I'm the Budding Blogger

Happy Saturday! I hope your weekend is off to a great start! 

It's a very exciting day here on this little blog: Amanda over at Teaching Maddeness was sweet enough to feature me as this week's Budding Blogger!! 

If you'd like to check it out just click on the button below to head over to Amanda's fabulous blog. Seriously, her blog is amazing and you really need to check it out - she has so many great ideas!!

New Book Finds, Site for Lesson Plans, and a Find {Five for Friday}

I've made a lot of new discoveries this week, so I thought this post would be the perfect way to share them all! I'm linking up with Doodle Bug's Teaching for the FAB Five for Friday!

1. I've made two great books finds this week while checking out the books my students had chosen from our school library. I wanted to make sure I would remember them, so what better way than to put them up on the blog to share with all my wonderful readers! 

The cover art on Hide and Seek Fog caught my eye. Once I started reading it knew it would be perfect for a writing lesson on descriptive language. I think you could really dive into this book with students and look at adding descriptions to writing. The pictures are also beautiful and that never hurts! 

The Life Cycle of a Spider is a great nonfiction book!! The bright cover drew me in and then I couldn't stop flipping through pages. It has a really nice combination of real photographs, drawings, and diagrams. This one will be perfect to pull out for nonfiction text features. 

2. I'm a gummy bear. I may be the last person on Earth to know about this song!! My kiddos mentioned it last week and I had to do some investigating. It makes a super fun brain break. 

3. Have you ever visited Ag in the Classroom? This little gem of a website has a lot of fabulous lesson plan ideas that integrate agriculture. 

After you click on the map above, select your state then choose Lesson Plans from the Teacher drop down menu at the top. There are some featured lesson plans and if you scroll down to the bottom you can do a more detailed search by grade level and subject area. I've used a few lessons in my class, especially for science, and the kiddos loved it! 

4. E-Z Grader + Amazon = love I just discovered that Amazon carries colored E-Z Graders. I'd only see the dull green ones in stores, so I am very excited about this.

5. I'll leave you with this little love note from one of my sweeties! Remember back a few weeks ago when I said we needed to work on writing...remember that when you read this.  : ) 

What have you been up to this week? 

Planning Tips for New Teachers

I'm mentoring a new teacher this year, so I have been doing a lot of reflecting on what worked for me as a new teacher. Today I wanted to share some planning tips that might be helpful for anyone, but are especially for new teachers. 

Here is a step by step recount of how I planned when I was a new teacher. 

1. Follow the pacing guide. 

2. Create a resource list for each topic. 

My first year of teaching I would write a topic at the top of a piece of paper and then list all the activities, worksheets, videos, and any other resource I had for that particular topic. 

Now that I have Evernote in my life I just create a notebook for each standard I teach. 

I add in links, pictures of anchor charts, blog posts, and little tidbits from other sources to these notebooks. Then, when it comes time to teach or review that particular standard I already have a lot of great resources in one place. 

*New teachers, this does not mean I was planning months in advance. I simply created these lists when I started planning for the next topic and then had them to reference and add to the next year.

3. Create a day by day plan. 

The next step I took in planning was laying out the order I wanted to use for teaching the topic. This was still a preliminary plan for me and was usually scribbled on that resource sheet. 

I chose to plan day 1, day 2, etc. instead of locking myself into a weekly schedule. School schedules are unpredictable and (for me) "normal" weeks are the exception! 

I took that resource list from step 2 and started plugging thing into days until I had the order all worked out. 

4. Plan grades. 

I know that sound silly, but I did it AND still do this today. I will put a little * beside of activities I plan to use as grades. I don't use a ton of worksheets in my classroom, so sometimes I would plan a whole week and have nothing to use a grade!! Thinking ahead to grades at this point in the planning stage will save you from scrambling for grades later in the grading period.

6. It was at this point that I wrote my actual plans in my planbook. Of course, now I plan online so it is much faster than hand writing plans. I use planbook.com and you can read more about it here. 

7. Take cues from your students. 

Gather your resources and ideas and have a plan for what you'd like to do and what you THINK will work. However, always be tuned into the needs of your students. Every assignment you grade, every lesson you teach, every class discussion you have will allow you a glimpse into your students' understanding. Use this to guide your instruction. 

If today's lesson is a flop, pull something else from your resource list and try that tomorrow. Reflect on what went wrong, be honest with your students and let them know "we" are going to try again today. 

8. Keep Calm and Teach On 

You were trained for this job and you can do it!!!! Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. At the same time, don't be afraid to do what you know is right for your students - this is what you do and you know what is best for your students. 

And no matter what happens in the classroom today, remember that tomorrow is a brand new day! 

What tips would you share with a new teacher? 

Sally's Snow Adventure {Must Read Mentor Text}

I'm linking up with Collaboration Cuties for this week's edition of Must Read Mentor Texts. It's all about Language Arts, so I'm all there!! 

While I was unpacking my room about a month ago I ran across a book that I knew would be the next one I shared for this linky. 

Sally is a black lab and the star of numerous books. She is always going on adventures with her owner and in this book they go on a snowy adventure to a ski lodge. Sally gets lost and must be rescued by two rescue dogs. 

The pictures in these books are beautiful and if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time you know I'm an animal lover!! My dad has a black lab that I adore and this author does such a great job of capturing the lab personality! 

I think this book would be perfect for introducing summarizing. The text is short enough to read in one sitting while still having some time left over for the mini lesson. There is also a very definitive problem in this story with a really clear solution - both great things to have when introducing the summarizing strategy. 

Sentences, Smart Exchange, Procedure Review Game, and More {Five for Friday}

Fri-DAY!! Woot Woot!! I'm lovin' knowing that this there is a long weekend and lots of fun time with friends a family coming up! But first, time to link up with Doodle Bug's Teaching.

1. We've been working on complete sentences this week. Here is a peek at our anchor chart. I took this picture before we added in our example sentence and then forgot the camera...oops! 

I've said it before - I'm all about a nice, simple anchor chart. And apparently a bad picture...haha!!

2. Do you ever forget about some great places to find teaching resources? Happens to me all the time. I just revisited SmartExchange this week and found some fantastic resources for subjects and predicates. The people posting on that site can do SmartBoard magic!! I {puffy heart} it. 

3. We've got one more week left on Raymond and Graham Rule the School. Here is a  a few picture from our visualizing activity this week. 

In an attempt to shave his almost-invisible mustache, Graham shaves off his eyebrow. Being the good friend he is, Raymond draws him an eyebrow, but it turns out to be more of a unibrow!

We're having so much fun with this book. If you'd like to take a peek at my activities for this book you can click here.

4. We spent about a week going over rules and procedures for reading workshop and our classroom library. Even with reminders every now and then, I still felt like we needed a little more reinforcement. I created these cards and we played "Pass" a modified game of Scoot where pairs of students sit around the room and we pass the cards around (creative, I know...haha!). 

5. A few weekends ago I accidentally baptized my Kindle in the tub! eeekk!! It did turn back on, but things were never really the same. Earlier in the week I ordered a new Kindle Paperwhite (aka Baby Kindle) and it arrived last night! It is great!! I'll be doing a lot of reading this weekend!

What are your plans for the weekend? 

Complete Sentences Game and a Flash Freebie

Engaging. Check. Fun. Check. Out-of-your seat. Check. 

It was a fantastic day in my classroom today! I couldn't wait to get home and share this super fun, super easy subject, predicate, and complete sentences activity with you! 

We are going to need a LOT of work on just writing a complete sentence this year, so I knew I had to up the fun factor to get everyone interested. 

The game is played inside outside circles style. One circle of kiddos moves around, visiting different partners, while the other circle stays in one place. 

The partners work at determining if a group of words is a subject or predicate. Then they decide if their two cards together make up a complete sentence. 

When I created this activity I made sure the combinations would be silly and sometimes outrageous and the kids loved it! There was definitely a lot of giggling going on! I also hear a lot of talk about subjects and predicates and saw students frequently referencing our anchor chart when they needed a little reminder. 

"My teacher is fuzzy." We heard some great sentences. 

"The cafeteria blew bubbles."

"The bus ran around the house."

I was thrilled with how this drove home the point that a complete sentence needs both a subject and a predicate. We will definitely be doing this activity again! 

I have posted the instructions and 2 sets of cards for the game in my TPT store. You can click here if you'd like to take a look. 

Since I have such wonderful followers who read all the way to the end of the post, I will be giving away this set to the first 3 people to leave a comment with your email address.

Thanks to all those who commented!! 

Remind101: Making Parent Communication Easier {Tried it Tuesday}

Happy Tuesday! I hope your week is off to a good start. I'm linking up with the Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for a very quick Tried it Tuesday post. 

Since there are still some people gearing up for the beginning of the school year, I thought I'd share a great site I was introduced to over the summer and just started using with my class. 

After reading about remind101 on so many great blogs, my teammates and I decided to give it a try this year. Remind101 is a website that allows you to send texts to parents or students without either of you sharing your phone number. The program only allows you to send outgoing texts and is free. 

Here is what I think so far: 

It was super easy to set up (great for the beginning of the year) and there is a form available to print online with all the information your parents will need to join in. 

Texts can be scheduled!!! This is what I've loved the most so far. Before school ever started I sat down with the calendar of events we already had and set up a lot of reminder messages - such a time saver! 

The only downside I've seen : be careful when scheduling texts - it seems to me like it would be very easy to accidentally set your message to be delivered in the wee hours of the morning - not something I want to happen!! 

So far we have 28 out of 64 parents sign up, not a huge number, but this is the first time anyone at our school has ever used a program like this, so I'm hoping it will grow in popularity. 

For now we are just using the program as reminders for returning forms that need to be signed and important events at school. Do you use remind101? What types of things do you use it for?