Need Some Clip Art?

Yeah, I know... I've been neglecting my blog. I do feel slightly guilty about it. I mean I really intended to keep up better than this! But I have some legitimate reasons. Mostly family drama and I don't mean the entertaining kind that everyone eventually laughs about. Posting the details online isn't really appropriate, so I hope you all will just accept my excuse without further explanation.

Now, the fun stuff! If you sell on TpT or Teachers' Notebook or just like to make your own stuff, you absolutely MUST check out this giveaway. You can win a ton of awesome clip art and fonts!  And I really mean a ton of it, good stuff, no great stuff! (Wow, that was a terribly grammatically incorrect non-sentence.) Honestly, I'm hoping to win myself but you should enter too. I don't mind the competition LOL.

 

I promise to get back to blogging on a more regular basis soon. Today was the last day of school (woo-hoo!!!) and as soon as I recover, I'll be back in business. Happy end of the year!

Wrapping Up The Year

Whew! Just 15 school days left and that includes vehicle day, field day, awards ceremony, and who knows what else I'm forgetting! Just like every other teacher, my schedule is packed. I think I have 3 IEP meetings just in the next week.

I've been thinking about what I can do to help myself be more organized next year. We only get one post-planning day, so I have to make the best of it or else come in over the summer. Also, my partner and I are planning to take down our wall for next year and fully co-teach in a double room. We already mix and swap kids a good part of the day, so we're ready to jump in with both feet. I'll really have to get organized though. I don't think she'll fully appreciate my rotating piles system! lol

This past year we both used Christina Bainbridge's HORSE folder idea. I really love it but I'm going to pare it down a little bit.  Unfortunately, most of my parents never once wrote in the parent/teacher communication section, so I think I'll leave that out next year. Here's how I'm going to do them...

First, I adore the "Saddle Bag" idea and plan to use better quality zippered pouches. I used the cheap clear plastic ones from Walmart this year and they didn't hold up well. The "zipper" broke on all of them. Next year I'm getting something like this...

You can get them for $1 at the Dollar Tree and they have actual metal zippers on them. Putting these in the students' daily folders is a brilliant idea! Notes to and from parents, lunch money, permission slips, book orders, etc. all go in the "Saddle Bag" and they don't get lost on the way. 

The next section of my folders is going to be where students record their progress on things like fluency, math facts, and maybe Reading Counts points. It will be a page that looks something like this...

Behind this page will be a section of help pages for the kids. Things like sight word lists, math facts, and other things they need to practice at home. I'll put those in page protectors to keep them nice all year.

Finally, at the very end will be the Friday Notes section. I plan to make them all up ahead of time, 2 to a page, and then I just have to check them off on Friday.

Now, why am I thinking about all of this now? One simple word... INTERN. That's right; my handy dandy intern is going to put these folders together for me now. When school starts in August, all I have to do is write the students names on them. I'm even going to have her make up a few extras for kids I might get throughout the year.

Well I planned to talk about other ways I'm wrapping up the year but I've spent all this time just talking about folders. I'll have to write part 2 at another time. But here's a little giveaway to celebrate the end of the year (it starts tonight at midnight)...

One person will win my set of End of the Year Classroom Award Certificates and my Student Memory Book.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good Luck!!

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Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

I don't know about you but I have been SO busy the last couple of weeks with end of the year reteaching and retesting, FAIR (computer-based reading assessments), data meetings, and the dreaded formal evaluation. Actually, that went really well and I didn't even break out in hives over it!  I'm not sure how many years you have to teach before it becomes old hat but I'm sure it must be at least 50.

This week should be fairly relaxing though. Today we were treated to donut holes in the teacher lounge. Tomorrow we get a yummy lunch from PTA and Wednesday, another one from administration. I can't wait! They bring in two guys with a big smoker and they cook all day... BBQ pork, beans, corn...oooooh, it's going to be good!  What does your school do for your Teacher Appreciation Week?

I'm sure you already know that Teachers Pay Teachers is having a HUGE sale tomorrow and Wednesday. These sales only come along a few times each year, so now is the time to stock up! I know I have a ton of items on my wishlist that I'm planning to buy tomorrow. Ooooh, I love a good sale!

Here are a couple of my newest items that you might like to check out...

Classroom Award Certificates

Be sure to stop by my store to see what other new things I might have for your classroom. (Everything will be discounted!) Happy shopping...

Magical Product Swap

 

Over at Jessica Stanford's blog, she hosts a product swap every few months. I decided to join this time and LUCKY ME... I got matched up with Marcy at Saddle Up for Second Grade!  I was so excited to get her because she has some awesome stuff. She is also one of my TpT/blogger friends and was my niece's teacher in Texas!

After browsing through her TpT store, I settled on trying the Place Value Activity Pack: Hundred, Tens, and Ones. I already had her Pen Pals: Let's Make New Friends pack and just LOVE it. So, I knew this place value pack would be great too! Here's what the cover looks like...

This is actually a bundle of some of her individual place value activities. It includes I Spy Place Value, Mystery Numbers task cards, Place Value Memory, and my favorite - Place Value Slap Attack.

My class was so excited when I showed them that I had a bunch of new math centers. They LOVE math centers and these looked like so much fun! For this review, I'm going to focus on the Slap Attack game because I don't know if many of you are familiar with this game. I wasn't until I got this product.

Slap Attack consists of 20 cards with base-ten block models of numbers that look like this...

To play, you need 3 people. One will act as a referee. You start with the cards face-down. A player turns up one card and the first person to slap the card (not too hard!), gets to tell what number is shown. If the answer is correct, he or she gets to keep the card. If not, the other person gets a chance to answer and keep the card. The referee's job is to decide who slapped the card first. After going through all the cards, the player with the most wins.

My students LOVED this game! I was actually a little afraid of the slapping getting out of hand but they were really good with it. Having a referee definitely helps and they were all wanting to have that job. My camera wasn't cooperating but I was able to get a couple of decent pictures of my students playing.

 

 

These two girls played the game at least 5 or 6 times. As you can see in the pictures, they were turning over two cards at a time. After the few games, they decided to turn over two cards and slap the one with the largest number. Wow, what a great way to differentiate the game and they thought it up themselves! Some other things I really liked about this activity were the clear images of the blocks and the great size of the cards - not too small and not too big. Just right for second grade hands. You could also use these cards as flash cards to build quick recognition.

Since I was having camera issues, the rest of my pictures didn't turn out. But I'm planning to put all of the games out again next week. I'll be sure to get more pictures and add them to this post. I highly recommend a visit to Marcy's TpT store to check out this great Place Value Activity Pack (and many more awesome products). And don't forget to hop on over to her blog. You'll find a lot of super second grade stuff there (including a review of one of my products)!

Fun & Games

So, there are 35 days left of school. It sounds like so little, yet feels like oh so much. You know how those last few weeks just draaaaaag by. Today was a real test of my nerves and I had to pull out the dirty little trick of saying, "Hmm, I wonder how many of you will be ready to go to third grade in a few weeks." That snaps them to attention for at least a few minutes.

The next trick up my sleeve strategy to make the days go by a little faster is to find some new games and interactive things to do. I already use the Jeopardy review games on Mrs. Zirullo's website for our weekly reading skills (for Macmillan Treasures). But I just found this very promising site full of Jeopardy games for all kinds of skills. You can even make your own!  Now, my district has very kindly blocked this site as it falls into the banned category of games (God forbid!) but I've worked my way around that. It really is quite fabulous! Check it out...

The site has other exciting things too, like a random name generator for choosing students and Who Wants to Be A Millionaire games.

Tomorrow we'll be watching this very cheesy, but entertaining and informative, video explaining non-fiction text features... (ok, I can't figure out how to save the picture, but here's the link... http://vimeo.com/23765240)

Another fun freebie I found is Scootpad. It's online practice in reading and math (aligned to Common Core!) and you can sign up your whole class. They can work on it at school or home and get this... you can assign your own rewards for them to earn like lunch with the teacher or treasure box or whatever. Even better, the parents can do the same thing! One of my students is working to earn a new fish for her fish tank. Her dad added the reward to her account and when she gets 400 coin, she can trade them for a fish. Cool, huh?

So, what games and technological tricks do you have up your sleeve for the end of the year? I'd love some more good ideas!