April GIVEAWAY!

Happy Tuesday everyone! I am in the "springy" mood today and feel very giving :) I'm trying to build up my shop on Teachers Notebook, as well as my new Instagram account. Follow me on IG @theelementarylife to see how I run my classroom, new products, activities, and other exciting things going on in the life of this teacher + wife + mommy <3

Head on over to my Teacher's Notebook shop HERE and enter in my giveaway for a Sentences and Fragments Bundle! There will be FIVE winners so don't miss it! It will run from tomorrow until Sunday. Please follow my shop on Teachers Notebook and get more opportunities at sales and giveaways!

Fact and Opinion Bundle!

Happy Wednesday! I just posted a new product on my Tpt Store that I LOVE! This fact and opinion bundle includes a poster, two worksheets, and a center! Head on over to my store to grab it! You can use it as a center or a mini-lesson. I have an assistant that works in my room during our literacy block so this will be super useful when teaching my students about fact and opinion. Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for stopping by!

                                                                               

Charlotte's Web Novel Study

I hope everyone is having a nice and relaxing summer! Since I've got a few minutes of extra time, I wanted to prepare some things for the study that my third graders do of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. I've got two products on Teachers Pay Teachers so far!

My first product is a set of vocabulary words from Charlotte's Web. You can display these in your classroom or use them as a center! Click here to check it out!

 

My next product is a set of response questions by chapter. You can use these as a seatwork packet, quizzes, or homework as needed. Click here to check this awesome product out!

 

 

Tips to End the Year Off With!

We are nearing the end of the year! It's that time when we don't have new content to teach, but we need to keep the kids engaged. Otherwise, we would all go crazy! Here are a few math and reading ideas to end the school year off with: 

Reading: 

• Create a comic strip of your favorite story that we've read this year

• Write a poem about a character from one of the stories that we've read 

• Compare two stories that we've read this year using a Venn diagram and then illustrate

• Creative writing: use plot, character, and setting cards to create a crazy story! 

• Write a song or rap about your favorite story or make up your own story and create a song or rap

• Work in groups to create a story. Each student write a sentence and keep passing it along and adding until you have a finished product! 

• End of the year memory book: Create your own or grab mine HERE!

Math

• Roll the dice: roll the dice and create numbers to add or subtract-we have foam dice that the kids love

• Add it fast-take digit cards and have students each put down a card-whoever says the sum first keeps both cards. You can use this for multiplication too

• Math bingo-easy to create on your own with multiplication, addition, or subtraction!

• Have you students create their own word problems and post around the room for students to solve 

• Math olympics! 

There are so many more things that we are doing in our room, but this would be a very long post! I also do a lot of Smart Board activities that I find through Smart Exchange or TPT, but my students love playing games with each other! Any other cool ideas that you have are appreciated! 

Writing in the Classroom

Happy Hump Day everyone! It's been a couple weeks since my last post...a lot has been going on! On top of MSA, snow days, and grad school, I'm overwhelmed to say the least. I wanted to do a quick post about writing centers. I love writing and I want my students to enjoy it as well. I'm even writing my 40 page graduate paper on the attitudes of students towards writing!

During the Daily 5, students are able to work on writing. It is a requirement to work on writing AT LEAST twice a week. I've created a writing table where I store their writing folders and the class writing journals. At the beginning of the year I bought a folder for each student to last the entire year. They are stored in the bins shown below. This way, students won't lose them and I can see the progress that they make throughout the year. My students can write whatever they want in these folders. I have journal cards, story ideas, creative writing cards, etc. In addition to the folders, I have spiral notebooks and composition books with labels on them that I created. You can grab these for free at my Teachers Pay Teachers store here! These journals have broad topics on them so students can write creatively.

How do you promote writing in your class?

 

St. Patrick's Day Freebie

Hey everyone! Hope you all are enjoying your Tuesday! Over here in Maryland, we are on our second snow day this week. I'm bummed that we'll be losing some days of spring break, but happy that I've had time to work on my grad paper and my TpT products! Today I created a new St. Patrick's Day writing pack, which includes two graphic organizers to help your students develop a "Leprechaun Story." In addition to the graphic organizers, I've included a publishing paper and cover page in both black/white and color so your students may color themselves or use the colored copies.

 

 

                                                            Click here to snag this freebie!

Black History Bulletin Board

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. This month, as I've stated in previous posts, my class and I have been learning about many figures from Black History. I have three guided reading groups, so I used Reading A-Z to find books to use. I had my below grade level group read "Good for Thurgood," my on grade level group read "Martin Luther King, Jr." and my above grade level group read "Harriet Tubman." After reading about these figures, each group created a character trait poster using text evidence to support the character traits that they chose. I displayed this in the hallway so other classes could see who we were learning about and what kind of people they were. I love it! What are you doing in your classroom for Black History Month?

Sentences and Fragments

Happy Hump Day everyone! I hope you all are having a great week so far! I have a new product to share with you, which focuses on developing sentences. Many of my students have trouble developing sentences, as they are writing fragments. What a perfect way to get rid of this habit...a few printables and a center that focuses on sentences and fragments! These activities could be used from 1st  grade to 4th grade, depending on the needs of your students. I teach 3rd grade and I created this for my class, although it can be differentiated. This awesome bundle includes 3 printables and a center! Click here to grab this at my TpT store!

 

 

 

 

 

Classroom Library Organization

Happy Friday everyone! I was lucky enough to have a half day all to myself in my classroom on Wednesday! We had an in-service the first half of the day and then it was organization station in my room! My library before Wednesday included great books, but they weren't organized or showcased, so I don't think my students took the time to look through them. I went on Teachers Pay Teachers and found an AMAZING freebie from Jessica Tobin's store: Book Tub Labels! They were owl themed which is my classroom theme so I had to download these. There are so many labels included with this product. I laminated all of them and only used a handful because I don't have much space in my classroom for a large library. I picked a few genres I wanted to stick with and organized it that way.

 

Check out my library BEFORE I organized....

 

Look at the heaping pile of books falling off the shelf! Makes my head spin just looking at it!

 

AFTER:

 

I can breathe now! This makes me happy just looking at it. And I must say, my kids were actually looking in the library this week! Organization really is an important component in a successful classroom.

 

 

How do you have your classroom library organized? Don't forget to head over to Jessica's store to grab this awesome freebie! :)

Black History Month Part II

Happy Hump Day everyone! I am so excited to share my new Black History center! After watching the movie, The Butler, I became even more intrigued about Black history. If you haven't seen it, you need to watch it (not with your kiddies of course). It gave me a new insight on history and what African-Americans went through. I was hooked the entire time. I thought having Oprah in it would throw me off, but she did an amazing job. I want my kids to learn about Black history and appreciate what they have now. Check out the trailer below, then go to Redbox and get it! :)

 

 

 

 

 

And now for my center, called "Who Am I?" Click the photo below to grab this awesome center!

 

 

 

 This easy to assemble center on requires laminating and cutting! Use this as a literacy or social studies center, whole class activity, or differentiate it and have students research the figures.

Includes:
-Cover page
-Directions
-Answer sheet
-Recording sheet
-9 character cards
-27 facts

 

What are you doing in your classroom for Black History month? If you'd like to see a similar center for President's Day, click here. Happy blogging, teacher friends!

 

Black History Month Part I

Black History Month is approaching quickly. I'm running around thinking, what am I going to do? I have a few good books that I'd like to read (Ruby Bridges and Henry's Freedom Box). What should I do with them? Then I had an idea...we've been cramming the Common Core into our heads and yelling "TEXT EVIDENCE!" So, I decided to create some graphic organizers that focus on character traits so my students CAN determine character traits and use text evidence to support them. A graphic organizer isn't enough, so I added an extended response prompt. The reason I chose character traits for Black History Month is because I want my kids to really get to know these people and understand why they have the character traits that they have. If the didn't go through struggles and perservere through difficult times, would they be the same person?

 

Here are some great resources that I found on Black History Month:

 

NEA Black History Month

 

Scholastic

 

Enchanted Learning

 

Check out my product that you can get here.

This product includes 12 graphic organizers!
Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Sarah E. Wood, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, Jessie Owens, Marcus Garvey, Sojournor Truth, and Thurgood Marshall.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by! I would love to hear from you and check out your blog. Follow me and leave me your blog name so I can check it out! :)

 

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

I don't know about you all, but the east coast got a nice chunk of snow fall! It's been a FIVE day weekend! Super exciting! Only downfall is, is that we have a LOT of catching up to do in school. My reading data was due at the end of this week. Looks like it's not going to be finished in time! What did you do on your few days off if you had some?

 

On another note, I wanted to share a great activity that accompanies Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. This wonderful book is in our third grade curriculum, so it's most likely in many other third grade curriculums. Sadako and the Thousdand Paper Cranes is about a young girl struggling with Leukemia caused by an atom bomb that dropped in Hiroshima, Japan. Sadako attempts to fold 1,000 paper cranes, in hopes that she would get healthy again. After we read this book, I had each of my students write any wish that they had for themselves, the community, their family, etc. This activity got my students thinking about others and also how lucky they were. Some wished for a cleaner environment, world peace, less violence, and for family and friends to be healthy. I posted this bulletin word, titled "I wish..." outside of our classroom. I included the article on the Hiroshima Peace Park in the middle of the board so that students and teachers could read about Sadako and understand why our wishes were so sentimental. If you haven't read this book, you've got to! It's a great read for the intermediate grade levels. If you have read this in your class, are there any other activities that you recommend?

 

 

 

 

Some pictures from my snow day :)

 

Thanks for stopping by! Stay warm :)

 

Long Vowel Sort

I spent several hours on making this super cute center academically appropriate and easy for the teacher and students to use. I'm very excited to have it in my TpT Store. This long vowel sorting center is perfect for both primary and intermediate students! I geared my words more toward third grade because I'll be using it in my classroom. This center can be easily differentiated by using it in different ways and altering it using the extra blank cards that are included. Click here to get this product! Let me know what you think! :)

 

 

All I did was laminate the entire file, tape the cover page and the directions onto the folder, and place the pieces in a bag!