My Truth Monday

I'm linking up with

Sunny Days!

to share "My Truth Monday". This Monday she is tackling the tough topic of fitness.

Go ahead and go over and link-up! What's your truth about fitness?

Link-Up!

I'm Back!

It has been a crazy few months. I finished my first year teaching, spent the summer traveling around with my church's high schoolers and started my second year teaching.
My second year...is amazing! I have a smaller class size this year and really good kids. Plus there's the whole feeling more confident thing as well. The ride this year is definitely less bumpy, more smooth flying.
I'm currently at the NCAEE conference in Greensboro, NC with four fabulous ladies from my school. Three of us teach fourth grade and two of the ladies teach third. We are all so thankful for the opportunity to get this time for Professional Development! Our county is letting us pick our PD this year, and this is what we all chose. I'm also going to be attending a county-given math training.

From left to right: Amber (4), Sammie (4), Debra (3), Me (4), Celia (3)

Yesterday, I got the opportunity to see the fabulous Deana of Primary Punch and Rachel of The Tattooed Teacher. It was a great introduction to selling on TPT and creating awesome products for your classroom. They uploaded the presentation to both of their websites so if that's something you're interested in, you should go check it out!

Later this week, I'll put up pictures of my new classroom. I moved classrooms this year, but with less desks I have a totally different arrangement. I'll leave you with this picture of us at the yoghurt shop tonight, make sure you catch the saying on the wall. Incredibly appropriate for us fabulous ladies!

I hope everyone is enjoying their week! I'm so glad to be back in the blogging world!

ABC

I'm such an overachiever. For the last 26 days of school we are having an ABC Countdown. Last week on Thursday we began with "A is for Adventure". We went on a hike on our trail behind the school and wrote some poetry. We also collected leaves and then later did a crayon rubbing and measured the angles.

Friday was Beach & Book Day. It was also field day, so in between events we read on our towels. The kids loved field day. In the afternoon the firetruck comes and sprays the kiddos down. Most definitely their favorite part.

 Today was C for Chalk Day. I had originally planned on taking them outside and having them draw different geometric terms/figures with chalk but the weather was dis-gus-ting. Torrential downpour all afternoon. (And yet, I still had children ask me if we were going outside for recess. YEA! Of course we are!) Instead, I handed out black pieces of construction paper and told them to draw a picture including at least 5 of the geometric terms we had covered in math.

Some of them did a really awesome job. I especially love the robot!

This week is also Teacher Appreciation Week! I got some sweet goodies today and then tonight we had a Dine & Design event at school for the staff. We had one in the fall where we painted a cityscape. Tonight we painted a beach scene. Here's my finished artwork...

Do you see the shark fin? haha.

I am also working on adding to my TPT store. I am having a SALE beginning tomorrow through Friday, May 10th for Teacher Appreciation. ( I was going to start tonight, but TPT doesn't let you have a sale for more than 4 days. lame) Go check it out. Tomorrow and Wednesday you can get an additional 10% off my already discounted product. 

I posted some CCSS Division Word Problem Task Cards.

There is 26 word problems as well as a recording sheet. I used these last week with my kiddos in tutoring and they loved them so much they wrote me these notes...

*obviously we need to work on your vs you're * :) 

I genuinely love tutoring my little friends three days a week. One of them even brought me a treat for teacher appreciation week today! It was tho thweet.

OH! For the division word problem cards, the first person to guess my favorite book series growing up and leave it in the comments with their e-mail address will win the cards fo free. I'm also working on some multiplication cards as well. And as always, leave feedback!

So for this week's mentor text link-up, we are supposed to discuss reading texts again. I'm not sure if anyone has talked about this, but my absolute favorite book to teach about Alliteration is The Z Was Zapped, by Chris Van Allsburg. My kiddos love this book. It's essentially a play in 26 acts. There is a picture on one page and when you turn the page, it tells you what happened to the letter. I had my kiddos guess what was happening to each letter, but it was starting with the same letter. We were getting some awesome alliteration practice in! After reading, I had my students write their own alliteration about themselves and draw a picture. This book is definitely a winner.

 

Have a fabulous week! Don't forget to comment if you want to win! :)

What a Week!

Oooh. It's been a week.

Sunday I felt a little crummy, but I still went to work on Monday. I actually ended up taking a half day and leaving at 11:30 because I felt so bad.

This week has been crazy busy at school. We began tutoring after school 3x a week due to the impending TESTING. One day is for reading and two are for math.

I have also been ignoring the linky parties, so I'm here to link up!

First up is Tried it Tuesday! (I know, it's no longer Tuesday. FAIL)

Let me just say that Ladybug's Teacher Files is AWESOME. She posted about a week ago about the Great Pencil Challenge. I printed the file IMMEDIATELY. We began the next day. The jist of this is that you challenge the students to see how long they can keep one pencil. I put their numbers on their pencil. And so far it is going so well. The first week I only had TWO children not have their pencils on Friday. This from a class that has probably used over 500 pencils this year! YAY! (We did break yet another sharpener, oh well).

For Workshop Wednesday (Hey! I'm only a day late with this one!), Jivey asked for a small group reading text. When I student taught I used Because of Winn Dixie. Boys and girls both loved it and it is a great way to teach so many different themes, standards. Right now I'm doing two book clubs. I have a group of girls (levels Y & Z) reading Stuart Little. I have a group of boys (all Z) reading Travel Team. The boys love this book. They are all into sports and think it is so cool! I love finding books they are genuinely interested in!

And of course, I have to link up with Farley! And I Heart Recess!

I hope everyone has a fabulous Friday! It's field day so hopefully that will be awesome!

Catching Up

Wow. This weekend has been crazy busy! I have missed out on several linky parties, so I'm going to link up real quick with all of them.

First up, is Workshop Wednesday with Ideas By Jivey. Oops!

This week's theme was Math Card Games. I found this idea somewhere online, but I cannot recall where. It's for equivalent fractions. Students will flip over two cards and create a proper fraction. They will then race their partner to create all the equivalent fractions they can think of. My kids loved this game once they grasped the concept. Generating equivalent fractions is always a hard standard to understand. You can download the game sheet for free at my TPT by clicking on the image below! (sorry it's so teeny)

Okay so on Friday my students got to celebrate bringing in the most Box Tops in March. We had a popcorn and movie celebration. I did throw in some learning. We watched a read-aloud of The Lorax and then watched the 1972 original film. I won a craftivity from Where the Wild Things Learn. It included a graphic organizer for comparing the book with the movie. My students completed that. We also created the craft. They LOVED it! Then, they were able to write haiku's about the earth. We have been working on poetry so this was a great tie-in.

Friday evening, I was able to help out at church with Megan and Erin with the senior high girls. We partnered up with Sole Hope. This organization brings shoes to children in Uganda who would otherwise have infected feet. Our part was in cutting out the pieces of the shoes so that their shoe makers can sew the shoes together.

We had a great time and put together about 30 pairs of shoes. Our goal was 100, so we will probably have another party together sometime soon. This is an awesome organization that really has a heart for Ugandan children.

Saturday was the Middle School missions dinner and I was able to help with that by cooking dinner and helping them to raise money for their summer mission trip. This was a great opportunity to serve with Megan, Mark, and a few other young adults.  No pictures from that unfortunately, too busy!

Sundays mean a link-up with Collaboration Cuties for their Mentor Text Linky. This week the topic is Social Studies. A text I used this year was T is for Tarheel. This is part of a series that encompasses many different topics, however, this book is geared specifically to North Carolina. It goes through the alphabet and my students learn so much. I even learned many things I didn't already know about my state. I love this book and my kids did too. We were also able to make a list of other items that began with that letter that related to North Carolina.

Okay, I believe this post is stinkin long enough! I hope everyone has a great week!! My week will be slam busy as I begin tutoring after school this week on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Linking up with:

     

Oh wait!

Where the Wild Things Learn is having an AWESOME giveaway! You should definitely go check it out! She has tons of great prizes to celebrate reaching TWO HUNDRED followers! GO GO GO!

Tuesday!

It's Tuesday! 

I'm linking up again with Flying Into First (great name, huh?) for her Let's Get Acquainted Linky!

The topic this week is 3 favorite places in our classrooms...

1. My kidney table!

 

I spend probably 70% of my day at this table. I teach reading groups here, meet with kids one-on-one, and meet with math groups here. I love my bucket seats that I created and my kids do too. 

2. My classroom library. I don't have a current picture, but here's just some of my books. 

 

3. My clip chart!

 

So, this week has been good and difficult. My math lessons have been going awesome. I planned well and am actually trying really hard to stick to my plans. Why waste my time writing them and not use them?!?! 

What have I tried recently? Blogging! I've been meaning to start a blog since I was student teaching, almost 2 years ago. OOPS. I would say that it's going pretty well. Does anyone have any tips for me? I use Wordpress, which many people do not. 

 

Linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper! Check out everyone's things they've tried! :) 

 

Have a great week! Tomorrow is HUMP DAY!!! 

Mentor Text [Science]

I'm linking up again with Collaboration Cuties for their Mentor Text Linky! This week's topic is Science. I actually really like teaching Science, but I don't have a lot of time during the day for it. 

A book I've used this year to teach about the Moon is One Giant Leap by Dana Meachen Rau. 

This book follows Tomas to the National Air and Space Museum with his friends. When he goes to look at the Apollo Lunar Module, he is transferred back in time to the 1960's and he becomes Neil Armstrong. The book is incredibly informative regarding the first moon landing. From Amazon:

A child's imaginary trip aboard the Apollo 11 and the infamous first walk on the moon in the shoes of famous astronaut Neil Armstrong gives listeners the chance to learn about this historic moment. Two boys and two girls are on a trip to the National Air and Space Museum when Tomas is transported back in time.

 

After reading this book, we continued to learn about the phases of the moon. We also were able to create the phases of the moon using Oreos! I found the idea from Pinterest. Click on the picture to take you to the original pin, where you can find a great printable! I had the kiddos use a popsicle stick to scrape the creme and form it. They loved this activity!

 

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend and has a great Monday!