Birthday Giveaway!!!

In spirit of having over 100 followers on my blog and my birthday coming up soon, I have teamed up with Scrappindoodles for a fun GIVEAWAY!!!  I use her clipart almost 100% of the time.  

 She was even nice enough to take me up on a suggestion of creating a couple sets with reading kids and writing kids!  

I am in no way gaining anything from this promotion.  I just LOVE her stuff and want to pass it along.  She has top-notch customer service!!!

 Here is what you have to do:

1. Go to scrappindoodles.com and check out some of her sets 
2. Become my follower (if you already aren’t.) 
3. Comment below what your favorite set was and how you will use it!

I will let you know by random generator on Wednesday, February 9, who will win a set valued at $5 or less (courtesy of my pocketbook!)  My birthday gift to YOU!  

Scrappindoodles has graciously offered to donate a SECOND set for the giveaway!!!  If you are the winner of the second set, you can select a  set from her "Graphics Collection" category and she can send it to you!  SWEET!!!  See, I told you she ROCKS!!!

 I can’t wait to hear what you would do with her fun sets!

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Blogger Friends...HELP

HELP…I was just telling my teaching partners about a GREAT idea I found on one of the blogs that I follow (or maybe it was proteacher or 2^nd Grade Teacher’s Club) with a book students make out of the Valentine’s they get from classmates. 

For the life of me, I can’t find it.  I am hoping it was one of you that made it and can link to my blog through the comments???  Thanks so much!  I can’t wait to use your idea!

EDITED TO ADD:  Here is the link to the book I was looking for over at What the Teacher Wants.  Check it out!  What a fun scrapbook idea for the kids!

Snow Art

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With all of the snow, wind, and COOOOLLLLDDDD weather we have had lately, we decided to put our student’s background knowledge and experience to good use (of course, we tied it into curriculum ;o)

We did a little shaving cream/glue snowman coupled with a SNOW acrostic poem that taught the students how to use small words, such as onomatopoeia along with longer phrases-in an essence, we were practicing our sentence fluency!  They were sooooo cute.  We have gotten a lot of compliments (and fingers touching our art-grrrr!)

 

 

Mangament:  We used simple Dixie cups and popsicle sticks for our materials.  Each student opened up the lid of their elmers glue and poured a small amount into the bottom of their Dixie cup (probably about 2 Tblsp…give or take some.)  Then, I came around with one can of shaving cream and squirted enough in the cup to fill it up.  They then used their popsicle stick to stir it up.  Of course, I had already laid the ground work BEFORE the activity and warned them about how the shaving cream didn’t come out of their cup or they were DONE with art! 

Students painted their snowmen with their popsicle sticks.  The THICKER the shaving cream on the paper, the fluffier the snowman will be when it dries!

We had students put their buttons in the FLUFFY, wet shaving cream-this serves as the glue!  They also cut out their “goodies” for the snowmen out of construction paper and put it on the wet shaving cream.  There was NO GLUING needed!

After they were done with their art, they worked on their SNOW acrostic poem!  This was their first acrostic poem of the year, so they were a little “rough,” but they did another one the next day for another subject and they were soooooo much better!  Here is our publishing paper!

A couple on the bulletin board:

How-To Blow a Bubble Writing

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I have been sooooo inspired by posts that I have seen on proteacher and the 2^nd grade Teacher’s Club that I just HAD to do this lesson with my kiddos.  They LOVED it!  We just started publishing today and most of them are already done!  I can’t wait to get these up in time for conferences.  I will post pictures of the kids trying to blow bubbles and our hallway display later next week when we get them up.  For now, here is our Writers Workshop Lessons and printouts that we used for the lesson.  Enjoy!

Hooks, Details, and Endings!

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My co-teacher was given a document by her mentor that I thought was VERY useful!  Of course, I had to change it up to make sure it had cute clip-art…so, here is the end result.  I hope you can find these documents useful with teaching writing!  I know that we are going to include them in our student’s monthly writing journal along with other helpful files, like a monthly calendar full of ideas found at www.busyteacherscafe.com.  My next post will probably include details on what all we include in our writing journals each month!

Enjoy!

Dowloading Google Docs and Embedding your Own Document!

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Some of you are new to using google docs in blogs (I know I JUST learned how to embed my files, so I am fairly new myself), so I thought I send you to a GREAT tutorial that a friend of mine posted on her blog:  2ndin1st

As you can see, you just simply have to click on the “box-in-a-box!”  This will take you to the google docs page where you can then download my file!

If you have your own blog and you would like to learn how to embed a document (this means that people will see the picture of your document on your blog!!!), here are the steps:

•  Upload your document onto google docs.
• Click on your document name to open it (you will see your actual document and what it looks like)

• To the right, you will see an option with a url to embed into a webpage or a blog.  COPY this URL

• Open your blog and create a new post
• Type any instructions you would like to type in your message.
• UNDERNEATH where you type your message, there will be an option called “Post Options.”  Click on this!

• Change the Edit HTML line breaks by selecting the following: 
  Use <br /> tags
• Change compose setting to “interpret Typed HTML”
• In your message, paste the url from your document where you want it to appear…IMPORTANT…you might need to skip a line after your message and after your url to have your url be its own “paragraph.”  This made a difference the first time I attempted to embed a document!
• Click “Preview” and you should see you document appear in your blog! 

Let me know in the comments if you are still having trouble downloading my documents or if you were successful in getting your document to show up in your own blog!!!

Paper Plate Clock-revamped!!!

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So, we are getting ready to start out “Telling Time” unit in Math.  A while ago, I was browsing my favorite blogs and teacher websites and came across a paper plate clock that Mrs. Madden had her students create.  I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the idea of having the flap for them to look under to see the minutes!  So, I told myself that I wanted my students to create one of those as well. 

My team teachers and I were talking about making these at our plan session and wanted to make these a little less prep for us teachers, so I was messing around on my computer and designed the following document to match Mrs. Madden’s wonderful idea, but be less prep work for us.  I hope you like them!

By the way, my daughter made a sample clock (so I could see if my dimensions were correct in my document,) so I just had her use a marker to color in her numbers and hands.  Take a peek:

Comments for Confidence!

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So, here I am sitting on a snow day in my pajamas finishing up report cards with a hot, steaming glass of hot chocolate with fluffy, miniature marshmallows.  As I am writing my comments, I am keenly aware, as a parent myself, how much these comments impact a child and their parents.  I need to be honest and purposeful with my feedback, but I also need to be very aware of how my words are the ones that stick in my parent’s thoughts and minds.  This is their little baby that I am focusing on and making judgments about.

With that said, I am hoping that the following documents (created solely by information found in various sources on the internet…I DID NOT create these on my own-just formatted them differently to fit my viewing pleasure,) will possibly inspire you to focus future comments in a more positive fashion on your report cards!  Good luck with the next semester of teaching!

Christmas Wordle

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I absolutely LOVE this project with my students.  They have so much fun while secretly still LEARNING (shhhh...don't tell them!)  We do a Christmas wordle to focus on good word choice and using adjectives and our senses in our writing.  This is a way for them to practice those skills!  They look absolutely AWESOME in the hallway as a display as well.  This is my second year doing this project and every one of my students were able to play with the more "advanced" settings in Wordle.  Here is our Writers Workshop lesson for this activity along with the Graphic Organizer they use to prepare for their Wordle!

 

NOTE:  We actually taught our students this year how to take a screen shot of their wordle and save it on their desktop.  They then dropped it into a Group Shared folder so I could print them in color at a later time!  ALL of my students can tell you the shortcut for Copy, Paste, Select All, and Save by now!  I can't believe how advanced they are for 2nd grade!  I was VERY proud of them!  It was a LOT of typing, but they persevered through it and felt proud when they were done.  

 Aren't they soooo cool!

In order to do more advanced actions with the student's wordles, follow these directions:

Custom Colors:  In your "Create" Screen, you need to go to the "Color" menu bar and click on "Edit Custom Palette."  While you are in there, you can click on one of the four boxes.  When you click on a new color, it will assign that to your Wordle!  You can choose any 4 colors that you wish!  Also, this is where you can assign your background color.  I do not let my students have a black background because we like to conserve ink!  They have to keep the very first box WHITE!

Custom Font-(CAUTION-There is a font with an inappropriate name)  Students can go in here and choose a font they wish to use if they just click on the "Font" menu bar.  NOTE:  By selecting a new font, it will change the layout and some of the words may have a different one of the 4 colors you previously selected.  In my wordle, I used the Grilled Cheese font!

Custom Layout:  I really like all my words going the same way (a little anal retentive, I know!)  My students had various different layouts.  I let them choose whichever layout they liked.

If your student isn't ready to work at the advanced level, just have them choose the "Randomize" button at the bottom of the wordle (make sure you change the background to white for them!)  Once a student clicks off of a layout choice, they CAN NOT get it back, so if they find one they like, then need to keep it!

After this Wordle, we did another one for our parent gift.  They were a PRO by now!  They entered their family name and all the members of their family.  It took far less time to create this wordle than the first one!  They are experts now.

Other fun uses for Wordles:

·       Guided Reading-you can enter the Title, Author, Illustrator, key vocabulary, characters, setting, important events, etc!

·       Vocabulary Review-All Subject areas

·       School Spirit

·       Soooo many possibilities!

Leave a Comment with your ideas!

November Goodies

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I apologize for posting out of order, but I just brought my camera home this weekend from school.  I absolutely HAVE to share my fun tradition that I brought to my new school from a school that my children go to.  Every year, the Kindergartners dress up as turkeys and the 2nd graders dress up as Native Americans.  I think the First Graders were the Pilgrims.  Well, at my new school, we eat with just 2nd grade and Kindergarten, so 2nd grade girls are the Pilgrims while boys are the Native Americans.  The Kinders dress up as the turkeys for our Thanksgiving Dinner Lunch!  They look absolutely adorable...don't you think!

We also sent home a family project for the students to decorate a feather with things that are special or things they are Thankful for.  We then do a speaking assessment with them as they share their feather.  It teaches them how to look at people while they are talking, keep things in order, have good details, and not fidget with presentation aids!  They are getting so much better with all of our practice.  This is our finished Turkey with ALL the feathers!

 

Last, but not least was a lesson that we did on triangles.  With our new curriculum, we are presenting some pretty advanced vocabulary (seriously, I don't remember even hearing about an isosceles triangle until I was in middle school or later...I am getting up there in age though, so maybe my memory is failing me ;o)  So, we talked about the angles of a triangle and also the three different kinds of triangles.  Instead of them just doing a worksheet, we had them build them with pretzels.  Next year I will probably have a cuter presentation, but this is what we have this year.  They LOVED it!

Rudolph Spelling

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With our final full-week before Christmas Break, our spelling curriculum wants us to do a review of what we have learned thus far.  I think this is a perfect opportunity to review some spelling patterns and high-frequency words in a FUN, holiday way!  So, my students will be doing a "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" cloze-method spelling review for their test this week.  It puts the words into context for them!

Click the pictures to download!

Elf on the Shelf Writers Workshop

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I was soooo excited to introduce my students to the "Elf on the Shelf" book and concept!  I have read about several teachers on proteacher that have done it, so of course, I HAD to do it!  My grade level partners and I decided to incorporate it into our writers workshop and talk about the 5 parts of a friendly letter.  The lesson previous to this lesson was introducing the 5 parts (you can find that lesson below as well) and having them practice writing a letter to whomever they chose.  It was SUPER cute to see who they selected.  Some picked family and friends, but I had some think outside of the box!!!  I had them writing to their mailman and to a loving pet that had passed away.

So, on day 2, we presented the Elf on the Shelf lesson.  I have included our Writers Workshop Lesson Plan for you to see!  Click on the picture and you can download it.  I also have the template for you to download to do with your students!  I hope you enjoy :o)

It is great to see our students think about what they have done that is NICE this year and reflect on that INSTEAD of the typical letter to Santa telling him what they want.  They have named our cute little Elf "Redster."  Boy, you should have seen some of the suggestions-they are VERY imaginative!  They are caught up in the magic of this little elf...I think it will help hold us over until the holiday break gets here...I HOPE anyways ;o)

Jacqueline Davies

My students were absolutely ecstatic to meet author, Jacqueline Davies!!!  She gave a wonderful presentation as an author and how she is the type of author that tries out different genres.  We are reading her book, Lemonade Wars.  The kids were even more excited when she announced that they are almost ready to publish the sequel (shoot, why can't I remember what she said it was called...I will have to ask my kiddos on Monday-they will know for sure!)  Before she came, we read her book, "The House Takes a Vacation."  This is an absolutely wonderful, imaginative story about a family that goes on vacation, so their house decides it needs a vacation as well.  You can find it here:

Here are the kids with Jacqueline Davies:

My Ocean/Beach Classroom 2010-2011

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I have had an AMAZING time creating my classroom environment this year!  My co-teachers and I chose Ocean/Beach for a theme and I was apprehensive at first, but I had sooooo much fun that I don't know what I was so nervous about.  The students absolutely LOVE it!  Take a tour around my room and let me know what you think!

October Calendar Desktop Background

Well, we finally have a day off after a long, but gratifying, week of conferences about our kiddos.  So, I spent my morning doing what I love to do best (besides sleeping in)...I have been experimenting with my computer and teaching myself new things!  I am NOT very good at using Photoshop at all, so I have been forcing myself to practice with it.  So, I created a calendar to put on my desktop with some scrapbooking kits I purchased from Just So Scrappy!  If you like what you see, feel free to right-click and save it as a photo and you can apply it to your own computer!  Enjoy...I know I will be enjoying my break today!  :o)