Songs at Calendar? Yes, please!

I am the weirdo that LOVES calendar time.  I really hate when I have to skip it because I ran over on my time in other subjects.  I think calendar time is a great opportunity to review so many math topics.  Anyhow, I have been wanting to find a fun way to teach my littles how to spell the months of the year.

I looked around the internet for a while, and I found the coolest lyrics to practice spelling the months of the year.  Now, I cannot take credit for these songs, as I found them here.  The only month that wasn't included was July.  We go back to school in July, so I had to use my creative juices to make a song.  So, I'm no Bob Dylan or Irving Berlin, and as my students always tell me, "You tried your best," and that's what counts.

I am planning on writing these out on chart paper (with my new smelly Mr. Sketch markers... I LOVE those markers!) and hanging them so my students can read the words while they sing.  I am also going to print a copy for each student so they can take it home and sing the song for their parents.  Click on the picture below to grab your freebie.

Plus, I am running a sale this weekend!  Save 20% on everything in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store!

Here are a few other products that you may be interested in for back to school time.  

Click on the picture to learn more.

Plus, here's a link to some great freebies in my TpT Store.

DIBELS and DAZE

This Monday, we had our DIBELS benchmarks for second and third grades.  We have been working REALLY hard to ensure the kids are ready to show what they know.  We've been working on retell and comprehension.  We've also been working on cloze and DAZE passages.

DAZE exercises are on the third grade DIBELS assessments.  If you have never seen a DAZE passage before, it may be a little intimidating.  So, I took some second grade standards (mostly scientists) and turned them into DAZE passages with a little comprehension sprinkled in.  Our second grade teachers started using them this quarter and, hopefully, this group will be comfortable when they see the DAZE passages on next year's DIBELS assessments.  Plus, the passages are all non-fiction (bonus) so we are reading across the curriculum.

Right now, you can try out my latest creation by downloading it through Educents.  Please tell me you have heard of Educents.  They have everything a teacher wants at a discount price.  I just bought some awesome books from Educents.  The books were shipped quickly and they were cheaper than Amazon.  I was thrilled!

Learn all about Alexander Graham Bell with this {FREEBIE}.  It's only available for a limited time, so head over there now, and save it for later!

Makeover Time

Do you ever look back on your week and wonder what you accomplished?  Sometimes, I swear, the little things just add up and take up all of my time.  I've been doing a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and just trying to stay afloat.

We had our big "Muffins with Mom" shindig this past week.  It takes up SO MUCH TIME getting prepped, but I know the kids and the moms love it.  It's so worth it to see the kinders cuddled up with their moms, eating some muffins, and enjoying some special time together.  Then, the kids sing four songs and everyone is on their way.  I'll have to remember to take photos next year, when I am not running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

In my (little) free time, I have updated two different products.  My favorite has to be the "Getting Ready for Kindergarten" pack.  We e-mail this to incoming parents so they can work with their kids over the summer.  Our parents are notified electronically of their teacher assignments, so this pack is sent as an attachment along with the supply list.  We don't have to copy or staple anything!  Hallelujah!  Plus, parents can print as many copies as they want without having to ask us for extras.  Again... hallelujah!  Click the picture below to see what is included.  I check the links in order to make sure they are still active, and I add links when I find something cool.  If you own this pack, make sure to download the updated file.

The second product that I have revised is the Nicky Noun and Vicky Verb pack.  This was near and dear to my heart because it was the first paid product I uploaded to Teachers Pay Teachers.  My computer skills have obviously improved in the past 18 months, so an update was needed.  I actually added three new activities to go with this concept.  When I first uploaded this product, I only had the anchor charts and the first activity.  Now, this pack is top notch and a smokin' deal! 

Click here to check it out!

Have a fantastic week!

Thanking Volunteers

Have you ever been on a work committee that was just so insanely pleasant that you couldn't wait to work with the same people again?  I was SUPER lucky to have worked on our school's volunteer appreciation committee with two of my school friends.  There was no drama.  There was no stress.  It was an absolute joy.  Oh, I love those ladies.

Our school has the most amazing volunteers.  I have volunteers on almost a daily basis to check my homework folders.  I am incredibly blessed with supportive, giving parents.  I have been on the volunteer appreciation committee for the past two years, so I can show our parents how much their help means to us.

We had each grade level make a poster to thank the volunteers.  They were hung in each grade's hallway, and in the work room.














We had goodies all week in the work room.  Since it was the week before Easter, we had four days of treats with cute sayings.


I made the signs and put them in an 8" x 10" frame from the Dollar Tree.  The week of goodies cost less than $30, and I had a TON left over.  I probably should have only bought one bag of candy per day.  I will remember that for next year, and enjoy the extra candy this year.  :)

We had a morning reception before school.  Starbucks donated coffee (they are always willing to donate coffee if you ask), and each staff member pitched in some money so we could buy some goodies from Sam's Club.  We bought more Dollar Tree frames, and had our cute sayings near the food.  The trays are from the Dollar Tree as well.







We also organized a bulk purchase of plastic cups for our volunteers.  We looked around the internet and priced things out.  A website called 4imprint.com was the best price.  We ordered so many that it was less than $2 per cup.  We had our school logo imprinted on the cup.  They were SUPER cute!

I was SO happy with the service at 4imprint.com.  The cups were high quality for the price.  The printing was great.  The cups were shipped very quickly.  It was a dream!  SO EASY!

Then, we printed these flags from Lisa Storms and added a lemonade packet.

 

Fast, cute, and fun!

In order to help you thank your volunteers, I am giving you all of the printable signs I made for our volunteer appreciation week.

Click here to download this great {FREEBIE}.

Have a fantastic day!

DORF, DAZE, and DIBELS, and a {FREEBIE}

Do you ever feel like there are WAY too many acronyms in education?  It's SO true!

If you have read my blog, you know that I help with DIBELS at my school.  Our DIBELS expert is out on maternity leave (she had twin boys that are just the sweetest little babies), so I offered to help out.  It was a big endeavor for me to volunteer for, but I have learned so much along the way.  I really am thankful for the experience.

Now, our school has some amazing readers.  We do not have many yellows or reds; however, we noticed on the MOY DIBELS tests, some of our students were having issues with the quality of retell and with DAZE.  These skills are not just important for DIBELS scores, but they are important for reading in general.  You need to be able to remember what you read, right?

So, my brain started thinking about these two issues, and I came up with an idea to combine comprehension and DAZE practice.  I chose non-fiction topics because they are a bit more challenging, and our students are supposed to be reading more non-fiction in the classroom (hooray for cross curricular reading).  The biographies are about presidents, political figures, scientists, explorers, and other famous people.

The first level would be reading the passage and retelling the main idea and three facts (in order).  

This would help with DORF retell for DIBELS.

The second level is a cloze activity, which would help kiddos be ready for DAZE. 

 Since there are the same retell questions, it would help with DORF retell as well.

Oh, man!  Is it difficult to find extra DAZE passages or what?!  Start your second graders on these passages to familiarize them with the DAZE format.  This would also be great as an intervention, homework, or a center activity for third graders so they can get some extra practice.

Oh, my dear friend... the answer keys.  Have the kids check their own answers with these sheets.

I had a TON of fun researching these amazing people.  My favorite was Theodore Roosevelt, partially because he practically had a zoo at the White House, and all of his animals had fun names like Father O'Grady.  I decided to share my Teddy Roosevelt passage with you, so you can test out these activities in your own classroom.

Click on the picture to download your {FREEBIE}.

I am going to put these passages on sale until Thursday for 30% off!  Check them out in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Have a fantastic week!

Spring is in the Air (and there's a freebie)

With spring comes my formal observation.  Lucky me... it's on April Fool's Day.  Now, I am happy it's that week because we are going to be studying the butterfly life cycle.  First of all, I love butterflies.  Second of all, my students love butterflies.  It's an interesting topic, which will lead to engaged children.  It's a win-win.

So, being the planner that I am, I have started to think about my lesson.  I am planning on using my butterfly writing unit.  It has writing paper, a craftivity, and two emergent readers.  One of the readers is about butterflies, and the other is about the butterfly life cycle.

We use Thinking Maps at our school, so I knew a flow map of the butterfly life cycle would be perfect!  So, you are in luck, because I am going to share my flow map with you.  It is going to be a Facebook Fan Freebie!  So, head over to my Facebook page, "like" my page, and click on the "Fan Only Freebie" tab to download your copy.

I made it so you have a few options.  You can have the kids cut and paste the pictures, labels, and sentences.  The pictures, labels, and descriptions are not necessarily in order, so they will need to figure out the order on their own.  

You can also have the kids cut and paste the pictures and labels, and have them write their own sentence about each of the stages in the life cycle.  

I hope this helps you out!  Think of me on April Fool's Day, and send me some good vibes!

Can Life Please Slow Down?!

I know we all lead very busy lives as teachers.  We not only have our own biological children to worry about, but we have twenty-six other children to worry about.  Oh, man!  I am going to be the first to tell you that I have been running around like a headless chicken for the entire month of February.  I have had district classes on two of the Saturdays (which, of course, included a lesson plan that I had to create), and we went out of town to celebrate my daughter's tenth birthday (where does the time go?!).  On top of that, I had parent/teacher conferences (If you need a sheet to organize your conferences, head here or here), lesson planning, grading, and more.  Holy smokes!

Needless to say, I am SUPER excited for Spring Break to come next week.  Ahh... maybe I will be able to enjoy a bit of time to myself.  Who am I kidding?!  I will be working on new things for my classroom.

Speaking of new things for my classroom, I just finished a new set of DIBELS prep bellwork.  I can seriously tell you this bellwork has SAVED my sanity!  It keeps my high kiddos challenged, and it helps my struggling kiddos practice the skills for reading and for DIBELS.

This is the front side of each day's bellwork.  The kids read nonsense words and letter names to their neighbor.  They complete phoneme segmentation for eight words.  Finally, they read a sentence and draw a picture to match the sentence.  This is my favorite part because I love to see the kiddos' illustrations. 

Three days of the back side of bellwork looks like this.  The kids read ten of Fry's high frequency words to their neighbor.  They write five Ayres words in pencil and in crayon.  And then they think of their own sentence using one of the words listed.  If you teach kindergarten at a Spalding school, the bellwork is aligned with spelling lists 14-20.

When I originally rolled out this bellwork, I was a little concerned about this activity.  It turns out that this is their favorite!  The kids unscramble the Ayres words at the top of the page.  I usually allow them to work with their neighbor.  They get so excited when they successfully unscramble a word.  They are pretty fast, too!

I usually use this paper on the day of our spelling test.  The kids must find their spelling words (the Ayres words) and circle them.  They LOVE finding other words that I sometimes sneak in there as well (sometimes I plan that, and other times it just happens).  Again, I have never seen kids so excited about bellwork.

Can you tell I am SO excited that I finished this?!  My students are engaged in meaningful work while I am able to pull students for RTI.  In kindergarten, it is so difficult to keep kids occupied for any amount of time.  This bellwork has changed that for me.  And I'm not just blowing smoke up your skirts.  It has made my life SO MUCH EASIER!

Well, I am off to fold clothes and get ready for the week.  The last week before break is always super crazy, so wish me luck!  Have a fantastic week!