Cyber Monday Sale on TpT - Christmas Multiplication Fun

Head on over to my TpT store this Monday for                   Cyber Monday Sales!!!

I am going to be joining the TpT Cyber Monday sale and ALL of my products will be on sale. I am working on finishing up a couple of new ones to put up as well. Here is my brand new one that went up today.

The kids in my class do this activity every year, usually for an independent morning work activity and then we hang them up around the room. In this activity students will create a Christmas tree based on multiplication facts. This file gives you the choice to have students use preset facts or for older kids to create their own facts to use to make the tree. Hop on over to my TpT store to grab this activity by clicking HERE.

So much to be thankful for!!

Well with today being Thanksgiving, I thought I would share a couple of things I am thankful for. . .

First, I am so proud that both my twin (Susan) and I just found out that we both PASSED our test and have received National Board Certification!!!!!  Woooooohoooooo!!! I was such a long and difficult process but it definitely helped us to become stronger teachers and gave us the reminder of what a difference we can make in children's lives.

Hooray for us!! 

(This is a picture from our school field trip to the museum. I love that I get to go on these trips with my twin.)

Second, I am thankful for my wonderful family who always supports me. Even when I spend WAY TOO much time on school work, blogging, and creating TPT products! My husband and my two beautiful daughters cheer me on every step of the way.

Third, I am thankful to have a job at t wonderful school that values the teachers and the students. Teaching is a thankless career sometimes, but the people we work with are always there to support one another and the parents and students at our school are such a blessing. 

And lastly (for today), I am thankful for all of the resources teachers have today. With the use of bolgs, Pinterest, and TPT there are so many opportunities for us to stay connected and learn from each other. I know that I am a better teacher for learning from all of you.

So, with that being said HAPPY THANKSGIVING and I hope you all stop to think about what you are thankful for.

Non-Fiction with Gail Gibbons

Non-fiction Text Features and the Author of the Month!

This year I am really trying to make time for our author studies. Since there is so much going on it is hard to do one a month, so instead I have worked it to study one author every two months. To go along with our Journey's reading program I wanted to pick an author whose focus was non-fiction. So, who better than Gail Gibbons!

This is the poster that we have hung while we study her. I started by going to the local library (my FAVORITE place ever!!) and checking out as many books of hers as I could find. After a lesson on text features and a non-fiction/fiction book sort using Scholastic catalogs, is it was time for research. Before I sent the students off I had another mini-lesson on text features using the books I had checked out from the library.

Students were then paired up and were allowed to chose their topic from the stack of books I had. There were enough for them to all have a choice and really find a topic they were interested in. Over several days the students worked with their texts. They read, took notes, reread, and then created posters. The only directions they were given for their poster was that it needed to be informative, it should include a heading, at least five facts, and a picture. Many of my students chose to draw a diagram and here are what some of the posters came out like.

After everyone had finished their posters we set up a Gallery Walk. Students were asked to really study the posters that were created and take notes from the posters. They were to write down one fact from each poster (other than their own) that they found interesting.

The kids did such a good job and are getting better with non-fiction text features everyday!

Fraction Frenzy!!

Fractions, Fractions and More Fractions. . . 

This unit we went a little crazy with fractions. I was inspired by many ideas from my fellow teachers through Pinterest and blog posts so I decided to go all out and practice as many different ways as possible. This is what my bulletin board came out like, I love it!!

 

We worked with fractions of a whole and fractions of a set. After completing some in class work and posts in our math journals (which BTW are fabulous as this is the first year I have used them), I had the students each complete three activities.  

Our first activity was ice cream fractions. The students created their own ice cream cones and wrote the fractional parts of each. We were also able to pull in graphing skills by collecting data of the entire class and creating bar graphs. Thanks to Susan we were able to take this lesson even deeper. Each student developed two questions about the data and wrote it on a large index card. The cards were then switched around and the questions were answered by another student. When the student was done answering the questions they gave it back to the original owner who then checked their work. So many math skills in just one lesson. To get this lesson click HERE to visit my TPT website.

 I love to see the creativity of the kids. It was their idea to make the bar graphs look like the

 ice cream flavors!!

The next activity we completed worked with parts of a whole. The students were to create pizzas with different toppings and show the fractional parts of each. We brainstormed toppings that could be eaten on pizza and students drew pizzas for pizzas divided into halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, and eighths. They then chose their favorite to create a large pizza. Here are some examples below.

The last activity we did was create a bubble gum machine. Students made a bubble gum machine, colored bubble gum pieces and the recorded the fraction pieces that they had.  I don't have any individual pictures of these, but you can see some in the bulletin board picture at the top of this post.

It really was a lot of fun and I could see the students' knowledge of fractions getting deeper with each activity we created.

Friendly Letter Foldable

The last couple of weeks we have been working on friendly letters. My class has written letters to classmates, teachers, and even President Obama!! We discuss the parts of a friendly letter and what is entailed in each one. Inspired by Pinterest, I created a foldable to help students illustrate each part of the letter. Take a look below at some student work and if you are interested hop on over to my TPT store and grab the foldable to use in your class!!

I made a template with a boy and a girl, but the inside is the same. The head of the foldable holds the heading and greeting, the middle is the body of the letter, and the feet are the closing and signature. 

(click HERE to get this activity)

Students can cut on the dotted lines so they can focus on one part of the letter at a time. This is great to put into an interactive reading journal as well.

At our school we focus on showing good character and write character mail to each other. So, I had my students write a character letter to another student or teacher at our school. This child decided to write to his kindergarten reading buddy.  The foldable ended up being our rough drafts. We then wrote our final copies on a fall paper to send out.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing some of our work and can use this in your classrooms!!

Halloween Freebie!!!

Halloween Freebie!!!

I love this time of year and sometimes we just need a break to do something fun and educational. Hop on over to my TPT store to get this freebie (just click on the picture above)! Good for grades K-4, an activity where students must follow directions and know how to use prepositional phrases. They will enjoy coloring and creating this fun, holiday scene. Hope you have a Boorific week!

Scoot Pad

WOW!!! It is amazing how quick time flies by. It seems that it has been an entire month since I posted pictures of my room. I wish it still looked that clean and organized. Hopefully we will get used to this new world of blogging and have more frequent posts, but we do the best we can. Today I wanted to do a quick post to tell you about a great tool (yes it is FREE) that we have started using in our classrooms this year. It is called Scootpad! Now you may have heard of it but not really known what it was so I want to tell you a little bit about it. We decided to jump in this year and give it a go. Students are given individual accounts where they can log on and practice math and reading skills that are aligned to the Common Core. What is so great you ask???? Well, the students move up levels according to when they are ready so there is built in differentiation!! Students also have access to a class wall where they can post comments and you can set up a rewards system where when they earn a certain number of coins they earn a reward (there's your motivation). There are of course upgraded accounts which add bells and whistles such as online reading logs, detailed student reports, and spelling lists and practice. They also have an app! If your students have access to technology and you are looking for a fun way to practice reading and math try this!

Just click on the picture above to visit the website.