this month long
remodel. But it is done. The kitchen has been restocked and is functional again.

I just can't find anything any more. AAAAH!

Monday saw a return to the workforce, leaving the workmen to have their way with our kitchen. Since it was preplanning without students I was able to pop home at lunch time to check on progress.

Things plugged along all week. I was so excited to see the cabinet doors arrive. I love the Shaker style on them and just having them made out of real wood makes me happy. Those prefab builder cabinets had to GO!

It was slow going watching the cabinet doors and shelving go up. Have you heard of 'soft-closing' doors? Oh, it's awesome. The doors close by themselves. But the cabinet guy forgot to do that for some of them. He had to come back...several times. There were scratches on one panel, the shelves were cut too small and showed huge gaps, and pull outs weren't put in proper places. It was a trial.

You should have seen me doing a Happy Dance when the first door handle appeared. Just the idea that after four weeks of this remodel the finish line was approaching was so wonderful.

Other features like a bookshelf for my cookbooks and a wine rack with glass tray made me even happier. Friday and Saturday saw the entire crew rushing around our house to finish up. Friday was the Drop Dead Date for them to be finished or they would lose money. We wrote it into the contract that they would lose money for every day not complete on major milestones. They stayed until 9 P.M. on Friday night and came back at 8 on Saturday. Then they stayed until 6 that night.

All of Sunday was spent restocking the kitchen and unpacking the mountains of boxes in the back bedrooms. Five and half hours of trying to figure out where to put things. It was exhausting. I don't think we gained more cabinet space, rather it was just reconfigured. We had plenty of space before so I'm not all that upset.

Thanks so much for taking this journey with me. It was comforting knowing that someone was listening to all my whines. I would recommend a remodel for anyone but with warnings.

Just be prepared!

 

 

Here are some Before and After shots. Shoot me a comment and let me know what you think. Good job?

 

 



Five for Friday - August 1, 2014

I'm taking a little break from the Home Makeover to bring you some really (I  mean REALLY) great news.

 It's that time of year again when TpT brings one of their whoppers of a sale out.

It's the annual BACK TO SCHOOL SALE!!

CODE to use on the sale = BTS14

 

 

Start filling up your wish list. Set your clocks for August 4th and 5th. Many many many wonderful sellers on TpT are putting their stuff on sale to get ready for Back to School Mania. I am putting my ENTIRE store on a 20% sale for those two days.

PLUS - TpT will offer you an additional code to use so that you get even more of a savings.

By utilizing the TpT promo code with your already discounted store, Buyers (including you!) will save up to 28% off resources sitewide.

I knew you'd like that news so I put it first on my Five for Friday list.

The last Friday of the summer has arrived. Eventhough I've been doing preplanning stuff in my classroom all week, I still consider this summer. Kinda sad but I'm excited about my new class. There are so many of them but they all seemed really nice at Meet Your Teacher Day. The parents were pleasant and complimentary. I expect great things this year!

Dice and Donuts
That's how much I love my teammates at school. Over the summer I found some fun decahedron place value dice from the hundredths decimal place all the way up to the hundred thousands place. I knew my colleagues would be so jealous when they saw me sporting my new toy, that I got on Facebook and asked if any of them wanted a set. Turns out EVERY single one of them said yes. Oh, plus like five other people who also saw my post. I shipped a set to Minnesota!

My team got together for the first time on Monday to do some planning. I brought donuts to ease the transition back into the work mode.

 

 

We had a THREE HOUR meeting today to hear Tara Brown, the motivational speaker, pump us up for another school year with a brand new crew. I got a lot from her speech, but mostly am taking away how to empower my students just a little bit more. By Seeing them, Hearing them, and showing them what they say matters I can change the world!

 



 

 

I need to get my hair cut and maybe start thinking about what to wear on the first day of school. Teachers will be there on Monday without students doing final prep stuff. But the little kiddos arrive bright and early on Tuesday morning. I need to look good, right?