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Monday, April 28, 2014

Freebie on a Monday!

Hello friends!  Stopping in really quick tonight to post a fraction freebie!  We are going to begin tackling fractions (2.G.3) this week and needed an activity for next week.  I love task cards, so I whipped some up tonight!  Head over to my TPT store to check them out!!


Monday is out of the way...one down - four to go!


Friday, April 25, 2014

Five For Friday!

I'm back again this week for Five for Friday!  It has been a short week for us finished off with a field trip today and boy, am I tired!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday this week...so here we go!



So I am someone who likes change - like things on the walls and furniture kind of change.  This is my third year of teaching and I've been in the same classroom all three years.  My room setup has been pretty much the same for those three years.  Back in January I started thinking about how I wanted to move furniture in my room and move stuff around NEXT school year.  I convinced myself I needed to wait as it was going to be too much work to move stuff for the second half of the school year.  Well, I am also a person that when I get something on the brain, I can't forget about it.  So about once a week since January I've been trying to move my student tables to get some sense of change, but never found an arrangement I liked.  So....last Wednesday I got to seriously thinking about moving all of my furniture and when I came back to my room during my carpool planning afternoon, I took the plunge and worked for an hour moving stuff.  Came back the next morning and moved more stuff and waited to see my kids reactions when they came in - they were stunned and are still walking all over the room because their little bodies are used to going to the back corner to turn papers in and it is now on the opposite side of the room at the front.  Below are pictures from before...circa last July before our open house and after...finally taken today.

Before:








And after...I am in love with it!  The {tiny} room seems so much bigger with pretty much the same furniture just rearranged!  Still working on getting it just like I like it and trying to finish building more cubbie bookshelves that I finally received yesterday.








Arrays galore!  We have been studying arrays this week in math and the kids are excited to know that this is getting them ready to learn multiplication next year.  If only we can learn what a row is...
We used Soaring Through 2nd Grade's new arrays pack during Work with Teacher some this week.  We were building arrays from the repeated addition sentence and the kids loved it!  If they didn't finish during Work With Teacher, they wanted to come back and finish after they finished their math journal, so I had a table full of kids sitting and standing at one point working on their arrays!  Love it!



I won an art field trip for my class!  Whoop whoop!  We have a parent at our school who was offering art field trips to the first 3 teachers who emailed her, each trip valued at $175.  It will be an in class field trip and I am excited to surprise my kiddos with this after our end of year assessments which begin this week!



I finally got around to finishing my first set of themed/monthly math centers - baseball themed, perfect for May.  Can't wait for my kiddos to start using them next week!  Now I can start thinking about making sets for next school year - already have ideas for October, but need to come up with July/August and September first!  Those will definitely be a review of a lot of first grade concepts since it is the beginning of the year!
Head over to my TPT store to check out the centers!




We had our 2nd (and last) field trip of the school year today to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.  Because we are a charter school, field trips at our school are a little different...meaning that we have almost as many chaperones as we do students.  The woman at the front desk couldn't believe it when we told her we had close to 80 chaperones!  And we only have 92 students in our grade level!  It makes field trips so much less stressful for us!  We toured the museum for about 2 1/2 hours and then went to see the 3D movie, The Last Reef, in the WRAL 3D Movie Theater at the museum.  It was a good movie, but after walking around the museum...I think half of us fell asleep...soothing music and nice calm voice of the narrator meant I nodded off as did some of my kiddos and my bestie beside me too!  If I hadn't had my students beside me asking me questions throughout, I might have really nodded off to la-la land!
Here are some pictures from our field trip adventures today!


My silly kiddos!

Bestie and me with our one of our other team mate's granddaughter!


I'll leave you with a couple pics of my rotten kitties enjoying our sunroom earlier this week!
Have a great weekend!!








Sunday, April 20, 2014

Happy Easter and new math centers!

Happy Easter everyone!  What a wonderful day is for Christians all around the world today. I am so grateful for my Savior who came to Earth as a lowly baby and then was nailed to the cross and crucified to make atonement for my sins.  As my Sunday school teacher said this morning...we get all hyped up about Christmas, because of the gift giving and all, but Easter is what our religion is all about and she is definitely right!

Well, after lunch today and sat down and finished my first set of themed/monthly math centers!  They are baseball themed and are perfect for the month of may!  They are 2nd Grade CCSS aligned but would also make for a challenge for some firsties or a review for 3rd graders.

The way I work my math centers, I think I have more than enough math centers for the month of May...as I can divide the activities in this pack out to make 20 activities!  WHOA!  I thought I was done Friday night and then I realized we are doing arrays right now and I needed to add that in there too...so I was adding on last night.

Just print, laminate, cut, copy recording sheets and you are ready to go!
I know what my high school helper is going to be working on this week during her time with us each day!  Love having someone to help do these types of things!!
Click the top picture to head over to my TPT store and check it out!
20% today and tomorrow!








Wednesday, April 16, 2014

It's a Second Grade Thing

I am so excited to team up with some of my second grade bloggy friends to bring you a brand new, collaborative Pinterest board!
Click on the image to go to the board!
The purpose of this board is to share some of our spectacular second grade teaching ideas and resources with our followers. Here are some of the amazing bloggers participating:

To kick off our new board, we are giving away a $25 gift certificate to Teachers Pay Teachers! WOO HOO!!! Check out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We are SO excited to be connecting with our amazing readers on Pinterest! See ya over there!

Wordless Wednesday

It's Wednesday!  This is the first time I have linked up for Wordless Wednesday :)




We do!  Do you???

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Tax Break Tuesday Sale!!


I'm having a sale in my store today and tomorrow!!
I'm lucky to have a dad that did my taxes back at the end of January so I've gotten all my money back from Uncle Sam for this year!  What shall I spend it on???
Click the picture below to head over to my store and load up!

Friday, April 11, 2014

Five for Friday!!

Hello again!  What a week this has been..one of our only full, 5-day, normal weeks this quarter (PTL!) and we have been busy!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!




We have been studying shapes since we returned from track-out last week.  I've mostly been using games and activities from Primary Punch's geometry pack and my kids sure have enjoyed them.  We played Jenga in the hall one day this week during Math with Teacher and they definitely had fun trying to not knock over the tower!





We also did a new math bulletin board - What Does the Shape Say?  I saw the idea popping around on Instagram over and over a few weeks back and just loved it, so we incorporated it into our math this week and got it all finished yesterday.  I have enjoyed listening to all the kids (not mine!) coming down the hall in the morning singing!







Only a couple weeks left until we begin our End of Year Benchmarks, so we really hit the written comprehension questions hard this week in guided reading groups.  These questions stems are from Primary Punch and fit right along with our mClass TRC reading assessment questions.  Read, respond, write, glue in notebook and go!  Love them!  We have been doing some other nonfiction text and reading responses since January so my kids were surprised we were using these again!




One of my New Year's Resolutions was to get more work done during the school day and not have to take papers home to grade and the like home with me.  I am blessed with planning time during the day and I needed to get in my room and work instead of chit-chat with my bestie down the hall.  I have finally done this over the past couple weeks...which means I have time to relax and work on some "fun" things at night :)



After our middle of the year benchmarks, we realigned our Excel (RTI) groups and I did the fluency group.  So I have about 10 kids from our grade level that are working on fluency.  I have used a bunch of different things from different TPT sellers, but my kiddos seem to really seem to like Dirt Road Teacher's fluency packs with a Duck Dynasty twist!
Here are two of my sweeties responding to the story...we only do our fluency groups 3 days a week so we combine some of the activities.



I have probably written about this every week on Five for Friday...but my kiddos are enjoying using the iPads for morning work on Friday that it always ends up in my Five fro Friday!  If they have all of their work done and their folder is empty, they get to play anything they want to on the iPads for morning work.  This morning I look over and have 2 boys sharing one seat, but they are working so quiet that I didn't make them both be in their own seat.  One was so proud that he had made a cube on the Geoboard app that it was worthy of a picture too!




Happy Friday y'all!  Have a great weekend!
I'm heading to a Wolfpack baseball game tonight vs. Duke and the NC State spring football game tomorrow...supposed to have some gorgeous weather so I'm excited!