Me really? Thank you.

Me really? A Stylish Blogger Award? I don't win or am awarded anything often. Thank you to:
Sailing into First
Ms. Durning at Second Grade is Splendid
Hadar at Outfitted & Inspired
Sarah at Teachers can not live on apples alone
Lady Bug Teacher
Barbie at Really Roper
You all have such wonderful & stylish blogs of your own. Your all on my blogger list and always look forward to reading what you post. I guess it wouldn't be appropriate to send this back you way huh? Well just know that I would. :) Thanks again.

Here's what I have to do:
Here are the rules for receiving this award:
1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Award 5 recently discovered great bloggers
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award

Because I already did #1 above let's go to #2.
2. Share 7 things about myself

1. I love all things stripes & polkadots.
2. I LOVE to read. It helps me to "destress" & relax everyday. My favorite books are Urban Fantasy & Mysteries.
3. I've taught in 2 states. Previously in Florida & where I live now. Can you guess where? I am in the Midwest, right smack in the middle of the country, & there's lots of corn.
4. I am a Vegan. It's a personal lifestyle & health choice. I don't judge anyone who is not, I just prefer to be & like it. With that said, my favorite thing to eat is a bag of chips!
5. My favorite colors are Plum (or deep purple), Charcoal Grey & Black.
6. I've wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. I actually remember sitting in my elementary school class, looking at my 3rd grade teacher & thinking, I want to do that.
7. I have a container/ organization obsession. The best compliment was when I returned from my 3 day flu vacation & 1 of the sub notes said "Your classroom is very organized & your students knew the routine." Translation, my students bossed her around all day. I'll have to talk to them about that. BUT did you see, she said I was organized! That made me smile.

3. Award 5 recently discovered great blogger. They are not recent;y discovered but they are Stylish & great!

1. Frog, Bees & Under the Seas
2. The Polk Dot Patch
3. eighteen 25
4. First Grader At Last
5. Ms. Van Orman's First Grade Fun

 4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award
DONE!

I've been sick

So my Valentines day post was not posted because on Monday I got VERY sick. There has been something going around my school. A flu I guess, it sure felt like a flu & I caught it. It was awful. I was out for 3 whole days. 3 DAYS!?! I have had perfect attendance for years. Now it is ruined. :(

On Tuesday I couldn't get out of bed & slept most of the day. On Wednesday I still had a fever & chills. Finally on Thursday I felt almost normal & today was my first day back to work. I am not yet 100% but can function at an almost normal level. However, I did not want to stress myself too much so my classes have been watching a Presidents Day themed video. Thank god for educational videos.

I have not been on Blogger since Monday morning & there is no way I can catch up with all the wonderful posts I missed. I'm a little sad about that but I have to cut back a bit. I just can't keep going at the rate I was a week ago. I do plan to post about Valentines day... eventually, & I also want to share what my students did as part of their Poetry unit. I hope to get those up but it might have to wait until next week.

I hope you all have been well.
Ms. M

Valentines Good Reads

I've have been trying to post about Valentines day for over a week now. I have been so busy with meetings, parent conferences & catching up with the curriculum that I didn't even get my planning done for next week. *Sigh* The good news is that I got my planning done today. The bad news I that I've found SO many wonderful ideas for Valentines day online that I am overwhelmed and confused as to what I will actually do with my students. I did start some projects on Friday but didn't take pictures so I will have to post those on Monday.

I also made some writing activities but they are trapped on my Mac Book & my internet is down. I am now posting from my iPhone. Not great but it works. So expect some late freebies from me this week. I suppose you can make it a week of V-day activities, I might.

What I do want to post is what I will be reading with my "Tator Tots". I can't remember which one of you said that on your blog but I fell in love with that & am useing it from now on.

My FAVORITE V-day read is Love Splat by Rob Scotton.

If you've never read Live Splat, it is about a little cat named Splat who like another cat named Kitten. He always gets nervous around her & it doesn't help that she acts weird around him. He gets the courage to give her a Valentines day note but then he gets to school a bigger cat named Spike proceeds to make Splat feel inferior. Splat feels defeted & throws away the Valentine. Spike gives Kitten his Valentine but well let just say it's not very nice. Kitten ends up with Splats Valentine & also has one for Splat too. I adore this book because I get to talk about so many things. Being scared, having courage, bullies, & Valentines day.The illustrations are wonderful too.

I also like:
Fancy Nancy's Heart to Heart

Today Is Valentines Day by P. K. Hallinan

The Night Before Valentines Day

The Best Thing About Valentines Day

I hope you have a great V-day tomorrow. I will try to post some V-day activities soon.

Enjoy!

Digital Storytelling

I was over on Amanda's blog One Extra Degree & was inspired to post about my own adventures into the land of Digital Storytelling.

My districts ELL program really pushed Digital Storytelling this year. So much so that we had a Professional Development dedicated to it. Actually it makes perfect sense because it is a perfect way for out ELL students to share some wonderful stories. So at the end of the 1st quarter, at the end of October, I jumped feet first and into the film industry. Ha, ha!

At the time my students were working on "3 page stories", which means stories with a beginning, middle & end. This helped me a great deal because I could then have them illustrate a picture for each page. Yes, the stories are not terribly long. Really, they are pretty short, but it was the start of 1st grade. I want to do it again at the end of the year, to show the growth my students have made.

After my students wrote, edited & illustrated their stories it was my turn to get to work. I had each student come to me one at a time & we took pictures of them & their illustrations in Photo booth. This was a tip I got at the Professional Development. This way I didn't have to upload the pictures onto my computer, they were already loaded & I could delete them easily when it came to the next student.

Once the pictures/ illustrations were finished I moved to iMovie. Here we recorded the audio to go with the pictures. I recommend tinkering around with it a few times. It took me about 3 stories/ films to really get the hang of it. After a few stories I realized I could use the "Project Themes" to embellish each movie.

When they were all finished we celebrated by watching all the movies & eating some popcorn. Lots of fun. The students loved watching their creations on the "big" screen, my projector. :) I have to admit, they are not riveting stories, & the editing is not perfect, but for a 1st attempt I think they turned out pretty well.

Our Technology Liaison then put them up on our school website. Our students were then able to share with their classmates & families. I struggled with posting these because my students faces & names are shown, but I decided that they were already posted online & the families do know about it. SO if you are interested in watching a few you can find them here.

One last note, I do want to mention that Amanda has created some great templates for both the teachers & students to use while creating these wonderful stories. Head on over to One Extra Degree to check them out. You can also purchase them on her TPT store.

 I realize I did not get very technical with steps on how to operate iMovie but I am not very good at that. I do believe that there are some tutorials online on how to do it. However, I do hope you all try some digital story telling. It was fun & the kiddos LOVED it.

100 day exhaustion!

I am so glad that the 100th day is over. I am ready to pass out. I've had to celebrate the 100th day 5 times today.

Here are some of the activities we have done.

Kindergarten started by reading a story.

After we made a 100 day crown.

Then we completed the Dots to 100 we got from The Polka Dot Patch.

 Which was perfect because the Kinder kids are learning to count by 10 right now!

After that we worked on making 2 groups of 10 links.

The First Graders read

Then they made crowns from CTP's 100 Designer cut outs.

After I had them write about having 100 somethings with this sentence starter. If I had 100 ___... & counted to 100.

I also had them make 20 links. I have 5 classes so 100 links to put up in the hall!

I did not get a chance to get a picture of my 2nd graders but I had them draw what they look like now & what they will look like when they are 100. Not as cute as some of the 100 year old portraits out there but this had to be quick. You can download here.

Then we ran out of time. but not before they all got 100 day awards & stickers.

I hope you have as much fun on your 100th days as I did on ours. However, I am glad it is over it was tiring.

Ms. M

Patton's Patch Giveaway

If you haven't had a chance to check out Mrs. Patton's blog please do. She is having a very cute giveaway. 

Here are some of the items you might win.

So head on over there. You might just win something. :)

Ms. M

Conference Notes

I am getting read for our 2nd round of conference notes, that is why you haven't heard from me since last Friday. I still have not posted all the wonderful activities my students got to do on the 100th day. Maybe later tonight. Or maybe tomorrow.

Because I am an ELL teacher & see 3 different grade levels serve 35 students. This makes conference time very difficult for me. Last round of conferences I went nuts trying to go to all of my students conferences. It was a mess for me. I barely had time to breath. So this round I am only going to the conferences where I feel I should make some parent contact. Basically, I will see parents of my struggling kiddos. For those conferences that I will not attend I will give the Gen Ed teacher some notes/ comments to share on my behalf.

As I was typing them up, I thought you might like a copy. I added a ladybug because they are so darn cute! So here it is. I hope you find it useful.
Enjoy!

They arrived!

So remember about a week or two ago I posted about some fun & cute pointers. I also told you bout Hadar's wonderful highlighter pointers. Well Hadar is so generous that she sent me a pack of colored file folders to make a set for myself too! 

Well they arrived today. I walked in to work all bundled up and carrying my million bags. I go to my mailbox and there was a manila folder! I was very excited. I think if it weren't the 100th day, I would have made them by now. However, today has been insane & I have not had a minute to breath. I think I will make them this weekend.

Thank you very much Hadar!!!

If I get a chance I will post about our 100 day happenings & share some printables. If not, enjoy the weekend!

Ms. M

What would you do???

I've been working on a fair way to give all of my students a chance to answer questions in my classroom. At the moment I ahve two kinds of students. Type 1: Knows all the answers all the time & gets mad when they are not picked ALL the time. Type 2 doesn't know the answers most of the time and just sits back and waits for type 1 to shout it out when they get frustrated during my "wait time". So I decided to implement a tool I used to use when I taught Gen Ed 1st grade. The "Answer Jar", that's what we've been calling it in my room.


It works great. Each student has a stick with their name on it. When I ask a question, I just pull a stick out & that student answers the question. If they can't answer their name goes back in the jar or they can ask another student for help. My students love it, so far. Type 1 knows they will get 1 turn to answer a questions & type 2 knows they will be asked and are more attentive.


(BTW, I don't use the jar for all my questions, just predictable ones, that we go through everyday. An example would be, what month is it?, What day is it today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? etc...)

My only problem is that I currently have 4 groups I am using the "Answer Jar" with & I am having trouble storing all my popsicle sticks. At the moment I am keeping them rubber band together on my desk.

 Which is really bugging me because I like to keep my desk clean & orderly.

My classes are 1 hour long and so I switch them out that frequently. I thought of a hanging Zip-lock bag staples to my wall, but I am not sure if that will be durable enough. I also want to keep them separated by class, so they are easy to grab & switch out. I am thinking I need something with at least 4 pockets.

So before I go to the store & spent some cash I wanted to know if you had any ideas on where or in what I could store all my little name sticks. Any ideas?

Ms. M

Check out what I did...

One of the MANY blogs I follow is eighting25. These ladies have some GREAT ideas, printables, & decor. If you have not checked them out, you should take a minute to do so.

My favorite item of theirs is their holiday Subway art.

I like using these both at home & at work. For their Christmas Subway art, I just printed it up and posted it outside my door. It felt like it was missing something. However, I did not dare put it in a frame because I was afraid that it would fall, the glass & frame would shatter and some student would get hurt.

So for my Valentines subway art I framed it with some CTP bulletin-board boarder. While I LOVE this boarder, I was wondering if I over did it, or if it looks a bit cheesy?


Please tell me what you think. Do you have any suggestions on how I can improve it? How would you do it differently?

Ms. M