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.