A new Etsy shop...

Hi Everyone,

A friend of mine just started selling hand made, one of a kind cards on Etsy. So many of you are crafty or like crafty things so I wanted to share. Her shops name is Otherworldly Cards.

Here is my shop review...
"Intriguing, unique and colorful cards. Hand made w/ quality, 3D embellishments, paper & card stock. Built to last for all occasions. Will bring a little bit of enjoyment every time you look at them on your desk/table. They make wonderful additions to any gift."

Take a look...

(Click on the image to go to the card on Etsy.)

Click here to visit her Etsy shop.

Hope you go take a look around. As she says... "I love it when you visit. Thrilled, when you buy." Have a great weekend.

A helpful tip: Serious Vs. Silly

Happy Tuesday! 

I hope all of you that started work today had a FABULOUS day.

I had some ideas to share with you all and I thought why not give it a name and make it a LINKY? Soooo...

Thanks for stopping by for...

This year I had a student who was having trouble during our whole group lesson time. Part of the problem is that he has quite a bit of language already. He still needs some ELL time, but he is more advanced than the other kids in his group.

I understood that he required more of a challenge during his work and I gave it to him. However, during instructional time I still wanted him to sit quietly and listen to what I was demonstrating. I didn't want him to continue to get in trouble and miss out on valuable instructional time. PLUS, and this is the more important one, I wanted him to stop disturbing his peers, who DID need every little bit of what I was teaching.

He was basically being VERY silly and giggly all the time. When I discussed him in my PLC group, another teacher suggested I make a Silly/ Serious sign so that the expectation was clear. This was brilliant!

The next day the class discussed what silly and serious meant. What it looks like and sounds like to be silly and what it looks like and sounds like to be serious. We talked about why it is important to be serious during whole group lessons and about how sometimes it is ok to be silly.  Demonstrations are VERY important for ELL kids, so we practiced this.

I let them know that I would help them learn when it was ok to be silly and when when have to be serious. Then I took their picture. Now, I don't know if you know this, but Kinder Kids LOVE to have their picture taken. We took several pictures with silly faces and several more with serious faces. I took the picture as a whole group because I did not want to single this particular student out. Not to mention that it is good practice for all my kids. 

So here is how it turned out.

I printed it up as two separate whole sheets. Then laminated and taped them together. Inserted a Popsicle stick and Tada! I added the word up top because I wanted to connect it to print, but you don't have to.

Best thing is that now all I have to do is show the sign and they know right away what kind of behavior is expected of them.

Just in case you were wondering we used our silly voices and faces to sing and echo. Occasionally when we share, I allow it to, but the rest of the time we are serious.

Because I love to share you can pick up a Serious or Silly words to go with your sign. Click here for your freebie.

Have any Teaching you wanna share? Feel free to link up below or share via a comment box. 

Currently: September

Hi everyone,

This is a quick post today, cause even though I have a day off, I am still crazy busy. Here is my September Currently.

A colleague shared this with the staff and I thought I would pass it along.

You Might Be In the First Week of School If...

That is all for me for now. However, I had a stroke of genius and I have lots to share later in the week. Don't forget to stop back. Now off to work on my plans for this week.

Now off to
To link up too!

Writing: How it works in my room...

I have been trying to write this post for SEVERAL days now with out success, until now. It seems like I don't have a lot of free time at the moment, but I am MAKING myself stop and write this post. :)

I'll start back here at my Writers Bulletin Board.

I have the writing process displayed with posters explaining what to do at each step. Because of my surfing theme this year I am calling my kids Wave Writers. Kind of cheesy I know. I love that huge pencil with the reasons why writers write. :) Anyway...

I am using the ribbon with clothes pins to display where my students are in the writing process. They will move these clips and I will use them to help me conference with my students during Writing.

Next, we move on to the 6 traits. Oh boy these are not easy for my ELL kids. They are not as concrete as the writing process and we get a bit lost some times. I am hoping this will help us keep it together this year.

  I did not staple these down. Rather I attached them with a paper clip hung on a push pin. When I teach Ideas, next week I can move it and place it next to the "We are learning about..." sheet.

I also plan to add mini versions of my districts anchor charts, but I don't have them yet. :/ I will update when I do get and laminate them.

On to my writers storage and supplies.
This is what the front of my room looks like. Right under my white board I have this sweet little set up, that took me forever to think through. I had the custodian take the bottom legs off of 2 desks to make it just the right size. :) And I have extra storage in the desks. I am thinking of either turning them around or adding some fabric/ table skirt to cover it up. For now it isn't bugging me too much.

The purple crate houses our writing paper. I wish I had a close up shot of it. The red hanging folders house the Kinder writing paper, the blue is for 1st grade and the green is for 2nd and 3rd grade. My students never have to ask permission to get paper during writing time and this works great. Then I can conference in peace. I have some updated versions of my writing paper for each grade level so look for that coming soon.

The crates house my 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders binders. Can't tell you how happy I am to be back to binders. We had a donation last year of gently used binders from an office building and I snapped them up. However, if your looking for a multiple pocket folder go here and here for a quick fix.

My kinder kids still use 2 pocket folders and they are housed in one of the drawers of my 3 drawer cart. On top of that cart, I have my extra writing supplies. Everything from pencils, to erasers, sharpeners, staplers, even some Popsicle sticks to make our spaghetti and meatball spaces. MY students are allowed to go here at any time to replenish their supplies. No need to ask.

Can you see that I added some fun tissue paper to the bottom of my pencil buckets? I hate when they get marked up from the pencil lead. I am so OCD, I think I have a problem. :P

Finally, a shot of my Word Wall. Obviously it is not up on the wall yet. Still waiting on the district people to come in and drill it to the wall.

 I went with the 2 tone paper again. I like how it separates each letter and that is so important for my kids. Especially when I start adding words for 4 different grade levels. Yikes.

So a freebie for you...
Below you will find links to writing folder cover sheets.

We use these in the front of our binders so that I can easily distinguish, by color what grade it is. 
Kinder Writing Cover
 1st Grade Writing Cover
2nd Grade Writing Cover
3rd Grade Writing Cover
4th Grade Writing Cover
5th Grade Writing Cover
General Writing Cover
For my kinder kids who use a 2 pocket folder, I will glue their sheet to the front of their writing portfolio. I will collect all their writing at the end of every quarter and store it in there.

In addition to all that Writing stuff I just threw at you I want to introduce you to two relatively new, new to me, teacher blogs. These are 2 male teachers. I know just plain weird right? LOL, j/k
Now Gary from, Follow Your Bliss and Liam from, A Twist of Liam have some company.
Mr. Smedley's Kinder Blog
Mr. Michelbook's 1st Grade Blog
(Here is a secret, Mr. Michelbook is having a giveaway.)

I think that is all for now.
Have a great rest of the week!

Instructional Bulletin Boards

Hi everyone,

I am taking a break from Operation Classroom to show off another bit of my room.

I have to say that what I am posting about today is one of my favorite parts of the classroom, of MY classroom, bulletin boards. There has been a lot of talk about bulletin boards and how to decorate them this year. It seems like there is a lot of pressure to make them look great. I personally like things to look clean and pretty and modern. I don't always achieve it but I try.

This year I was so consumed with moving in to my renovated school, my new room, and unpacking that I gave little thought to my bulletin boards. I knew I was going to use a theme, surfing, but not much thought went into how or what I was going to put on my BBs. Part of that was cause I didn't know where I could put stuff up, not having seen my room yet. The other bit was because I have been teaching a bit now I kind of know what I want up on my walls. Ie: I know I will have my alphabet over my white board, I know I will designate one BB for writing, etc...

So when I got into my room and I had less than a week to unpack and have the room up and ready to go I kind of freaked and went into just get it unpacked and hide the mess mode. My BBs were last unfortunately. I can tell you I would go home and think about them all night and still could not figure out what I wanted.

To make a VERY LONG story short, I finally found some fabric at Hobby Lobby and settled on one look across the room. I was actually very lucky, I was going for a gray chevron but lucked up on this beachy blue and kind of light tan chevron. It goes so much better with the theme.

I have added to it since you last saw it. I put up the palm tree just 2 days ago. At first I was afraid that the chevron was too busy. However, I love how it kind of looks like waves. This is obviously my calendar/ carpet space bulletin board.

 This next bit just kind of evolved into what it is now and I just ADORE it! It is my Reading bulletin board. This year I am trying to make my life easier and going to teach the same reading strategy to all my kids across all 4 grade levels, k, 1, 2 and 3. Last year it was crazy jumping around trying to match the Gen ed strategies. I am figuring if I teach them all by the end of the year then I am good.

 So I framed the outside of the BB with the different reading genres posters. Christy from Teaching in FlipFlops made these for me last year. If you have not seen her room you have to. I am SUPER jealous how her room turned out.

As you can see I used the waves of blue boarder but did not have enough to cover all my BBs. I wanted them all to match so I used waves of blue below and the rainbow waves above. Kind of like a sunset thing. Don't know if I love it but it is staying up for now.

 On the actual BB I am going to post the strategy and a definition. I will have up some visual representations or anchor charts AND some super big/ blown up graphic organizers for this strategy. For me this is HUGE cause it will help my ELL kids make those connections.

 Some of the elements on this board were made by me but the icons and one of the graphic organizers came from Lindsey's, The Teacher Wife, Comprehension 2 packet. I just love it. As you can see I started with "Making Connections". I will leave these up for the duration of the time I will teach this strategy then change it all up for "Story Elements". However, I will keep the same format for my kids. Consistency is the key for my kids.

 My 3rd board is my Writing strategies board. This has actually changed quite a bit and I want to talk about it in depth more with some other Writing components I have in my room, at a later time, so I will be brief.

 I put up the Writing process posters to the left of the board. Again Christy from Teaching in FlipFlops made for me last year. They are Hawaiian print to go with the surfing theme. So it kind of mirrors the BB on the other side of the white board.

 Here is a close up. My students will eventually move these clothes pins to show where in the writing process they are.

I put up the 6 traits on the board with a thumb tack and paper clip. This way I can move around the posters and don't put a million holes in my beautiful fabric.

I am working on making small versions of my districts writing traits posters and posting them under these traits. I mean it would be chaos to have 6 posters up for 4 different grade levels.

The last bit I want to show off today is my new alphabet line! Just my absolute favorite new thing. Makes me happy whenever I see it. It is clean, pretty and modern. Obviously it came from Kristen from Ladybug Teacher Files. She has SEVERAL different versions in her shop so don't hesitate to check her out.

So that is all for now. In a day or two I'll post more about how Writing works in my room this year. I've given it a bit of an overhaul/ facelift and am super excited to share with you all.

Now I am off to do some lesson planning.

Have a great week!

Operation Classroom: Whole Group, Student Tables

Class us up and running, even if it is not completely perfect. This is a big thing for me. I am not a perfectionist but I like to try to be. :P However, this year my motto is "It will get done eventually."

Here is my next installment of Operation Classroom...

 

This is a view from the door.

Some of this has actually changed a tiny bit but the layout of the tables and chairs has not.

This is a view from the opposite side.

As you can see I have two tables that seat 4 (possibly 6) on the left side of my teacher table.

Each table has two supply, pencil and crayon baskets.

Two students (possible 3) share those supplies. For now i have them on the edges of the tables, but should I have to add that 3rd student the baskets/ caddies will move to the center of the tables.

Here is another view from the front of the room.

AND here is my teacher table. The chair was inherited from a fellow teacher who is now retired and living it up on the golf course. The table is kind of messy at the moment but you can see I have got two trays, one for my random papers and the one to the left will hold my daily student work by grade level. You could subjects instead of grade levels. Here is where I also have my beloved projector and Doc Cam. Don't know how I taught without them. There is also a plastic box that houses all of my teaching items so that I don't have to share the bogie covered crayons with the kids. It also allows me to model what it is like to keep my materials clean, neat and orderly.

My third table makes an L with my teacher table. This table is for those students who I want to keep near for whatever reason, ie: behavior or extra support, etc.

I have so many little things I want to share about this space, ie: my bulletin boards, but they really deserve their own post so I will save them for another time. Now it is your turn. What does your whole group table/ desk space look like?