Peace, Love, & Summer

You might have seen in a couple of my past posts that our theme for next year is peace, love, & dogs.  Even though it's summer, that new theme is what has been on my mind!  I've been looking for ideas and working on a bit of a classroom makeover so far this summer, and I'm back today with a few more of my updates!

This week is vacation bible school at my church, and they have worn me out!  I don't know why!  I have only had 9 to 11 kids each night, and they have been sooo well behaved!  Some of them just finished second grade at my school...fingers crossed that I get them next year!  So, I have been trying to squeeze in some school stuff here and there this week!  I stopped by my "new" classroom Monday to pick up a few sharpies, and this is what I found...

OH. MY. GOODNESS. 

I got my markers and got out! 

I found this cute picture frame at Wal-Mart on clearance.  I'll put a picture of my class in it, and change the photos throughout the year!

I took a few minutes to doll up my clipboard with some retro paper, a big flower, and of course a monogram! {I love anything personalized!}

And I finally finished (I think) my "Really Groovy Class Pack"!  This is my first big product for TPT, so I'd love to have a couple of my followers look over it!  Is anybody else out there using a retro theme next year?  Leave me a comment with your email address, and I'll send a copy to the first two people that agree to give me some feedback!  This pack has lots of documents to help you organize your classroom and start off your school year.

For everyone else I have a freebie for you!  Click on the picture to download a preview of my "Really Groovy Class Pack"!  You get a few job cards and subject cards, a to-do list, a classroom expectations poster, and a certificate for a "hip helper"!  If you download, all I ask is that you please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!    

And finally I'll leave you with a little sneak peek of one of my next projects for my classroom!  We're off to the lake tomorrow, but hopefully I'll get to this soon!

A Summer of DIY

Welcome to my extreme classroom makeover!  I can call it extreme since it will be a whole new room, right?  If you haven't seen in my past post about all of my packing (ugh), my school district is switching buildings.  Nearly everyone P-8 is moving to a different building!  Luckily 3rd and 4th stay in the same building so I'll just be moving upstairs.  Even luckier, we have help!  I don't have to move everything myself!

Every year in the third grade we change themes.  

My first year in third grade the theme was cars and racing.  Take a look!

Last year our theme was monsters - so colorful and fun!  And I got tables (mostly)!  Yay!  Love them!  Here's a peek!

This year we have a school-wide theme...

Peace, Love, & Dogs
(we're the bulldogs - sometimes we spell it dawgs)

Since I can't get into my classroom for a while, I'm going to spend some time working on projects at home!  I think Classroom DIY might just be my best friend this summer!  If you haven't checked out Charity's newest venture yet, run, don't walk to see all of the DIY projects and tutorials on this new blog!  If you use one of the ideas on the blog, you can submit pictures to be featured on the blog.  I decided to try out the DIY dry erase boards for next year using report covers and peace themed and tie-dyed duct tape!  One of my pictures is on the DIY in Action page right now!

Looking around online for things to go with our new theme I found Shindigz, a party supply website.  They have super cute funky and hip 60's and 70's themed items of all kinds.  You can even make personalized banners, candy bar and drink wrappers, and stickers like this one I personalized!

Personalize a sticker with your school colors and mascot at Shindigz!

Do you have any great ideas for our groovy theme?

The End is Here

The time has come.  Yesterday was closing day.  Monday was our last day with the kids.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to summer, but I honestly will miss my class!  On the other hand, I'm so excited for next year!  The kids I will have next year are the kids I taught during my very first year when I taught kindergarten!  They visited us last week for transition day, and it was so fun to see them!  I was asked a lot of "do you remember my name?" and "can I be in your class?"...and I loved it!  We gave each second grader a top ten list after their visit.  The now fourth graders wrote the top ten things you should now about third grade to pass along.  You can see my top ten list here or grab your free copy for any grade k-5 at my TPT store!  My kids came up with some great tips!  A couple that stand out are "care and share" and "listen and learn" from one of my sweet girls.  In some of their tips I could here myself talking!  I guess some of what I said this year has stuck with them!

Before I can move on to thinking about next year, it's time for me to reflect on this year to see what worked well and what I can improve.  Amber at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher is hosting a linky party that is just perfect for sharing reflections on the past year.

Click on her blog title or this picture to join in and link up!

So we all know that every year has great moments and...ummm...slightly less than great moments.  For Amber's linky party I'm sharing a little of both - 3 great things and 3 not-so-great things!

source: Bing Images

It's Grrreat!

(Did Tony the Tiger read that to you too?)

1. Chapter Books

This year I asked my fellow third grade teachers to do something a bit different with me for reading halfway through the year!  These wonderful ladies were two of my second and third grade teachers, by the way!  Like always they followed me into the unknown and trusted my ideas.  Did I mention that I love them, and I'm so thankful to be teaching with them?  We used scholastic points to order a class set each of the original Flat Stanley and Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  We also ordered 5 each of 5 different Judy Blume books for literature circles!  My reading group started out with "Sideways Stories", and as soon as we started reading I was in love!  It seems so much more real to be reading from a chapter book than from a text book!  As I looked around at all of my kiddos with that little yellow book in their hands all following along and waiting for their turn to read, it finally seemed like we were really reading.  Does that make sense?  All of our kids loved it too!  They were so excited about reading, and they hated to go back to the basal.  I really hope that next year we can get a couple more classroom sets or series for literature circles and do even more real reading!

2. Hands-on Math and Math Journaling

This year we also went back to self-contained classes in third grade, switching only for reading.  In the past we changed classes several times a day, and I taught all of the math.  I liked this year so much better simply because we had sooo much more time for math!  We got to do some great games and hands on activities to supplement our learning.  One of my favorite activities was the perimeter and area activity I blogged about last month!  Check out that blog post for pictures and a freebie!  

Last summer I attended a local "branch" of the National Writing Project (highly recommended, by the way) and developed an action research project to improve writing across the curriculum - math journals!  The first set  of journals I developed were designed to be used with Every Day Counts Calendar Math and to help us review even and odd, multiples, and place value!  I blogged about my October Journal and posted it as a freebie way back in October!  I quickly figured out to number their pages before copying their journals - it made things run so much more smoothly!  Why didn't I think of that in the first place??  Each month I made a new set of journals.  Some of the pages stayed the same, some were left out or combined, and some new pages were added.  Our journal always reflected what we had been learning and helped us keep it fresh in our mind to review all year long!  Hopefully I'll be adding lots of ready to use math journal packets to my pretty empty very new TPT store this summer! 

3.Pinteresting Ideas and Donors Choose

So I have found 2 new loves this year...shhh...don't tell my husband!  Just kidding, I'm pretty sure he's noticed!  I love pinterest, and I love Donors Choose!  I have gotten sooo many good GREAT ideas from pinterest to use in my classroom!  You can see some of the decorating ideas I've used at this blog post from August!  A pinterest inspired, super cute, and really fun project the kids did at the beginning of the year can be seen here!  The perimeter and area activity I mentioned above was pinterest inspired too!  I have lots of school related pins and lots that aren't!  Visit my boards and follow me!  If you need an invite, email me and I'd be happy to send you one!

Donors Choose has been so great for me and my students this year!  I submitted my first project at the end of June last summer, and we have had three projects funded up until now!  All of the items we've had donated will be loved for years to come!  I am so thankful to all of the donors who have helped us out!  I couldn't give my students all of these things without their help!  I have two more projects that I'm hoping to get funded for next year's class to enjoy!

Thanks for making our journals better binded and more colorful!

So thankful for fun, factual, and mysterious chapter books!

TAG Readers thanks to the wonderful donors!

The Not-so-Great...

(dum..dum..dum....)

1. Organization

Ugh....organization.  This has ALWAYS been my BIGGEST problem!  I am so not an organized person at home or at school.  I'm trying to get better...I have so many things pinned!  haha 

I did reorganize my reading series materials this year, and I do LOVE it!  I bought 3 drawer organizers and labeled each one with a story from our basal.  Vocabulary word strips, leveled readers, worksheets, and any other materials for that week are kept inside of that drawer!  Here is a peek at that part of my room.  It's not a great pic or a close up, but they are the white containers on top of our cubbies.

2. Writing...consistently

I have to admit...I'm getting there!  My writing instruction is improving all the time, so this one could almost go in the great section (definitely in good)!  After my summer experiences with the writing project, I had big goals for myself to have my kiddos write every day!  Unfortunately, I didn't achieve that goal.  However, we did write much, much more this year, so I'm saying it's a small win...I just want to be more consistent with it next year!  I really want to implement writer's workshop though, and I just didn't get to it last summer.  My plan for this summer is to research and prepare for writer's workshop and hopefully start in the fall!

3. Moving

BIG changes are happening in my district, and I do mean BIG!  Almost everyone is moving this summer - most to different buildings (different, not new...we're switching), some to new classes (that's me).  We have to pack everything in our rooms for the move at the end of May!  EVERYTHING!  I've only been teaching for 3 years now (I'll be starting my 4th in August) and I have so. much. stuff.  I feel for my colleagues who have been teaching 20 - 25 years!  I'm still packing!  We were lucky enough to have a  fairly large storage closet on our floor this year, but we won't next year.  Uh-oh!  Look at all of the boxes from our storage room...and we're NOT done!  Where will all of this stuff go next year??

So that was my year in a nutshell!  I had a great group of kids and enjoyed our year together!  I'm so, so excited to get my kindergarten kiddos back next year!  Hopefully they haven't grown up on me too much!  

Do any of you guys have tips for writer's workshop??  Any suggestions or info I need to know?

Check out Amber's blog and link up with her!

Where I Spend Most of My Day

My third grade team and I change classroom themes yearly, so there's always a fun little addition of some sort to my classroom!  If you've seen my blog before, you know our theme this year is monsters!  And I am loving those cute little things!  I made some big changes in my classroom this year, and so far I'm really liking it!

I switched out some of my desks for tables, so now I have a mix!  I had to gather up the leftovers, but it works for me!  I'll take what I can get and make it work!  So after looking through my bag (even emptying it all out) I seem to have left my camera at school.....So check back tomorrow for pictures of my tables!



Here are my old well loved desks last year!
Excuse the mess...my racing room was in progress!
















I'm trying out the token system this year (from The Cornerstone).  Here is my token box!

Check back tomorrow for more substantial pictures...when I locate the missing camera...I"ll add more photos of my room to this post!  Don't forget to check out Blog Hoppin' and join some of their teacher week linky parties!

A sneak peek at my room

I've been working in my room a little here and there for a few days now, but today is the first day that I have gotten really excited about my room and our new theme!  As a grade level we change our theme every year, and I am loving the monster theme we have now!  I've also made some other changes in my room. 

Today I switched out some of my desks for tables.  We had the middle and high school type desks - one piece with the slanted desktop and the basket underneath the chair...ugh.  They are not kid friendly!  Don't even try pushing them together to play a game or do a group activity - nothing sits flat!  So I scrounged up tables that were no longer wanted or needed ( I got 3 to go with the 2 already in my room) and chairs to go with them!  Nothing matches, but I'm just glad to have them!  I also found out that I'll be getting 5 new "elementary" desks (you know the type), so I'm thrilled about that!

Well here are a few things I worked on today that I wanted to share!  First off is something I made just for fun!  It is a pinterest inspired project (of course).  I got my idea from What The Teacher Wants.  Here is my lollipop tree!  I didn't have an empty pot at home so I used a cute desert bowl that was part of a gift from a great little girl last year, and I love how it turned out!

Another pinterest inspired project are my clothespins outside of my door!  (You can find the source on my pinterest post.)  I painted two yardsticks (not really - they're actually 48" long each) and my clothespins then just hot glued...simple but time consuming!  Right now it is holding a welcome sign.  On the first day of school it will hold 20 different monsters that will help the kids find a seat (I'll post some pictures and let you know how that works out)! 

I made this I'm Done jar after seeing one at teachingblogaddict.com (I had to pin it first though...I think I have a problem...nah!)  It holds sticks with different activities for those early finishers.  Some will always be there...draw, write a note to a teacher or a classmate, practice your cursive, etc.  Some will change with the content we are learning...dice addition games will turn into dice multiplication games, tangram puzzles will replace place value activities, etc.  They can only pick once!  No putting them back to try to get something more fun!

I'm sure you could guess our school colors by now! haha

And now my smarty pants!  Special thanks to a great friend with a growing baby for the little jeans and Abby, from the Inspired Apple for the idea and printables!

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of my projects - who knows...maybe something I've shared will inspire someone else!  (We can dream, right? ;))  I'll be back tomorrow with some pictures showing how I organize my reading materials, plan to keep track of student helpers, and tackle classroom management issues.  You'll never guess but I'm trying a couple of new things!

OHHH! And DON"T FORGET!  There's only a couple of hours left to enter the giveaway at Thoughts of a Third Grade Teacher!  She is giving away a $20 gift card to Baffin Bags (an etsy shop that sells adorable baskets, bins, key fobs, and more) and a 12 x 18 fabric covered magnet board by Livy Lou Designs (another etsy shop with great stuff)!  To head her way now just click on the link above (to go to the giveaway post) or her button (to go to her blog)!