Squirrel's New Year's Resolution

I just wanted to announce a quick little sale in my TPT store.  20% off of everything Sunday the 30th and Monday the 31st!  I didn't make a graphic for it so just imagine something fabulous...that's what I did.

TPT Store

Have you ever read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution?

Click here to check it out on Amazon!

Adorable.

I picked it up at the Teacher (super discounted) Scholastic Book Fair a few weeks ago and decided to make a few companion materials to go along with it for when we return to school (in a few short days....BOOO HOOO!)

It's a pretty small pack but it's packed full of hands on, engaging activities!  In it you will find:

-2 word building worksheets where students use the words "new year" and "resolution" to build and list new words.
-Retelling page where students learn the definition of resolution, record each characters resolutions and brainstorm other resolutions that could be made.
-Writing prompt with additional writing page for students to write their New Year's resolution, why they chose it, and what things they can do through the year to achieve their goal!
-Word work sheet where students can read, write, color, pyramid write, & cut/glue the word "resolution"
-Sequencing page where students can color and cut out pictures of the animals in the story and then glue them in the order in which they made their resolutions.
-8 mixed practice story problems with multiple addends.

Click here to check out Squirrel's New Year's Resolution!

During the sale it will be marked down to $2.00!

In the Preview you will find a FREE whole group activity/printable about what resolutions are, what resolutions the animals in the book made, and what resolutions students could make!

I hope you all have a wonderful new years!

Adventures with Ozzy!

Do you Elf on a Shelf? 

A few years ago one of my students came to school every morning talking about his elf Oliver's escapades.  Before we left for the holiday break I asked his mom about Oliver and she told me the story of Elf on a Shelf.  I loved it so much that I considered scooping up one for my classroom but before I could that sweet Mom surprised me with my very own Elf!

I love doing the elf with my class!  If all I have to do to keep their behavior in check is move an elf around the classroom I'm all for it!  I wanted to share pictures of our elf adventures this year!

Ozzy arrived via hot air balloon/solo cup attached to a paper globe the day we returned from Thanksgiving break!

We were just starting persuasive writing so I had my students write letters to Ozzy "convincing" him to ask Santa to put them on the nice list.  They asked if they could read their letters to him when they were done.  How could I say no :).

For the next three weeks leading up to break Ozzy explored every nook and cranny of our classroom.

He brought tootsie rolls...I might call them elf poop next year :)

Ozzy napped it out in the Kleenex box, rode the ABC caterpillar, occupied real estate in the hundreds pocket and took an elf bath.

Everyone was being so good that Ozzy surprised them with peppermint hot chocolate one morning.

During the last week he brought them kisses from Santa, kicked it with our book buddy, had a marshmallow fight, hung out of a paper globe, and scrabbled "goodbye, be good" while he cuddled with the Grinch.  

I hope you all are enjoying the holidays with your family and friends!

Helping Children Cope With Tragedy...

Like so many of you I haven't been able to tear myself away from the news coverage about the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Over the last 7 years I've imagined what I would do in that situation every time we practice our code red drills.  I've contemplated buying a fence cutter to keep next to the window and a big knife to keep on a shelf in a cabinet that I can't even reach.

I hope for the bravery that the teachers and administrators at Sandy Hook showed in any situation where I have to stand up for my students.  The courage to love and protect them no matter the personal cost.  As heart broken as I am, I've never been prouder to call myself a teacher.

On Saturday morning the parent of a former student contacted me to ask what she should say to her daughter who has seen the news coverage and is devastated.  I didn't know what to say as I don't have children of my own and we are on break so it wasn't something I was considering having to confront.  I started looking online and found the web site for the National Association of School Psychologists.

They have tons of resources, this one in particular is about helping children cope with national tragedies.  Children grieve differently than adults and sometimes aren't prepared to talk about an event until days, weeks, or even months after it happens.  I wanted to bookmark this for myself and share it with you in case it is needed for future reference.

Just a bit of fun!

Looking through portfolios is a great pick-me-up :).

I was filing my students mid year prompts in our writing portfolio's and I'm always amazed at the wonderful progress students make in just a few short months!

The development with illustrations, use of upper and lower case letters and punctuation marks are just a few impressive leaps this student has made!  They obviously aren't consistent but he's getting there!

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Sid Shuffle.  I posted about it here.  Well my students are obsessed!  We usually shake our tail-feathers on Fridays but some of my girls just couldn't wait.  They asked me to record their shufflin' at recess!  Enjoy!

Pumpkin Day

I'm pretty late getting this up but thought I'd share anyway :)

Every year, during the couple of days leading up to Thanksgiving we always have Pumpkin Day.  I'm sure you've seen ALL the pumpkin books, journals, and activities out there.  My co-worker Cheryl and I have been doing this for years and it's always a great time!

Essentially, we do a whole bunch of math and science activities.  Students bring in those tiny decorative pumpkins.  They describe and illustrate what their pumpkin looks like and how they feel.  Students do informal measurement and weight activities, use a string to measure the circumference, and do a sink of float activity with a large pumpkin.

Then we cut it open, they help scoop out the guts and describe how it smells, feels & what the guts look like.  

Once we finish scooping out the guts we predict how many seeds are in it and count them up.

Finally, we end the day with a little pumpkin pie!  Students taste a small piece of pie and they write a story persuading people to eat or not to eat pumpkin pie.

 Looks like I have one who doesn't like it.  What's wrong with him!!!

We ended the day with a little science experiment (as seen on Pinterest).  We put soil and water in the pumpkin with about 12 seeds on Monday and when we returned from Thanksgiving break the next Tuesday the seeds had really taken off!  I would recommend putting a pan underneath the pumpkin if you try this at home.  The actual pumpkin rots pretty fast.  Gross!

Holiday Jams

We listen to music.  A lot of music.  Some might say too much and to them I'd say, there's no such thing!  I'm going to share our top 3 Holiday Jams this year.

1.  Alvin and the Chipmunks-Christmas Song
I....I mean WE could listen to this one all day.  I love listening to my kids sing along to "I still want a HOOOOLA HOOOP!"

2.  The Twelve Days of Christmas-John Denver & The Muppets
Miss Piggy "FIVE goooold rings, BAH DUM BUM BUM!"  We just can't get enough!

3. All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth
I couldn't find the song on the cd I have in my classroom but this is a pretty cute version.  Every time we hear this one they start wiggling their loose teeth...GROSS!

What holiday jams can't you get enough of?

MTSS Monday

I've been wanting to start blogging about what I'm doing during MTSS (Multi-Tier Systems of Support) formerly RTI (Response to Intervention) formerly tutoring that teachers did on their own before someone felt the need to dictate exactly what they need to do and how they need to do it...WHAT?

Did I digress?

I know myself well enough not to commit to doing this every Monday but hopefully I will be able to share what I'm doing in MTSS at least once a month.

I actually enjoy MTSS.  We do it every morning for 30 minutes, school-wide.  In the past we have had to split every single student in all 8 classes on our grade level.  Splitting up 135 students right after you get them settled into the school day was, as I'm sure you can imagine, pure chaos, and not very effective.  Now we are able to do it in our classrooms with our own students.

Instead of collaborating over which student needs to move up or down a tier and how each of our students are doing in all 7 of the other classes they are spread amongst we actually get to share activities and how each of us are addressing specific needs.

We hold our grade level meetings and PLC's in different classrooms each time so we can see each others system for running MTSS (as well as literacy and math centers).  I don't know about you but sometimes I can get more out of visiting another teachers classroom than I can an entire Professional Development workshop.

We decided to have a general form of data tracking so that when an administrator comes in our room they will see the same thing.  I'm going to share it here for free.  I've already changed it 3 times and I've got a couple of new elements I'm thinking about adding so when I update it I will repost it in another MTSS Monday post.

You can grab these tracking forms here for FREE!

At this time I don't have any Tier 3 students.  I do have 4 Tier 2 students and the other 16 are Tier 1.  I split Tier 1 up into a medium and high group.

The students in the high group are working on enrichment and high order thinking activities.  My medium students are provided extra practice with skills and concepts we are working on in class (they are the biggest group, of course).

The Tier 1 recording sheet is pretty basic, I just list the activity they are doing, Readers Theatre, for example, the students names, materials they need and there is a place for notes.

Finally the Tier 2 students are given activities for remediation in areas that I have identified a deficiency.  For example, we spent about 3 weeks working on Kindergarten high frequency word identification.

In the Intervention Focus I wrote KG HFW.  I listed their names with their baseline scores 12/20 (meaning they were able to identify 12 out of 20.  Each week, after retesting, I recorded their new scores 15/20 then 19/20.  Once students show good growth or achieve the standard I move onto another area of focus.

I like this system because I can also throw in a couple of Tier 1 (medium) kids who need a little extra practice as we remediate different skills.

I have our MTSS time set up like centers so I am free to work one on one with students or in small groups.  I try to meet with each group once a week and my Tier 2 students one on one and in a small group once a week during our MTSS time.  I will post more about all of that another time.

*Please note-I created the MTSS tracking forms because they are useful to me and my colleagues.  If you have any suggestions I'm open to hearing them.  I'm considering separating Tier 2 and Tier 3 and adding a chart to Tier 3 with Time, Program and Frequency.

For more information about MTSS check out these Educator Resources!

Beginning, Middle, and Ending Sound Activities

Have you ever started 3 or 4 units around the same time and then lost all motivation to finish any of them?

Yep, that's what I've been up to.

I finally knocked out a beginning, middle, and ending sound activity pack mostly because I need to use the activities for remediation during MTSS (formerly RTI).

It's just too much fun to focus on all the fun and adorable holiday activities everyone else is churning out right now!

So the BME Sound Activity Pack provides opportunities for students to isolate, produce, find, sort, and match beginning, middle, and end sounds.  The whole pack is black line masters (of course) and linked to common core standards.  It is broken up into 3 sections (beginning, middle, and end).  Each section has:

*Hole punch activities

*Stamp or fill in the sound

*Sound sort

*Sound research and record

*Sound memory

The BME Sound Pack is available in my TpT store and there is a FREEBIE up for grabs in the preview!  Stop by and check it out!

Cyber Monday & Tuesday Sale!

Hey everyone!  I'm throwing a huge sale in both my TpT and Etsy shops!  This is my first Etsy sale so I'm pretty excited to see how this turns out!  You can save up to $4 on the magnetic fishing poles with FREE shipping from now until Tuesday night!

Click here to check out the magnetic fishing poles and use the code CMT12 for FREE shipping!

In my TpT shop you can save up to 28% on ALL of my products on Monday 11/26 and Tuesday 11/27!  Use the code CMT12 there as well!

Check out a few of the units below!

Short vowel foldable books!

Houghton Mifflin first grade supplementary worksheets for themes 1-10.  These worksheets provide additional practice with word families, ABC order, handwriting, the comprehension skill & strategy, and more!

Theme 1-10 worksheets!

Fishing games can be laminated and cut out.  You can use paper clips, washers, magnets or even magnetic brads (through the fish eye, thank Erika Schaff) on the cards and magnetic fishing poles to create an exciting game for your students!

 Fishing for compound words!

Fishing for contractions!

Math fishing games!

Book companions!  I'm just getting into these handy activities.  So far I've only created 2, check them out!

Pigsty!

Room on the Broom!

Happy shopping!

PIGSTY!

Last week my blog updates were SUPER long due to a little blog-slacking.  This week I'll keep it short and sweet!

You're welcome.

So our book of the month for November is Pigsty by Mark Teague.  This weekend I created a few activities to help me teach it this month.  They've just been uploaded to TpT in a pack titled Pigsty Literacy and Math Companion.  Click the title to check it out!

There are 4 literacy activities and a craft.  Students will write about a text to text connection they can make to the story and write/draw about 4 ways they can be responsible.  Students will also be able to practice word building, ABC order, do a word search and a maze along with put together the pig craft and complete a writing prompt about how they can keep their school from becoming a pigsty!

In the math section you will find 4 math bingo games where students practice adding or subtracting 1 or 10 to the card they draw.  There are 1/2 page 100's charts to assist students in correctly finding +/- 1 or 10!

Finally, there is a freebie in the "Download Preview" section!

I've discovered that Pigsty is a great book for teaching your students about responsibility and the importance of keeping your desk, classroom, school, and home (BEDROOM!) clean!  If you plan on reading this book or talking about responsibility with your students please consider checking out my Literacy and Math Companion!

M is for cat, tomorrow's meat/farm field trip fun!

On October 25th we departed for our annual first grade field trip to Conner's A-maizing Acres!  Check out this year's corn maze!

Here are a few pic's of us getting lost in it!

The bus ride is just 60 short minutes of pure insanity that may or may not have driven me to drink bottle(s) of wine after work.

When we arrived Mr. Conner talked to us about the importance of a farming in America.  The first place we visited was the cow train!

Next we checked out the pedal carts and slide!

 After that we made our way over to the hayless ride and met up with some hungry cows!

Check out that tongue!

We saw this billy goat and everybody kept yelling "Look, there's the 3 billy goats gruff!  Do you see his mustache?!"  There was only one goat and apparently I need to introduce them to Duck Dynasty so they learn the difference between a mustache and a beard :)

Mustache...haha :)

Finally here are a few pictures of them playing on the hay bales!

Before I go I want to update you with a few funny Tomorrow's Alphabet pages that my students created this year!  During MTSS (tutoring) my high performing students have been making their own Tomorrow's Alphabet books.  Check out my original post about this here!  They have been finishing them up over the last week or so and these are the cutest/most twisted pages I've ever seen!

N is for baby tomorrow's Natalie!  Adorable!

M is for cat tomorrow's meat!  WHAT!!!!