Monday Freebie/Tuesday Freebie Combined! (Freebie # 5 & 6)

Yesterday and today's Freebie got together. I teach in Wisconsin and we have a great resource called the Wisconsin Media Lab. They put together fantastic reading resources among other things.

 One of my FAVORITES is something called Storylords. It was made in the 80's so you need to ignore the costumes, haircuts, etc. but that adds to its charm!

 The episodes are free on YouTube here.

 They also have a free PDF of lessons to go with the videos.

I made a set of posters that I will add to my TPT store tonight for free!

Basically it's about a boy named Norbert (Norby for short) who needs to help different people in a faraway land from the evil Thorzuul and his sidekick Milkbreath.  Norby has to use strategies he learns in reading class!  The kids LOVE it!

Weekend Freebie - Freebie # 4

This is a reference tool that I use for my students who need phonics intervention.  They use it to help them remember their long and short vowels and all the spelling patterns possible with long vowels.   

Click here to get the board.

Friday Freebie (2 days late) aka Freebie # 3

Quick, Slow, I Don't Know

This is how we have our students sort their math flashcards.  We also have given the kids green rubberbands, yellow rubberbands, and red rubberbands to sort their cards when they finish.   This would work great with sight words too.  Please use if you can! 

Brain Break Favorite (Freebie # 2)

Today's freebie is not something I made, but my favorite thing this year that I have found on Pinterest.  Every once in a while, we take brain breaks.  I have used a variety of things but this is my new all-time favorite brain break.  It takes 4 minutes!  My kids were doing story problems in math today for an hour straight.  Before we pushed through one last page, we took a break to do this!  So hilarious to watch 3rd graders dance and it's fun for the teachers too!  :)


 

Freebie #1

This is a freebie to use before Thanksgiving!  Have your students write about what they are grateful for!

You can find it here:

I am Thankful!

Grateful

Wow! That's about all I can say.  I had stumbled upon Teachers Pay Teachers a few years ago when it had just started.  Besides teaching, I was coaching and in my Masters program, so I didn't look into it at all.  This summer I had to rewrite all of our writing lessons to meet the Common Core Standards and I began thinking of TPT again.  I also was  big fan of Pinterest and it seemed that every teaching idea I found linked back to TPT.

With the blessing of my husband, I took the leap.  I am so grateful that I did!  I have sold over 400 items, was able to purchase some things we had been saving for in our new basement, but best of all my writing lessons are being used all over the place!  I am so excited about them, that I am so excited more get to have them too!  

It might seem cliche but it has made me a better teacher too.  I think about every detail more than ever before.  I have make more appealing lessons than in years past too!

Thanks to anyone who reads this and bought anything.  It seriously has changed my teaching career, for the better!

As appreciation, I am going to be giving away free things every day until Thanksgiving.  Thankful doesn't seem to even cover how I feel!

Interesting Stats!

This was too interesting not to share!

Crazy October!

Wow!  I have been updating my classroom blog, but totally let this one go!  I apologize for anyone who has been watching it!  We have conferences for the first time ever in October so it's been crazy getting ready for them!  24 conferences in 7 hours - let's go!  Top that with a little baby with his first ear infection + test prep =  one exhausted teacher!  I'm sure many of you are in the same boat as I am!

I wanted to share a picture of my kids using the writing checklists that I had made and posted on TPT.  It's funny how much they LOVE editing now!

Math Facts

Well, math facts are starting to rock our world!  We have a new math curriculum - Math Expressions.  I like it so far but it was a HUGE change for everyone and even bigger change that we started the year with multiplication!  This is a big jump for kids that can't even always add or subtract correctly.

Needless to say, we have been doing a ton of facts fluency practice.  With the new Common Core standards, our cut-offs for grades are also much more strict (and frankly pretty tough) compared to what they used to be.  

I decided to have my students graph their progress to help them feel little successes along the way. 

Feel free to download what I made from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  

Melvin Bubble

Do you know this book?

If you don't and you are an elementary teacher, you NEED to read it!  It's one of my all-time favorites and that's saying a lot!  I read this at the beginning of the year, every year, to my students.  They laugh, smile, giggle, and LOVE Melvin.  

We then follow-up with a quick writing activity called "Who is Mrs. Krahn's Class?" It's our first class book and everyone writes a page in the style of this fun book.  It makes a great book to set out during parent teacher conferences. 

If you are interested in the pages I use, click here. (It's only $1).  

I'll continue sharing my favorite finds in books!  

Olympic Theme

I've been meaning to pictures up of my Olympic theme and kept putting it on the back burner! I know the Olympics are gone now, but hopefully someone can be put this idea away for a different year!

Our bulletin board of all the Olympic sports with this poster:

Get this poster free on TPT! 

 Loved this flag banner!

Our classroom jobs for the year! 

Gold Medals = Hardest Jobs

Our birthday board!  My students' pictures are by the month of their birthday. 

ScootPad

We do Tech Talks at school on Thursdays, so I'm going to try to update my blog on Thursdays as well with Tech Tips!  I've haven't blogged long enough to make certain things on certain days yet, but with my love of technology, I'll gladly share something once a week.

Scootpad is new.  Scootpad hasn't even been around for a year yet.  It's picking up steam thanks to Pinterest and word of mouth.  We are trying for the first time with all the third graders this year during our differentiation block.  Here's what I love about it!

• It's aligned to Common Core - LOVE when things are!
• It's easy to customize.  Our students all learn differently, so it's awesome when they can all be on the same learning tool but doing different things at their level.
• It's something that parents can be involved with.  They can check their child's progress and set rewards. 
• Speaking of rewards, students can earn rewards set by the teacher which fits in our positive reinforcement that is stressed at our building. 
• REPORTS! In this age f reporting data, using data to make diff groups, RTI, etc... the more data the better!
• It's super easy to set up and manage. 
• It looks like fun for the kids with a dashboard, messages, etc.  All the messages they can send are pre-programmed and POSITIVE! 
• IT'S FREE!!!!!!!!

Try it out!  I love it and can't wait to try it with my students once the computer lab opens again after MAP testing.  

What a Week!

I'm sure I'm not the only teacher who is completely and utterly exhausted this week!  We are officially back to school and it is very different for me this year.  Now I need to get myself and my six month old son out the door every morning!  I also am working on finding the balance between family and school.  My husband always understood but now that I have to do even more juggling.  I know many of you have been in this boat for years!  Kudos to you!

I just wanted to update that things have been great so far with the Classroom Organizer from Booksource that I blogged about earlier.  My kids LOVE it!  They are so quick checking out their books (10 times faster than using paper like we used to).  The program is so user friendly. I am in disbelief that it's free!  It may be time consuming to enter all your books but I promise it will be worth it!

I'll be posting pictures of my classroom this weekend so check back!  Also, a freebie for a back to school activity to use with your students!

Happy (almost) Friday!

Classroom Organizer from Booksource

If you are a teacher (especially elementary) and don't know about this fantastic new tool, you need to learn about it!  First of all, it's FREE!!!  ABSOLUTELY, 100% FREE!!! What teacher doesn't love that!  This tool is a way to organize your classroom library.  It is also a great checkout/return system for your classroom library books.  It evens has a free app to use on iPods or iPads. 

It's super easy.  Here is what you need to do.  

1. Set up a teacher account. 
2. Add your books.  This is the hard part.  I was very thankful that my crazy type A personality already had kept a catalog of all my books in an Excel file.  You can import an Excel file, type them in or scan them in.  
3. Decide what info you or your kiddos want to see.  There are a ton of options (reading level, AR, etc)
4. Set up your class with your students' names. 
5. Show the kids how it works!

I showed this to my students today and they are so excited.  They can't wait to review the books when they return them (something that I thought was a really cool added feature!).  

I also love that I can generate reports to see what my kids are reading, how long they've had something, and if they are choosing good fit books.  I obviously can't oversee every book pick in our library so this helps me monitor it easier than the old paper/pencil check-out I used to have! 

We can't wait to start tomorrow with the check-out process!  Hope you enjoy this as much as we do! 

Happy First Day of School!

Just wanted to wish a happy 1st day to all my teacher friends!  I am very excited to get to know my new 24 kiddos, but am sad to leave my little guy after 5 1/2 months at home.  I'm excited to try some new classroom community building activities this week.  Check back for freebies on some of the things I did as well as pictures of our room.  I've also decided to also make Thursday's posts about Technology as we do Thursday Tech talks at our school.

Open House

Our district has gone Google! We are excited for all the possibilities and working through the kinks that come up.  I decided to try something different for open house.  This year I had my parents fill out their "Get to Know You" sheet via a Google form.  It will sure be easier for me to organize and keep track of the data that I get from it.

It's always exciting to meet a new batch of students.  They are so shy and nervous (for the only time for some of them!).  It's definitely different to be back with a baby now, but great all the same!

Here's the form I used.

Here I go....

I have been following blogs for years.  I have followed personal ones to read about loved ones, new recipes, crafting ideas and more.  I have followed professional ones to learn about new teaching ideas and trends in technology.  And now, finally, I am about to embark on one myself!  I've wanted to blog for years but it's always something I've put on the back burner.

First, I was getting established in my teaching career when blogging was the "new" thing.  Then I was changing jobs, coaching two seasons at the high school,  getting a masters degree building a house, getting married, having a baby.  Basically, the crazy demands of life that we all know happened.  This was something easy to put on the back burner because it was an optional part of my life.

I had also been inconsistent with my classroom blog.  We'd start off every year STRONG and then it would be something that was updated less and less as time ran out each week in our room.

So this year now that I am feeling more at ease in my sixth year in third grade (even though we change one subject area at least every year - this year we have Common Core, Daily 5, Math Expressions, new keyboarding, new report cards....) and I'm not taking graduate classes (for once in the past 4 years), I am making it my personal and professional goal that I will keep both blogs faithfully!

This is my personal blog that relates to my profession. :)  I won't be sharing baby stories (too much anyway).  It is my intention that I am able to share successes and failures of things we try in our third grade classroom.  I do keep a blog just for the parents and students in my classroom and some of those things will be shared here as well.

I hope this is a great outlet for me to share and I hope someone is able to gain an idea because of it!  I look forward to any feedback as this whole blogging thing is finally happening!

Stephanie