It's Time to Say, "Hello, Again!"

I am so happy and all around giddy to be back blogging! Most of you know that last year my husband and I announced that we were expecting our fist child. It has been such a wonderful journey, one that I wanted to soak up every. single. experience. So, that is why I decided to take a little break from blogging. It has been a little over a year now since my last post, and wow, a lot has changed! 

Here is a quick recap of my journey! My pregnancy was an absolute joy so much so that I was able to work right up until our school district's winter break as well as celebrate Christmas with all of our family. It wasn't until New Years Eve that I started to have contractions, go to the hospital to only be sent home to labor until my water broke! All I can say is "AAAhhhhh" and at this point it was not a very happy new year... yet!! Ha! After what seemed like eternity, we welcomed our sweet Ella Rose into this world on January 2nd. (Cool little fact: I was born on August 2nd) My recovery was rough since Ella and I experienced what the doctors call Shoulder Dystocia. At times it was not easy but when you see the sweet face of your child, it seems gives you all the strength you need.

Here are a few photos I had taken of Ella Rose when she was 10 days old.

 

Today Ella Rose is almost 8 months old. I can't believe how much she has changed and grown. Time really does fly!

However, with all her growing up I have some how managed to squeeze in a little bit of creating. Even though I have taken a year off from being a classroom teacher, I still remain connected to all of my teacher friends and love creating things to help them in their teaching journey.

I first made some Whole Brain teaching posters that I posted as two different freebies. You can check them out here and here.

I also created a set of Attention Class posters. It is a fun chant that I used to get my students attention throughout the day. You can pick up a copy here.

Last, I added a blank portable word wall that each individual student can use and keep in their folder. If you are in search of one make sure you get this freebie here.

I hope you can use some of the freebies that I have posted. Before I wrap up this post I also wanted to share two of my newest units that I have posted.

The first unit is all about creating purposeful PowerPoints. When I was in the classroom one of my biggest struggles was posting objectives. I just was never great about posting a new sheet of paper or writing on the board. It never felt like it belonged in my routine however i tried to implement it. Then one morning I decided to try using PowerPoint.... it changed the way my students talked about our daily objectives. It felt smooth and if we were struggle with the language I could easily edit right on the spot with my students. From that point on whoever walked into my classroom to ask my students what they were learning, we had it down!! Also, another bonus, it freed up some board space! So one thing lead to another and before you knew it my students and I were creating rubrics and answering essential questions with ease. The understood the purpose of every lesson!!!

This unit includes daily objective, essential questions, 3 rubrics, exit tickets as well as black slides for 7 different subjects. It is all editable and brightly colored.Just click on the preview images above to grab yourself a copy!

The next unit I wanted to share with you is classroom labels! This has been on my "To Do"  list like FOR.EVER. But on the bright side, it gave me time to think about how I wanted them to look. I hope you find them helpful and use them to label-up your classroom! ha!

Each card that you will use to label all your classroom materials will have the word, a picture and the syllabic dots (when appropriate). I also underlined spelling patterns so that when your students are trying to read each label they are reminded that it falls under a spelling rule! You should know that I have included 96 different labels. You can click on the product cover above if you would like to snag a copy of this!

Well that is all for know! I am so glad to be back and sharing what I love to do. I hope everyone has a wonderful week with your new bunch of students.

It's been.......too long!!

HELLO out there! I am so embarrassed that I have not posted in about 2 months! But I have a really great excuse that will make everything understandable and hopefully excusable! =) 

My husband and I decided to start expanding our little family. Yes, that means we decided to start trying for our first child. Now mind you, we decided this in all the chaos of end of the year testing, parties, and of course report card checks, RTI documentation, you name I was busy!  Did I mention that my husband is going back to school for his masters and he is working on his graduating project! 

Well I am happy to announce, that after trying for only a month, we got pregnant and are expecting our first child! That's right I'm going to be a MOM! I love saying that! =)

You are probably wondering about my pregnancy symptoms. Well I have to report that I have been blessed. The only side effect I have is extreme fatigue. I'm taking like, out like a light within five minutes of sitting down. It is the kind of sleep that when you wake up from it, you wonder what day, time, or even where you are. lol! Dazed and confused! So it has really effected my blogging schedule. I normally blog at night after I get home from work, but ever since I have been pregnant, all I can do is, well, sleep!

So I am happy to report that I am sixteen weeks along and finally getting some much needed energy back! It also helps that I am finally done teaching summer reading camp too! 

There she is! I am so excited to finally announce her to all of you! I am going to need all the advice I can get my hands on. So all you moms out there, if there is something that you just can't live without, please leave me a message and tell me all about it! 

Now onto some school matters. I have posted a freebie for all of you. I feel so bad I have not been of much inspiration lately. So hopefully this makes it a little better. It is the classroom rules that I have hanging up. I had received a few emails about them a while back and decided this would be a great way to get back in the groove! I hope you can find them useful in your classroom! Just use the picture below to take you to my TpT store.

I just have one other little project I wanted to share with you. I am in the process of making some rock and roll classroom positive posters. I made a few quotes at the end of the year to help my third graders believe in themselves during testing time. They really loved them and I would see them look up during the test for a little encouragement. So I thought why not make some for the beginning of the school year. 

If you want to check out the positive posters I made for my students during testing you can check them on by clicking on the picture below. Once you are on the product page, just click the preview button and you can see all the posters you will get in this unit.

Before I head out here is a look at the posters I am creating for my rock and roll theme!

Coming Soon!!

I hope that everyone is enjoying their summer! 

Hiking to Success

Tonight I am going to make this post quick and to the point. I finally had time to put the finishing touches on my Hiking To Success Unit. This unit's main purpose is to help students get ready for state testing. Last year I used the elements in You've Got Game. This year my students were familiar with this unit so I needed something new to keep them testing their best! So my team came up with the theme hiking to success. The more I thought about the theme the more ideas I came up with! Hints the long completion date.....ha! I am still putting finishing touches on some lessons, but i will talk more about that later. Take a look at this unit!

All the resources you will find in this unit focus on a camping theme. What fun, right?

There are ten testing strategies in this unit! Each strategy poster features a picture, badge, and explanation of how it works. I have also added blank posters in case you want students to take notes while they learn and work with them. In addition to these posters, I have provided a PowerPoint editable file that allows you to edit each poster. This means if you want to say things differently that what I did, you can!

To make sure your students use and practice the strategies that you teach them, they have the opportunity to earn camping badges! Each strategy has a matching badge. Once they earn the badge I have provided a little craft that they can use to display all their newly earned badges! You can allow them to earn badges everyday and add them to their banner or you can create it at the end and pass out all earned badges! There are full color as well as grayscale options. You can use colored paper on the grayscale images to add a little color on them. All the white areas will pick up the color of the paper you use!

On your hike through the testing trail I have created posters to displaying your daily purpose. There are options that I have filled out as merely an example of what you COULD write. But just like the strategy posters I have made blank as well as editable versions on the posters! Now each day will start with such purpose and focus your students will enjoy working hard for their badges because they will know what is expected of them.

The student tracking pages all them to work hand in hand with your purpose posters. As you are assessing their understanding of the strategies and skills you cover, you can use the tracking pages as a way to assess your students. They can answer essential questions on the sheet, check off learning objectives, or simple use it as an exit ticket each day. I provide you with two options here. One is a printable that has a path the students fill in daily understanding. The second is a foldable which uses envelopes and index cards to showcase learning and mastery. Step-by-step pictures are included in the unit for how to create the foldable.

Of course becoming a camper is essential in the hiking to success journey! This means a camping sack is in order! I have included step-by-step directions for creating a pack the sack for each little camper. All you need is a brown paper bag. I have also included flap toppers for the sack which will allow you to personalize each one. There are blank as well as editable options in the unit.

As you are working with review text, I like to use different ways to review the correct answer choices. My school provides us with practice passages that resemble our state testing passages. I use these as we practice. Since i want them to attend to each and every question, I review differently during the week. I have included the different way that I review in the unit. Please know that independent work is still of importance here. They first must take the practice test independently, the review is then checked, using these games! I do it this way only because each person needs to learn something different and to do this they need to realize what THEY did on the question.

I love to reward exemplar work and thinking during these review games/days. So when there is a camper that is really working hard I hand out rewards. In the unit I have included six different reward coupons. One of the six allows the teacher to pick a "surprise" reward. This allows you to really do anything you need to or want to do for that reward.

I don't know about your school but where I work, we have to cover/take down any anchor charts or posters that would provide our students with help during testing. I hate this because the environment of the room changes. The colors and text rich classroom essentially disappears! So I made these positive posters to help encourage my little test takers. You never know when they need some positive encouragement to not give up! Another little resource I provided in the unit is a poem to send home the night before the test. Sometime nerves get the best of us, so I made some ready confetti and poem to give your students the day before. That night they will ready it and hopefully get a good nights sleep, stress free. {Please believe, this one might just be for me! =)}

After all the testing is over and your students have truly tested their best, I have made a little trail mix party for them! There are signs to post in your classroom, ingredient labels and treat bags! In addition I have included sheets for tracking ingredients hard working tester earn! Just another way you could choose to motive your students! I provide trail mix suggestions and meanings for each ingredient. You can use my suggestions or create your own trail mix ingredients.

Okay, so this resource is just because I wanted to keep things motivating and fun during the actual testing week. I want to use this a relaxing cool down after the test each day. I plan on reading one or two of the campfire riddles for the students to try and infer what ingredient they think is being described! I have included student guessing sheets with each riddle on them so you can tally votes and see who infers correctly. The riddles focus on the eight ingredients I suggest in the unit. However, I provide blank slides that you can use to create riddles for additional ingredients you wish to use.

That pretty much does it! I am so excited to start this unit with my students! As the activities start to unfold in my classroom, I will try to post about it. However, I love to add photos of classroom happenings on my Instagram. So if you follow me on there you might get more sneak peeks!

I am creating read aloud lessons to accompany the camping theme! So be on a look out for this unit!

Coming Soon!!

Have a great week and happy teaching!