Five For Friday...It's SUMMER and #SnowDay

Hello friends - long time, no blogging!  Wow, it's been 2 months since I blogged - what a busy last quarter of the school year.  But...as of 1:45 this afternoon, I am on summer time!  Woohoo! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five For Friday!

I reached a couple of milestones this week!  First up, Scholastic Reading Club - I am a Golden Apple Teacher for a 2nd year in a row.  I have been a Golden Apple teacher this past school year, and will continue to be next school year as well!  $1000 in total orders for the entire year - woohoo!

Then, on Instagram, I passed 1000 followers!

We had 3 days of school this week - well, really one full day, our EOY celebration day, which was basically a 1/2 day, and then Wednesday was a 1/2 day too.  So, Monday morning, we spent the entire morning making games for their summer buckets.  Their poor little hands were so tired of cutting cards for the games, but their parents sure were appreciative of all the games to keep practicing skills over the summer!

Speaking of our End of Year Celebration...well the weather sure didn't cooperate!  Here in NC, we haven't seen much sun this week - so our morning at the park to play games and have "ultimate recess" was kind of ruined by rain.  Luckily, we got some play time in sans rain, and then when it rained, they just kept playing in the rain!  When we first started planning this day, we talked about having water games, welp, we got natural water games!

My car was all loaded up with games!

So Tuesday afternoon when I got back to campus after our morning at the park, I started taking stuff down to make way for new next year!  I use black sheets as my bulletin board backgrounds because they won't fade - these have been up for 2 years and are still super black.  Wednesday morning while my kids were helping me reorganize and relabel books in our classroom library, I worked on putting up new borders.  I discovered layering borders a year or so ago and LOVED it - so I've layered borders on my bulletin boards in my room as well.  All borders pictured are from Creative Teaching Press.

Then on Thursday, I added lights to attach to the ones already around my whiteboard.

Even got my new Class Dojo board close to done!

This is a new bulletin board - got to get some more of the chalkboard polka dot border to layer on top.

All packed up and ready for my 6 weeks of summer!

If I want my floors really cleaned and waxed, all the furniture has to be cleaned off so the cleaning crew can move it out - so that means stuffing my rolling cubbies, cabinets, and my closet full.  I am pretty good at packing (which will come in handy next month when I head to VEGAS!), so I was able to pack it all way, in an organized manner, and have a little room to spare!

Love my rolling cubbies!

I put my classroom library up on my counter tops and then stacked lots of other stuff up to the ceiling.  I know they'll appreciate not having to move so much out of my room!

I PACKED my closet FULL!

#SnowDay you ask???  Well, if you stuck around long enough, you are in for a treat!

Back in February when NC was socked in with snow (like a lot of the rest of the country), snow day videos were flooding our Facebook news feeds.  One of my co-workers mentioned on Facebook that we should do a video - well our elementary music teacher came up with the lyrics to this amazing snow day song and then we got to videoing on our own Snow Day Video!  It debuted today at our end of year staff luncheon and it is just amazing!  We have joked all along that we hope to make it to the Ellen Show for our awesome video - so who knows!

Yours truly is featured in there too!

 
Enjoy!
 

Five For Friday

Another day, another linky!  Today I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday to tell you all about our first week back after track-out!

Last Saturday I blogged about how I was going to try to tackle transitions this week with my kids using my little Eeyore hiding in the Easter egg.  Well, the first letter they guess was E, and then they guess R!!  I couldn't believe it!  By Tuesday, they had it figured out.  So, I had to figure out something else because we still need to work on transitions.

So off to the workroom I went Tuesday afternoon to cut out some die-cut shapes - one for each table - pink, green, blue, and purple.  Since it is spring, I chose these cute little flowers.  Now they are competing with each other and will have to get hole punches all the way around their flower and their table will win a prize.  Now, I just have to be consistent with the transitions and reminding them so they can earn punches!

Wednesday was April Fools Day and I tried to pull one over on my kids - keyword: try.  I saw from another teacher in a Class Dojo Mentor Facebook group that she was going to trick her kids with negative points and I knew that would work for mine!

I made a new class so their parents wouldn't freak and it wouldn't mess up their percentages and such and then took 5 points from all of them.  I had a great plan on when to show my kiddos this trick of mine, but our classroom laptop has been a little wonky this week and my plans got delayed so it didn't have the same effect.  I had them for about 3 seconds and then they knew I was tricking.  Plus, I'm terrible at keeping a straight face, so my back was to them just about the whole 3 seconds!

Back in October/November, I started doing a monthly book raffle.  The way I have done it has changed a little bit, and now I only have one book up for grabs each month.  Over track-out, Erin Condren had this wonderful little sale on St. Patrick's Day and I grabbed this acrylic book stand along with some planner stickers for next year at a discount!

Added a little vinyl and we have a perfect stand for the book raffle book so it isn't just propped up against the wall.

My plans for writing this week all changed on Sunday afternoon about 5PM.  I saw another teacher post her writing prompt and creativity for this week about writing how to get Easter bunny unstuck from his burrow hole.  I couldn't find it anywhere at the time, so I just made my own!  They turned out too cute.

We had a half-day of school today as part of our #snowdaypayback.  So, we had an Easter egg hunt!  All the eggs were filed with ELA & Math questions and since the weather was super nice today, except for that darn wind, we went outside, I threw all the eggs out in the grass and let them have at it.

Then we came back in and had a surprise!  Bunny Bum doughnuts fresh from Krispy Kreme this morning - I was out the door at 6:15 and on my way to KK to get these cuties for the kiddos.  But they earned it - 90% or above as their class percentage on Class Dojo this whole week.

Have a great Easter weekend y'all!

April Currently

I'm linking up again (for a second time today!) with Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for April Currently!

Listening - to Grey's Anatomy - my Thursday night show!  Started watching Grey's when I was a freshman in college and I've just had to watch since!

Loving my new blog design!!!  Gabby over a Gabby's Classrooms installed my new design last Saturday afternoon and I am over the moon in love with my new design!

Thinking...more like wishing that we didn't have to make-up all those snow days we had back in February.  We lost 6 full days and then had 2 half days due to late arrivals.  So in technical terms..we had 42 hours of instruction missed - we have to make up 15 of those hours to meet the minimum hour requirements for the state.  So there is a positive in that we don't have to make up all the time.  We start tomorrow by having to go a half day and then a full day on Monday.  In a couple weeks we have a half day Saturday school...ugh!

Wanting - a long weekend...only get an early afternoon tomorrow - boo!

Needing to make a to-do list for our all day planning day on Tuesday.  Each grade level gets one all-day planning each quarter and ours 3rd quarter got pushed back because of snow - so our is Tuesday.  Hoping to get the rest of the year planned out and plan some end of year stuff - go to make a to-do list so we make sure we do it all!

My blog name is based on my alma mater's new campaign slogan.  A couple years ago, my alma mater, Meredith College, adopted a new campaign slogan of Going Strong.  As a women's college, empowering women is a theme - and our alumnae are going strong all across the globe.  I won't step up on my soapbox about how much I love my alma mater and what it did for me and my leadership.  And since I teach second grade - it just fit - Going Strong in 2nd Grade!

Have a great holiday weekend!

Happy Easter!

#2GETHERWEAREBETTER - Schedules!

I am linking up with Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd & Lucky Little Learners for their new monthly link party and this month it is all about schedules!
I'll start by showing you my daily schedule that I started with back in July when we started school.

So, let me tell you a little about my schedule.  Our "Excel" time is our RTI time and each grade level has a specified time throughout the day since we have interventionists and even our specials teachers helping during Excel. 

During Excel our intervention students receive reading/math interventions and our EC students receive their pull-out services.  This way they are not missing instruction some other time during the school day - I LOVE this aspect of Excel!  The rest of the kiddos I split up into smaller groups to focus on different topics.  I have help during this time from our media specialist, so she will take a group to the media center to work on math or reading projects.  I keep a group and we work on different math topics as needed on Tuesdays and then Wednesday and Thursday we work on reading fluency and comprehension.  On Monday we do mClass math progress monitoring and working on strategies for that assessment and we don't really do much for Excel on Friday - that's catch-up day!

Now, I have swip-swapped some things during my Writing and ELA Block/Snack time since we started the school year.  I am so thankful that I have the ability to do this too - our original schedule just wasn't working for us!

So, now when my kiddos return from Excel at 9:15, we eat snack and I either read aloud from The Doll People series or we work on one of the chapter reading response pages from the companion novel study I created.  One day I read aloud a chapter, the next day we do the written response.

After snack and read aloud, about 9:30-9:35, we start our Letterland lesson.  Letterland is our reading phonics program and I absolutely LOVE it.  The stories that go along with the letters and spelling patterns helps the kids remember why they make a specific sound - and they remember it!  For example, this week we are studying ar (Arthur Ar) needing more AIR in words like pair and square.  So, Arthur Ar is a vowel stealing robot and he goes around Letterland stealing vowels, but reports back with his last name, Ar.  But sometimes he captures 2 vowels (a and i) and as he is running, he needs more air, so he says "air" like in pair.  Then he sometimes captures an e and has 2 sacks, one with Annie Apple, and one with the E, on either side of him.  As he is running, he needs more air, so the "are" sound makes an "air" sound. 

Back to my schedule - after Letterland, we move into writing.  We usually do writing for about 30 minutes and that includes a mini lesson and time for the kiddos to work.  We work on a writing topic for a week usually, unless we have to do research, or a craft and we might work on it for longer than a week.

After writing, we move into Daily 5.  I LOVE Daily 5!  We do Daily 5 for an hour in my room and I meet with all my students for reading groups each day.  Each Daily 5 round is 15 minutes, so they do 4 activities each day.  Now, I don't do Daily 5 the traditional way in my classroom - my students do about 8 different Daily 5 activities during the week - some they do every day - some twice a week, some only once a week.

Here are the posters I have in our room so the kids can keep their Daily 5 schedule straight.

After Daily 5 we get our lunch boxes out and either head out the door to Health or PE.  We have 2 K-4 PE/Health Teachers, so we have 2 classes going to PE/Health at the same time.  We are a K-12 school sharing one gym - so we have to be creative when it comes to PE time!  So one week my kiddos go to PE for 30 minutes each day and then the next week they go to Health for 30 minutes each day.  On their Health weeks, they also get to use the Wii room one day, so that is always a favorite!  On our Health week we will go out to Recess for about 15 minutes before we go back in for lunch.

Depending on if we have PE or Health, our lunch time fluctuates start time, but we start lunch between 12:05 and 12:20 and finish up at 1:00.  Now, I know to some of you, 40-55 minutes for lunch is a really long time - BUT, I eat with my kiddos in our classroom every day.  We do heat-ups so students can heat food for lunch and while we have 2 microwaves in our room - it can take a while to get through heat-ups some days.

On our PE weeks, we do our minute math tests about 12:45.

At 1:00 my kiddos are off to specials.

I pick them up from specials and then we are back to the classroom for math.

Last year I began flipping my classroom for math, so when we do math, we usually just come back and do math centers each day, so that I can do small guided math groups covering the concept that they watched on their math video the night before.  I give directions for the day and we start about 1:55 and work until 2:45.  Each center lasts about 12 minutes - I use my Class Dojo timer to keep me honest!

While I am working with math groups - my kiddos are split into 3 other groups working on different math centers:

1.  My monthly math review centers (reviewing concepts learned this year as well as 1st grade concepts we haven't covered yet)

2.  iMath - Reflex Math App on their iPads

3.  Math Journals - working on Stuckey In Second's mClass Math practice sheets - I staple them into a booklet and make a cute cover to be their journal.  They work on 2 concept pages each day.

About 2:45, when the last timer goes off, the kiddos go back to their seats while cleaning up math centers - and I've gotten them trained to put everything back in its place so I don't have to do it!!  We get out our COLLEGE notebooks, color in behavior graphs, check our Class Dojo percentage, pack up, stack chairs, line up and head down to the gym for carpool.  Our carpool is from 3:00-3:30ish and then everyone goes outside to watch for their cars.  We don't have buses so all students go through carpool or ride home with a high school sibling.  I have parents who volunteer with carpool each day (PTL!!) so our grade level works it out so that each of us can have 2 days of not having to do carpool but we have planning time instead.  

Working on Transitions...

Before track-out we started working on transitioning from one activity to another quickly, efficiently, and without so much talking and I've got a little friend that is going to hopefully help me with this when we head back to school on Monday.

Meet my Easter egg...

My family and I went to Disney World my senior year in high school for spring break...way back in 2007 - wow 8 years ago!!  Easter was the end of that week and we came home on Saturday - on Easter, the "Easter Bunny" had brought me this little cutie all the way from WDW.

So, how am I going to use my little friend you ask?

Since there is a Disney character hidden inside this Easter egg, we are going to play Transition Wheel of Fortune this week to figure out who is inside the egg.  Whenever we transition from one activity to another, the table that does it the best will get to guess a letter of the name of the character that is hiding in the egg.  They only get one letter guess OR attempt to solve.

So, not only are we working on transitions, we are also going to be practicing a little team-building, as I'm sure that they are going to be helping each other hurry up to show that their table is ready.

Now this character is not one I think they are going to guess right away, so I'll be interested to see how long it takes us to figure out who is in the egg...hopefully most of this week at least.

Now that you've read all about my plans, I'm sure you too want to know who is hiding inside the egg, so I'll share with you!

It's Eeyore!

I hope you have either a great week at school this coming week - or - a great spring break!  I'm just a little jealous that it is supposed to be nice and warm here in NC this week and we have to go back to school..oh well, 9 weeks to go!