Five for Friday 5/29/15

Okay, so Friday has come and gone, but it is still a great time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

This week has a little bit of a family theme.

Last weekend we visited the science museum. We now have a membership, so I have a feeling we will be going there a lot this summer. Here are some of the creative things the kids were doing...

First she wanted to draw the flowers - can't really see them, they to the left of the picture. Then, she wanted to make a list of everything she saw on the flower. We didn't know what one part of the flower was, so we looked it up. Such a smartie!

After examining the flowers, she was ready to build!

Meanwhile, I had a momma eagle playing in the other room. The best part was that the kids would all "flap" their wings while they ran around. It was adorable, and, of course, I didn't get a good picture.

This was the highlight for the boys! You can tell they are all scared because they are in a Megalodon's jaws.

One not-so-fun part of our week was the fact that my brother-in-law is dealing with some pretty nasty side effects from his recent stem cell transplant. We sent him some goodies to cheer him up. It is hard to tell, but the stuffed animal is a big foot. This was sent because my daughter won it in a claw game, and claw games are my brother-in-law's specialty.

If you have a minute, please send some healing thoughts out into the universe. We want him back on his feet soon, so my sister and he can get to work on some nieces and nephews for me.

I just love how awesome my kids are at creative play. This is a neighborhood. They are so detailed in their playing/storytelling!

My sister-in-law's family recently purchased a ski boat. We were lucky enough to get invited out on a sunny day! My kids are hooked. First question today was, "Can we go out on the boat?" Second question, "When are we getting a boat?"

I am definitely looking forward to many fun days on the water with our fun family this summer!

And finally, as a thank you to all of you who are reading my blog, I have a flash freebie!

Grab it from Teachers pay Teachers while you can! Usually $3, but free for the next 24 hours or so! Thank you for reading. Please, follow the blog to be the first to hear about new products, new ideas, and freebies!

Summer Blog Hop

You will have to wait a little while longer to read the Planning by the Pool Blog Hop, but lucky for you, you can still join in being a contributor! Just grab the picture below, and send me the link to your post. I will e-mail you with the post you need to link up to. Happy blogging!

My Goals for the Summer

So, I am staying up way too late to link up with I Heart Grade 3 for her weekly summer link-up. This week's topic: Goals for the Summer. Let me tell you, I have quite a few, and they are big!

1. Write Curriculum for Next Year

Yep, that's right. Write curriculum. Why on Earth would I have to do that, you ask. Well, our district does not provide curriculum. We have this weird online portal they are building that has links to different resources and lessons, but that just doesn't work for me, so I am making my own. Well, as much as I can.

This year we decided to use Engage NY for math, and I really liked it for a lot of reasons. However, I also really didn't like it for a lot of reasons too. I have already made my new math plan, and while it doesn't work in the same order as Engage NY, I will be using a lot of their ideas. 

Luckily, for reading and writing, I have been creating a lot this year, so I will just have to pull from resources I have already created.

2. Vegas, Baby!

Not really a goal, but I am so excited for Vegas! It is going to be a huge whirlwind because we are only coming in for two days (one night!). I still need to get my stuff ordered... I guess that is a goal...

3. Up My Performance on Teacher's pay Teachers

Teachers pay Teachers has been so good to me. It is a blessing in my life for so many reasons. However, I really neglected it last year while I was pregnant, and I didn't see the growth I was capable of. 

Now it is time to nurture my little store again and get back to business! I have a dream that someday my husband will be able to stay home and take care of our many, many kids. I know I can make that happen if I stick with it!

4. Start a Video Presence

I have been wanting to add a video presence to my TpT Universe for a long time, but it is really hard to shoot videos with four kids running around - well, you know, three running and one crawling. I am really committed to getting this videos made this summer. We are hiring two, yes, two, babysitters to watch the kids, so I can take care of business.

Well, I am super-pumped for summer now! It is like ten months long, right? Anyway, thanks for reading! Be sure to click on the picture at the top of this post to visit the linky and read all about everyone else's summer goals!

Friday's News

Well, I am either very late or a little early for linking up with RClassroomsRUs for Friday's News, but I just learned about this link up and I was too excited not to participate right away!

I really love linkies where all I have to do is share what I have been up to this week because that is about all I can process right now.

We are smack in the middle of testing season - my lesson plans just seem to be filled with tests. Insert sad face here. However, a bright spot was this test review activity that the kids got really excited about.

This is an old activity my mentor teacher taught me many years ago. Kids are given some math problems and have to work as a group to solve them. Sounds pretty boring, right? Wrong! The team that gets the most right first wins... Skittles!

That turned this semi-boring test prep activity into one of the best things we have done all year! My kids were so focused that a volunteer mom knocked on our door three times and no one heard her. This is not because they were loud - they were actually really quiet! Everyone was just that focused. Or she was a quiet knocker...

This is the only picture I took. I wish I had taken more! But can we all just admire the fact that at a table of four kids, here are all four kids actively involved in the assignment?! I LOVE these guys!

I wish that I had created the product they were working on (or even bought it at TpT, so I could throw some love to another seller). However, it is just the released sample items from the SBAC website.

Since I couldn't share a product related to this post, i have decided to share a FLASH FREEBIE with just the readers of this post. For the next 24 hours, one of my newest products, Hamburger Paragraphs is FREE! That is a savings of $3, or part of a fancy cup of coffee at Starbucks.

This is another activity that had my students super engaged for the entire lesson. Students put sentence strips into the correct order to create a paragraph, then use the tools provided to start writing their own paragraphs. The paragraph organizer was a great scaffold for getting my students to consistently write complete paragraphs.

Planning for Next Year

The school year is coming to a close. Every day on Facebook there is a message from another teacher who is done for the summer.

Well, in my class we are still going strong. We start the SBAC math test next week. Insert sad face here, but that is a whole different topic.

Anyway, even though we still have a few weeks left of school, I am at that point in the year where I have covered the major things I want to cover, so a lot of my major planning is done. It is a great feeling.

Now, it is time to focus on next year.

My school district, like many other districts in Washington, has no elementary curriculum. None. This has made the last two years a little bit stressful. I moved grades last year, so I couldn't even reuse what I came up with the year before.

Last summer I tried planning with my new third grade team, but we just didn't get as much accomplished as I had hoped. I still ended up scrambling to gather resources and create a coherent plan. 

This summer, I am working on the plan on my own, so I know I will get it done. And, I am putting everything I create up on Teachers pay Teachers, Teacher's Notebook, and Edmodo, so I can share it with you! 

My plan is to create a curriculum that works for both teachers and kids.

I have already started working on the math plan, and I am so excited about it. This year I was really excited to use Engage NY. It worked really well this year because it gave me a plan. Having that plan made math this year a lot more successful than it was last year. However, I think it can be even better. 

Have you noticed that there are some lessons in Engage NY that just don't make a lot of sense? I found myself working so hard to teach a lesson to my kids, and then saw that it was never brought up again. I understand that Engage NY was designed to help kids understand math, but some of their steps just didn't work for me.

I also hated the tests. I felt like the exit tickets did not get the kids ready for the tests which were really heavy on the reading. This was a nightmare for all of my ELL students.

My goal is to create a curriculum that takes the best parts of Engage NY, uses specific direct instruction, creativity, and fun to teach math. I have already come up with the framework for the year, and it looks so good! I have time for every Common Core standard with buffers built in because you know we are always behind. 

Now, it is time to create the lessons, worksheets, quizzes, foldables, anchor charts, etc...

Five for Friday 5/15/15

It has been a most exhausting week! Probably one of the most exhausting weeks since the beginning of the school year. When was that? Five, six years ago?

Anyway, I don't think I have ever been so happy to come home on a Friday afternoon. Here is a look at my week as I link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching  for Five for Friday!

Here is the thing that is most on my mind. I am going to lose a student next week. He is not moving or getting promoted to fourth grade. He is being transferred out of my room. I feel so mixed about this. First, I am sad, and I feel like a failure. 

This is a kid I have been working with all year. We have had some really good times, but we have also had some really bad times. The idea of him being transferred was brought up earlier this week when he was sent home for poor behavior. He was supposed to get it together to be able to stay. Unfortunately, though circumstances and his own choices, he was not able to do this. 

I said I wanted to keep him if we could work things out, but it was best for him (and the rest of the class) if he moved. The trouble is another kid was moved into my class (from another class in our school) a few weeks ago, and the combination of these two is just terrible! They are feeding off of each other. If I would have known this would happen, I would never have accepted the new kid. 

So, while part of me is feeling terrible about all this. Another part of me feels relieved. About 75% of all my time is taken up by this one student. Not just school time - all my time. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of ways I can help him be successful. About 90% of my school day is redirecting him. I adore this kid, but he is exhausting me. 

Another reason this week felt so long is that our school district participated in the Washington state rolling walkouts. This was a tiring day for so many reasons. First, walking around holding a picket sign is more work than you would think. Second, I had my kindergartner and first grader with me, so lots of child management going on. And finally, I do not like conflict or controversy, and that who issue is full of both. I really need to build a thicker skin.

We started our morning at a local intersection. It was great to hear the horns honking in support of the students and teachers of our school district!

It is not very much fun for a kindergartner to picket, so luckily there was a tree to climb!

Later, we meet with other school districts at a rally in downtown Vancouver. I missed the speakers here because the girls wanted to play at the park, and it had already been a long day for them. How could I say no? Plus, this adorable girl made her own sign that said "It's time... less testing, more learning." She said she wanted to take it home and show it to her teacher. Although, I bet her teacher would totally agree!

 My week started off with a wonderful Mother's Day surprise. My wonderful husband got tickets for the big girls and me to go see Varekai - a traveling Cirque du Soleil show. To say that it was amazing does not do it justice. I was blown away by the costumes, the music, and the talent of all the performers. If you have not seen a Cirque du Soleil show and ever have the opportunity - Go!

Pre-show - Aren't they adorable?!

Post-show: Practicing! 

Both girls are totally doing dance, gymnastics, and circus camp this summer. They are so excited!

 Have you seen that Edmodo is starting their own teacher resource website? It is very similar to Teachers pay Teachers. I was experimenting with it last night, and I really like how easy it is to use. I hope that this site takes off!

Well, I don't really have a 5 - and I have to go get the little kids from daycare. So, have a great week!

Author's Point of View

Do you need materials to teach or assess your students on the Common Core standard RI.3.6? Well, then this is the product for you!

Students start by reading about one event from several different perspectives. A cat runs away from a dog, and it is described by the cat, the dog, a mouse, a mother, a little girl, and a little boy. My third graders especially liked this activity, and it really showed me who was reading carefully for the author's point of view.

The next step is to read an article about elephants. There are two versions for different levels of readers. This gives students a chance to answer both multiple choice questions and a short answer question. It gets to the heart of understanding the difference between the author's point of view and the reader's point of view.

Also included in the product is a short reading passage about homework and two short answer followup questions and a short quiz that tests author's point of view.

Five for Fraturday

Well, I didn't quite make it for Friday this week. I think that speaks to the kind of week it has been. Nothing big happened this week, but it was just long... Anyway, I am glad to be wrapping this week up by linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Do you have a "problem" student in your classroom this year? Well, I do. I adore this kid, and I know that he needs lot of love, but at the same time I feel very guilty for how much of my attention he gets. The rest of the class has been really good about it, but is it fair to them? Also, it has affected my management of my entire classroom. I am so busy dealing with his outbursts that I find it hard to cut off less direct misbehavior.

This kid has made incredible progress this year, but I think that next week it will be time to take the expectations up to the next level. I think he can do it if I stay positive and give him enough breaks... I really hope so!

Anyway advice would be appreciated!

In no particular order, here are some of the things I do to organize my week. At the very bottom are the weekly plans I put together. I write down a very brief synopsis of what I am going to do for each subject each day. When I have time, I add links to resources online, but I haven't had time to do that in a while! 

I also used to give each student a homework sheet like the one under the blue pages. They would take this to and from school every day, so parents could see the homework for each night. I stopped creating these for the last trimester since my third grades are almost fourth graders and need to learn how to write down their own homework. It is going okay... Let's just say we definitely need the practice!

Finally, the blue sheets are from the Google Slides presentation I made last week. There is a slide for every activity every day. This really helped me with my transitions last week since I didn't have to write anything on the board when we were moving to a new activity. I think the kids liked them as well.

We have been working on area and perimeter this week. I found that the square tiles I had stashed away in the classroom were perfect for this. The kids got very creative - I only had to remind them a few times that their amazing shapes would be really hard to use to find area and perimeter.

I probably should have turned this picture, but I am way too worn out to think about it right now. This was written by my first grader. It says, "I like dogs because my cousin is a dog." This was too cute! My sister does not have kids yet, but does have a dog that she treats like a baby. 

This week we did "cave art". The kids were so excited to draw in their "caves". I am so lucky to have two incredible and dedicated "Art Moms" who do a different art project every week for our class.

Finally, one last picture for the week. My mom, sister, and I are sending each other selfies every day for a year. At least we are supposed to, I have missed quite a few days this week. Anyway, my mom has pointed out that I never smile in my selfies. I feel so self conscious so I always make a crazy face. So, here you go. One crazy face selfie!

Have a great week!