Feeling odd? Number line fun!

I am STILL trying to make some cutesy signs for my classroom! But I keep telling myself the walls can wait! The kids cannot!

I have a great little number line in my room that has odd numbers in red, blue in even.

I wanted to make a few little signs to hang with it but keeping others in mind, I revamped them to fit anyone’s number line! {note that the ones below say the numbers in red…blue…but the ones I am selling have 1,3,5,7,9 and 0,2,4,6,8 instead}

These are super glittery and cute! Grab some up on TpT!

We’ve been playing a game my teammies told me about all week. One kiddo stands at 100 (or however high you want), another kiddo at 0. A third has a secret number and calls on classmates to guess it. Then they say, “My number is less than {or greater than} …whatever the guess was. If it is less than-the kiddo at 100 moves to that guess. If it’s greater than, the kiddo at 0 moves…for example

*Is your number 56
*No, my number is greater than 56
so the kiddo at 0 moves to 56 and the class knows to guess something between 56 and 100…

it has been wonderful for greater than, less than practice and speaking in complete sentences! I called it Monster in the Middle because I could not remember what is was called! I was also the secret number (or the monster) for the first 2 times we played. They beg to play every day!

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Aftershocks and Withdrawals

Picture it, Claremont, NC 2011...stressed out  procrastinating teacher sitting on her classroom floor cutting lamination, gluing together a story map poster, and watching tv (all at the same time of course). Suddenly all the laminated glory on the walls begins to temble. "Katie!" she yells to her teamie across the hall. Then the floor begins to shake. Now she realizes this is not an AC unit gone awry...what the heck! A freakin' aftershock from the VA Earthquake all the way here in Southern NC! It was my first experience and it was all the talk around here. My less amused hubby posted the above picture on fb! 

ok, now that everyone is ok, back to the real issues I'm having this week...

After a 5 days back at school for workdays, I have never felt so unprepared! Today was our first day back with the kiddos, and I still had piles of crap beautiful things to hang all over! I swan-nee! I must say I could eat most of my class with a spoon! They are sooo cute and sweet. This is a definite advantage to lower grades! The are all adorable and don't smell! Definitely got a few rounders, too! But, let's be honest, they make the day more interesting. I hate to admit I have no pictures from today! Sheesh! I was crazy swamped and need to go to bed already!
I really have nothing wonderful to share other than promises to post classroom pictures (I LOVE my Pinterest/Blog inspired room) and a freebie "Graphing Myself" graph we did today! I am having serious Internet/blogging withdrawal! I have no time for play!

A few Requests Fullfilled and a Bloggy Button!

I finally created a blog button. I honestly didn't think I needed one, but I felt left out! And I will soon be posting to Me and the Gang as a contributing author for 2nd grade {exciting}! After an hour of messing around and googling the preferred button size, I ended up making it in Powerpoint of all things! The little program that could...

Grab her here!
I love my character by the way. My Vistaprint banner I made with her came today! Adorable. You can snag one at Jessica Wieble's amazing site!

And here are some requests I had that I'll share with the rest of you guys.
Addition to manners posters-The bg looks funny in Google docs, but the pdf printed fine for me. Let me know if you can't print it correctly.

And some new titles for the common core posters (these will be freebies). After my one millionth update to them...they are $10 so I want them to be perfect for that kinda money...I think they are good to go! You can purchase them on Teachers Notebook {preferred} and TpT!

Reading Street, Workshop, and focus walls

I will begin this post with an explanation and apology. It will be lengthy (at least for my posts) and rambly…

Last year was my first year in 2nd grade, with Daily 5, Café, and Math Expressions. I pretty much change things up yearly-there is just so much you live and learn, but geez…

Just a note-I thought it was easy to combine D5 workshop with Reading Street. I used the basal, which has some great literature by the way, most every week. I do find this series to be overwhelming and I def. had to pick and choose what elements I was going to utilize. I am very indecisive flexible when it comes to instruction and scheduling in my classroom. If I don’t like how something is going, I change it.

By year’s end my reading workshop looked like this:

*Word sort at seat (did I mention it was our first year with Words Their Way, too) but I LOVE IT so no biggie. If you don’t use it already, use the online stopwatch site for speed sorts…oh my! Be sure to scroll down-the bomb is the class’ personal fav.

*meet at the rug for phonics or vocab minilesson. If there is one thing I found useful in Reading Street it was the word work/phonics lessons. Awesome. I love word ladders. My kiddos used little white boards at the rug. I am pretty sure it was their favorite type of minilesson. We also did dictation sentences using the spelling test section. Since I used WTW, the spelling was a nice tie in to the phonics that week that they had to apply.

*Read to Self (always round 1)

*meet back at the rug for skill or strategy minilesson. I used the basal or other picture book to intro the skills. You can really use it exclusively, but I love books too much. I used the basal like any other picture book. The difference was each kiddo had their own copy! I pull these lessons from any and everywhere. The Lesson Plan SOS ladies are my new go to though!

*Round 2-choice. I had a clipboard with all their little names down the side and daily choices across the top. You can find the original here (I just redid mine a little-like added lots of lines for kids!). They raised their hand when they were ready to tell me their choice and the round was 20-30 mins depending on how many kids I had to meet with. (this is my weak area so I am not going in to depth here. We do use mClass assessing that rocks my the way)

That’s it. We went in to some sort of terrible writing lesson here then Author’s Chair. I am still lost about wiring instruction with 7 year olds at this point…

There are some changes I will make this year however. One is a mini focus wall. I moved my huge Pottery Barn rug to school (after we repainted, it no longer matched and I can’t justify selling it for 1/10th what I paid). I moved my meeting area in front of our tv so I can utilize it more during this time. I love using games during this time. (see the links at the bottom of this post) This left my desk right beside my rug. Since the side is ugly and bare, but magnetic, I made this little focus wall to cutesy it up and be a reminder of what we are working on that week. You can download it for free below.

For now it is going to be the story book cover, the skill, the strategy, and the genre. I am undecided about where to house the vocab words and hf words…I am doing a large word collector and sounds we know boards for vocab. this year.

Focus Wall Mini

More info will come as I think things over more thoroughly. Right now I am still in “I have to get the room situated before I can think about academics” mode. I will also get some pictures of it soon. We were teased with a hot minute to come in and work yesterday before the new hallway tile is waxed. My mom and I worked most of the day, but how much can this gal get done with 3 boys with her…nada!

If you use reading street, here are my delicious bookmarks for resources on the web

Use Your Manners Please

Going through all my pins on Pinterest today and really forgot about a few things I wanted to DIY. Here's one. Manners posters for the classroom. This was inspired by two seperate pins: a manners poster (that cost too much) and manners display for a child's bedroom. Cute huh? Love that alphabet!? Found it on Scrap Orchard and the creator used Pass the Chex (one of my fav fonts).
Enjoy! If you can think of any more that relate to school-post a comment. My mind is drying up!

Common Core Standards display update

After several requests, I added ALL the standards in Language Arts and Math (these are the common subject areas that are being adopted nationwide.) Before I just used the broad standard.
I ALSO added a Jungle theme and a banner theme for more choice. I may make a few more and post on the blog. If you've already purchased from TpT, you should have gotten an email telling to to re-download. If you purchased from Teacher's Notebook, just shoot be an email and I will get you the revised document!
Here are the new themes:

Banners

Jungle animals

Update: added these today

Thanks to everyone who is purchasing these! Read more about common core adoption here. I am pretty excited about the new meshing of standards and no more vague standards like I am so tired of!
Tomorrow I plan to show off a few craft-tivities I worked on last week! yay!! So ready to get into my classroom!

Pay day, a little Target shopping, and a freebie

Finally payday; and that long awaited trip to Target was on! We first made a stop by Michael's to get a few supplies for a gift for each of my teammates. I’ll be mod-podged later on! Also found some rainbow ombre colored poster board! woo-hoo!
At Target I picked up a tub for my big books that came with our Reading Street series. I had to make a little signage too. Inspired by a Pinterest…shared with you!

Big Books Sign

100 followers and a freebie!

I finally printed out all my goodies from the Lesson Plan SOS ladies for guided reading. I was simply raptured by how easy they explain everything and lay it right out! Those files are a goldmine if you don't already have them-go scoop em up on TpT! I change how I do reading groups each year because I am never satisfied, but I am always willing to adapt and remain flexible!
That said-I had to redo the reading group posters to match my "scheme"-I don't stick to a theme, more a color scheme! I am sharing these and several examples of how I would set them up. I don't know my kiddos yet so obviously I don't know how many groups. Last year I only had 4, and that's my plan again. I also can't decide between Harry Potter names or travel sites (you'll see what I mean...). Hope you can adapt and enjoy!

Guided Reading Groups Poster
My favorite idea was putting their little faces on the reading groups poster and writing the title of their current book on a sticky. Such a good display!
Just fyi-alphabet and cliaprt from lettering delights, fonts from kevin and amanda! I always wanna know that stuff! =)

It's here...the Common Core Standards for Second Grade!!!!

Ok, so I know you all saw Mrs. Jump's amazing Common Core Standards posters and that dang cutie patootie ribbon display, Right!? I had to make one, and so with permission from the fab Deanna Jump herself, here they are!

We are required to have our standards that we are teaching posted in our rooms (and they have to be changed when the content changes-mine are changed daily in math and weekly in other areas for the most part). These posters are a quick (and cute) way to change out what you are working on with the kiddos. Put velcro on the strips and subject posters-then swap them out as needed.They are in the language I am supposed to use with the kids during lessons and refer to.

picture from Deanna Jump's blog

I used the CCS adopted in these states (and NC where I am next year) for the standards strips. I used the broad essentials since the specs vary state to state still. Hope you all enjoy! There are 2 different color schemes to choose from. If you see ANY mistakes, don't hesitate to email me!

They are posted on Teacher's Notebook and TpT now! I have my ribbon ready to hang, just waiting for somebody to allow me in my classroom then I will post some pictures!

purchase from teacher's notebook store

purchase from TpT

Reading Notebook Organization

I am really revamping my binders and trying to consolidate what I really use into a few spots. I tend to keep stuff all over! I recently purchased all the guided reading goodness from Lesson Plan SOS ladies and read Christina Bainbridge's post about how she has her binder organized. I teach by strategy (our district assigns a strategy to teach each month), so her setup works well for me! Long story short, here's a Comprehension Notebook cover to share! Enjoy!

click to download cover

The plan:
*put a different strategy on divider tabs
*keep my booklists for each strategy and lessons in each section (right now I have them all lumped together in my lesson plan binder. I would love to hear how you organize your reading lessons!

Cooperative Learning

Today I attended my first summer workshop, well, half a day of it! No babysitter this afternoon =(
Anyways, it was all about collaborative learning and ways to get your kids discussing and learning with each other. A few things sparked my interest (minus the peanut M&M's, Diet Sundrop, and fudge Pop-Tarts I brought along!)
The first was a Kagan strategy for calling on students or teamwork management. Kagan suggests assigning letters and numbers to students, then when you want a discussion leader for instance, say, "OK, all the number 1's begin." The important thing here is that there were some cute "maps" on our tables. Each was divided into fourths and labeled with a letter and number (gives more options). I had to come home and recreate a few. Not sure which I like most from all my new Lettering Delights graphics (bugs, animals, letters, travel!), so enjoy all or one! Just tape in the middle of your tables and leave for the year!

I updated the file! I forgot to rotate the top ones so they'd face the kids on that side of the table! OPPS!

Click here to download a zip file with several options.

 Another thing I l-o-v-e-d where these questioning cubes and dice. I know we have all probably used beach balls with question stems, but what set these apart was that you used two spinners or cubes to form a higher level question. They were great! You could make out of foam dice from Dollar Tree or Target dollar spot. If you have a Smart Board you can create spinners! Oh, the possibilities!

If you are interested in more files, Laura Candler has lots for free on her site. Tomorrow I will post about using AlphaBoxes for preassessing or reviewing. My file is saved at work!

Back to School files

I am taking on a tedious task of organizing my files and uploading to Google Docs. The problem is I keep finding great stuff to save and/or remake! Here are 2 goodies I will use this year. A classroom scavenger hunt-fun, fun!

Click to Download

And the second is a graphing printable I used last year as a get-to-know-you-see-what-you-can-do activity! I called it Graphing Myself.

Click to Download

Enjoy!

10 things you never really needed to know about ME!

In honor of Go Fourth!'s linky party here are 10 things you don't need to know to get through your days, but enjoy the printable at the end!

10. I LOVE reading and have trouble understanding those who don't! (ie. my hubby, bless him) I love teen fiction, DK books on anything,dirty vamp novels (I just finished up the latest Sookie book! and classics. I am currently reading Fahrenheit 451. My shelfari shelf needs some updating, but you get the idea.

9. I am extremely ADD. Really, not joking or saying lightly. I just purchased myself on of those special pads to sit on during teacher meetings!

8.  I never thought I would start a blog or teacher website, but am addicted to both. I thought the teachers who did that stuff were just full of themselves! I wonder now how I could ever come up with an idea without them!

7. I love Bravo and any program on that darn channel! Inside the Actor's Studio is a fav!

6. I am/was a teen mom. I went into labor the day after high school graduation and started college when he was 3 months. I love when people say "Oh, you don't look old enough to have a 12 year old..." We were married when our Jackson was 3 and eleven years later have 3 boys! Love happy endings right?! Because of this, I am super determined and out to prove others wrong. I do not care for judgment.

5. I have 2 tattoos. I got them both in the same month I turned 30 (this past April). I have three stars on the side of my foot for each of my babies and the Chinese symbols for elder and sister (big sister isn't a Chinese symbol all on its own) on my inner wrist.  My little sis got a matching one too! They are both quite visible, but the kids think they are fake!

4. I love school. Being in school, teaching school, whatever. Most co-workers think I am crazy, but I need routine and enjoy what I do. Summer break is really tough for me!

3. I am what my dearest teaching partner calls a global thinker! I can come up with anything, but have no follow-through! That's why we were such a great team for 5 years!

2. I LOVE decorating with birds, but I am terrified of real birds. They really gross me out.

1. I am obsessed with the following items: Bath and Body Works lotions/soaps/car scent portables/body wash; stationary aisles and pens/pencils, Target, storage baskets, did I mention birds, Pier 1, exclamation marks and commas, shoes, and chocolate. I have too much of all them

And if you read all this-here is an awesome Pencil Sharpener sign for your classroom. I got the idea from Mrs. Beam's blog. Because, as you can see, pencil sharpeners are not on my list of things I am obsessed with!

Planning ahead...freebie!

If you are somewhat of a teaching addict like me, you are already zoned in on next year! I saw a yearly topic calendar somewhere out here in the blogosphere, but couldn't locate it again so I remade one. It just has a small spot to jot down what I what to teach that month. I am probably going to redo it to make one page for each month, but until then...Enjoy!

Download Link