I'm back!!

If anyone is still here, I'm back, and I have lots to share today!

First I have some big news....

Can this count as a Monday Made it?

Tomorrow we'll be 12 weeks, and as awesome and amazing as it is (at least to me), I guess it can't be a Monday Made It! haha...but I do have some things to share with you over the next month or so that have already made my year easier!  I'll save a couple for next month's linky!

Now hopefully I can make math a little easier for you this year!

We just finished up rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred.  One of the things my kids have the most trouble with is knowing their options!  I usually see many answers at the beginning that affirm that...6 rounded to the nearest ten is 60...236 rounded to the nearest hundred is 600.  So that's always where I start, learning how to find your choices.  We review counting by tens and hundreds first.  Then we practice finding the two multiples that a number is between.  We make a color coded hundreds chart and then practice A LOT by writing our options down to find the correct answer.  That hundreds chart and other worksheets for a rounding unit are in my new "Ready and Rounding" unit that's {almost} for sale in my TPT store or TN shop.  But I have a freebie for you too!  Click on the picture to download the freebie and use these two worksheets to practice finding your options for rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred!

If you like those worksheets remember to check out my "Ready and Rounding" unit {soon} and my "Rounding Robots" Scoot Game in my TPT store or my TN shop!

And I want to apologize again before I go...can you forgive me for my month long (and then some) absence??  Finding out we're having our first precious little one, school starting about 2 weeks later, and a few scary moments with a one night hospital stay in between (already...ugh...) have really kept me occupied!  I've already missed two days of work due to unplanned doctor visits...and I HATE missing work!!  Hopefully things will straighten themselves out soon and my body will start cooperating!  And hopefully I'm back for good...for at least a post or two a week!

So if you're still with me and you're still reading this 'forgive me, please' post, if you'd like to proofread my rounding unit leave me a quick comment!  The first person will get to keep the finished unit for free!  I'd love to post it within the next couple of days so make sure you can look over it soon!  Anyway, thanks again for sticking with me, and know that I'll try to be a better blogger during this school year! :)

Now go grab some more great freebies!

Everyone enjoy the week ahead!  

I hope it got off to a great start today!

It's My Blog's Birthday!

One year ago today I published my first post on my little ole blog!  I didn't keep up with it so well during the school year, but I think I might have the hang of it now!  Hopefully!  I plan to keep up with my posting a little better this time around!

Now it's time to celebrate!  

It's my birthday, but you get the presents!

I have reached 250 followers, and my blog is one year old!  So to celebrate I'm throwing a sale in my TPT store and in my TN shop for 15% off this weekend only, July 28th - July 29th!

I'm also giving ALL of my followers a birthday gift!  You can pick any one of my scoot games listed below, and I'll email it to you for free!  You can see all of my games and more details and pictures in my TN shop or in my TPT store!

Just leave me a comment with your email address and the item you'd like BEFORE MIDNIGHT on Sunday the 29th!  I'll have all of the items emailed by Wednesday, August 1st!

Scoot: Identifying Nouns

Scoot: Rounding Robots

Scoot: Adjectives

And finally, I'm giving away some items to make going back to school a little more fun!  2 winners will each receive a copy of Barbara Robinson's chapter book "The Worst Best School Year Ever" (you know how I love those crazy Herdman's) and 7 packs of stickers (various shapes, sizes, and themes)!

Source

You've just got one easy entry using rafflecopter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So, do you have any blogging tips to help me keep it up after school starts?  

I'm going to have A LOT going on!

**Both giveaways are now closed!  Thanks to everyone who entered!**

Birthday Baking, A Freebie, & ELA Scoot

My hubby's birthday is coming up...tomorrow!  Ahhh!  And I'm blogging instead of getting things ready...gosh...

I'm baking a scrumptious dessert bar today and a red velvet cake tomorrow for him, and chicken enchiladas were requested for his birthday dinner!  These dessert bars (whose name I won't mention) are sinfully delicious...I'd hate to think how many calories they have!  I found them on pinterest along with the "lighter" chicken enchilada recipe!  Click the pictures below to go to those pins!

The dessert bar is super easy to make!  The enchiladas take a little more time and prep, but they are so worth it!  I thought I'd bring you along today while I make Kyle's brownies!

You only need a few ingredients!

Preheat your oven and prepare your brownie mix and cookie dough!  I'm using boxed today to save some time, but you could use your own recipe too!

Layer!  Cookie Dough - Oreos - Brownie Mix  (You'll notice I made a double batch...now Kyle can take some brownies to work with him!)

  

Bake and Enjoy!  Yum!!

Be sure you check out the original blog post I pinned for the full recipe and her amusing explanation of the name!  Check out those enchiladas too!  So good!!  I can't wait for dinner tomorrow! =)

I'm linking up with Michele from Miss Nelson's Got The Camera for her "Make it, Bake it, Sew it, Grow it" giveaway!

Now, to help celebrate the birthdays in your classroom, enjoy these freebie postcards!  Everyone loves getting mail, right?  Just click on the picture to download your own copy or get it for free from my TN shop or TPT store!

And finally, I'm working on scoot games for the parts of speech.  I'm finished with a noun combo set (2 games) and a verb game!  The first three people to comment and agree to proofread one of my games will get to keep the finished version for free!  All you have to do is email me back with comments, questions, suggestions, or any concerns with the game!  I definitely want to produce a quality product so I need your help!  So, if you want to be my editor for the day (or for 15 minutes!) comment on this post, and tell me which game you'd like to look over (identifying nouns, common vs. proper & singular vs. plural nouns, or verbs) and your email address!  I'll give one of each game to the first person to request it to proofread for me!  Remember, if you ask for one of my games you agree to proofread it for me!  =)

So, do you have any special ways that you celebrate birthdays at home or at school?

Building Our Community and Our Stamina: Freebies for Your Class

If your reading stamina is good and you made it through my long, long post yesterday, you'll remember that I promised you some freebies!  We'll here they are!

In chapter 2 of the Daily 5, the sisters talked about trust and building a classroom community.  I have a freebie that can help you with both of those things!  Obviously to make your classroom a trusting environment with a strong sense of community, you have to know your students!  But I think they need to know you too!  This freebie is a heart mapping "worksheet".  Heart Mapping is not my original creation.  It is an idea developed by author, Georgia Heard.  She writes about it in her book Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School.  It's a great way to learn what's important to your students and can be a great addition to a writing journal (for those times they just don't know what to write about)!  It can also be a great way for your students to learn what's important to you.  I would suggest completing your own heart map on chart paper while your students create theirs and then giving everyone time to share after you share yours!  Click on the picture to download your freebie (with an example of how it's used).

The sisters also talked about stamina.  After reading about building stamina, you wonder why you haven't always done things this way!  We do in many ways, but I have never referred to it as such.  Starting small and building up from there is basically all there is to increasing your stamina with anything.  I'll definitely be helping my kids build their reading and writing stamina in my class next year, but why couldn't they build their reading stamina at home too?  Many teachers already assign nightly reading for homework, and that homework can be perfectly combined with building stamina.  Your second freebie is a worksheet that can be sent home for weekly homework.  It's a modified reading log that requires students to record the time they started and finished reading and how long they read each night (with help from an adult in earlier grades).  They can see their stamina improving at home, and parents are involved too!

I'm linking my freebies up with TBA and their "Freebie Friday"!  Go Check it out for more great freebies!

And I'll leave you with a picture of my heart map!

 What are the important things in your life?

Big News!

Big news for me at least!  I finished my "really groovy class pack" that I blogged about last week and uploaded it to TPT...but I decided it was time to open a Teacher's Notebook store as well!  So I got down to business this morning and set up my store!  I uploaded a couple of freebies and my new retro themed class pack!  Click on the picture to check it out in my TN store or click on my new Teacher's Notebook button in my sidebar to make your way to my shop!

To celebrate the opening of my new TN store I'm running a giveaway on Teacher's Notebook.  It only lasts until Wednesday at midnight, so hurry over to enter!  One person will win this class pack!

Don't forget, you can sample my class pack with a freebie!  Click on the picture below to download!

Be sure to check out more freebies at Classroom Freebies' Manic Monday!

More news...I am ready for the Daily 5 and CAFE book studies that are coming up!  And I am excited!!  A book study for grades 1-3 is being hosted through linky parties on a lot of lovely blogs, and a book study for upper elementary grades is being hosted at "We Read, We Blog, We Teach"!  I got the kindle version of the books for $9.99 each to read on my iPad!  I've heard great things about the Daily 5, and hopefully I'll see great things for myself this year in my classroom!  

Now, have you met Amber?  (I feel like Barney on "How I Met Your Mother" haha)  She blogs at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher, and she is having a giveaway to celebrate summer!  You have the chance to win $25 worth of items from her shop {which is great!} so be sure to stop by!  Just click on her button to go to her blog!


I'll be having a giveaway of my own soon to celebrate 100 followers!  I'm almost there!

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!

Writing in Our Classroom

I am sharing my love of the written word in partnership with the Superb Writers’ Blogathon. Sponsored by Grammarly grammar checker, this series is bringing helpful hints to aspiring superb writers all across the world wide web.


Writing in our little corner of the school is constantly evolving and growing!  Like most subjects, the way we teach writing changes from year to year, class to class, and often student to student.  This year I was surprised to find that a lot of our third graders had poor handwriting...a few were nearly illegible!  I kid you not!  So I started with the basics.  We generally begin teaching cursive at the beginning of third grade, but my kiddos were not ready for that this year!


I had to improve their handwriting skills, so we talked and talked about the importance of neat handwriting.  I wrote on the board in different levels of "sloppiness", and we discussed how easy or hard it was to read the different examples.  

I found a great way to illustrate and discuss neat handwriting that was relatable for the kids thanks to Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants. I introduced "the handwriting house" to my kiddos soon there after, and it made it so easy to talk about neat writing!  Here is a peek at the handwriting house anchor chart I made for my class!




All capital letters and the tall lowercase letters touch floor and the roof.  Most lowercase letters like a, e, m, and v sit on the floor and look out of the window.  Letters like g, y, and p sit on the floor and hang out in the basement.  It's a really easy way to talk about letter formation with the kids. It's something they can all relate to pretty easily!


Since we straightened out our writing and learned the correct letter formation we could move on to doing some real writing!  My biggest problem obstacle in writing is grading their work and giving them feedback...especially timely feedback!  I was always so overwhelmed with all of those papers...all of that writing staring back at me, page after page.  There always seemed to be something more pressing that I had to do!  When I did manage to get everything checked and make all of the notes they would need, there was so much on the page that the kids were overwhelmed!  They didn't know where to start to make their corrections!


I think I have finally found a solution that works for me and for the kids!  I've found that it's unreasonable to expect my third graders to do everything right at the beginning of the year, so now we take it a little bit at time.  Instead of marking every mistake on their very first piece of writing and destroying their confidence, I focus on the things that I know they have learned!  I'll check for capital letters, end marks, and complete sentences in their first piece of writing, and we add more conventions of writing to that as we progress through the year.


Another thing that I have begun doing this year is allowing more time for peer editing and self assessment of the kids' writing.  I love allowing them the opportunity to look for mistakes before I do.  It gives them an extra opportunity to improve their work and more practice in finding the little mistakes that we all look over sometimes.  We do this from the beginning of the year on, and we always remind each other of the importance of checking our friends' work respectfully.  I use checklists or rubrics to lead my little editors in the right direction and remind them what they're looking for.  Whenever possible I print the checklists or rubrics on sticker paper, and we stick them right into a corner of the work we're looking over.   

This is one of the checklists we used about 3 months into the year.  We had already learned about the parts of a letter and practiced writing letters together in class.  


We used this peer editing checklist after writing a letter to Santa!  As the editor looked over their friend's letter they marked any mistakes they saw and then filled out the checklist.  Click on the picture to download your own copy! {{Updated May 30 to correct download link - sorry for the mistake!}}


I've used peer editing and self-assessment in other ways in my classroom as well.  You can see one of the checklists I used near the end of the year in my blog post about our adventures with the hilarious "Sideways Stories from Wayside School" by Louis Sachar!  Next year I want to keep improving my writing instruction and implement writer's workshop in my classroom!  

How do you make grading writing assignments and giving feedback a more manageable task in your class?  Do you have any tips for a writer's workshop beginner?  

There's always more to learn!

Happy writing!

It's Coming to a Close

The end of the year is quickly approaching!  We have 9 days of school left...single digits!  I can't believe it!  We're working hard on the K-PREP state assessment this week, so I've been trying to come up with some worthwhile activities that the kids can enjoy doing in the afternoons.

Source: 2nd Grade Pad 

I found this great pin on pinterest and we'll be doing this activity this week.  Special thanks to Cynthia at 2nd Grade Pad for the inspiration!  I can't wait for summer to be out on the lake!  I'll have my writing workshop books with me, but I'll be on the water!



Since our transition day is coming up soon and the second graders will be visiting us I thought it would be great to have a little gift for them!  We have done some prewriting to come up with ten helpful tips for them before they start third grade.  I made a top ten list for the kids to write their final drafts on using the cute, cute font, alphabet soup, from KPM Doodles.  While I was at it, I made top 5 pages for K/1 and top 10 pages for kindergarten through 5th grades!  You can download them for free at my TPT store!

Amber at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher is having a 300 follower giveaway!  Congrats to her for reaching that milestone!  Go check out her terrific blog (click on her button below) and enter her giveaway for an e-gift card, items from her TPT store (she has great stuff), or a handmade pinterest inspired magnet board!  Yes, I just named 3 different items for 3 different winners!  3-6 Free Resources is having an amazing Mayday giveaway too!  There are too many prizes to name!  Definitely click on their button and check it out!

            
So, what are you doing to mark the end of the year with your students?

Easter Themed Measurement Activity

If you're looking for something to do tomorrow that will tie in the Easter holiday with your math curriculum take a look at this measurement activity from my new Teachers Pay Teachers store!

We completed this activity last week, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it!  They, of course, love hands-on learning like most kids do!  I numbered 20 different plastic eggs (I have 18 students) and filled them each with a string that I had already measured.  We started out by each choosing one egg, measuring the string inside to the nearest half inch and recording the length on the exit slip.  We did this three different times, and each time the kiddos had to have a different egg.  After measuring all three strings, they found the total length and then had to write specifically telling how they found the total length of all 3 strings.  We ended the activity by estimating 3 more items that would be about the same length as the total of all 3 strings.

This was a fun activity for the kids and something that we can include in our writing portfolios!  Hopefully it will be of some use to others!  If you'd like to download this freebie, you can get it at my TPT store!

aROUND and aROUND we go

We have been in school for just over 3 weeks now...so far, so good!  My reading group is going strong!  We completed a great social studies unit, and we've spent the past week in our first science unit investigating the world around us using our 5 senses!  My little detectives tried to determine ten different concealed objects using only their sense of touch, different scents using their sense of smell, and the objects creating different sounds in closed containers using only their sense of hearing.  We also observed for details using our sense of sight.  But I think their favorite by far was exploring their sense of taste!  Little secret - it was mine too!  Don't we all love a good snack?

Place value was a huge success!  Our first chapter in math was place value - ones through thousands - and all that it entails.  Well about 14 or 15 out of my 19 homeroom students earned an A on the chapter test!  The other three homerooms had good reports from their math classes as well!  Now that we have mastered place value we're moving on for a unit on rounding to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred.

We started out by coloring this hundred chart from "super teacher worksheets" that shows which numbers round up (we colored them blue) and which round down (we colored them yellow). The kids will keep this in their binders that they take home.  Then we colored a blank hundred chart to match.  We used the second chart to make a foldable.  We cut out the square chart, folded it in half, and cut it to the crease between the numbers that round down and those that round up to make a simple two tab book.  We glued this book to the bottom of a piece of construction paper and labeled each side with round up/down.  The kids then took a blank piece of paper and created another two tab book.  We labeled this one with "Rounding to the Nearest Ten" and "Rounding to the Nearest Hundred".  On the inside we wrote our rounding rules - "I look at the digit in the ones/tens place" (respectively) and "If it is 1, 2, 3, or 4 I round down.  If it is 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 I round up."

The foldable was a good interactive project to introduce the subject and I love the original hundreds chart we colored.  Both will be great reference tools for them as we go through this unit.  Most of the kids seem pretty confident with the basic rules of rounding.  The trouble starts when they don't have answer choices.  My kids are having a hard time figuring out which two numbers they should choose between for their answer.  In rounding a number like 26, for example, I might have a student say it will be either 20 or 60.  Another might say 20 or 10.  Of course there were those who got it right away and know that it is 20 or 30!    Super teacher worksheets has a couple of number line pages for rounding I plan to use, but I created my own for some extra practice for our kiddos too!  If any of you can use it, feel free to borrow!  You can download it from google docs here or from scribed (I'm trying it out since I can never seem to get google docs to embed right).

Rounding - Finding Your Choices

Everyone have a great Labor Day weekend!  Enjoy the extra day off...I know I will!