A Peek At Our Week

I had every intention of sharing our plans with you on Sunday night... but the baby fell asleep on my chest and she was just so cozy that I didn't want to put her down. So here is a "Peek at Our Week" a few days late...

Yes, I didn't sugarcoat them. We seriously still write out our plans in the the old school plan book. It works for us! Don't judge.

This week we've been working on the difference between complete and incomplete sentences. Yesterday we did a flap book. Today we made incomplete sentences complete! We've been using activities from our Statements, Exclamations, and Questions OH MY! pack.

We've also gotten into our mini lessons for Daily 5. This week we are working on the strategy, Check For Understanding. We need some more work on it, the kiddies want to give predictions instead of telling who and what!

We also introduced Work on Writing. We've been talking about forms of writing, writing ideas, and using our word books.

One thing that we are really excited about is our new spelling program! We found The Teacher's Clubhouse. Saw her spelling pack. And HAD to have it! So far... we are loving it. Spelling lists are so much more meaningful this year. Our lessons in class match the word lists. Everything we need is included in her pack!

We are trucking along in our math series. Not to much to share on that home front. We are just seriously missing all of our cute/fun/interesting activities, games, and lessons that we created 2 years ago before we were forced into using this new series. BUT what's a teacher to do? We are trying to make the most of it! I find myself putting my own spin on the lessons which makes me much happier. Here's a look at the "Work Places" we've been engaged in.

As far as social studies goes... full speed ahead in our communities unit! This week is all about rural, suburban, and urban communities. We are also studying for our Where I Live test... this Friday. It's pretty amazing how many kids don't know their address, phone number, or city. Scary.

Now that the "honeymoon" phase is wearing off Go Noodle is my best friend. That Zumba helps get our wiggles out. Life saver.

Amy

WHAT we teach

This late night post has been delayed for a few reasons: 1) Our power went out last night and was still out this morning 2) It's my last Friday of vacation :((( and 3) I just wasn't sure what to write!

But, I have decided that my favorite things to teach are Writing and Math.  I absolutely love anything with numbers and math has always been my favorite, but I am a little nervous to begin this year because we have a totally new math series again.  The series is, Bridges, and it looks like it will be very beneficial BUT also super intensive without a lot of prepping.  So, we'll see. :)

I also adore teaching writing.  Well...usually.  At the beginning of the year, I might wanna cry and pull my hair out sometimes, but I remind myself that these little cuties will develop quickly.  I love writing because there are so many types of ways for the students to show their creativity.  We do most of our writing based on a great book and usually wrap up the lesson with a cute final copy or craft.  

Have a good weekend!  I'm going to soak up the sun and squeeze my boys tight because I know I'll be missing them like crazy next week.

-Lindsay

Bed Rest Day 17...

Well, day 17 is the day I'm starting to go a little stir crazy. I know it's the best for baby and me but these four walls are getting a bit boring! I had daddy-to-be get some things done in the nursery and it's one step closer to being ready for baby. I LOVE Pinterest and found some really cute trees on the walls in baby's rooms. I asked the art teacher at our school if he would paint one for us. It turned out so adorable!!!

I have to say being off work I thought I was going to be worried about school and what was happening in the classroom. But I know my room and my students are in good hands!! I love my sub, she is fantastic.

The sisters sent me a few pictures and freebies to post for YOU! So here's a look at what our classes have been up too..

Three digit addition is in full swing. The students are using multiple strategies to help them solve the problems. Grab this freebie!

I really don't understand why I couldn't get this picture to fit and load the right way! Grrr

They also did a Solve It! This Solve It! can be found in our addition packet.

They have also been working on cause and effect during our Daily 5 rounds. We read tons of books during this unit, both fiction and nonfiction. One of my favorite books to read to kick off this unit is The Wonderful Happens.  We start off whole group discussing cause and effects and by the end of the unit our students are able to pick them out by themselves! Here's one cause and effect map that we use.  

That's it for now, I have to get back to my movies! Have a great Monday everyone! 

-Sister 3-

Monday Math Day

Today we spent most of our day in meetings. This morning was spent on School Improvement with a touch of grade-level time. Then, we got to treat ourselves to a fun Mexican lunch with some of our Kindergarten eacher friends. Our school is so big that we often get sucked into our own little 2nd grade world. We have the same lunch and prep by grade level, so it's hard to see everyone else. Anyhoo...after lunch we trekked over to another elementary in the district for some math training. I'm not gonna lie and say that I was super pumped for the training. Especially since the Mr. and my babies were snoozing away when I left this morning and had a pretty fun day planned out without me. But, the training did open my eyes to a few cool ideas. The first is something that I plan on implementing soon. It is called Number Talks. Very simple, yet effective. Basically, you pose a math problem for the kiddos (I plan on doing this as a warm-up), and then many different students how they would solve it. Check back this week for some pics and ideas as I try it! Since math is the theme of the day...the first 3 people to comment on this post with their email address will get our Math Wall unit for free! It is loaded with vocab and CCSS related cards to help you. Peace, Sister 2

Five For Friday Freebies!

It's FRIDAY!

Today we are linking up with Doodle Bugs. Who doesn't love Five for Fridays? Especially when it's five FREEBIES!?!

Our kiddies have a really hard time with the difference between nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I can't tell you how many times we've gone over them and yet they still get confused. We decided to do a little cooperative learning activity to help their understanding. We put one of these on each table. Groups of four had to work together. They got one minute to write down as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives they could before rotating to the next table.

They did a pretty good job... hopefully this means they are FINALLY catching on. Grab this nouns, verbs, and activities cooperative learning activitiy here!

This week we've also been working on skip counting, specifically by 5s, 10s, and 100s. To make it a bit more challenging we've had different starting points... so when we count by 10s we don't start at 130 but we'll start at 137. Talk about a brain bender! Gotta get these kids thinking. Grab a skip counting sheet here.

Next Tuesday we are going to focus our writing lesson around MLK. We have tons of great informational books to read and share with the students. We are going to use this organizer and final copy paper. It's nothing fancy but will get the job done. Sometimes that's all you really need! Why make everything a production???  Included in that file is also a winter writing organizer and final copy paper. Enjoy!

Evens and odds always need to be reviewed. We have a full evens and odds pack that will take you through the year posted on TpT but you can grab a free snapshot here! 

There you have it, 5 freebies.... just for you! We appreciate you visiting our blog and hope you stop by again to follow our journey in teaching, snatch some free stuff, and learn about us!

- Sister 3 -

Time to Catch Up

Where has the time gone?!? About a week and a half ago we said we had another major announcment... sorry to leave you hanging!

I'm having a baby!!! Lots of big news on my end this year.  My students are beyond excited! Every day I find sticky notes on my desk with potential baby names.

In the mist of wedding and baby planning I am managing to get some teaching in! hehe... Thanks to my two lovely sisters, of course.

We have our bat unit under way. We have to say we are very excited about this unit because it was our launch into TPT. It's our first Sister Secrets "baby" if you will! Check it out if you're interested in studying bats this year. Here's a writing craftivity from the unit.

We are also starting our Halloween inspired activities and lessons. Today our cuties began rough drafts of scary stories... look for pictures of the finished projects soon! We also have been enjoying Halloween Bump! in our Math Menu rotations. You can grab a year of bump here, for free!

This week we've been doing all sorts of visualizing. It's one of my favorite strategies! Yesterday, I read See the Ocean.. it's such a sweet story. I stopped about half way through and had the kiddies go back to their desk and draw what they saw when they heard the words on the page, in their Daily 5 Notebooks.  Then we did a gallery walk. Here are a few of their visualizations!

And finally the highlight of last week was a visit from Big Boy! Our students had written resturant letters a few weeks ago and Big Boy wrote back saying they wanted to bring an ice cream sundae treat to ALL of us! 90 ice cream sundaes!! Such sticky fun. :)

I'm off to meet a contractor... we're wanting to renovate the bathroom. Wish me luck!
-Sister 3-

And we're back!!! Halloween, Happiness, and Headaches!!

First...let us start by apologizing to all of you!!  We have been MIA for the last few weeks with SO much school stuff.  You get it right?  SOOOO much school stuff!  The beginning of the year is just plain exhausting.  We love the excitement of back to school but we must forget how tiring it is.  Have we mentioned the SOOOO much school stuff?  Anyway...boo hoo enough about us!  You are all in the same boat and so we can sympathize with each other!

So forgive us for being absent for so long!  But we are back!!  Things are finally settling into a routine and we can get back to what we love....blogging, our teacher friends, and TPT! :) All three make the three of us very happy ladies!

We've worked on a few products in the last few months to prep for the fall season. Somehow working on TPT is like therapy that relaxes us...yes, we need help! :)

Check out Apples, Fall Writing, and Halloween!  All three are packed with fun for this season!

 

We have a new math series this year.  It is the absolute DEATH of us so far.  We know that new things come along and we always adjust what we do as the years change...however, sometimes we are forced to use things we don't think are the best materials for our students.  We are trying to stay positive that the farther we get into it, the more it will all make sense but....eeekk.  Right now all three of us worry about our math instruction.  We've decided to try to find a happy medium of the program we have to use and supplemental materials...for the kids and for maintaining our sanity.  We don't want to give out the name (to protect the innocent...lol) but out of curiosity...what math program do you use at your school?  More importantly tell us what you think of it!

Hope you are all having a wonderful beginning of the year and settling into your routines!  Halloween will be here before you know it!

A Linky and Freebies

Happy Monday everyone! Today I'm linking up with Oh' Boy Fourth Grade for her July Linky.

Last week I attended a four day math conference. When my alarm went off on Monday morning I was really wondering why I thought registering for this back in March was a good idea.  But once I got my butt moving and the Monday session was over I was pumped for the rest of the week and definitely not regretting signed up. 

The four days few by and I have a binder full of resources and ideas that I am itching to use next year! So naturally what did I do? That's right ran home and made everything cute! You're welcome. hehe 

We talked a lot about this thing call subitizing. Have any of you heard of this? As soon as I heard that word my college best practices in math course came back to me. How could I have forgotten about something so important? And something that will make my life easier when checking math papers. If you've never heard of it Google it. Seriously.  Subitizing is basically "instantly seeing how many." You can use whatever model works best for you whether it be a nines frame or a tens frame. All you have to do is teach the kids the patterns...

Subitizing is going to be one of our first lessons in the fall. It helps keep those math pictures neat and organized. It may not seem like a big deal but you'll be thanking me for this later! 

One of my other "ahha" moments was went I saw this...

Why didn't we ever think of this before? How awesome... a hundreds chart puzzle. I put it on card stock and cut away. The best part is none of them have to be cut the same way! 

I'm not sure if I've been living under a rock but I hadn't heard of the game Bump! I'd say about 90% of the teachers there play it in their classroom. If you're like me and don't know what it is or have the game yet grab it here for free! 

We also did a little bit of "Farm Fun."  The instructor read the book, The Rowdy Rooster. Then she posed the question, "There are 12 legs in the barnyard. What animals might be in the barnyard?"  We had to cut out farm animals and glue them to a barn. Grab our cute version here. What a great way to not only incorporate literature but also get the kids talking about math! 

That's all for tonight... I have to go pack for my trip to Connecticut! More math fun to come. 

- Sister 3 -

XtraMath and a Yummy Birthday Dinner

XtraMath is also a great FREE website for kids that we use to help with math facts.  It's super easy to set up. All you have to do is type in your students names.  Once the names are typed in you can go to "print flyers."  The flyers explain the site and how to use it.  The site generates a flyer for each student, with their name and pin number printed at the bottom.  What's great about this site is that there is no maintenance.  Every week you will receive an email with each student's scores.  This way you can see who's using it and who isn't.  We use it as an at home option.  Sometimes, after I get the report, I'll pass out our school wide positive behavior tickets as an incentive.  This usually gets a few more kids to go on!

On a personal note, tomorrow is my boyfriend's birthday. He's turning the big 2-6!  I'm right behind him... I've got 1 week to be "younger."  We're celebrating tonight with family.  What's on the menu you ask? All his favorites!

Homemade Panera spinach power salad, Coney dogs, and cheese fries! Yummm! Happy Sunday everyone!

Looking for a little easy motivation??

If you all are anything like us, we have serious cases of Spring Fever.  And by that I mean, the kids and the teachers!  This year my class needs a lot of extra love and I have been needing to change up the routine a lot as well as behavior plans and management ideas. 

Soooo...when my own 2nd grader came home and was begging to go online and do EXTRA math homework to earn a reward, I had to check it out.  I had heard of the website before www.ixl.com but didn't know much about it.  There are some awesome math testing resources here!

I sat down on Tuesday night and looked into.  I learned there is a FREE 30-day subscription (which coincidentally takes me to almost the end of the year), so I signed up.  It literally took me 10 minutes to sign up and enter my kids names.  Then, I just printed parent notes with passwords for each student.

I decided that I would give my kids a little incentive of earning tickets (our school incentive program) dependent on how many problems they completed each week.   Needless to say, I was SHOCKED when I opened my email the next morning and 10 of my kiddos had already spent a total of 3+ hours on the site!!

Today, I passed out tickets to about 80% of my kids...they loved it, I loved it, and they are getting smarter!

Check it out!

Rockin' in our Math Shoes

After Christmas, we jumped right back into school by starting Addition with Regrouping.  We started incorporating the CCSS last year and we found students really got a deeper understanding by working with the math cubes and using our hands-on/cooperative learning activities.  These activities can be found here.  I wanted to show you the Solve it! activity because the kids really loved it today.  They are rockin' the regrouping!

We also posted our Subtraction with Regrouping unit yesterday.  Some of the activities are similar to the addition pack and really build onto a deeper understanding.