Flash Freebie - One Hour to Go!

Sometimes I get bored on a Sunday night - not that there isn't stuff to do around the house... there is always stuff to do around the house...

So I get on Facebook... and I ask my friends what I should put up for free for an hour or so...

Tonight a nice person commented that my memory book would be a good idea, so it's free until 8:30 PST.  Just click the link above to head over to TPT.  

If you download please leave some nice feedback for me.  :)

Hope this helps someone.  

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Free and Easy Earth Day Pins

Need an idea for tomorrow's Earth Day?  I have been busy looking at Pinterest last week finding ideas to spice up my day.  Here are ones that I found that are free and/or easy crafts.  With all of these images, just click and it should head over to my Pinterest board (Holidays in School), and from there you can go onto the real links.    

Free Earth Day Writing - My class did the top one on Friday when we were listening to our group presentations on how they can protect the Earth.  

Free Task Cards - I'm planning on doing this by table groups tomorrow.  Groups will brainstorm together.  

Flip books are always fun.  

Hope this helped someone.  There are other ideas over on my boards, but this post was getting pretty long.  :)  

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Grade Level Team Gifts

Had to share what I posted last night on FB.  

I know, I know - the second post of the day - it's okay, really!  Just breathe!

I love personalized presents and wanted to do something special for my 

grade level team since we have all had QUITE THE YEAR with our darlings. 

A T-shirt was out of the question since we would never wear it to school, a mug was out of the question since we really don't need anymore mugs... or else we would feel the need to hide it.

So, I found these medals over at Oriental Trading Company.  

There are many styles to choose from on the front, but the back is completely customizable.  

The front of ours will say "Victory", and the back is what is shown above.

I had 3 lines, but I just couldn't bring myself to add anything more to it.

I'm understated like that. 

Totally worth the $4.25 each. 

Hope you are having a great day!!

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Incentive Banners

Today I'm linking up again with Head Over Heels for Teaching to 

share another thing I do in my classroom.  

Incentive Banners!

I love them.  They are fun, exciting, and they work!  

I used to just draw the dashes on the board to spell out a treat - but then I would usually forget what I was spelling, or I would accidentally erase it and have to start all over again... so this year I decided to make some sayings/words/phrases up for my students to spell.  

So far this year my students have spelled "Be Merry" from Tara's banner in December.

Then we spelled out "Snowman" in January.

After that we spelled out "Dream" for Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday. 

Then we spelled out "Love Bug" for February.

For March we spelled out "Easter Egg".

Coming back from Easter I was so into Test Prep that I didn't even realize I didn't have another word to spell until one of my sweet kiddos asked me the other day what our next word would be... and I automatically said "Popsicle".  I guess I really wanted a popsicle at that moment since my air conditioning wasn't working very well and it just seemed rather refreshing... so because of my promise to my student that was the next banner I made up.

Now, just because I'm putting a sweet treat on the banner does not mean that I'm going to give them sugar when they spell it out.  In the past times the class has earned class tickets, a homework pass, new pencils, or a little extra PAT on Friday.  Something that doesn't cost me anything out of pocket - but they still want it!

I have seen how incentive banners motivate my unruly, hyped up children, and I wanted to share the love.  Call it a I'm-so-happy-I'm-done-with-testing present.  It's a freebie in my store!

With all my banners I make the circles 2 sizes - a smaller size that fits 2 letters per sheet, and also a larger one letter per sheet.  The smaller size works great to put at the top of my whiteboard when I'm spelling out the words/phrases, the larger one I sometimes use on my door for decoration or on a bulletin board for a craft & writing project.

I hope this helps someone!

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Five for Friday

Hi all.  Hope you had a great day today!  I did - because it was the last day of testing!!!!

All those months of stress just washed away.  Now it's time for fun and projects and centers (and cleaning all my cabinets, and reorganizing, etc...)

Today I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching to share my 5 random moments from the week.  Please forgive that I don't have many pictures - I couldn't with the test in class.    

1.  I had to wake a kid up during state testing.  This has never happened to me before, but the child fell asleep around #23 and needed to be woken up to finish.  I then watched the child randomly fill in bubbles for the rest of the days answers without turning a single page in the book.   

2.  A student filled in a sample question with blue ink.  The rest of everything was already in pencil, so because of that one little bubble the child had to fill in all 124 answers again on another scantron.  It was a very odd moment... wondering, why????

3.  I loved my extra long recess that we gave the students to celebrate working hard.  Usually our recess is 15 minutes, but since they were all playing so nicely, and all of us teachers were enjoying adult conversation after having been cooped up in the classroom for hours upon hours... it turned into a 40 minute one.  

4.  I waited approx. 30 seconds after collecting the tests to have the students move their desks into groups.  Testing rows be gone for a year!

5.  My students shaped their clay poppies today.  On Monday we will be celebrating Earth Day and we will be painting them (in addition to planting, etc.)

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Fourth Grade Common Core Resources

Guess what 4th grade teachers?  Look what I found!

Common Core State Standards is having a free giveaway for bloggers using Blogger and WordPress.  I don't know of other grade levels since this was emailed to me directly, but I would imagine they have other grade levels handy as well.

The free giveaway ends April 21st, 2013 - so make sure to check it out soon.  

What's the free giveaway?  The ebook Fourth Grade Common Core Resources looks like a great resource for Fourth Grade Teachers.  It has over 850 pages of worksheets, activity centers, and posters that help to teach the Fourth Grade CCSS - both ELA and Math.  I'm excited about it since next year my district is adopting the standards - I want the transition to be as easy as possible.  The idea of having so many resources available that will help my students when my old textbooks will be outdated is making me giddy!  

Want a free book too?  Click the above links to take you to their website, but hurry!  

Time is running out.  :)    

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Writing Workshop: Remembering Rainbow Edit

Yay!  It's more Writing Workshop Ideas with Ideas by Jivey.

My absolute favorite lesson of the year would have to be my Rainbow Edit introduction lesson.  I don't start the year using Rainbow Edit - we work on making sure our paragraphs are complete sentences to begin the year, but by October it's time to move into a full Rainbow Edit mode.  

What's Rainbow Edit?  

It's a way to make sure the kiddos remember to check for everything in each sentence of each paragraph - it creates a visual during the editing/revising stage of the Writing Process.

Each color corresponds with a different thing for them to color on their rough drafts.  If it's not there, they have to add it in or fix it.  Each sentence should have a rainbow.

Here is our simple whole class paragraph - I wanted something relatively quick so we could practice Rainbow Edit.  

So basically my lesson is writing a full class paragraph - mine on chart paper, they have the same one written on binder paper.  We brainstorm together, then write together.  

After that we use a handy dandy key to figure out what color to use.  We go in order of the rainbow, using the same color throughout the entire paragraph before we move onto the next one.  Some kids choose to underline the specific parts of the sentence, others trace over their pencil marks.  I tell them that either way is fine, we just have to be able to read their writing when they are done.  

We tackle all the capitals in the entire paragraph first - coloring them red.

  

Then we go through with orange and make notice of 

all the end punctuation marks. 

After that comes coloring in the indent space with yellow, and 

then underlining our topic sentence with green - making sure to 

draw a box around our key words.

 

Blue means that we notice adjectives and examples in our writing.  

If a sentence doesn't have an adjective then they need to add at least one in.  

Last they go through and circle/underline any words they aren't positive they 

know how to spell.  Then they look it up.

It's pretty simple, and for the first lesson everyone is excited, especially 

since they get to use colors during writing time.  

If you are interested in my Rainbow Edit packet of materials it is over in my TPT store.  It contains a student full binder sheet, half sheets, posters, explanation, and a rainbow to fill in.  

Hope you have a great day! :)

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