Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Check It Out!!!

 
Check out  Fun In First Grade
She is awesome and features new teacher blogs every Tuesday.  I am one of the blogs featured today.  She asks lots of good questions so you can get to know me better!  The other teacher she features today is awesome and has a super cute freebie in her TPT store that I will be using with my class sometime in the near future.  It is a writing prompt, complete with checklist.  The prompt is:  If I Ran My House....seriously how fun!?!?!

While you are there check out all the amazing things on that blog!  I frequent Fun in First Grade often to get ideas and inspiration for my own classroom. 

Monday, February 18, 2013

Life...

Not sure how many of you have realized that I have been MIA the past few weeks.  Nothing major has happened to explain my absence.  I didn't win a Carnival Cruise (thank goodness, not sure I will ever go on a cruise now) or win the lottery.  Life just happens.  I have two adorable little girls that take up a lot of my time at home and most nights I feel like they deserve my attention more than my blog deserves my attention.  Here are my little cuties in the bath last night!
Photo 
I have been really busy at school also.  We are in the process of switching over our curriculum to be 100% common core.  We are starting to implement now and are to be finished and ready to fully implement in the fall.  I found out I will be staying in first grade next year instead of moving back to kindergarten.  I was disappointed at first, because there is just something magical about kindergarteners, but now I am really excited to get to implement a lot of the things we have already decided to put in place for next year.  I am on our schools math committee and have been working a lot on our fluency tests.  We have decided to give the first graders 3 minutes to do 40 problems with 90% accuracy.  What are your schools doing?  My kids did really well on addition through ten.  All but one of them passed the second time we took the test and continue to pass every Friday.  Now, subtraction has been a little trickier for them but the majority of the class is to the point where they are continually passing.  We also decided to do an oral fluency test.  Our first attempt at this test was to give the kids 40 problems and as long as they need to finish...BIG MISTAKE!  We switched it to 20 problems and they have 1 minute to orally answer them.  I gave the addition version of the oral fluency test on Friday and it went MUCH better.  What does fluency look like for your first graders?

BOOKS?!?!?!
What are some of your go to books that fit into the common core criteria?  I have been slacking on my Friday book posts (again, life happens).  But I have been starting to keep a list of books that I love and what standard I see them fitting into and how. 

I have a lot more I would like to say(like I discovered DOJO), but I will save that for another day...who knows, maybe I will get two blog posts done in a week....oooooooh!  :) 

Friday, February 1, 2013

Are You A Pooper, Scooper or a Pointer?

For those of you wondering what the heck I am talking about, you have never read The Dog Poop Initiative by Kirk Weisler!  Which is my  Friday Book I LOVE! Click on the book to be taken to Amazon.com's description of the book.
The Dog Poop Initiative [Paperback]
This is a FABULOUS book that talks about 3 different types of people.  The people who cause problems, the people who see there is a problem and point it out, and the people who do something about the problem.  It is a great story for this time of school year when kids seem to randomly forget how to solve their own problems.  (Am I the only person this happened to?)
I came into work on Wednesday morning frustrated after waking up to a semi flooded living room due to a ton of rain coming down onto frozen ground.  I swear my kids have great timing because as I was in the cafeteria chatting with kids before school started one of my little girls came up to me and brought me these:



With this note attached:
Man, I am going to miss these kids next year!  I had the same kids last year when they were in kindergarten.  Saying good bye is going to be tough this year!



Tuesday, January 29, 2013

My Document Camera Arrived!

I got my document camera yesterday from IPEVO.  If was free, I didn't pay a penny, not even for shipping!  Our awesome tech team got it hooked up for me today right as I was leaving.  I can't wait to try it out tomorrow!  Here is the link in case you missed it before:  http://www.ipevo.com/wishpool.  They are all out of the free tech items this month, but make sure you check back next month!

I was the blogger again today on Pinteresting Mama's.  I blogged about how to make these adorable pointers.  They cost less than $1.50 each!

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Click on the link to be taken to the post.
 

Last thing for tonight, make sure you check out Kool in Kinderlands 100 follower giveaway.  She is giving away tons of awesome stuff!
 

I am joining some fabulous bloggers to celebrate Khrys from Keepin' It Kool In Kinderland. She is throwing a HUGE 100 follower giveaway! One lucky winner will win over 25 products and 3 winners will win a product of their choice from Khrys' TeachersPayTeachers store. I hope you will check it out!




 
 
 
 


 
 
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you will enter this giveaway! This will end NEXT Wednesday February 6th when the clock strikes midnight. Can't wait to find out who the super lucky winner will be!

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Friday Book I Love & Guided Math


This is probably one of my favorite books to use.  It is about a man who is homeless and he goes around town collecting cans.  A little boy that lives in the same city decided he wanted a new skateboard so he starts collecting cans also.  He finds out that the Can Man is collecting cans to get a new winter coat and the little boy decided to give all of his can money to the man.  You have to read this book to teach your students about wants and needs and good character.  There is also a surprise at the end of the book.   I tear up a little everytime I read it!
The Can Man
Click on the book to be taken to Amazon!

Guided Math!
So I dove in this week finally.  The kids LOVED it!  I am still unsure about it.  I was under the impression that I was going to be able to meet with all four of my math groups everyday.  That is NOT going to happen!  I tried that this week and I got two really good groups in and the third group I met with was short and not really detailed enough.  So next week my plan is for groups to look like this:
Monday - Whole Group Place Value Lesson and pretest
Tuesday - Group 1 and Group 2
Wednesday - Group 3 and Group 4
Thursday - Reteach groups that need it
Friday - Fluency Friday (we play fluency games and take our timed tests)

Doing groups this way will allow me to teach a 20 -25 minute lesson with each group and it gives me the opportunity to reteach, in small groups, the kids that need it.

While I was meeting with my groups the rest of my groups were at other centers.
Smartboard - Have you ever visited www.gregtangmath.com??  If not, you should.  They have a game on there called kakooma and my students LOVE it!  Our school also has a subscription to Education City so I had them alternate between those two things at the SMARTboard this week.

Extra Practice - Each group had a worksheet that pertained to the extra practice that they needed.  One group had an addition worksheet, two groups had a fact family worksheet, and one group had a subtraction through 20 worksheet.

Math Tubs - Each tub had a different game that pertained to what the particular group needed.  We are a Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks school, so finding games to put in their math tubs was fairly easy.   Here is a quick overview of one of the games we played this week!

Zap - students have a deck of cards divided equally between the two players.  Each player flips over a card and the first student to add them together and yell out the answer gets to keep the cards.  You can play two ways, the student to have the most cards after going through their piles wins, or you can play until one student has all the cards.
*I am going to use this game again when I teach adding three numbers, they will just play in a group of 3 instead of a group of 2.
Brrr It's Cold Outside: 10 Common Core Aligned Math Centers
We also played Frosty Fact Families & Snowy Subtraction out of Katie Kings Brrr! It's Cold Outside unit!

Hope you all have a great weekend!  We are *almost* antibiotic free at my house.  My youngest went back to get her ears rechecked and I asked about a rash that she has (and has had for a while) around her waist and ankles.  Apparently it is somewhat common for kids to be sensitive to elastic in their paints waistband (and because she lives in sweatpants the elastic around the ankles). So she got put on a steroid cream to help with the hives. 

P.S.  Go check out A Sweet Little Giveaway at Fashion Crazy Learning Days!

Monday, January 21, 2013

Free Document Camera and Changes...

Have you heard of IPEVO?
Yeah, me neither until about a week ago when a coworker sent out an email saying she had gotten a free document camera.  Just the word free made my ears perk up a little bit, so I thought I would check it out.  I did, and then kind of forgot about it because I have been so busy at work and  I have a sick child at home.  Friday I had to pick up my little Whit from the sitters and take her to the doctor and when I came home the girls laid down for a nap so I checked my email and saw the email again.  I figured I would sign up, what's the worst that can happen?  They fill my inbox with junk mail and I don't get a camera.  Well, much to my surprise after writing a very short paragraph on why I NEED a document camera, my wish came true.  I got an email from IPEVA today saying my wish had been granted.  Now, I don't actually have the document camera yet, I will update you when it comes!
IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera
The website is:
Apparently they give away different technology items every month.  Maybe next month I can wish for an Ipad.  I know, I know, keep dreaming!
I am also working on making my blog cute.  But, I am not a huge fan of the internet when it comes to codes.  My blog looks beautiful and centered in Mozilla, off centered to the right in Internet Explorer, and off centered to the left on my phone.  Seriously...how is this even possible.  So, if you are looking at my blog and it looks off to you, it probably is.  I will keep working at it.  I did find the little button to make the background stay put instead of scroll.  Learning,  little steps, baby steps, google is my friend.

Have a wonderful Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I for one, can't wait to get back and see my little monkeys tomorrow!

I also uploaded a new item to my TPT store.. Check it out!
This file includes two sets of place value (o through 99) I have, who has.  Each set has 20 cards.  I use these cards when we have a couple extra m...

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Check it out!

I was todays blogger on PinterestingMama's today.  I talk about how I am teaching my strong-willed 3 1/2 year old letter identification. 
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