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