Award and Another Freebie!!

First, I want to say thank you to Stephani at Maestra Biligue for awarding me

 

I'll have to hand this award out to others later as I have a lovely BBQ to get to today. However, before I do, I created another freebie to go along with the daily 5 signs I posted yesterday. These are for CAFE! 

Click on the Image to download them! 

Please know that this product is an unofficial adaptation of the Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser and are in no way endorsed by the 2 sisters. You can visit their website here: 

The 2 Sisters 

If you download it, and can use it in your classroom, please leave me a comment and let me know how you use Daily 5 or CAFE in your room.

75 Follower Giveaway

I am so floored that I have 75 (well 76 now) followers. I wanted to say thank you by offering a freebie. I've really been enjoying our Daily 5 book study, so I wanted to create something to go along with it.

Here are some Daily 5 header signs you can display in your classroom, using graphics from Michelle at the 3AM Teacher (because I'm just obsessed with her work)! There are two sets, one with bird graphics from The Digital Bakeshop, and one without. Each set includes 5 signs, one for each task of the Daily 5. Click on the photo to download each set.

Enjoy! :)

Who Loves Pinterest?

I do, I do!!!!

I really do, a little too much maybe. But, I'm not afraid to admit it.

I love it so much, that I go on pinning frenzies ... and forget what I've pinned.

I'm guilty of pinning it and forgetting it. But, no more. I've decided to be a more responsible pinner. I need to go back through my boards and pins and start trying all of the amazing ideas I've found. Thinking about that this weekend inspired me to branch out in my blogging adventures and start a new blog about it. I've decided to blog about my pinteresting journey.

Here is a link to my first post: It's a Pinteresting Story

I'd love all of my fellow pinterest addicts to check it out and tell me what you think.

ALSO, I realized today I have 75 followers ... 75!! Wow! I'm flattered and stunned.

Because of that, I've decided to work on a freebie for all of you lovely bloggers out there. Be on the lookout this weekend :)

JUMP IN TO LEARNING with The Daily 5 Book Study!!!

Are you ready? Have you started? I hope so!

has begun their Daily 5 book study!! 
It just started yesterday, so if you haven't begun reading yet, there's plenty of time to catch up!
I really connected with the first chapter of Daily 5. The sisters talk about the "traditional" way we approached education, especially discipline. We I began teaching 6 years ago I was SO happy with my discipline chart. I used a pocket chart and die cut machine to make "tickets" for each student. The colors ranged from red to green. Green was, "Good to Go", and those students knew they were doing a good job. The other colors went in a range from yellow (warning), to orange (fill out a think sheet), to pink (loss of recess), to red (call home/office visit). I even had a purple ticket to reinforce positive behavior. Students on green setting a good example could earn a purple card which entitled them to a classroom dollar at the end of the day. Now, what could be better than that? Wasn't it a perfect system. The cards were even numbered to provide a little anonymity, (though after the first month of school the kids knew who was who). But, what if? What if the structural system in place negated the need for such a system? Could it work? Really? ..REALLY?  Has anyone tried this? Does it work in practice? I'd love to hear feedback and experiences! 

My Big Mess and End of the Year Gift

So, as promised I have just a few pics of my mess. I'm too embarrassed to show the worst ones. Does anyone else feel like messes get bigger before they are organized to perfection?

This is the "leftover" stuff. My basement has an huge pile of my plastic bins FULL of stuff.  As my boyfriend was helping me empty it out of my classroom and take it back to my house, his comment was, "Do you really need all of this stuff? Can't you throw some of it away?"
Uh, NO! I am in no way a hoarder, BUT I do spend a lot of time making nice things to my classroom and there is NO WAY JOSE that I am going to throw it away.

Anyway .. thanks to a WONDERFUL idea from Confessions of a Teaching Junkie I decided to take on another project for the end of the year (and half way into I was wishing I hadn't ...)

It is such a cute idea that extended something I already do with my class. I've always had my class write down words to describe each other as a memory. However, now that Tagul, Tagxedo, Wordle, etc are so popular, a natural next step would be to make word clouds using the words. So, thanks to some Teaching Junkie inspiration, I did that for them this weekend (after packing up and moving my whole classroom and finishing progress reports ... ).

Here is the template I gave to my students: Click on the image to download the PDF. When we began passing around the papers, I outlawed words such as kind, good, nice, fun .. etc. I had them use their character trait lists to come up with thoughtful lists, which seemed to help a lot.

 

And, by 11:00 PM last night, I had all 54 of my students' papers typed up into nice little word clouds. 

And 1 and a half more days .... it can't come soon enough!

Home Stretch, Being Crafty, and one HUGE MESS!

Ok, so two and half more days to go...
I think I can ... I think I can...
181 days never felt SOOOO long!

So, I'm sure you've all experienced the ridiculousness that is that last few days of school. You don't feel like teaching anything too taxing, and frankly, the kids don't feel like learning and applying themselves any longer. However, my principal is probably not going to allow three days of movies, games, and all around work avoidance. It's that summer itch, and it's a problem. I've been  trying my hardest to keep their interest, but I think the only thing that would at this point is a clown will, red nose, and some fantastic juggling skills (all of which I do not have).

So, what's a teacher to do? I've pulled my resources and decided do a few things that (fingers crossed) will keep them motivated to stay on task and not drive me completely crazy.

First, we're still not quite finished out study on the regions of the United States. The southwest region has pretty much gotten the shaft (sorry to all of my southwest friends). We saved it until last as it has the fewest states, but I still want my students to learn something about that area of our country.
So, I tricked them into read. Yep, I did.
What ten-year-old doesn't love to color? Ok, there are a few, but they all love it when they can do it instead of working. So, yesterday, I had my students read about the canyons and deserts of the southwest. The trick? When they were finished they could create a poster advertising one of the things they read (most picked the Grand Canyon). Of course they all wanted to do the reading so they could get to the creating. AND they had to use some details from the reading to make their poster persuasive and enticing to a traveler (HA getting in those persuasive writing skills we've been working on).

The best part of this is, it is helping me take down my bulletin boards. I am a firm believer that empty walls speed up the kids itch for summer. So, I HATE taking them down too early. That being said, I am moving and have to get all of my stuff packed up before the last day of school. So, I'm using their posters to decorate my boards once I take down my stuff!
Here are some of their creations:

The other really fun thing we're doing thanks to a great idea from Lessons with Laughter is writng Porquoi Tales. She even has a free template for kids to use to organize the elements of the tales. We started my reading some together and mapping them out. We then used that information to write our own. My kiddos looked through some Ranger Rick magazines to get ideas of what animal to pick. I'll post picks of these on Monday because they are doing an AMAZING job! 

As for the mess, I need to go tackle that now. My classroom looks like a bomb exploded. Do you ever feel like when you are getting organized you make a bigger mess in the process. Maybe I'll take some pics of that too. Feeling bittersweet about all of this packing!