Teachers Pay Teachers

Just a quick post to let you know that I have placed another free item on my Teacher Pay Teachers store.  Check it out.  I am creating a sports theme this year for my classroom (more on this in a later post) and this is one of the items that I will be using.  Here is the link....http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Desk-Name-Tags-734914

Busy week

School has only been out for one week and I have been so busy.  Picked mother in law up at airport on Friday and drove her 200 miles away on Saturday so she could visit with her younger son.  I have been sorting boxes full of books from my classroom library.  

I attended professional development on Monday and Tuesday.  Topic was math concepts, since I am moving to a new grade level I felt it was very important to familiarize myself with some of the grade level math standards.  The workshops were mostly positive and I got tons of ideas for the coming year.  

Speaking of professional development-I finally sold my first product today on Teacher Pay Teachers.  I was in the middle of professional development when I heard the cha-ching sound on my cell phone.  I was thrilled when I realized that I had sold a copy of my digital product.  

The best part of the day came when I got home and opened my Erin Condren lesson planner.  Here is the box that it came in.

The box was so pretty looking I didn't want to take it out.  Once the box was open it was packaged in tissue paper-reminded me of the Coach store.  

I ripped off the tissue paper and Voila!  My very own personalized Erin Condren lesson planner.  

Is it not just beautiful?  I am so excited that I was able to get the roses on the front cover.  It reminds me of my hubby and now I can take him to work with me each day :)

I am almost afraid to write in the book and think I am going to think about how I want to use some of the pages before I begin writing in it.  I will let you know what I decide in a future post.  

Classroom library organization

Happy Saturday morning!  I have been thinking about how I will organize my classroom library when I move to my new school in the fall and came across a great idea from http://fourthgradeflipper.blogspot.com/ .  This is a web based program that allows you to enter your classroom library titles and then students "check" out books with the program.  This allows you to keep track of all your books and hopefully fewer of them will be lost.  http://classroom.booksource.com/  Once I sort out the boxes of books that I brought home this will be one of my summer projects.  (I need to start writing these projects down or I will never get them all finished.)

Last full day of school!

Today was the last full day of school for my students.  We had an awards ceremony in the morning and spent some time creating words from the letters in Summer Vacation. We also had a tropical storm come through today and had several inches of water in the hallways.  We dismissed students in a different way to avoid them crossing the bus parking lot in the pouring down rain.

Monday students will come for part of the day and be dismissed two hours early.  We will watch the annual kickball game-fifth grade students versus the faculty in the morning.  Students will have an early lunch and we will play some board games and perhaps some Greek Mythology Jeopardy!

The faculty and staff will have a potluck lunch once students are dismissed and then we will begin the process of closing out the school year.  Since I am moving schools the majority of my personal stuff has already been moved home.  Thank goodness we bought a house with a two car garage, I don't know where I would put all the stuff otherwise.  We have two workdays after students leave and this will be used with gathering up all of our things and storing them away.  All the furniture is removed from the classrooms so that the floors can be waxed over the summer time.  We are required to get several signatures before we can be officially released for the summer.

Greek Mythology Trading Cards

We completed our state test last week so now we get to do the fun stuff!  We have been studying Greek Mythology for about six weeks now and the students have really enjoyed it.  I wanted to have them create trading cards as part of the culminating project and found a great post on Nicole Shelby's blog, Teaching with Blonde Ambition.  She had a rubric and examples of her students cards posted.

Students have read several different myths with the majority of our time spent on different versions of Demeter and Persephone.  They also read several short myths as well.  They then chose six characters and began making their cards.

They were required to create six cards with an illustration on the front and at least three facts on the back of their card.  They were so engaged!  And quiet!  Here are a few pictures of the results.  Click on the first picture and you will be taken to Teaching with Blonde Ambition blog where the original idea came from.

Daily 5 Book Study

I received my copy of the Daily 5 today in the mail.  I also ordered the Cafe Menu along with it.  I read the introduction to the Daily 5 and can't wait to read the rest of it.  I will post my thoughts here as I read each chapter.  Hope you enjoy my thoughts.

Field Trip!

We recently took our third graders to Camp Agape in Fuquay Varina.  Camp Agape is an environmental science camp that provides educational experiences for students as well as summer camp experiences.  My students are inner city kids and they were so excited  at the farm animals that we saw along the way.   Once we arrived at our destination we unloaded the buses and were met by the camp staff.

Our students were divided into five groups and we had two different sessions.  The first session was about plants and the parts of the plant.  We gathered by a small pond and the kids had a flower that they were able to dissect.  They also had a hands on experience where they were the different parts of the plant.

Our second session was about soil.  The kids did an activity where they were the three parts of soil, clay, silt and sand.  They were able to pretend they were water molecules and could see how the water travels through the different parts of the soil.

On the way back to the lodge for lunch we saw a baby deer.  One of my students thought they saw a bunny but upon further inspection we realized it was a fawn.  Here is the picture, you can just make out the deer's ears and the dappled skin.

This is a picture of the butterflies we saw.

I was so excited at how much they remembered from class.  They also were able to tell her what the meaning of the root word bio was.

My coworker and I expected them to be exhausted on the way home but they were even more talkative than on the way there.  They had a great time and I hope that they will be able to go again next year.