Summer Sale Vegas Style!

I'm headed off to Vegas to attended the first ever Teachers Pay Teacher's conference!  I can't wait to get together with so many of you amazing teachers! So, in honor of the conference, I am having a sale in my TPT store starting July 9th!

Mercedes over at Surfing to Success has started a linky party for anyone else who is having a sale too, so be sure to hop over there too and see what other great deals you can find!

Thanks for stopping by and happy shopping!!  ;)

Classroom Library Organization - New and Improved!

Hi there!  I hope you are all having a restful summer!  I am busy tackling my very long summer list of things to do…

The biggest project so far has been a revamp of my classroom library and thanks to my awesome teammate, I think I have finally found a system that is going to work for me and my students.

Ok, so basically, I created categories for my books based on what type of books that I have the most of and gave each category a number.  So for example, I have a quite a few Care Bear books and Biscuit books, so I put them together in a basket.  I love the series My Weird School so I have collected about 15-20 of those, so I put them into a category!  I made a sign showing the category and number (12) for the basket and put a sticker on each book and wrote a number 12 on it the sticker.  

After I sorted out all my books, I ended up with 24 different categories!  Some of my categories are seasonal so I won't have to have them out until that season but at least they will be all sorted.  When students are done reading they will be able to find the basket with the correct number and put the book away.  

Having all my books in the correct baskets and categorized was a huge mental undertaking, then I got some help from a few middle school students to put stickers and number each of the books!  I am happy to report that the whole project is complete!  If my classroom wasn't being used by summer school, I would be able to put all the books back on the shelf and snap a picture of my beautiful new library system.

The next step in the whole class library step was to find a new library app to keep track of my books electronically.  I blogged about a great free app back in January '13, call BooksApp.  Sadly, that app is no longer available in the iTunes store.  So, I started searching for a new app to use as my electronic database.   The two that I like the best are iBookshelf and Book Crawler.  They both have a free version for to try but have limitations on them so if you have more than 50 books you might want to just get the $1.99 versions of the apps.  I downloaded the free versions of both so I could try out the scanner option of them and then I wanted to see what other options I had once I had my books scanned.  Both iBookshelf and Book Crawler had good scanners that worked well using my iPhone!  iBookshelf was pretty cool because you have the option of scanning multiple books at a time which seems to make the process go faster.  I have decided to use Book Crawler because I liked that it gave me fields that I could edit myself.  So, I was able to add my category and book bin number right into the record (as you can see in my picture below).

So, what kind of system of organization do you use for your class library?  Please let me know especially if you have tried this numbered category system, I really want to know how it has worked in your classroom!!

Author Visit & Free Books!

The coolest thing happened at my school this week; we had 2 different authors come and visit us!  My awesome reading specialist found out about this great organization called, An Open Book.  They are an organization committed to bringing books to disadvantaged children and teens in the Washington, DC area.  Through the organization our school was able to have 2 authors visit with 3 different grades.

Uma Krishnaswami is one of authors who came to our school, and she was great!  She read her book, Out of the Way! Out of the Way!, to the whole 1st grade.  The story is a sweet tale about a tree growing up amidst a very busy and growing village.  I can see using this as a mentor text for a few different topics like change over time or natural made vs. man made features.  

After she read to us, she worked with them to create a whole group list poem.  The kids loved the book and had so much fun creating the poem with her!

The best part for my students was finding out that they were going receive a free copy of the book, and that the author was going to sign it for them!  They were so excited and just couldn't believe that they were getting their own book to take home and keep!  It was so cute!

After one of my cutie pies got her book signed, she went right over and put it safely in her desk.   Then she went back to sit on the carpet to listen to another one of Umi Krishnaswami's books being read aloud.  After a few minutes she quietly got up and went back to her desk to retrieve the book, as she walked pasted me she leaned over and whispered, "I just want to hold onto my book, is that ok?"

What a wonderful experience for my students!  I think this organization is just great and would encourage you to go and check them out!

I wasn't involved in coordinating the event, but I was told that it was pretty easy to set up and the whole experience was just so meaningful!

Happy Teacher Appreciation!

Happy Teacher Appreciate week to all of you wonderful teachers out there!

I thought I would take a minute to write about a few outstanding teachers that I have had the privilege of knowing or working with.

Mrs. O'Leary is an amazing teacher and good friend.  I feel pretty lucky to have been placed on her team before she retired from her over 30 year teaching career.  Mrs. O'Leary is the kind of teacher that we all wish we had ourselves or would want for our own children.  She has a gentle nature a warm smile and a huge heart and tons of creativity.  Now, don't let those sweet qualities fool you, she is spunky, dedicated and has the absolute highest standards for her students and their parents.  She opens her heart to her students and creates bonds with them that seem to last and last over the years.  Her wealth of knowledge of teaching is an endless and she is the kind of teacher who loves to help other teachers.  I learned so much from working along side her, it was like having a second internship and I am grateful for all her support.

Mrs. Riley is another amazing teacher that I have had the privilege of working with.  I  was actually on her team when I served as a long term sub for one of her team mates and year later, I was her long term sub while she had knee surgery, so I was able to work with her and then be her for a short time.  :)  Mrs. Riley is the kind of teacher that captures everyone in the room, she has an energy about her that is contagious.  She gets to know each one of her students and lets them know just how important they each are.  I work in the same school where my own children went so I am also fortunate to be able to say that Mrs. Riley was my daughters reading teacher.  My daughter was always coming home with stories about the awesome things that Mrs. Riley was doing in class; from dressing up as a character from a story to talking in silly voices to get everyone's attention.  Mrs. Riley is retired now but I keep a picture of her in my classroom to remind myself of the kind of educator that I want to be like!

Last but certainly not least is my dear friend, Mrs. Row!  Mrs. Row and I go way back because we met when our now 18 year old sons started kindergarten together.  Not only is she a great teacher, she is probably the reason why I am a teacher today.  Before teaching I worked for a small company as their office manager and computer trainer and when the company went out of business and I was jobless, Mrs. Row said, "why don't you sign up to be a sub?"  Well, she had to talk me into it but as soon as I started subbing it was like a lightbulb had gone off in my head and I just knew that I wanted to become a teacher.  So, Mrs. Row started me on my journey that led me to eventually get my teaching degree.  Now, back to Mrs. Row and her amazing teaching.  Both of my children had Mrs. Row as their teacher and my son actually had her in 3rd grade and then again in 5th grade.  In addition to being able to see her teaching from a parent's perspective, I am fortunate enough to work in the same school with her so I  get to see her teaching and leading from a professional perspective as well.  Mrs. Row is always thinking of new ways to reach her students just where they need to be met and pushes them as far as they can go.  Like the ladies above, Mrs. Row also has this amazing way of connecting with her students and their families.  When you are the parent you feel so blessed to have her in your child's corner and when you are a co-worker you feel inspired to try a little harder yourself.

My hat is off to all of the amazing teachers out there who are tirelessly working to change little lives everyday!

Teachers Pay Teachers is having a huge sale to help celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week!  The sale starts on Tuesday,  hop over the TPT and check it out, don't forget to use the promo code TPTXO!

Help Henry Fundraiser

30 Teachers have joined together and donated well over $100 worth of teaching products for this fundraiser!  You can have all of these for your $20  $10 donation to Help Henry! Your donation will go to help Henry’s family pay for the numerous plasma transfusions and medical attention required to help little Henry get well.

This bundle is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!  You really do need to grab it while it's half price.  

Happy Spring - Happy Earth Day!

It's finally spring, although yesterday we had some snow here and today it is only in the mid 40's!  Yikes!  Well, regardless of our weather we are excited about this year's upcoming Earth Day holiday!

There are so many fun things that you can do to celebrate earth day!  This year we began by spending time learning all about taking care of earth!  Some years we actually go and visit the local recycling center but this year with all our snow days, it did not work out for use to go but if you have one near your school you should consider going there as a field trip.  It’s pretty cheap (just the cost of buses) and the kids LOVE it!!

After we read some wonderful mentor texts like The Great Kapok Tree, and Just a Dream, we read a wonderful non-fiction texts called Heroes of the Environment: True Stories of People Who Are Helping to Protect Our Planet by Harriet Rohmer.

Then kids were ready to write an opinion piece about why we should take care of earth!  I love reading their opinions after all our research!  

They did a great job!  If you are interested in doing this project, check out my earth opinion/informational writing unit in my TPT store.  It has a graphic organizer, final draft, craft and a few fun earth day word work activities.

I also loved having my kiddos write an earth day poem!  Check out this fun freebie by Lisa Lilienthal

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Earth-Day-Acrostic-Poem-Freebie-569440

The Great Kapok Tree Freebie

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynn Cherry is such a great book, and we had a blast reading it!  I love the way the story draws the reader into the rainforest and makes us think about the environment from the animal’s perspective! 

After we read the book, we talked about the rainforest and learned a bit about each animal in the story us the non-fiction book Rainforest Animals by Maria Lopes.  

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To get ready for our 2^nd lesson, I showed them this youtube of The Great Kapok Tree which is read by                         Mrs. Thomas.  I love finding little youtube gems like this and allowing my students to experience the story in another way.  After we had read it a 2^nd time, I gave pairs of students a part of the story (from my TPT sequencing FREEBIE) and we formed a big circle on the carpet and retold the story.  It took us a few times to get all the animals in the correct order but the kids loved it and they did such a great job acting out their parts! 

To wrap up our lessons we created our own kapok trees! To create the trees, students traced their forearm and hand onto brown construction paper and then created leaves in whatever shapes they wanted.  

I put the youtube video on again and they were amazingly quiet as they created their trees and listened to the book being read; in fact I think we listened to it a few times while they were creating!  Once their trees were completed they cut up the events from the story and put them back together to retell the story.

Feel free to hop over to my TPT store and grab your own Great Kapok Tree sequencing freebie!!

As always, thanks for stopping by!  Please leave a comment and let me know some of the fun ways you have used this story in your classroom!!