Favorite teaching trick of the Moment

Every teacher has a go-to when it comes to resources or tricks of the trade.


This year, I'm in a new position working as an English Learner co-teacher. My schedule is a little hectic and all over the place. I'm teaching a first grade reading class, second and fourth grade small groups for new to English students, and co-teaching a 4th grade math class. I'm constantly on the go and most likely seen hauling my own backpack around the building!


One of the strategies I've been working on this year is incorporating better visuals into my teaching -- hence today's teaching hack!


Make Your Own Sequencing Cards
If you're like many teachers, you've moved away from the basal as much as possible to try and include authentic texts into your lessons. I LOVE using my projector for shared reading! No worries about finding enough copies or making copies.


I used to use a fantastic website called wegivebooks.org and was upset to learn it was taken over last year. No fear! It's been absorbed into http://www.getepic.com  It's a free resource for teachers and families can use it for a small fee. You get tons of trade books accessible for free. And who doesn't like free?


How to make the sequencing cards

-Select a projectible text you'd like to use
-Take a screenshot of the book open to a moment in the text

• If you're using a PC, hit ALT+PrntScr (in the upper right hand side of the keyboard)

• If you're using a mac....I'm looking into it :P

-Paste the screenshot into Powerpoint
-Crop the photo to get the part you want


and voila! You can make as many sequencing cards as you want AND it's a great way to differentiate for students (3 vs. 4 vs. 5 cards)

Getting back into the swing of things

So I've never been especially good at keeping up with blogging or even my personal journal. It is not my New Year's Resolution to keep up with my blogging, but I'm going to try to be more frequent when I have something fun to write up.

On the upside, this year has included getting engaged, getting a house, getting a puppy, and finally getting married!

You may notice that those are all really exciting personal things. However, in terms of work, this has been the craziest and most difficult year. New administration, new team and new grade level -- and I'm the team leader! My class is also one of the most challenging I've had in terms of personalities -- they are each individually very sweet second graders but all together...oy.

So over break, I was looking for new ways to keep my kids positive and work on the classroom environment. I fell in love with the concept of Brag Tags. I discovered a collection from the TPT store Fun in 5th Grade that were perfect for what I needed. I just needed to figure out how to make my own to fill on some gaps including - no surprise - pencils.

Pencil Perfect Brag Tags!

Sunday Sitdown

Um, oops? I couldn't believe how long it's been since I've posted when I sat down to check in. A lots been going on since then.

Highlights

• Finished the school year
• Came back to the same school to teach same grade with same team and same principal. That has literally never happened before.
• Bought a house
• Got engaged
• Am planning a wedding for later this year!

One of the things I'm most excited about is that the new house has a room for my office! I'd post pictures, but it's still a mess. As a treat to ourselves, my fiance and I bought a desktop computer to share. Which is great, because my personal laptop was getting ancient and slow and my work laptop can't do all the fun things I wish it could...like print...add programs.

I'm going to try to commit to writing each Sunday. I'll do three things -- Stalking, Sharing, and Setting Up. Let's see how long that lasts!

Stalking

This one is super easy for this week. I'm stalking Annie Moffatt over at The Moffatt Girls. I'm getting ready to head to my College Reunion and I absolutely love her No PREP packets for when I am out. Our school doesn't use a lot of typical worksheets, but when I am out, her packets are juuuust enough that the substitute can support them, the principal doesn't get upset about worksheets and paper usage and OH YEAH, the kids LOVE it. 

Sharing

I'm going to piggy-back off my love for The Moffatt Girls to show you some projects I just wrapped up over the long weekend. In trying to reduce paper usage, I've been laminating more and finding ways for students to reuse the same materials. Ta Da!

Exhibit One:  The Moffatt Girls Read and Sequence with Blends NO PREP 

Exhibit Two; Making Words Folders

A wonderful parent volunteer started to put a set together for me earlier this semester and I ran out of Velcro. She had neat suggestions for working with Velcro which made finishing up the project SO much easier! Now I have enough for my intervention group which is still struggling with isolating sounds and consistently matching sounds to letters. 

Call for help: I downloaded the file for free AGES ago and can't find the original since that computers gone the way of the dinosaurs. If you recognize it, please let me know so I can give that creator credit!

Setting up

We are getting ready in our All About Tennessee unit to talk about the Native peoples of Tennessee. My old roommate is a former Social Studies teacher and currently a PhD candidate in American Studies and teaching about Native cultures is her thing. So I called her up and we're going to be reading these stories over the next few weeks.

(Note: I tried to show a copy of the covers and it messed everything up. Each title is now linked to the Amazon page)

How Rabbit Tricked Otter
How Turtle's Back was Cracked

Getting Anchored

So one of my goals this year was to blog more. Woops!

And I know, excuses aren't allowed in my classroom, but I think I have a good one. I started at a new school in July, got my new kiddos, and three weeks later found out that I was being transferred to a new school in our district due to enrollment. That meant saying goodbye to my new friends and getting a whole new set of friends a few days later.

We're on Fall Break now and I've finally just unpacked some of my boxes I brought and some of the boxes I found in my new classroom. I've been itching to clean and set some things up, but they've fallen all the way down to the bottom of the to do list until now.

I have, however, been trying to be more purposeful and specific in my anchor charts. Now that I'm settled, I'm kind of excited to share them!

Getting Started on the Right Foot!

I haven't been the most avid of bloggers thus far -- it was a crazy year this year adjusting to changes at my school and ultimately getting a job at another elementary school here in town. I'm excited to be staying with first grade for another year but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. The first six weeks or so of last year passed by in a blur! Luckily, I had an amazing co-teacher who helped keep my head floating above water!

As I get ready to back to school soon (kiddos arrive August 1 -- how crazy?!), I'm revamping some of the files I used a lot and making some new resources. Check out my TPT store to see what's new!

Ch ch ch changes

So I am horribly, horribly overdue for a posting. But here we go.

I've spent the last few years teaching 4th grade and had started making my own materials for that grade. Over the summer, I switched to a combined 1/2 classroom -- totally new ballgame! Since I have to differentiate quite a bit to meet all my kiddos needs, I've been checking out a lot of blogs. Woowee -- I wasn't sure I was really an elementary school teacher at heart in upper grades so it's definitely been a challenge.

Fairly exciting start to Fairly Elementary!

I finally did it!

I've been reading teacher blogs for the last 3 months or so, a few weeks into the start of my second year of teaching. I work in a high-poverty, inner-city elementary school that is trying actively to diversify our  student population as a magnet school with a hands-on, project-based curriculum.

Hands-on? Projects? My first year, the idea was completely overwhelming. I got started on reading centers only partway through the year and never even got a chance to attempt math stations. Coming into teaching, I had originally thought I would end up in middle school and the idea of making all these materials seemed overwhelming. I also had an aversion to comic sans and, silly me, associated elementary materials with that font.

My enthusiasm for teaching has skyrocketed with some of the things I've found on teacher's blogs these past few months! It's amazing how much more respect kids will give materials when they look neat, attractive, and organized! It gave me the umph I needed to update some of the materials that I'd made. I recently started my own store on TPT and had my very first sale today!

Here's to a new adventure in blogging!