Completely new schedule....in March! AHH! (Freebie!)

So I am totally dreading tomorrow because we are getting a completely new schedule! Can you believe it? Second graders totally and completely changing their routine?

It is all for the best, because our pull-out and push-in schedules are going to be better AND it means I'll get someone in my room everyday for an HOUR during reading. Cool right?

So, because of this I have been planning like crazy to make sure that our day runs smoothly and that everyone LOVES our new schedule.

Here is the basic run-down of our day:

8:45-9:05: Morning Stretch
The students will arrive at anytime during this 20 minutes, so I have to be prepared for students who arrive at 8:45 and 9:05. I want everyone to be doing something beneficial the whole time, so this is what I've got.

The students start with a 4-square. They are all review questions and should take the students about 5 minutes to finish. There is a question in each square (based on math/word work skills we are currently learning) that I project on the Smartboard, and students complete in their journal.

When they finish, students look at our Be Proactive board (7 Habits!). Students choose from this board anytime they finish early. If you would like a copy of this, you can get it here!

Book recommendations is something new that we are trying. Most of my kiddos are into chapter books, and I am trying to push the last few in there too!

There are different forms included based on the type of recommendation it is. Maybe they think they'll like the character or lesson taught, or maybe they know someone likes a particular topic like sharks. It is a freebie for you :)

9:05-9:20 Morning Meeting
This is my favorite time of the day! My kiddos share about their weekend, share things they are excited/scared/nervous/happy/mad about. We greet each other and begin with the end in mind (7 Habits!) by going over our schedule for the day. Getting them excited about what we are doing not only keeps me on track with what we are doing, but also helps the organize their day.

9:20-10:50 Reading
Our reading time has now increased from 60 minutes to 90 minutes! Ahh what to do? Luckily, for the next 2 weeks we are working on nonfiction reading clubs.

Our reading clubs are topics of the students' choice that they research with a purpose. For example, if their research is on sharks, their purpose could be Top 5 Most Dangerous Sharks. This way, they have a purpose for their reading and are forced to provide evidence.

They are LOVING this, so we are currently doing this for most of our reading time.

10:50-11:50 Writer's Workshop
I LOVE writing! It's my favorite thing to teach :) I always do a short mini lesson, with modeled writing. Then the students take their writing folders and work on their own ideas.

I call over writing strategy groups throughout writing time to work on handwriting, sentence conventions, story organization, paragraph writing, etc.

11:50-12:20 Lunch

12:20-1:20 Math Workshop
Math is probably my second favorite! We always start with a Problem of the Day. These are short math journal prompts that usually do not have only 1 answer. For example, I might say, how can you make 43 cents? Then, they show me as many ways as they can.

Then, we move right into math stations. There are 4 stations, and the kiddos make it to 3 stations each day, for 15 minutes. The stations are:

• Paper Practice: Anything from our Investigations workbook or any other worksheets to practice important skills.
• Math Tubs: Differentiated tubs (2-3 students share a tub) of skill appropriate games
• Computer: Math computer games
• Work with Teacher

For the last 10 minutes, we do a whole group activity.

1:20-1:40 Recess

1:40-2:25 Academic Lab
This is when most of my pull-outs happen. This is also the time I pull groups that don't fit anywhere else in the day!

2:25-2:50 Science/Social Studies
We alternate science and social studies units. We are currently learning about landmarks!

2:50-3:05 Pack Up/Stack Up

3:05-4:00 Specials
Specials at the end of the day? AHH! I know. Roll with the punches right?

So that's about it. Crazy right? I hope it goes well!
Sarah

March Currently

 

I am linking up with Farley at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade for currently March!

Listening: To Modern Family! Awesome show that I have at least 5 episodes back up on my DVR :)
Loving: My laptop! It's like I use it for something new every day and love it even more!
Thinking: Conferences are right around the corner and I need to get everything ready. I hate/love them at the same time. I really do enjoy meeting and speaking with parents about how much I love their kiddos, it is just rough to do it all at the same time!
Wanting: A Diet Coke and sushi for dinner! Going to a family dinner so it's not going to happen, but a girl can dream!
Needing: A job for next year :( Hoping that one will open up at my current school because I love it, but time to get out that resume again. Boo!
Like, Love, Hate: Like sweatpants, could wear them all day, everyday if it was appropriate. Love sushi, could eat it for every meal if I wouldn't get Mercury poisoning. Hate snow, all the time! I hate cold and snow just slows everyone down. Come on summer!

What about you? Head over to Oh' Boy Fourth Grade and link up!

Happy weekend!
Sarah

Giveaways Galore!

I normally do not do this, but there are so many awesome giveaways going on, I had to make sure you all knew about them!

First, Learning with Mrs. Leeby and Live, Laugh, I LOVE Kindergarten is having a 300 follower giveaway!

What is so cool about this giveaway, is that they are giving away gift cards to Target, Sephora, TPT in addition to products from their TPT store! Awesome right?

I think you can get up to 50 entries! So you have lots of chances to win. It ends Tuesday!

Another awesome giveaway is the Teachers and Tapas giveaway! This giveaway is AWESOME! You can win products based on your grade level and have so many entries possible!

Head over and check them both out! You never know when you are going to win a giveaway. I enter them all the time and have never won one yet, but this could be my chance :)

Enjoy the last of your weekend!
Sarah

Hall Pass!

With two wonderful snow days to relax and recuperate, and giving me a nice long weekend, I thought I would blog stalk. I have seen tons of people link up to Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits for her Hall Pass Linky! 

Who doesn't love getting awesome ideas from each other?
So I will start with my favorite product. That's a tough one! And I'm kind of cheating, because it is more than one product BUT it is all based on the same concept. I LOVE my monthly calendar journals! Right now, they are available for August-March, with April, May, and June/July coming soon!

I think that calendar is the most wonderful part of the day and sadly I don't really get to do it anymore in second grade! So, instead, I have these wonderful calendar journals that some of my students use for their morning stretch.

These are just a few examples of the pages from the October journal. The calendars build off of each other, and become more difficult as the year goes on. You can find them all in my TPT store (August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March)

BEST OF ALL....You can re-download them each year with new dates FOR FREE!!! Yep :) One purchase and calendar journals for years to come.

My favorite classroom area is most definitely my classroom library. This is the most boring picture ever because it was before school started, but you get the picture.

This area includes our just-right library, where students choose leveled books for themselves, in addition to a theme/author library as well. They store their book boxes on the top shelf. The desk that is half cut off to the left is the listening center.

The voice signals that I have been using this year that I really like are:

• What I learned from whole brain teaching: Class, Yes (and all other variations)
• Give me 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and the kids hold up one hand and count down with you

I also have a Smartboard file that has 10 songs we use for various transition times (morning meeting, come to the carpet, clean up, line up, move stations, timer, etc.) Original idea for this came from Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives, but I tweaked it for my kiddos. IT IS A LIFESAVER and so simple. I will take a screenshot of the file and upload it on here later).

They are all kid-appropriate songs (most of them cut down in time). Other teachers come into my room are amazed when all I have to do is play a song, and all of my kids clean up their math tubs, move to the new station, get started with all their materials, and work quietly with just one little song!

Here are the ones I use:

• Morning Meeting: Sunshine Day by the Brady Bunch (whole song) It gives the kiddos about 3 minutes to finish their morning work, clean up, and all be ready for morning meeting on the carpet.
• Come to the Carpet: I Dream of Jeannie Theme (1 minute of song) Any time my kids are doing independent reading, desk work, partner work, etc. and I want them to come to the carpet I play this!
• Timer: Jeopardy Timer (for final question, 1 minute of song). This is perfect for stop and jot, elbow partner sharing, quick think, etc.
• Quick Clean-Up: Eye of the Tiger by Survivor (until the words start) I play this at the end of indoor recess or a craftivity.
• Line-Up: Andy Griffith Theme (whole song) Any time we are lining up to go anywhere, I play this song and they get right in line!
• Re-read Your Writing: Hawaii Five-O Theme Song (5 minutes) This is the last portion of our Writer's Workshop. They stop writing, and re-read what they worked on that day. This gives them the opportunity to fix quick spelling, capitalization, punctuation or organization errors quickly to make editing later easier!
• Problem of the Day: Mission Impossible Theme Song (1 minute) This is our transition song to start math. I play this song, they go to their desks, get out their math journals and do our math journal "problem of the day."
• Station Switch: Password Theme Song (2-3 minutes) This is what we use mainly when we switch math stations. This song gives them enough time to clean up, move stations, get their supplies ready, and get started!
• Stack and Pack: Pink Panther Theme Song (3-5 minutes) This song is PERFECT for those end of the day jobs and pack up. It is kind of quiet and I tell the kids to act like "spies" while cleaning. It is so cute and it is amazing how quietly and quickly we finish pack-up and jobs.

The way I keep sane is spending time with my teammates! Whether it is venting, sharing ideas, or just talking about life, they keep my head in the game. That, and a lot of caffeine (aka Diet Coke and Dunkin Donuts coffee!).

Stop by the Hall Pass Linky Party and link up!

Have a great weekend!
Sarah

Super Sunday Sale!

Happy Superbowl Sunday!

For today and  tomorrow, everything in my TPT store is on sale for 20%, and today, you can get an additional 10% off from TPT :)


Happy shopping!
Sarah

MLK Day and Character Traits

Hello all!

I don't know about you, but my kiddos are CRAZY right now! I have never had behavior problems with this class before and they are driving me bonkers. Hopefully this extra day off will have them coming back relaxed and ready to LISTEN and learn :)

Speaking of our wonderful day off yesterday, I took the opportunity to get my favorite activities ready to teach about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I really enjoy teaching my students about him because his message is s important!

My absolute favorite activity to do on MLK Day is one with food. (Can you say engaging?) I choose a physical characteristic of certain students in my class. This year, I chose students that were under 40 inches tall (which happened to be 4 of my kiddos).

These 4 kids got this!

 

Needless to say, the rest of my class's jaws were down to the floor. I heard so many "That's not fair!" and "Why are they the only ones who get that?" I look at them very confused and tell them that students who are under a certain height get the MnM's and the others do not because they are too tall. That's just the way  that it is, and I don't know why they would be upset about that.

One student shouted out (it's like I can telepathically transfer my thoughts to their brain): "That's not right. I can't change how tall I am. Why am I being left out of the fun just because I'm too tall? I can't shrink." Genius child. I think so :)

Then we can get into our discussion of how it is unfair to leave someone out when the thing that is keeping them "out," is not something they can change about themselves.

We answered the questions:
1. Why is this unfair?
2. How does it make you feel?
3. What can you change?

Finally after all of this, I read this book below.

My favorite book to read first is Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I posted about this book last January, but it is so awesome I had to post about it again! This book has such an awesome way of helping the kiddos understand what the words in Dr. Martin Luther King's dream was all about!

Since we are working on understanding character traits, (that differ from character feelings) we made an anchor chart displaying all of Dr. King's traits. I do realize that MLK is not a "character," but he worked well for the skill I am trying to teach my students! We are also really big on providing "evidence" for our thoughts, so for each trait, we thought of 1-2 pieces of evidence to support it.

Horrible picture! But you get the idea :)

Then, we discussed the importance of his words. I posted different parts of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and the students had to pick the words that meant the most to them, and how they could show what these special words mean today!

This is the paper my students filled out. You can get it on Googledocs here. These are some examples that my kiddos did!

 

I wish I could have talked about MLK all day! The kiddos were so interested!

 

 

Enjoy the rest of your week! Only 3 days left :)

Sarah

Back so soon! New Year Happenings!

Today was my first day back with the kiddos! Break seems like it just started yesterday :) As much as we needed the time apart from each other, I was so happy to see their smiling faces today!

After we spend the morning sharing all of our special news from winter break, we talked about New Year's resolutions. My kiddos are all about making goals, so this idea really resonated with them!

I am using Anna Brantley's New Year's Resolution template, and an idea from A Cupcake for the Teacher, to make this! I really liked the writing part of this page because it not only asked the kiddos to make their resolutions, but to explain why and how they are going to accomplish it. I think kids miss out on the "accomplishing" part a lot, especially since it is something only they are responsible for.

We also wrote goals for our behavior for the month of January. We have been reading the book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey and if you have not read it to your kids yet, DO IT! It is a phenomenal way to give your kids a vocabulary on goal setting and being in charge of themselves.

So many of my kiddos wrote their goals for January saying they would "Be Proactive" (Meaning be in charge of themselves) and "Begin with the End in Mind" (Meaning make a plan for themselves). I almost started jumping for joy!

Here are the goal setting sheets I use for each month. I included all 12 months so you could use them anytime. They are just little half sheets so the kids can keep them in their folders and access them quickly.

Luckily, this first week back isn't too bad because we can ease into it with 2 days. Next week is gonna be tough!

Happy (almost) Friday!
Sarah

Happy Holidays Giveaway Day 5!! WOO ITS BREAK :)

Today is Day 5 of my Happy Holidays Giveaway AND THE START OF WINTER BREAK!! (I'm not excited at all...) If you missed Day 1's giveaway, please visit that post here :) If you missed Day 2's post, please visit it here! If you missed Day 3's post, please visit here! If you missed Day 4's post, please visit here!

Today, I am giving away everything "snowman" that we did during our fun last day before break! I will be giving away two craftivities.

First, the Lost Snowman craftivity (Googledocs). I saw the idea on Pinterest and tweaked it a little to fit our needs. The kiddos put their snowman together and decorate it.

Then, they fill out a Lost Snowman form giving detailed information about their snowman. Then, we mix up all the snowmen and Lost Snowmen forms and the kiddos try to figure out which snowman is which!

Second, the Math Snowman craftivity (TPT or Googledocs)! The kiddos build their snowman and then do various activities to go along with it!

I also included two work station games! The first is a Winter ABC Order game (TPT or Googledocs)! The kiddos put 16 winter words in ABC order to the fifth letter! (This is really just because snowflake and snowman are included!) The second is a Winter Number Order game (TPT or Googledocs)! The kiddos will put the 24 two and three digit numbers in numerical order. They can do so from least to greatest or from greatest to least. Response sheets are included for both!

  

The winner for yesterday was...Mrs. Brown! Congrats and I will be e-mailing you soon :)

And for the last day, I will be giving away one item from my TPT store of your choice! You can comment and earn an entry for:

1. Following my blog

2. Following my TPT store

3. Posting about my giveaway on your blog!

So you can comment up to 3 times up until 2:00 AM central time! Please leave your email on your comments and I will email you to see what product you would like!!

YAY! Winter Break finally!!!

Happy Friday and enjoy your holidays!

Sarah