Hello out there.... has ANYONE been in school lately?  All these weather issues have really put my plans into a tailspin.  Last week we had a regular day on Monday, the 100th day on Tuesday, a regular day on Wednesday and then 2 days off for snow - and we don't go back until Wednesday!

Today is sort of a double post for you - well deserved because I haven't exactly been steaming up the blogging world with my posts lately...  I also blogged over at Who's Who and Who's New about my

graphics by Krista Wallden, Fonts by Hello Literacy and KB Fonts

 

You can click on the image to visit me over there.  I'm planning on having LOTS of moments to teach with once Wednesday comes around.  I am done with snow.  Done.  No more.  Finished.

I had big plans for Valentine's Day on Friday.  It's one of my favorite holidays to spend with the kids.  I love all the niceness, kindness and general love-ness that goes on.  I originally told my kiddos that if we didn't have school on Friday, then we would still exchange valentines when we came back, but no party.  This weekend I started thinking... I was planning on doing the party-part of the day as an introduction to a writing activity we're doing about making and eating ice cream sundaes.  Which I still plan on writing about this coming week... soooooo, since we are going to exchange valentines anyway, and we're still going to make sundaes... it's kind of like the real Valentine's Day after all!

Here are my modified plans, along with a few freebies.  Maybe some of you can use them this week for your belated Valentine's Day activities, or  you can save them until next year.

In previous years, I have always told my students NOT to put names on their valentines for who they are for - only their name for who it is from.  We would sit in a circle with our valentine bags and everyone would just walk around and drop in a valentine for every bag.  Easy-peasy... 400 valentines (20 kids with 20 cards!) in under 10 minutes.  This year, I decided to change things up.  I plan on having students start by alphabetizing their valentines.  Then we'll sit in our circle - in alphabetical order - and have two or three kids go around the circle, dropping their valentines into the bags.  Still easy, but some good practice there, as well.

After everyone has had a chance to open cards, squeal, shout and smile about all the valentines, I'm going to have them do some sorting.  Katie at Teacher to the Core did an amazing job sharing 5 great tips for keeping Valentine's Day smooth - and one had to do with sorting valentines.  After we sort - and I think I might start by having them generate ways to sort their own valentines first - we'll do a little "Find a Valentine."

and a valentine scavenger hunt

You can pick up both (along with a word search I threw in there because my kiddos love word searches) by clicking on the images.

 

That should pretty much do it for the party part... of course we have the ice cream sundae part, which will be a whole other story... Wish me luck!

 

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Elementary Stories

Woo-hoo!  I'm so happy to be meeting up with my pajamas once again for a full day together!  Three day weekends are always welcome.  Just a short post today before I get back to all the work I've avoided this weekend...

I'm linking up with Jess over at I (HEART) Recess for her Mathematical Monday linky party.

The Common Core has very little money practice in the younger grades - yet by second and third grade students are expected to know how to solve problems using money!  That's kind of hard to do when they haven't had experiences identifying coins, counting money and making change! 

 

I try to connect money to what we're doing any time I can - counting days of school, lunch money, etc.  And I sneak in some money centers and skills for our math time, too!  Here's a fun freebie from my TpT store to help your kiddos practice counting groups of coins.

It is part of my bigger set of money Read-the-Room cards, which you can find HERE.

 

And, because I like incorporating technology into my day, here's a great activity from ABCya.com

There's also a multi-level Money BINGO game that's great practice, too.  And if you're looking for the app for your ipads... here it is

 

 

Be sure to click on the link at the top of this post to visit the linky party and find more great math freebies!  



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Elementary Stories

Is everyone out from under all the snow and ice yet?  We had an early dismissal today due to this

 

That's the view from my classroom.  We didn't end up getting a lot of snow, but we had a delayed opening yesterday, an early dismissal today and we may possibly have a delay tomorrow.  Ugh - three half days in one week.  That makes it very hard to get things done.

 

Fortunately though, we did have a chance this morning to play "Holiday 4-Corners" for our morning meeting activity.  If you've never played 4 Corners before, the directions are simple.  Each corner has a number (or a cardinal direction, like north, south, etc. if you want).  One person closes their eyes and counts to 10 while the others quietly go to one of the corners.  The person who counted keeps their eyes closed and calls a corner - everyone in that corner is out.  The last person left is the winner.

 

This is one of the first games I introduce to them at the beginning of the year and it's a favorite - especially around the holidays when we change things up.  For Thanksgiving, we renamed the corners, "turkey, mashed potatoes, pie and stuffing."  They loved it and begged me to do one for Christmas.  Sooooo... here it is!

Four Corners Game

 

Now, I ask you - why can't I just anything simple?  I could have just made 4 easy pages, one for each corner, and called it a day.  Nope, instead, I do 10 different words, add borders, a cover page and directions... my team members think I am nuts.  But, you get to benefit from it, so enjoy!  We switch the words each week.  You can grab it to use in your own classroom by clicking on the image to download. (update:  click on the link under the picture to download it.)

 

I also wanted to share my students' new favorite brain break.  I LOVE this one - it's so much fun!

I finally got around to putting all our brain breaks on one Notebook slide for the Smartboard.  I was originally going to them through my pinterest board and that was getting a little cumbersome.  This is sooooo much easier - now we just choose a title and click the link to go to that video. 

 

I hope you enjoy these holiday cheer activities.  I know my kiddos need SOMETHING during our day to get that Christmas energy out.  Have fun! ~ Lisa

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Elementary Stories

It's that wonderful holiday time of year!  Teachers are masters of sharing - it's one of the things teachers do best.  We teach our students to share and we lead by example.  This blog post is filled with links to great resources sure to help in your plans before the big holiday - and the best thing is, they're all free! 

 










It's time for the TpT Holiday E-books - filled with over 50 freebies from teachers in all grade levels. 

This one is the Grades 1-2 book, but there are 2 others for all different grade levels.  I am thrilled to have my "Christmas Fix-It" freebie included in the book.  Click on the image to go to Teachers Pay Teachers and download the book, then grab a cup of coffee, a latte, a hot chocolate - whatever works for you! - and start downloading.  There are links to the other books, too!

 










Only about 24 hours left in the Winter Planning Giveaway!

I'm so excited to be a part of this fun!  EVERYONE wins when you visit all the stops on the blog hop and collect the secret words.  It's easy and fun.  Click on the image above to go to I'm Lovin' Lit's blog to see how to start.  There are 3 packs you can choose from - or choose them all!

Although I'm not a part of this great freebie frenzy, I'm going to be spending a LOT of time tonight checking out some great Facebook pages - and gathering some freebies to fill my stocking.

The links in the image are not active so if you click on the picture you'll go to Stuckey in Second's Facebook page where you'll find a link to download the frenzy map.  There are a TON - and I mean a Christmas TON! - of freebies to be had here.

 

Whew!  How's that for some holiday cheer?  I'm off to grab a hot chocolate (red velvet, to be exact - delish!) and sit by my computer in my cozy pj's blog-hopping and facebook-liking for rest of the evening. 

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Elementary Stories

Time for the weekend - and just 2 1/2 days next week, then Thanksgiving break... whoo-hoo!  I love Thanksgiving... the food, the colors, the family.... it's a great time of year.

This week we started a quickie unit in math on place value through 100.  I was pleased that most of my kiddos already had mastered a great deal of what we did, since much of this is part of my morning meeting smartboard calendar every day.  We count days we've been in school, add money to the piggy bank, do some math review.... suddenly the light bulb went off for some of them when they realized, "Hey!  This is just what we do in the morning!"  Oh yes, your teacher really DOES have a plan for all she does!

Anyway, a favorite math time this week was when we reviewed comparing numbers.  And I have to be honest, I cannot take credit for this.  Although the alligator idea has been around forever, this song from Ron Brown of Intelli-tunes really got them hooked

You can also click (HERE) to download the mp3 and the lyrics.

We started the lesson (after a quick review of how we knew numbers were greater or less) by listening to the song and singing along.  We added hand motions and dramatic effects - they loved it. 

Then we did some practice on the smartboard

 

(You can search for great smartboard lessons on the Smart Exchange)

We also practiced READING the symbols - since some of my kiddos kept wanting to start with the bigger number no matter which side it was on.

Then we partnered up and each pair got a board, marker, eraser, dice and one set of these cards

Each person took a turn rolling the dice and they worked in partners to write the number sentence and put down the correct card in the middle.  Some of my pairs did 2-digit numbers and some did 3-digit.

Finally, a little independent practice - same idea, just by themselves.  I divided them into 3 groups for this so each group had a different way to get their numbers - one group rolled dice again, another group used a deck of cards (face cards removed) and another group used the random number generator on the smartboard.  They used this recording sheet

You can click (HERE) or on either of the pictures above if you'd like the cards and sheet.

All in all, it was a fun way to get a little practice with a familiar skill. 

Well, that's it!  Next week will be all out Thanksgiving and turkeys in my classroom.  I can't believe it's already the end of November!  Where has the year gone?

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Elementary Stories

This post definitely has two parts - first will be the "here's what I did last week but somehow I never got around to sharing it with you" part....
 
and then will come the "here's what I'm doing this week that if I don't show you now I may not have another chance" part.
 
So here we go!
 
Last week we finished up our focus on how characters respond to challenges.  We read lots of books with an "It's ok to be different" theme and focused on how each character handled their differences.  Between Molly Lou Melon, Freckleface Strawberry, Big Al and Chrysanthemum, we had quite varied ways those characters dealt with the fact they were different.
 
We kept track of our thoughts on this chart:

It looked much cuter when it had images from all the books we had read, but I can't share those with you because of a little thing called copyright law.... so you can add in your own.

 

For each book we read, we completed this chart:



 After a few days, my kiddos were seeing BIG differences in the way characters approached a challenge - and were beginning to use character traits to explain themselves.  We're still working on that.  They're great at saying a character was funny, or brave.... but they don't always choose the traits that explain how they respond to challenges...
 
I did a quick informal assessment by reading a final book to them - Elmer, by David McKee.  Then they had to complete the chart independently... ok, sort of independently... we went step by step through each part, but THEY had to come up with the ideas themselves.  It was a quick way to see who was getting the idea and who still needed more opportunity. 
 
You can download the charts for yourself by clicking on the images to go to Google docs.

Now on to Part 2!  I am really looking forward to our fall theme for the next six weeks.  Yes, I know... I'm a little late to the party, but here in CT fall is really just getting started.  The trees are peaking in their color and we've had a few crisp days.... we've also had a few 70 degree days which makes it hard to wear my fall boots and pants... but you gotta go with it!  We can do fall all the way through November. 

I'm doing a common core "seasons" unit, but with a major focus on fall.  I'm sorry people, but I just CANNOT do winter books in the fall... nope, sorry, I tried... doesn't work.  So, we'll talk about different seasons, but use fall as a jumping off point. 

This week we're starting with a fun Henry and Mudge story

I like this one as our introduction because it is readable for all my kiddos and it is VERY OBVIOUS that it takes place in the fall.  We'll talk about setting as our focus.... what information do they get from the text... from the pictures.. that tells us the setting.  How would the story change if the setting was different?  My mind goes off..... and while I was googling to find a picture of the book to use in my post I also found some great ideas for the book.... no wonder I don't get anything done...

Anywhooo.... I also spent a ton of time this weekend finalizing my fall activities bundle for TpT.

 

It is filled with math, language arts and writing activities with a fall theme - of course!  But rather than just be simple skill practice, I tried to include activities that extended to have some application - tasks that require students to DO something with the skill.  Check it out and see what you think!

 

 

You can get the math or the ELA activities separately, but the writing is only available with the bundle.  You can click on any of the images above to got my TpT store... or click here.

 

And to celebrate the start of fall in my classroom, I'll give away one set of my "Falling Into Autumn" bundle (math, ELA and writing) to someone who leaves a comment below.  I'm always looking for new fall books to add to my collection - fiction and nonfiction, so leave me a comment about a favorite fall book of yours.  I'll have my niece choose a random number Friday night.  Don't forget to leave me your email so I can send you the file if you win!

 

Happy fall!   Note: Congratulations, Karen!  Your fall activities are on the way :-) ~ Lisa

 



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Elementary Stories

Yes, I know... It's Sunday.  But I still plan on linking up with Doodle Bugs and sharing my five for the week! 

We are just starting to get into learning mode.... this group needs LOTS of modeling for behavior expectations and active learning, but we're getting there!  Here's a few moments from my week!

1.  Pucker up!  This was the big excitement for the week.  Our students were challenged to read at least 10,000 books this summer, and if they did our principal would kiss a pig!  You have to understand that we are a farming community, so I figured finding a pig to kiss wouldn't be all that hard.  We went even one better - we found Farmer Minor and Daisy! 

This guy was fantastic!  He was very engaging and the kids LOVED hearing his stories - and of course the big kiss was the icing on the cake!

Daisy is very famous and travels all over the country celebrating reading.  She just happens to be a hometown girl (boy, actually!), living just a little ways away from us in the "off season."  Here's the link to their website if you want to find out more.

2.  And if that wasn't exciting enough, we also had our Open House this week... on the HOTTEST day in 50 days!  Yes people..... in the low 100's for heat index, muggy, stuffy, sweaty... and that was just during the day!  Now add a boatload of families visiting the classroom and I'm not even going to tell you which parts of me were sweating!  Everyone had a great time, though.  Our Open House is very unstructured - just an hour's time where families can come up, visit the room and chat.  It's a great non-stressful way to meet parents and have students share what they've been doing in the classroom.  I left out a few papers for families to fill out - volunteer forms, etc.  Here's my 3-2-1 Information form that I ask parents to fill out about their kiddo.  I've seen many of these floating around on Pinterest, but here's my version if you'd like to grab it:

 

3.  My second graders have been in LOVE with Pete the Cat.  I know, those books are young for seconds, but these guys really get into the movement and rhythm of the story on CD.  They have been obsessed with Pete the Cat - Rockin' in My School Shoes.... so I harnessed that energy and we used it for writing.  I took pictures of all their school shoes



and they each of them chose something they "rocked" in school (doing math, reading, listening, etc) and wrote 3 complete sentences about it.  Seems simple, but remembering to put those capitals, periods, etc isn't easy.  I added their shoe pictures to their writing and we had a "rockin' bulletin board to display.  (of course, I didn't take a picture... so stay tuned for that tomorrow!)

4.  We've been working hard this week on identifying and writing the 4 types of sentences.  We've used Mo Willem's Pigeon books A LOT for this!  First we would read the story together, talking about the different sentences, then they would work in partners to sort sentences, go through the book and find specific kinds of sentences, etc.  I used this great freebie from Anta Goodwin:

Click the picture to download the packet.

 

We finished up with some "Sentence Superhero!" headbands from Amy Lemon's sentence unit.



 

You can click HERE to see more of what's in her packet.

5.  Daily 5 is off to a great start!  We've been working on building on stamina for Read-to-Self and we're up to 13 minutes!  Woo-hoo!  Next week we start Read-to-Someone.  I'm also planning on starting my version of Daily 5 math next week.  I'm going to do Math by Yourself, Math With Someone, Math Technology and Math Writing.... and something else.  I'm hoping this will be a great way to not only give my kiddos extra practice with skills and concepts, but also to have the chance to meet with small groups.  We have 90 minutes for math (a 60 minute math time and then a 30 minutes intervention time - same for reading.)  I'm going to do a whole class lesson for 30-40 minutes, then divide my kiddos into 2 groups and have half of them do Daily5 Math, and half meet with me.... then switch for two 20 minute blocks.  The last 10 minutes will be a time to close things up and have a "math meeting."  I'll post more about this next week.  Do you do some kind of Daily5 Math - any suggestions?

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Elementary Stories

Well... What do you think?  I'm so excited to share my new blog design.  It's perfect and it's definitely ME!  I worked with Christi from Design by Christi.  It was so easy and she fiddled with every detail I asked about to come up with this A-DOR-A-BLE design.  Thanks, Christi!

On another note - I went into my classroom last week with the intention of doing some serious work getting things ready.... But, that wasn't meant to be!  I had supplies and materials for our new math program and bunches of stuff in boxes that had been put in my room to be sorted out to all the grade 2 teachers.  

Soooo..... My goal went from "get my room mostly set up" to "get everything out of my room that wasn't mine!"  Oh well.... I am definitely going to have to go in this week and get serious.  Our first teacher day is next Friday!

Here are a few pictures of my classroom right now

Not exactly the cute designer classroom everyone else is revealing on their blogs. . . but it will be better soon!

One last thing to share with you - I know many of you are already in school, so here are 2 word searches you can use with your kiddos.  One is a little easier than the other.  I was planning on including them in a whole back-to-school printables pack on TpT, but that's not going to happen... so, enjoy!  Click on the image below to download the files.

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Elementary Stories

Yikes!  I can't believe it has been so long since I blogged!  Summer has really caught up with me, but I'm beginning to feel the back to school vibe coming on.  I've been doing some school shopping (fun!) and have a few projects I'm going to get started on.  I'll keep you updated on those.
 
In the meantime, I want to share some fantastic resources all the wonderful teachers at Teachers Pay Teachers have created just for you.  Here's just one of them -
Ta-dahhhhhh . . . .

They are FREE ebooks, filled with tips for implementing Common Core and links to great products to use in your classroom.  Annnnnd . . . . each page has a link to a freebie, too!

 

I shared the K-2 Ebook because that's the one I contributed to, but there are ones for grades 3-5 and 6-12, too.  Just click on the image above to go to Teachers Pay Teachers and download your copy.  There are links at the bottom of the page if you're interested in the other books, as well.

 

Now, let's have a little fun.... find my page in the ebook and click on the link to the freebie.  The first person who leaves a comment telling me how many cards are in the FULL set (not the freebie sample) will win the set.  (Don't forget to leave me your email address!)

 

Good luck!  And thanks for stopping by!

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Elementary Stories

Wow!  That's about all I can say... so many of you have entered Erin's Summer Planning Giveaway at I'm Lovin Lit - and I have gotten so many new followers both here and at my TpT store!  So.. hello to all my new bloggy friends!  And, if you haven't yet entered her giveaway (and it IS a giveaway - everyone wins!) click HERE to go to my blogpost and find out more or on the graphic below to go right to the directions.

And... if you're up for yet another giveaway (and who wouldn't be!)... head on over to Leah's blog at Learning 4 Keeps.  She's celebrating her one year bloggiversary!

I donated Winner's Choice for this one - so you get to pick any one product from my store if you win!  Oh yeah!

 

And lastly, I'm joining Charity over at Classroom Freebies and a whole bunch of other bloggers for a little Manic Monday Classroom freebies linky. 

My freebie this week is my Summertime Fix-It.

12 sentences with a variety of editing mistakes that need to be corrected.  I have used this as a center, or as a whole class activity.  (Click HERE to go to my post with more information.) Click on the image above to go to google docs to download your copy.  And if you're looking for more "Fix-It" freebies, visit my TpT store!

 

I'll try to be back every Monday for the rest of this summer with another freebie for you.

Thanks for stopping by! 



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Elementary Stories