Tuesday Made It

Oops! The days are getting away from me. Last week was spent on a family vacation with my hubby, parents, sister, and her family. And by family vacation I mean that we enjoyed our time at a beach house and on the beach between bouts of the stomach virus. We passed that stuff around like nobody's business and the only person who didn't end up sick was my hubby! A little disappointing, but we will get over it and laugh about it one day. Hopefully soon.

So now for Monday Made It! It's my favorite! Please excuse my tardiness. If you would like to see the rest of the link up, click on the Monday Made It icon below. But don't do that until you read my post! 

I have been recovering from the above-mentioned sickness and doing some work this week, and my TPT project is what I am most excited about! You must check it out! It is a collection of Task cards to introduce the Seesaw App to your classrooms. Each card has a fun getting to know you (or getting to know the classroom) task on it plus some step by step instructions. If you have the App already and know how to use it, the only prep you need to do is to print these Task Cards out! If not, you will have some downloading and exploring to do, but I think this product can help you with that.

Ok, I didn't make anything yet, but I scored these signs from the Dollar Spot at Target. Any ideas of what I should do with them? Other than "stop buying stuff that you don't have ideas for already"? Ha!


XOXO,
Stephanie

Monday Made It!

I have a new product in my store! It's something simple you could use for a variety of grade levels and small group, centers, or full group settings. My kids enjoy reading fairy tales, and they especially love giving advice to other people...so enter Fairy Tale Advice letters! The product includes several formats for student response (scaffolded for use of commas and frames) and include eight different requests for advice from common fairy tale characters. Check it out!  

I recently have begun making some of my own cleaning and laundry products. It's my effort to save money and get a little healthier with the chemicals I am introducing into my home. My sister requested that I make her a set, which is what is pictured above! Here are a few links for the recipes I've used so far:

Shower Cleaner

Dusting Spray

Fabric Refresher

Counter Spray

I love love love these clipboards I made for my students at the end of the year! I hope they will treasure them for years to come. I used Tagul.com to create the word clouds, and simply mod podged them to the clipboards. For the word clouds, I included each student's name, the name of our school, class, and mascot, along with adjectives that I think describe them best. Voila! 

Our Movie Review Celebration

In writing, my students have been working on Movie Reviews. I posted a week ago about some good YouTube examples and a little bit of info about the Let's Go To The Movies unit I sell on TPT.

Today, we had a celebration! I meant for us to do this last week, but since everyone wanted to type their final drafts and we only have four computers, we had to postpone a bit.

It was a super simple celebration. Sometimes that's all it takes. Actually, I'd venture to say that MOST times, that's all it takes!

We did a "museum walk" to share. Then, students gave out a few "Movie Tickets" to compliment the writers. We had a little lesson before this to be sure that the compliment was related to the writer's craft, and not the reader's personal opinion of the movie.

So, for example:
I want to see your movie because you said it's full of action and I love action movies.
...is a way to give feedback to the reader, not:
I want to see this movie because I love this movie!

Finally, I passed out popcorn for students to enjoy as they read their compliments and pieces again (they love reading those beautifully typed-out pieces!).

It was so nice to begin our week with a little writing celebration!

Dig Deeply Series

Hi everyone! For the past few months, I have been creating, refining, and posting new units as a part of a series called Dig Deeply Into Math: Higher Order Thinking.

I've been taking it slowly, as I have been testing these products in my own classroom. Why do I think you would be interested? Well, keep reading:

Each product takes the Common Core standard and stretches it. Take a look at this example from the multiplication unit. Students aren't just solving problems, but they must move on to connecting them to a real life story, and then choosing the best strategy for solving it.

An Example from the Multiplication Unit

Each activity offers the opportunity for tiered work. Struggling students may not be ready to do each piece, and that's ok! Their work on any portion is valid as practice or assessment toward the standard.

And Finally.


My favorite part.


Each activity has a specific assessment checklist. 
Need I say more? In my classroom, students use these to self-assess, which is such a powerful way to make students leaders of their own learning.

An Example from the Addition and Subtraction unit. 

So check out this collection by grabbing a unit in my store! OR buy the growing bundle now!

Addition and Subtraction
Money
Time
Multiplication

My Growing Bundle!

Gooney Bird Greene

Calling all 2nd grade teachers: if you have never read Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry, do yourself a favor and go check it out right now!

Gooney Bird is a precocious and unique 2nd grader with a knack for telling stories about her life. All of her outrageous (at first) stories are filled with suspense and include a surprise ending (which turns the outrageous sounding story into a perfectly reasonable one).

During my first year of teaching, a friend of mine told me about this wonderful book. My second year, I kicked off narrative writing with this wonderful text and have not looked back since!

Today, my class finished up publishing their first big narrative piece.

I'm so proud of their work! They spent time revising, drafting, crafting, and self assessing this one piece. We finished up the book weeks ago, but Gooney Bird has continued to be a mentor to the class as writers. 

The checklist we built and revised together. 

A simple anchor chart to help us remember how to zoom in.

I created a unit of ideas and resources to use this book in your own narrative writing unit, and I have it on sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store right now! It includes a read aloud guide, rubrics, writing paper, crafting aids, skills practice, possible NB entries, and a game. I try to keep things pretty open ended by offering a variety of ways to approach the different skills that are gleaned from this mentor text. I also include different types of writing paper and levels of rubrics.

I really hope you'll check out this book and find a way to use it in your classroom! Have a great week!

 

TPT Seller Challenge: Dare to Dream

I'm continuing to link up with the TPT seller challenge. This week, we are all sharing our goals and dreams for our TPT business.

This blogging, selling, and connecting is HARD WORK. I knew it would be, which is why it took me so long to finally jump on the TPT and blogging train. Because it's such hard work, it's easy to see that the teachers who are joining up must be doing it for a reason!

So, here are a few reasons I am on this journey:

1. Sharpen: I want to improve and sharpen my own practice. When I create products for TPT, I am creating well designed and fully thought out products that I use in my classroom. They are organized, beautiful, creative, and include things like real life connections and differentiation. In addition, blogging and being in contact with other teachers has helped me learn more about what is going on in the world of education while also reflecting on my own practice.

2. Save: I'm getting married in October, and I want to save money for our future dreams. We hope to buy a house soon, and who knows what we might need some extra money for: a down payment? A renovation of some sort? Just a fresh coat of paint? Or hiring people to come move us (and by us I mean my massive pull out couch)? I want to contribute to our dreams with the extra income from TPT!

3. Supplement: This is sort of a long term goal. At some point down the road, I would love to grow my TPT business enough to be flexible with my work as a teacher. Ok, actually writing that down seems kind of scary...Anyways...my sister works part time right now as a school speech therapist so she can be at home with her babies, and I think I would love that option when the time comes. It's been really neat to see some of the teachers I've "met" online be able to supplement their income with TPT.


I can't wait to hear about everyone else's dreams! Happy Monday, y'all!