Drum Roll Please.... The Daily Centers Classroom Pack is Complete!

Okay, it is official, I have finished my Daily Centers Classroom Pack! Can I get a Hallelujah?! =) So I am going to get right to the products to show you everything that I offered in these two units! I am beyond excited to show you! I think you will be happy with what I created.

So up first is the Daily Centers Classroom Pack! This unit offers 7 different center materials! There are behavior webs for every center in this unit but they are not editable. However,  there is a blank set in color and in black and white. If you want the editable version hold tight that is up next! So, first up is the independent reading center.

For this center materials I have created a vocabulary poster for the word independent. I wanted to make this point clear to the students. They need to understand that this is not buddy reading. In addition to that I have made three different reading logs. There is one reading log that focuses on reading strategies for both fiction and nonfiction. Then I created one for just fiction and one for just nonfiction. To hold students accountable, I also made several different exit tickets that students can use when reading independently. If you are looking for something more that what is offered here you can check out my Interactive Reading Response Unit by clicking on the picture below!

Next is the reading partners center. I have to tell you I went totally CRA.A.ZY with this center. Check it out!

 

So I made 11, yes I said 11 different comprehension checks! These are called check for comprehension! I added tons of thinking stems for reading strategies. Each of the 8 comprehension checks focuses on one reading strategy with one thinking stem. These skills are questioning, determining importance, visualizing, predicting, inferring, synthesizing,  main idea, and a genre check. Then there is a nonfiction feature, story element, and summarizing checkmark to round out the last 3. I wanted to stick with the vocabulary theme so I included a partner definition. A Partner bookmark, EEKK poster along with how to choose a good partner posters are included. Finally, I created 2 different exit tickets: one that focuses on the buddy and one that allows them to respond to what they have read.

 

In the listening center I have included some labels to help organize your center supplies. I made labels numbered from 1-6 with headphones, seat, and circled numbers. This will help you set up and organize all of the materials for your students. There is also a step-by-step poster to help them get the listening center started. Last, there is six different response sheets for students to use after they finish listening to a story or during listening. There is both fiction and nonfiction response sheets.

 

Okay, I went a little crazy in this center too! Here you will have your students choose from 7 different writing activities. Of course you do not have to display them all at once. You could introduce new options over some time or you can display them all at once. There are many different writing projects your students can work on. I have provided examples on each poster and templates for each as well. You can use you paper, notecards, and other materials, but templates are provided for you, if you need them.

 

For the word work center in this unit there are many materials that can be used with many different words. There are 6 different worksheets that have the students use many different skills . There is also a poster for materials that students can use when at this center. I created matching labels so you can label all of your materials for students to use. Last I made letter cards in case you didn't have any in your classroom. I made the vowels red so that they stand out from the other letters. I also have a word work unit for sale where students play boggle and scrabble in one! You can check that unit out below!

 

Another center that I have included materials for is in the computer center! I have made computer labels to number each computer in your classroom. I also made a poster where students can look to know what programs they were allowed to go to when they were on the computer. I labeled the poster with a must-do and a can-do section. Last there are computer log-in cards that you can use so your students can log in to any program without help! There will be no more students wondering what they can do when they are on the computer.

 

The last of the 7 center materials is checkout books. I know that some teachers make this part of their center time and others do it as a morning routine. Whatever the time you allow your students to get new books these materials will help your checkout system. I love how it allows students to mark the spot that they get a book with the numbered clothespins so that my library stays organized. It is definitely time effective and cost efficient! This might be a system that you'd like to try!

Now to show you what's in the Daily Centers Management and Expectations Pack! This pack has tons of customizable options so you can label anything you want.

 

I have made editable behavior webs for your centers. I labeled some of the webs with the center name but left the bubbles blank for you to fill in with expected behaviors. However if you do not like the label I used for the center name you are still able to enter in the name as well as the expected behaviors in the bubble! So you can totally customize your behavior webs!  I have also created 22 center signs for you to use in your classroom. But again if you do not want these sayings you can type in your own. There are 8 different colors to choose from! Oh, and I almost forgot I have added clip art to the posters so every center can have a visual representation!

 

Next, I made rotation cards for you to use in your classrooms. Again I have added clipart and the ability for you to edit each. I made two styles: a mini version of the posters and round rotation cards for letter abbreviations. There are many different  tracking sheet options for you to use in order to keep track of the choices your students make. Hey, they have to be held accountable! One of the sheets has the option where you can type in student names as well as create a custom key for your centers.

 

There are also many fun tools in the is unit to use when introducing and running your centers. One of my favorites is the Daily do and Daily don't interactive sticks. When you are modeling and going over expected behaviors your students can use these interactive sticks to show their thinking! It is a great way to get everyone involved in the process. I also have stamina materials, awards for great behavior and materials for checking in.

Lastly, I have created a voice level management tool! I made a mini poster as well as elements to create a larger classroom poster. In order to make sure the students keep this volume level at their center I have created little labels for you to place at each center. You can edit them to say whatever center name you want. I hope this keeps things consistent in my room as well as yours!

If you are interested in purchasing these units you can click on the unit cover below and it will take you to my TpT store!

Have a great night everyone! Can you believe that on Monday I will be heading back into the classroom!? At least I will have a week before the kids get there!

A Daily 5 Update, Other News and My Very First Linky Party!

Okay so, is it me or does summer seem to be slipping through my fingertips? I so much enjoyed this last week of sleeping in, watching movies, and getting some sun. I know that I still have two weeks until I head back for preplanning, but I have a busy next 2 weeks. So you can bet I am going to eat up as much of the summer as I can.

So onto my update on the Daily 5 freebie. This past week I scoured the internet for computer as well as classroom library ideas. I wanted the things that I included in the unit to be useful to every classroom. Mostly I was on the hunt for book checkout ideas and procedures. Making the computer items wasn't that bad because a lot of the ideas I used are things that I do in my classroom already. I just made them match my new inspiring color theme.=)

 

 

For my "Checkout New Books" section of the unit I first want to let you know where my inspiration is coming from! I need to give credit where credit is due! So, I found some super cute library sticks from A First Grade Frenzy and from A Cupcake for the Teacher. If you click on their names it will take you to their posts about their library sticks. However, I do not have time or the energy these days to make their super cute wooden library sticks. So, mine will be out of cardstock and lamination! =) Hey, then they can double as bookmarks when they are not using them to look for books. Second, I found this genius idea for helping kids remember where to put their books back. It is from Teaching Is a Work of Heart and she has the kids put close pins on the baskets from where they found their book. I just loved this idea and so I created matching number circles that I will attach to close pins for the kids to use. Also, the amount of close pins they have is how many books they will be allowed to have in their book basket. Love this! So this ends up being a management tool as well a way to keep your library in order!

 

 

Okay so now for some news and questions with my Daily 5 unit. This past week as I was checking things in my TpT store I stumbled upon some news about copyright issues they are having with the "Sisters" from The Daily 5. The sisters have asked that anyone who is SELLING Daily 5 materials to remove it from their store otherwise it will be a copyright issue. Anything that is free and is not being profited on is okay as long as they are credited {Check}. So I have to make a few adjustments to my Daily 5 unit. Here is what is changing:

1. The unit is no longer called Daily 5 Classroom Unit, this unit will be called Daily Centers Classroom Pack.

2. I have had many requests to add center posters and rotation cards for other common center names such as, "Buddy Reading", "Creative Writing" and "Word Work" to name a few. With that being said, the posters that will be offered in this unit will have the more traditional wording on them not the wording of the 2 sisters. That wording will be found only in my Daily 5 freebie.

3. All of the activities and resources that I have previewed are staying in the unit. These are ideas that do not come from the Daily 5 and will remain in the unit.

4. If I come across something that I feel can not go into the unit it will be added to the Daily 5 freebie so that you can still have access to things I have shared.

5. I -Charts are part of the Daily 5 even though I used my own idea in creating a web design to feature the different expectations, the wording is from the sisters. So this is changing. I am going to be making this a separate pack called "Center Expectations Pack" which will be editable. Meaning you can type in what you want. I am excited and nervous about making this because I have never done this before. Any tips and tricks for doing this would be appreciated! I know how I like to have things typed so I didn't feel comfortable not offering this. The blank color and grayscale webs will still be in the Daily Centers Classroom Pack.

6. Last, I have a question. A few teachers have asked if I am going to make this into individual units to sell. Is this something that interests you? Or are you looking for the entire unit? Right now I am only going to offer The Daily Centers Classroom Pack and the Center Expectations Pack. Let me know your thoughts.

Please do not worry! I promise that you will have access to any and all things I have shared. Meaning if it is not in my unit for you to purchase it will be in my freebie. I will also be posting a detailed post on August 8th about the unit as well as any changes I have made. You will know everything.

Alright, enough about that. So recently I have finished my mystery unit. I am not even going to mention how long it took me to finish this one. Oh. My. I think it just might have been a month or so! So after its long awaited arrival, you can now pick up a copy of my newest unit called, LA Case File Full of Suspense." It focuses on the mystery genre. There a tons of great activities to get your students reading as well as comprehending mysteries. Take a look.

One of the key ingredients for making your students understand a mystery is through the vocabulary. I tie all the vocabulary terms to the familiar story elements. So this is building on their background knowledge. Also each vocabulary word has the word, definition and picture to represent it. These definitions are very kid-friendly and different from the ones that Beth Newingham uses. I find those too hard for my students! This is from experience of course. I offer tons of different lessons and organizers to get your students familiar with these mystery terms! One of my favorites is the spyglass craftivity.  Here is a close up. It is a mini flip book for the story elements and it is in the shape of a spyglass. This has also evolved over the years. I started out with a small version that didn't work because my students couldn't get all the information on there. Lets just say it was a HOT MESS and leave it at that. So I have enlarged it a lot and added space for pictures as well as words. I used scrapbook paper and construction paper to make the spyglass. The pages to the book are regular copy paper.

In this unit you will also find templates for your students to write their own mystery. I have to be honest here, when my students get to write their own mysteries all of my writers do fantastic. Even my struggling writers that have trouble with story structure, finding a topic they know about, or just being motivated to write, do so well with this. They truly get so excited to write their own mysteries.

Every year to close up our unit on mysteries the whole second grade team does a real mystery. Things start to disappear from our rooms and guess who comes to the rescue? Our 2nd grade detectives! It is so much fun. So I have included a class mystery for you to do with your students. It gets them putting all those hard-earned skills to work and lets them have a ton of fun in the process.

Another part of my mystery unit is mystery story element wands. I am excited to have included them. Students just love these wands and they are focused on the mystery vocabulary words as well as comprehension skills. I made questioning, inferring, predicting, and synthesizing wands that included thinking stems. This makes it easy for the students to share their thinking.

This unit offers so much. I think my favorite part has to be the Detective files as well as the spyglass craftivity! I have used both of these things in my classroom for 3 years now. I have improved on them and made it such a fun part of the unit. your students will just love being detectives. For the case file there are 14 different color options. I did this because I made some case files for individual students, "Dynamite Detectives," or some case files for pairs of students, "Detective Duos!" So their mysteries can be solved as buddies or independently! On the back of the case file they will keep their detective tools. These is really just a fun way to get the students to use reading strategies. There are 5 different tools, which are sticky notes, detective badge, highlighter, spy glass, and a flashlight. All have a purpose for helping students solve their mystery. These case files have really transformed over the years and I am really proud of how they turned out. They come in handy to store students books, papers, and other materials you may have in them. That way everything is in one place.

The last thing I have today is my very first Linky Party! I am so excited and nervous all at the same time. I got to thinking the other day and one thing that I always do every year before the kids come is think about 3 things I want to do this year. So I started thinking about what other teachers strive for every new school year. Then I made a connection {oh look at this, I'm using my strategies} to New Year's Resolutions and this was born:

So here is how it works. One of the best parts about our job is that every year you have time to reflect on your previous year and make changes to better ourselves as teachers.  As I got to thinking I noticed that I always seem to focus on 3 common areas when making goals for the new school year.

1. Teaching Techniques

2. Organization

3. Student Oriented

After I realized this I thought that these areas would be a great focus for this linky. There is going to be three areas in which you will think about a goal you want to set for yourself in the up and coming school year. After you make your goals you can use the sign that I posted above in your post. I have also made a fun little template if you want to use it but that is not required. Here are some questions to get you thinking about things.

1. What new teaching techniques are you excited to try with your students? This can be new or old techniques that you want to give a second try.

2. Having an organized classroom makes your day run smoothly. What areas in your classroom need some organization attention? How do you plan on organizing it?

3. Our students are the reason we love our jobs. What is one way you want to help your students this year? This one is very broad and can really be anything. I made this one easy.

So that's all I have for you! Make sure you link up below so I can read all your inspiring resolutions!  Also, if you want the template that I used you can get it below.  Have a great week!

Daily 5: Chapter 6 and Summer School Rewind

This week is my first week of Summer! Okay not really, but that is how it feels since I have been teaching summer reading camp. I have to say nothing is quite as nice as sleeping in and having a PJ day! But then....

the bad day virus came around and ruined my plans! That was how I wanted to start my day/ summer vacation yesterday but I guess life had a different plan for me! As I started writing this post and putting all my Daily 5 documents together something awful happened. My program stopped responding and once I finally got it up and running again EVERY-SINGLE-THING  was G-O-N-E! Gone. My husband actually had to e-mail someone {I donno who} to send me my document! Thank you Mark, he really is a life saver and I don't know what I would do without him. So I spent hours upon hours fixing everything in the Daily 5 unit {can anyone say freakout moment}. So if you are wondering why I didn't post yesterday, now you know.

In all the upset I was able to still add my new word work unit to my TpT store as well as add some pages to the Daily 5 freebie. I hate missing a scheduled deadline so I had to figure out how to get everyone their freebies! That was one positive note from yesterday. If you haven't grabbed your new freebies yet, just click on the picture below to head over to my TpT store. If you spot any "oops moments" in the new freebies just let me know, I have been a little scattered.

Anyways onto a much needed subject change! I can now post about chapter 6 of the Daily 5 {well at least some parts of it}! This chapter took me a while to complete because of all the great ideas out there! Seriously, I think it took me a whole day of just looking at pictures and ideas of different writing centers and word work centers. Personally, I think that writing is such an important part of the reading block so naturally I was so excited to read this chapter. Students need to understand the connection that reading and writing play in their everyday lives. It makes the purpose for reading as well as writing more likable and achievable.  So many times I start my year with students that have never seen a plan, have never written a story they feel proud of, or just plane Dread {with a capital D} writing! I know why they dread it, it is because;

1. They have never been able to find tools that help them write.

2. Understood the purpose and joy of writing {which isn't to fill the page to the bottom with meaningless words}.

3. Learned that when you write for enjoyment, you are not just a writer, but a story teller!

I really enjoy teaching the writing workshop and once my kids start to see that writing isn't a dreaded time during the day, they too become wonderful story tellers. They grin from ear to ear when it is their day to share their writing pieces with me. I truly love this one-on-one time with my students. Okay, so I went on a little detour there but I'm back now! =)

Back to chapter 6. This chapter ended up being just another great excuse to squeeze some writing into the day. Currently I have two writing centers in my classroom, both from Lakeshore, which is a teacher supply store that I love. If you click on the pictures below it will take you right to the product listing. I like these two centers for a lot of reasons.

1. I didn't have to create anything myself.  I love to make things myself but let's be honest sometimes grab and pay is the way to go. =)

2.They were easy for the students to read and follow the directions.

3. They held the student's accountable.

The writing pockets have 3 different prompts on each pocket, topic cards with related vocabulary and pictures. This center is great for my ELL and language impaired students.

The Write and Publish center has step-by-step directions, already made templates and writing activities for the students to publish. This is great because they can publish something every time they visit this center.

Sorry for all the number listing. I don't know why I had to do that twice. I guess I had some important points. lol!

So knowing what I have and knowing what I wanted was helpful in this chapter. I wanted the students to be able to edit as well as create common forms of "write communication." I wanted them to feel the purpose for writing at this center.  So check out the materials I have made for "Work on Writing." Like always not everything you see here will be in the freebie. If you are interested in the full unit, it will be available on August 8th! BTW- thank you to all of you that have sent such sweet e-mails and comments to me! You all are the reason why I love to give things away and really why I have made such a large freebie. Thank you.

Okay onto working with words. So this part of the unit I struggled with. I wanted to create materials that could be used in any classroom so I decided to go with common worksheets that are easy to play as a whole class {this is great for the day that you want to teach the class how to play the game} as well as can be used with any words. So I think you will be happy with the worksheets I have made. There is actually 6 worksheets included in the unit but I have to recreate them so you can see 4 of them for now.

In addition to this I have also created a Boggle/Scrabble working with words center game! Let me just tell you that I am really excited to use this in my classroom and to offer it to all of you. I have seen so many of these games on Pinterest I just couldn't help myself.  You play the game like the original Boggle but the letter cards that you use to make words are Scrabble letters {the ones with a number value in the corner} So there are two awesome parts to this game. Students make words using the letters from the Boggle game cards and then add their letter values together to get a word total! Two skills in one!  If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself click on the picture below.

I also have some exciting news for the Daily 5 Freebie! I am creating a Spanish version! Yep you heard right! A Spanish version. Okay so no I don't speak or write in Spanish, however one of my sweet followers and teacher, Christina Lopez had asked if I would be willing to create her a Spanish version if she translated it. So I thought, how cool is this, and said, "Yes" right away! So here is a sneak peak at the cover! So if you are interested in a Spanish version it will be available to download at my TpT store when it is completed. I mean, I just love working with fellow teachers out there. It really is amazing how blogging lets us connect to one another.

I have also made another few additions to the unit through some requests from teachers out there. They are not finished yet since I had to redo them all {deep breath} so they should be ready by next week. If there is anything else that you are wanting and have not seen in the unit previews, please contact me about it and I will see what I can do.

Topic switch! Since I am finished teaching summer school and all of my students finished making their animal research projects I wanted to share with you what they created. They all turned out so great, I am really proud of all their hard work.

These next few pages I have quoted some of my favorite sentences from their work!

Finally, before I call it a day I wanted to Link up with Amy Lemons "Tell Me More, Tell Me More" post to share some random facts about myself! Click on the image below to see who else has linked up! I know I am.

1. I always take a FULL glass of ice water to bed, even though 9 times out of 10 I will only drink a few sips. =) Hey, you never know when you are going to get thirsty when sleeping!

2. I used to rock the bangs when I was growing up! It wasn't until I graduated High School that I decided they had to go. I used to hair spray those bad boys stiff! lol!

3. I don't like to eat ham, apple sauce, cottage cheese, or seafood {I am allergic to shell fish so that is partly the reason for seafood}.

4.I am obsessed with weddings. I loved my wedding so much and I love to look at any wedding photos I can get my hands on.

5. I am scared of spiders. I usually yell for Mark to kill anything that looks, moves, or hangs like a spider.

6. I want to visit all the special places here in the United States. There are so many wonderful things in our country to see and experience. I loved our trip to the Grand Canyon.

Well, I think that is all for today. I hope everyone is having a better start to their week, because I sure had a downer of a day yesterday. Wishing for a better week ahead.