Happy One Year to Me!!

You cannot hear it, but I just sighed a huge sigh of relief and satisfaction. It is the 3rd day of 2015. This very day last year, I began this blog! I was eager, excited, a little lost, but I felt like I was on fire. I wanted a new venture so badly. I wanted it to be a gathering spot for my creativity, hyperness, learning, teaching, and motivation. It has really satisfied all of that. So when the past few month passed with so many new responsibilities at work, so many personal and physical challenges at home, I was pained to not have many blog posts and barely any TPT products at all since August. I really felt I had let myself down. On top of it all, after Christmas card season was over, I announced that I was also taking a hiatus from my photography business. What a slump!

Because of all that, I'm thrilled to have my first TPT product of the year up and ready for purchase. It's not even about the sale, it's a feeling of accomplishment! I've been wanting to make this particular product available for a long time. I used it in past years with my ESOL students, who really get a lot from the rich photographs. When I had made this originally (prior to my blogging and TPT days), I had just used Google images. It was the first time I'd made something for my class that I thought, "Hey! This would make a great TPT product." I knew that the Googled images would be a big, fat no-no. So... it has taken me this long to do it correctly and to make some additions and improvements. Stock photos and royalty-free images were not easy to find. That's the beauty of following so many knowledgeable bloggers and creators. I was led to morgueFile. This is an incredible resource that I plan to use often. Actual photographs are great for vocabulary development and also great for visual learners. I'm so happy I found it!

Below, you'll find a link to my latest - Differentiated Diagraphs & Blends SCOOT and Fluency Pack. Click on either image to go to my TPT store.

I know there are plenty of SCOOT activities out there, but as soon as I get my younger grades back, this will be my go-to for blends lessons. In the meantime, I'll just have to share it with my ESOL team. I hope the kids love it as much as they have in past years. I welcome feedback as always! 

To all readers out there, especially my fellow blogger friends, Happy New Year! May we set our bar higher and surpass them anyway. Here's to positivity, growth, connections, and laughs. Lots and lots of laughs! I want to close with a photo to start my year off right. I had the pleasure of spending lunch with these ladies on January 2nd at the yummy Cheesecake factory. They were wonderful company, we all left with cheesecakes (of course) and participated in a mug swap. I hope it's the first of many meetings, chats, and opportunities! Please check out their blogs if you get a chance!

 

R.A.C.E. to Respond

How about a little freebie to make up for my lack of blogging? R.A.C.E. to Respond was a concept introduced to us during a faculty meeting earlier this year. I love it! I like the fact that I can use it in my classroom, poster-sized and in a more manageable postcard size, for my kids to refer to when they answer. For my ESOL students, it's helpful to answer using the guidance of R.A.C.E.  My hope is this will give them a boost in rigor and in comprehension. Rush over to TPT and grab your very own R.A.C.E. to Respond poster. Leave some love while you're there. It's not been the easiest beginning of the year, and I can't wait for the mojo and creativity to make an explosive return.

Back to School Sale

Take advantage of a Teachers Pay Teacher Back to School Sale. Save 28% on all items in my store. My cart is loaded and ready to check out. I love shopping for class tools and center materials! Click on the sales banner to get to the Oh, Snap! TPT store!

Using Commas in a Series (List)

Hi gang! I've got a brand new product up. This time, I've posted something useful for first graders and up. This is the first time that students see the standard, but I've taught enough grades to know that this lesson is not lost on any grade in elementary, especially ELLs. This set is differentiated. I always try to offer that for you. Even in my tiny classes, I have levels so spread out that it's difficult to have one type of work to give them. You'll find variety in this packet that I hope you can appreciate. Click on the images below to see the product at TPT. Please pin it if you think your followers could use it.

Coming up very soon, I have a few great posts. The posts I have in the works is a dynamic description of all the things you can do with travel brochures. I'll be sure to have some product for you, strictly for you convenience, but as always I try to just offer suggestions. Travel brochures, are after all, free for the taking! I do love those things. I've been slightly obsesses since childhood.

Another post is about another review game that we did in class today (the video is just not ready) that was inspired by Hollywood Game Night. I was worried it wouldn't be as great as it is on TV, but it was! Happy day. Can't wait to share the video.

And finally.... (takes deep breath), after testing is over, I love to squeeze in the longer-term projects. This year, I get to collaborate with the 4th grade social studies and science teacher. We are going to do a Westward Expansion project. I can't share much now, but it involved an amazing app that I've since become hooked on in the name of project planning! At least I know it'll hook the kids, they'll learn from it.

I look forward to getting these post ready for you. We start testing tomorrow. I'm a read aloud test administrator. It's definitely not the best time to be up, but you can't tell creativity to call it a night. Goodnight all! Hope you're finding inspiration!

Chop Suey - Perfect Testing Review Dishes

I have a late one for you readers. I had the best time with this lesson, and I couldn't wait to share it... but, I had to do some Spring Breaking first! So here it is, my Chop Suey review lessons. This is a great, interactive way to connect students with the text and to check their comprehension. Let me start with the prep for this lesson first.

I was able to get a dozen to-go boxes, a dozen sets of chopsticks, and a dozen fortune cookies for $3 from my local Chinese restaurant. I made an 11pm run, so I was willing to pay much more. I was floored and so appreciative of the deal. "I'm a teacher" can be a powerful phrase! There are two Chop Suey lessons I've created. One is arranging a short story; the other, finding the main idea.

Story Chop Suey 
I found stories online and cut them up by sentences. For the product listed below, the stories are mine, completely original, so no worries about infringement. In each to go box, I put the story sentences on white paper that I curled. I also added the other parts, title choice and ending choice. Titles were printed on one colored paper, and story endings were printed on another. Students were instructed to put the white "noodles" in order, using all of them. They were then instructed to choose the BEST title and the BEST ending to the story. Once everything had be chopsticked out of the to go box and taped down, students read their story one more time. When they decided as a group that their story sounded correct, I gave them a story key to check their work.

Main Idea Chop Suey
I put out 8 boxes around the room, and in each box, I put 4 sentences. One sentence was the main idea. I timed the students to see how quickly they could find the main idea. When they were finished picking out the main idea with their chopsticks, I ran to check their answers and told them how many were right, how many were wrong. 

After they had them all correct, I asked students to tell me the main idea and use the phrases from the anchor chart to cite and defend why they thought they'd chosen the main idea correctly. Once finished, we checked the key to see the sentences together.

My ESOL kids loved using the chopsticks. Some had never had the opportunity to try. My students did a great job, and it gave us all a lot of confidence in their reading and comprehension. I've created the packets below that would be convenient for you to purchase; but honestly, plenty of stories are available online, too.

Get out there and get those Chinese food supplies. I'm still figuring out how many ways I can use them. For all of those testing now or in the near future, good luck to you and your kids. Hope they're all kissing and nurturing their brains! Before I link the product from TPT, here is a fortune cookie message. One fortune for you, one fortune for your students.

I hope the pictures help you see what is going on and how you can use the product. You simply print the pages, some on different colored paper, then cut the sentences into strips. Curling is optional, but if you plan on integrating the chopsticks, it makes it more manageable. Flat sentence strips may be impossible to pick up, and that's coming from a pro.... basically! Click on the images below to purchase your own copy on TPT.

Good luck! Thanks ahead of time for any feedback.

I Share, You Grab - Thesaurus Hunt

My students are encouraged to expand their vocabulary in my class. Not only do we have a new vocabulary word a week, I also have a bulletin board that celebrates my students' attempt at higher level vocabulary. Click HERE to see how I use this incentive bulletin board. In order to train my students to love words as much as I do, dictionaries and thesauruses are always visible and accessible in my classroom. This year, I also subscribed to Thinkmap's visualthesaurus.com. Part of the reason I love this website so much is because it gives a visual interpretation of how words are related. I also enjoy the fact that students can move words around; and specifically for my ELLs, each word can be pronounced for the students with a mere click of a button. Here is a screen capture of what it looks like. Notice that the right side of the screen indicates the part of speech of the words, in this case, I've looked up the word relate.

To help my students learn how to use these tools, I've created a worksheet that they can use. This year, it's just a sheet that I put in their center, but next year, I think I'll create a notebook for synonyms and high-value words. In the link below, I've put this FREEBIE in my Google Docs. It's called Thesaurus Hunt. See if there is anything else in the folder you find useful. Please comment and share this link if you found it helpful. 

It can also be found on TPT as a free download. Click on the image below to go to the product in my store. There are a few freebies there, but some great products for purchase. 

Update... Tumble Towers for 3rd - 5th Grades

Slowly, but surely folks. As promised, I'm creating additional Tumble Towers sets. To see the original post, click HERE. For now, ELA review for 3rd grade is up on Teachers Pay Teachers. Click on the cover to get your copy! It is the eve of Friday. I hope everyone is anticipating a restful and fun weekend! 

I can't wait to tell you when 4th grade ELA Tumble Towers is posted. I really can't wait until I attack the other subjects. Have fun with this one!

Happy day! It is finally here! Fourth grade ELA Tumble Towers have arrived. So that covers all testing grades' review sets for ELA. If you're using these, please let me know how the kids are doing with it. Click on the cover to find all Tumble Tower sets on TPT.

And if you missed out the 5th grade ELA Review Tumble Towers, click below.

Captured Lesson - The St. Patrick's Day Scavenger Hunt

Are you guys still doing leprechaun-themed lessons? I didn't think I would, but leprechauns are just too cute. I wanted my students to do a scavenger hunt through the school. You know, get them to change up their scenery. The reward was entering the classroom full of St. Patrick's Day treats. We just had a few stops in the school. We started in their hallway with a pretty hokey poem....

We then continued to the office, the gym, the reading garden, and lastly, our classroom. At each stop, they had to unscramble words to make a St. Patty's Day sentence. At each stop, one student was the designated QR code scanner who would check to see if the class could move to the next destination by arranging the words correctly. The destination was revealed only then and was underneath the sentences strip that the students made the sentence on. So much fun!

There are tons of advantages of working with a small group, and scavenger hunts are one. I could envision this being possible within a classroom or for an advanced kindergarten class or whatever classes that may have an aide. My heart is broken that every means I could've had to take a photo or record the scavenger hunt was out of commission yesterday, so I only have a couple of photos to share of what they came into the room to. It hardly looks like much at all, but first graders are still young enough to express glee and gratitude no matter how small the gesture.

Go on over to Teachers Pay Teachers if you'd like this set, all ready and made up cute for you.  Please pin it if you love the idea. Everyone have a great week!

Captured Lesson - Idioms Skit "Act It Out"

This week was super busy! I finally got my students back in my class after weeks and weeks of testing. I had a SIOP video observation, and yesterday was our Destination Imagination Tournament. I won't say whether I did or did not oversleep one morning last week, but if I had, I think it was justified. 

Having my students back now means that we're going to be doing a lot of spiraling, a lot of reading practice using the UNRAAVEL strategy, and much more pep talking in preparation for the CRCT. I was pleased that I had my SIOP observation; I'm also pleased that I completed the task and got my videos published on YouTube for my observer.

For my observed lesson, I chose to review idioms and figurative language. I created these skits for my students. For ESOL students, and honestly many students, watching and listening people use figurative language in context is more helpful than just reading it on paper. For SIOP, it was great, because this was a tremendous way to bring in all the language domains - reading, writing, speaking, and listening. I'm working on a video of the students acting out the skits, but I will post that later. Below, find the links to the "Act It Out" packets. One's a teaser, so I'm making it a freebie. Yay for FREEBIES!! For more skits and differentiated answering sheets, please get the full set.You won't regret it! The students will love it every time they see these waiting for them, especially if you have some popcorn popped, too.

My students loved this. I have a director's clapboard, too. Make it authentic for them, they will sure to be engaged!