Hello Sweet Summertime!!!! (and a Five for Friday!!!)

Today is the first day of summer vacation and as I write this I still can't believe it. The time flew by so quickly!!!

Ha! How true is this! Cracks me up!!

I have completely abandoned this little blog of mine so I could make it through these last few weeks, but I'm alive and oh-so-ready for summer! Although, I must admit, I am the total NERD who loves everything about school- my co-workers, my kiddos, school supplies, that funky cafeteria smell (don't judge!), all of it!  So, I go through some pretty serious withdrawals before I can completely embrace summer. :) Surely I'm not the only one.... right?!?

Moving on... it's time to link up with  Doodlebug's for the first Five For Friday (on a Saturday) of my summer!

Parent Presentations!

Last year, I started a tradition of giving a small parent performance after our annual end-of-year awards ceremony and we continued with it this year. The kids chose their favorite thing they learned from third grade and spoke about it for a minute or so. Some of the kids made posters to show what they learned, others used props, it was too cute!  Two little ones were the MC's for the whole thing, we served cookies and punch, and the parents seemed to really enjoy it! I was so proud of them! 

Class Gifts

This year I went with a simple end of year gift- a copy of the class picture slideshow, a writing tablet, and a pen. That's it! The kids loved it and it sure did save me a lot of time and money!! 

Self- Contained!!

I recently found out that I am going to be self-contained next year!!!! I have wanted this for a while now and I am super excited! I have been self-contained before and have team taught for the last three years. I'm ready for this change, but I have lots of math and science planning to do!!!  

I can finally use some of those amazing pins I've pinned over the last three years!! 

Summer Book Study!

I am teaming up with the amazing Sabra from Teaching With a Touch of Twang and several other fabulous bloggers for a summer book study! Each week someone will be blogging about a particular chapter from the book. The book we will be reading together is called Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary.

Vocabulary instruction is hugely important for my students' success. I can't wait to dive into this book and learn how I can improve my instruction. If you want to join in, go get the book and dive in with us!! Check in on Sabra's page each week starting the week of June 13th for the weekly posts. I will be blogging about Chapter 4 the week of July 5th, so be sure to check back in for that! :)

Rest and Relaxation!

This is my parent's backyard where I will be spending lots of hot and humid summer days with my family. It's time for this teacher to relax and rejuvenate!!!


How has your week gone?? Head over to Doodlebugs and link up!

Five for Friday May 17th: Tour the States, Class Meetings, and Other Randomness

OMG is the week actually over?! It felt like it lasted ten years! I'm not sure how this teacher is going to make it through THREE MORE WEEKS of school. In times like these, I turn to my most trusted personal advisor:

As she would say, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!" If that doesn't make you smile, I'm not sure what will!

I'm linking up with Doodlebug's Teaching again for this week's Five for Friday! Let's see if I can find five sharable things from this week.... (might be hard to do)!

 Research!

We were up to our ears in crocodiles and alligators this week. We're taking a field trip on Monday to the Houston Crocodile Encounter and the kids are seriously about to die from excitement. So, to prepare, we had to learn as much as possible about these oh-so-adorable creatures. Did you know that an alligator can go up to two years without eating?! ME EITHER!

Tour the States

To give our little third graders a bit of geographical awareness, we have been studying our country and learning the states and capitols. Last week, Sabra from Teaching With a Touch of Twang shared this awesome video and I finally had time to show it today. I think it would be fair to say we watched at LEAST five times. It's addicting. It's stuck in my head. But I love it. The kids fell in love and seriously tried to learn the words, which melted my heart. They would stumble and mumble through the verses and then burst into glorious harmony on the chorus. It was beautiful! The remembering of the states and capitols will come soon, I'm sure of it!! ;)

You can get a copy of the lyrics HERE.

And for some reason my class wanted me to take a picture when we were watching it. So, in case you didn't believe we actually watched it (lol), here is our proof! By the way, this is the DARKEST my room ever gets.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

One afternoon, we took some time to remember all the fun we have had this year. I made up this little sheet to record our thoughts. It was interesting to see what they remembered. This sheet is nothing special, but it serves the purpose!

Click HERE to get your own copy!

New Class Meeting Options

In our class, we have class meetings. At this point in the year we are having them daily! Most of the year we have them once a week or so, depending on what's going on and if we have a need for it.

The first thing we do in every class meeting is go around and share how we feel. We use two things to do this: Weather Report and Tribbles. Both of these ideas were given to me by my professor in college. I'm not sure where she found the weather report idea- I have looked all over and haven't been able to find it. If you know who originally came up with this, let me know and I will give credit where credit is due! I have been using the same two pieces of paper for several years, and they were starting to look pretty shabby. So, I decided to recreate them and give them a much needed update!

Weather Report is pretty simple. They choose the weather condition that best depicts how they are feeling that day and explain why they are feeling that way. 

Another option we use is called Tribbles. To be honest, I have never seen Star Trek *gasp* but from what I've seen online, they are small furry fictional creatures.... my professor called them Tribbles when she introduced this to us in college and I have used it ever since! And surprisingly, none of the students have ever asked me why they are called Tribbles! Again, I'm not sure where the original idea came from, but I was able to find the little guys HERE. You will have to color them with crayon, so you can make them any color you like!

To pick up your own copies of these, click HERE 

Need I say more?!

If you are still with me after this mammoth of a post, thank you!! Be sure to grab all of your freebies and then head over and link up yourself!! 

P.S.- I totally copied the way those amazing girls over at Collaboration Cuties, Amanda and Stacia, do their Five for Friday posts with the numbers! I hope they don't mind!! ;) I finally have a use for those cute numbers!

Five for Friday May 10th

This has been one crazy, long, emotional week for me! I'm so tired I couldn't even come up with a creative name for this blog post!  I think I might just call and schedule myself a massage RIGHT NOW! The tease of a massage I got from my awesome partner during conference today wasn't quite enough to work out all the kinks!

Anyway, it's Friday, which means it's time to link up with Doodlebugs!

1) Snowballs!

This week I pulled out one of my favorite tricks- the snowball fight! We used this to practice contractions and of course the kids were in love. Throw a snowball, pick it up, write the contraction. Simple.  Of course, they had to make sentences with all of those wonderful contractions! They weren't getting off the hook that easily!

2) Class store with student-made products!

I let my little ones use a little creativity this week and create some products to add to our usual selection at our class store. They designed a product, created a short "commercial," and sold their products to the rest of the students. They were so cute and creative!

3) Happy Teacher Appreciation Week- to myself!!!

I decided to treat myself and bought books on Amazon- some that have been on my wish list for awhile now and some that I saw last week on a mentor text link up. It's pathetic how excited I get over brand new books! My favorite one is called If I Built a Car. I can't wait to read this to the kids in a few weeks and have them design their own car! Thanks to AMC from Looking From Third to Fourth for sharing!

4) Writing Offices

I finally made writing offices!  I have wanted to make them all year, but never got around to it. They are a little bland right now, but I really just wanted to try them out and see how I would like them. I love the way the room feels when they are up, and the kids like them, too! These little babies will definitely be something I use starting at the beginning of the year next year!

I used this adorable COPS sheet from The Eager Teachers in the offices. Click on the link to get your own copy!

5) Chipotle!

My teammate and I enjoyed the buy one get one free offer from Chipotle this week for Teacher Appreciation Day. Delicious!

Alrighty- time to make a date with my recliner and RELAX! Can't wait to spend time with my amazing mom this weekend. Head over and link up with Doodlebugs!

Happy Weekend and Happy Mother's Day!!!

Five for Friday Carnival Day Edition

This week is OVER and I cannot be thankful enough! It has been one of THOSE weeks- and I haven't had one that stressful in a long time- ugh.

But today the sun is out and I feel tremendously better! I feel so good that I have decided to link up with Doodle Bug's Five for Friday linky!

My partner and I at the last minute, and I mean the LAST minute, decided to do a little carnival themed fun day!

I set my room up to resemble a carnival. The decorations were minimal. I already had this stuff from when we did an all-out blitz a few years ago.

I LOVE to do rotations on days like this, so I set up FIVE different stations. Here's a brief description of each of them:

1. Books!
Of course my kids would never make it through a day in my classroom without reading a book! I'm kind of a book hoarder so when the Scholastic Book Fair came to our school last week, I went a little crazy. I had to have so many! The kids were thrilled to have the opportunity to dig through the new stuff.

2. STAAR Bingo
Y'all I am not even proud to show you these! Good 'ol hand written words on blank bingo cards and hand written calling cards on index cards. Not pretty, but effective. I focused on all of those pesky testing words that can stump kiddos- selection, section, passage, you get my drift. I remembered AFTER I had hand written all of these cards that we live in the 21st century and we have electronic bingo card maker websites. Big sigh. You can bet I'll remember that for next time!

Now to my favorites!

3. Vocabulary Bean Bag Toss

Every day we do a buzzword of the day to increase our vocabulary. We always learn the definition and then put a motion or hand signal with it. The kids love it! For this station, I put all of our old words in a bucket and taped down this board on the floor. The kids had to choose a word out of the bucket, toss their bean bag, and then complete the activity written on the space they landed on. It was a hit! I had dry erase boards and materials on hand for the activities that required writing.

4. Bucket Dive

This had to be the favorite by far. Way back when I did my Knowledgeable Knight activity, the kids went absolutely crazy when they had to dig through the buckets to find words. I wanted to create a different version that activity. I really wanted to use the plastic balls that you find in fast-food restaurant's ball pits, but I didn't have time to search for them. So, I went for a cheaper route- balled-up paper!

I filled the bucket with the colored paper balls made from butcher paper and hid copies of Rachel Lynette's
Context Clues task cards, also balled up, but on white paper, in the bucket. The kids had to dig through the bucket and look for the white paper balls. When they found one, they pulled it out and filled out their recording sheet using the card (card number, underlined word, definition). They repeated this process until they found all the hidden cards.


5. Synonym Duck Pull

This station was a hit as well! I created a very crude duck pond using a hula hoop and blue butcher paper. On the bottom of each rubber duck was a plain word- happy, sad, make, mad, etc. Also written in smaller print  were synonyms for that word. One at a time, a student would pull a duck from the pond and read the plain word to the rest of the group. Together they would come up with synonyms for the word using the smaller words on the duck only if they got stuck or needed other ideas. Then they wrote a sentence using one of the words.

And of course, we had to have snacks!

Carnival Day was a great change-of-pace and a fun way to sneak in some targeted practice. It was the perfect way to end the week on a positive note.  I'm thinking Bucket Dive and the Duck Pull will be constants in our station rotations from now on!

Now to get some rest this weekend before the big test next week!

Have a great weekend!!!