Blog Hoppin Teacher Week 2016

     Last week was Blog Hoppin's teacher week. I look forward to this every year because I love learning about and getting new ideas from other teachers.

Meet Me Monday 

     My relationship with Jesus is the most important thing to me. I am in awe when I think about how He has changed my life. I still have so far to go to be like Him but praise God He's not finished with me yet! 

     My husband and I have known each other thirteen years and been married for ten. We met at the church we attended for the last thirteen years. We switched churches a couple of months ago, and it was just what our family needed for all of us to grow in our relationships with Christ. We have two sons together who are 7 and 10. Our older son is the people pleaser and our younger son is the unpredictable one. They are both sweet boys with big hearts who love to have fun. My step son is 15. He is learning to drive and is in band at the high school he attends. He has an excellent work ethic, and I'm so very proud of him. 

     I teach two classes of 2nd grade ELA and social studies. I usually have 35-38 students total between the two classes. 

     I am a huge Alabama Crimson Tide fan. We got rid of cable and the dvr a couple of years ago, so Saturday's activities revolve around the Tide's game schedule. My dad and his family are from Alabama, so I was raised a Bama fan. Of course I'm raising my boys to be fans too! 

     I love reading, white chocolate mochas, and Sonci Vanilla Cokes when I haven't given up sodas. Ha, ha!

Teaching Tuesday

     One of my very favorite lessons is to introduce adjectives using skittles. Skittles give the students so many different descriptive words to use. And of course we eat our skittles because it helps us think of more adjectives. 

Where I Work Wednesday 

     This is my cozy lil classroom. I teach at a local charter school that use to be a church. Our classrooms are tiny. But we make it work. We learn about cooperation and self control because we are all literally on top of each other all the time. I have become even more organized and very creative with how I use my space. 

Threads Thursday 

     I wear lots of cotton dresses with blingy flip flops when it's warm and tall boots when it's cold. I like to wear a lot of black and bright colors. These days I'm buying all my clothes from The Zig Zag Stripe. It's a local boutique, and she has a website. She is my size. It's nice to have cute, comfortable clothes that do not accentuate my problem areas. And to be able to tell how something will likely fit me once it has arrived on my doorstep is a huge bonus!

Friends Friday 

     I am blessed to have had many teacher friends I have loved working with over the past 12 years. These are two of my recent favorites. We are all at different schools this year, and I miss them so much. I'm so glad we can make time to see each other still. 

     You can hop on over to Blog Hoppin and read more recap posts from the week. 

Classroom Reveal 2016

     My classroom is ready and done for now. I always move things around throughout the year. It may look completely different in a couple of weeks.

     My room is tiny, and we are packed in tight. It does help me stay organized because there is absolutely no room for piles or messes. 

      I keep my decorations to minimum, and only keep up current anchor charts. This helps students focus in on what is important and current. 

     The bulletin boards are new this year. They also hung a bulletin board for each teacher out in the hallway this summer. It has been five years since I had a bulletin board or a guided reading table. I was so happy to walk in my room on the first day back and see these things.

                                           
   
       They also bought me a rug, a teacher's desk, and two rolling shelves. I now have a decent amount of storage for my room.
                                             

     I'm thankful for my cozy, little room and all the learning that will take place in it this school year!

And So It Begins

     Wednesday was our first official day of school. I love that we start on Wednesday, it gives me time to ease back into our school routine. For the first time in two years, I have a brand new to me class, so we spent a lot of time practicing routines and procedures. We used the conversation starters from Amy Lemons and Hope King's Back 2 School Engagement Made Easy unit to get to know each other and practice our partner talk procedures. These students were really good listeners; they could always tell what their partner said when asked.

     Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes is one of my favorite back to school read alouds. Before we read, I told the students I wanted them to pay attention to how Lilly feels as different events happen in the story. As we read, I stopped at a couple of places to have them predict how Lilly was feeling after different events. Then we brainstormed Lilly's different feelings and added them to our chart. 

     We also started our self portraits. I love to do self portraits at the beginning and end of the year to see how much their abilities grow.  The students were pretty impressed with their drawing skills. On Thursday and Friday, we finished our portraits, created our all about me flap books, and then mounted our finished products on construction paper to display in the hallway. Both activities are from  Amy and Hope's Back 2 School Engagement unit. I'm so proud of how they turned out. 

      We review and practiced our rules using activities from my Classroom Rules Pack. 

     We also read Edward the Emu and used the predictions activities from Amy Lemons and Katie King's Rooted in Reading August unit. The students were excited to set up and begin using their reading notebooks. I can already tell I have a deep thinkers like this sweetie.

     My own boys started 1st and 5th grade this week. My step-son starts his sophomore year on Monday. Time seems to be moving so very quickly. 

                                      

    

     

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Taste the Rainbow of Adjectives

      Today we used skittles to learn about adjectives. We reviewed what nouns are and gave examples. Then we reviewed what adjectives are. Next we made connections to the characteristics we used to describe Crankenstein and the Peasants in Stone Soup. BrainPop Jr. has a great video on adjectives that the students really enjoyed. We discussed adjectives used in the video. Then I handed out one skittle to each student. I showed them how to hold it with their palm open so they could observe it and so it wouldn't get sticky. We observed our skittle with each of our five senses. Then students discussed with their partner adjectives that describe their skittle. Finally we shared out and added adjectives to our anchor chart. The students really loved the lesson and had a concrete understanding of adjectives.

Stone Soup-Peek at my Week

     This week we are reading Stone Soup. This book is one of my favorites! I remember reading it in second grade, everyone bringing an ingredient to make stone soup. We also acted out Stone Soup for the monthly PTA meeting. Those are so sweet memories. I can't wait to dig deep this week with Stone Soup in my classroom.

     You can download the pdf here.

Resources:

Rooted in Reading: November

Writing Through the Year Unit 3

November Literacy Stations

Character Traits: Self-Control

     Head over to DeeDee's to link up and view my lesson plans.

November Literacy Stations & Self-Control

      I finished my November Literacy Stations earlier today. There are five activities and are TEKS aligned. The activities include:

*Thankful Synonyms-match synonym pairs
*Gobble Gobble Verbs-sort verbs as strong or weak
*Thanksgiving Common & Proper Nouns-sort nouns as common or proper
*Turkey Trot Spelling-spin a spelling pattern and record words
*Terrific Thanksgiving Sentences-locate hidden words in a picture and create terrific sentences

     Each activity includes an answer key and recording sheet.

     I also uploaded my Character Traits: Self-Control unit. It includes eight activities to teach self-control along with a poster, quotes, discussion questions, and awards in color and black & white.

The activities are:

*Introduce using poster

*Create a self-control example anchor chart

*Self-control scenario sort

* No, David! response

*Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day response

*Self-Control List Poem

*Self-Control Writing or Predictable chart

*Three Ways I Can Show Self-Control

     In honor of Halloween, my entire store is on sale for 20% through Monday evening.

Happy Halloween!!!

Spiders-Peek at my Week

     We will be using Spiders by Gail Gibbons and lessons from Amy and Katie's Rooted in Reading October unit. My students were so excited about Stellaluna last week, and I have a feeling they are going to love learning about spiders this week!

     Download the pdf here.

Resources:

Rooted in Reading October

Writing Through the Year Unit 2

October Literacy Stations

Character Traits: Courage

    Head over to DeeDee's to link up and view other lesson plans.