Five For Friday

This week was testing week!  I was able to finish ALL my reading assessments and enjoy Friday free of testing!  Now I need to enter scores and cross that off the to do list.

I created my sub tub this week.  I am really excited about it...especially for next year.  In the past, I have always typed up specific lesson plans for the day I was going to be out and it was a long and exhausting process.  Now I have my plans ready for any day I am out.  It is a generic template of my schedule throughout the week.

This was my Teacher Tip Tuesday link in my blog.

This is what started my successful week off on the right foot!

It has been MISERABLE weather here for the last 3 weeks with on and off rain and no sun.  :-( fortunately, we were able to go outside in between rain drops and enjoy some chalk!

This was an unplanned happy moment that happened this week int he classroom! 2 of my students and I all wore cowboy boots on the same day so we had to take a picture!  It was so much fun!

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!! Reading test is finished! I had to give close to 50 tests, but we all survived and now we can move on!

Reading Buddies

As a school, the older grade levels try to pair up with younger grade levels to form reading buddies.  This not only builds community in the school, but also builds an unofficial mentoring program in the building that allows the younger students to look forward to becoming a reading buddy when they are older.  Each week or every other week reading buddies get together to read to each other.  Also, we use our buddies to create writings together and supporting each other during testing. It is a lot of fun for the students and supports community building and citizenship for the students.  The younger students get really excited about reading every Friday when their reading buddy comes down and reads with them.

Read Across America Week

This week will be Read Across America Week at school.  We are trying to make it from VA to Alaska in one week by reading, reading, reading!  Each book/chapter from a book will represent 1 mile.  I'm super excited to read to my class and see the jump in reading to re-motivate them before spring time.
To celebrate the week I have made a few tee shirts to wear in the spirit of Seuss Week.

This week is a busy and fun week.  We also will be celebrating the 100th day on school on Friday!  It is a little late this year because of all the snow days. I am very excited to wear these and have lots of fun in the classroom.  

March Writing Prompts

This pack includes 3 writing prompts that you can have your students write about in March.  Each prompt have a craft to go with it.  These really motivate my students to write neatly and put more on the paper when they get to do a craft with it.  The pack includes a writing prompt for Dr. Seuss' Birthday, Read Across America, and St. Patrick's Day.  Enjoy!

I will be having my students complete this one during Read Across America Week in honor of Dr. Seuss. I want the students to write about their favorite Dr. Seuss book/activity that we read/completed in class. I might also use it to have them write about what they learned about Dr. Seuss since we are learning about non fiction and how to gather data.

I am going to have my students complete this fun writing craft for St. Patrick's Day. We are going to be writing about why we are lucky and what is important to us. 

(I colored eyes, eyebrows, cheeks, and a mouth. I wanted my students to be able to change them  and make them their own if they wanted. I also took a pencil and curled the bear and hair.)

This is one of my favorite writing prompts I have my students completes. It doesn't have to be done in March. It could be done any time of the year, but because of Read Across America, I wanted to include this one in March. Having my students write about their favorite book and explain why they like it, or try to convince another student to read it is wonderful. The students get really into it and add a lot of details to this writing.  I will copy a few pages if they need to write more than what will fit on a page and staple them together.

(This is one of my new books from Scholastic-it is really cute and I can't wait to read it to my class.)

I also have monthly writing prompts and crafts for January and February. Check them out at my TPT store and enjoy writing!

January Writing Craftivity

I just created these 2 January writing craftivities for my students to do after winter break!  I'm really excited to bring them into the classroom for my students to complete and share with others. You can get them here. This is going to be a nice way for the students to ease back into writing making sure to still use spaces between words,  correct punctuation, and sentence structure.

Christmas Gifts

This was the first year I decided to give gifts to my students, room parents, and team members, and I am so happy that I did. It was so nice when they were excited about the small gifts I had gave to them.  I got all my students The Gingerbread Man Loose In the School by .

The students were so excited about the book.  They were $1 on scholastic and I was able to use my points and bonus money to buy them.  I included a tag that I made on the inside of the book.  You can get it here to go inside any book as a gift to your students.

I have 2 parents who help me out a lot this year, and I wanted to get them something as well without breaking the bank.  I found this idea on Pinterest and LOVE it!  It is a oven mitt, a bag a sugar cookie mix, and some cookie cutters.  I also included a gift card for a local bagel shop inside.

And for my teamies, I also saw this on Pinterest and thought it was adorable.  It was a low cost gift but cute and thoughtful.  You can get the reindeer printable here.

All these gifts were under $3 each and I got many compliments on them from everyone.

Circle Labels

A lot of teachers have asked me for these so I decided to post them to my TPT store.  I copy them onto different colored paper and laminate them before hot gluing them to clothes pins.  This is a VERY EASY way to display student work that allows you to change the students work out and not ruin your board behind it. I use the labels to type the student's names on so when I hang their work up, they know where to look to find it.

These are free in my store.  Check them out!

Ice Cream Job Chart

I have a job chart in my room and the students change jobs each week.  Not all my students have a job, but about half my class does.  They get their new jobs on Monday and it lasts the whole week. Next Monday, the students change jobs.
Last year I made apples with the job listed on them and the leaves had the student names on them and I moved the leaves each week.
I just finished making my job chart for the school year and thought I would share it with you all!  I like to change it up each year, and this yeat I decided to make my job chart Ice cream themed.

You can pick this up for free and print it out, copy the cones onto brown construction paper and the ice cream scoops onto colored paper of your choice.  Then add your students names to the scoops.
If the job is for 1 student, only put 1 scoop on top of the cone.  If the job required more than 1 student, you can stack the scoops (like in the picture) to let the student's know what their job is.

Minions!!!

I made these precious minions last year for outside my door and all my students had one with their name on it!  They were so excited to take them home and some students still have them.  With the Minion movie coming out and still being a fan of Despicable Me, I wanted to make these available for your back to school bulliten boards.  Some teachers have made them themselves and some teachers have had their students make them and put them together.  They are very easy to put together and turn out very cute!

Just copy onto blue, white, and yellow paper and cut and glue together!  I made 26 last year for my class, and it took me less than a hour to put them together!

 This is what my wall looked like outside my room last year!

and these are all the pieces that you need to put the minion together!

ENJOY!

Measurement Math Journal Activities

These math journal activities for Measurement are for the students when we study length, weight, and capasity.  We spend about 2 weeks on this unit and these are the journal pages I have the studnets glue into their math notebook to help them practice.

This pack includes 3 activity pages for length, 2 for weight, and 2 for capasity, along with non-standard measuring tools, and vocabulary words.

This is one of the activities that I have my students complete in their math journal for measuring length. They love to go around the room and measure things and compare their measurements to others.

Reading Log

One of our standards that the students need to be able to do is keep track of a reading log.  At the beginning of each month, I give this print out to the students and have them glue it in their reading journals.  At the beginning of the year I use it to show the students how many books they have read and to enjoy reading, but towards the end of the year I use it to see if they are reading different types of books and if they remember the books they have read and can reflect on them.  My students really like getting these each month and keeping track of what they have read.

You can get these Monthly Rading Logs for free at my TPT store.

Teacher Appreciation Week

Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week and our Admin. and our PTA outdid themselves making us all feel very special and appreciated for all the hard work we do!  We were all super hero's for a week.

 This is the wall at the front of the school that the PTA decorated for us! Our PTA also brought us in lunch on Wednesday so none of the teachers had to worry about bringing a lunch in that day.  The decorations were also super hero themed and it looked amazing!

Our forms that we were asked to fill out from the PTA.  Our parents got a copy and I receiver almost EVERYTHING on my form (Note to self: next year...do not write so much junk food on my form!)

One of very many gifts that I got from my students throughout the week!

And on Friday every teacher in the school received a cape for being a super teacher!  This was hands down my favorite celebration from the week!

Fun Committee-Secret Pals

We do a Secret Pal as part of the Fun Committee at my school and each month our Secret Pal changes and they can't reveal themselves until the end of the month.  Throughout the month, your Secret Pal will get you little gifts and treats.  This is a gift that I have given all my secret pals because it is easy to put together, cute, and cheap.

It is an oven mitt, a cookie cutter, and a pouch of sugar cookie mix.  I buy the cookie cutters at the dollar tree along with the oven mitt and the cookie mix at the grocery store.  It is something fun for them to do over the weekend!

D.C. Field Trip

I love our field trip and how well it ties into your social studies curriculum about Famous Americans and U.S. Symbols.  We go to Washington D.C. which is not very far away but usually a chaotic field trip because we have 125, 7 year olds running around!  We study Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. and then when we go on the field trip the students are very excited to see the monuments and memorials and they know so much background knowledge them.  We have the D.C. Park Rangers come in to our classroom to talk to them about the monuments and then when we go to the park, it is a lot of fun!

My camera died so I only got a few pictures, but it was a great day!