I've been featured….

If you guys are anything like me… you love a feature about yourself right? ha!

I was beyond honored when Becky from Ucreate With Kids contacted me about doing a feature on moi on her blog! I guess I did not realize how much southern pride I had until I read her feature… what can I say I love the south, my football, and an amazing pair of cowboy boots… with a nice stacked heel ha! Go check her out… U Create has LOTS of great ideas to use in every aspect of your life! 

Click here to check out my feature! 

Thank you SO SO much Becky!

Classroom Makeover Pictures

The before and after of my classroom makeover…

This was the first year I liked where EVERYTHING was in my room. I have such a problem with arranging my room in order for it to flow a certain way. I don't even know what that means, but I know when it flows, it doesn't bother me… which is all that matters right?

So, just as I am happy with how my room looks…. this happened.

Am I upset about getting an Activboard? Absolutely not. However, am I upset that I am a middle classroom with movable walls, which meant that my active board had to go on the side wall… yep. This meant that they had to move a large cabinet  and my classroom library. Tear.

Please look at the following pictures of my room a mess before, and then the after. The large cabinet had no where to go, therefore they just shoved it by the door? Gave me anxiety for two days. The rest of the furniture was  pushed to the walls of the room since I was UM TEACHING when they installed the board.

Here is the mess of furniture:

On to the before and after pictures….

Here was my library before (which I loved):

Library after:

Pocket Chart Station before:

Pocket Chart Station After… (examples of student's work from this workstation will go up on this board as well, which will be a great reference for others working at this station):

Close up of the I can list:

Objectives and Agenda before:

Objectives and Agenda before:

Main Stage before….

Main Stage After….

 I moved the area to be buy my new active board...

I also moved my small group areas as well: 

Now a week and a half later I am FINALLY getting back to normal. Cheers to that! Here are some more pictures I took today…

New Listening Station:

I Can List: 

New Word Wall which I am loving: 

New Math Focus Wall… is it busy? Yes. But it works SO well for us during our Calendar Math time. It is so easy to update everything as a whole group, then I have the students go back to their seats and fill out their Calendar Math Worksheet (from Cara's TPT Calendar Companion ): 

Hope you enjoyed my pictures… I finally feel back to normal in the classroom (even if the to do list is ever growing)!

Happy Wednesday!

Read to Self and Classroom Re-do...

I'm pretty excited that our Read to Self is now in full swing. My kids started Read to Self last Wednesday and they are already up to reading for 12 minutes. Yeah I said 12… surprisingly these littles aren't having as hard of a time during Read to Self as I expected. I cannot explain it, since they are an "active" class… yet I am GRATEFUL!

We really discussed picking Just Right books before we started our RTS, which I am hoping my students really grasp this concept soon! Our books are housed in these pretty books bins from Really Good Stuff that my sweet bf donated… I love them and the kids do too! 

Last year he donated the Lakeshore Leveled Reading Library set one and two. You have NO idea how this improved my classroom library and my students interest in books. I had so many old torn up books that teachers did not want. Needless to say, my library was nothing impressive. Now I have an array of fab books for my students to choose from for their book bins. 

Also, I taught my students the IPICK rap, which I recommend! The kids love it and a bonus for you… it's pretty funny to watch.

Here are a few pictures of my class during our Read to Self time:

*Smiles*

In other news… I finally got this:

*Insert choir singing here*

Yes that is a new activboard! 

However, as you can see it is on the wall where a large cabinet (same as the one on the right)  and my classroom library once was! Ugh. I am in between two movable walls so this was the only wall available for the board to go on. 

What does this mean? Yep, it's makeover time. Yuck. Although I welcome the change… I can honestly say I wanted to pull my hair out at the thought of a room re-do. But, what's a girl to do? So I sucked it up, but on my big girl panties… and re did my room. Look for before and after pictures tomorrow :)

Also, I have started my small groups therefore I needed to remake my Making Words Folders (Ms. Thomas introduced them to me last year). I found this template at Teacher Bits and Bobs. I printed out the pages and taped them down onto the folder. Instead of using post it notes which I found is easily destroyed.. I printed the sheets again on card-stock, laminated and cut out each piece. I used velcro to hold them down since this seemed to work for Ms. Thomas really well last year! I am pretty excited to use these is small groups! 

Lastly, my Tigers are 5-0 and ranked #1! Here are me and my girls at the last games! 

Geaux Tigers!

What's In My Bag Linky Party

It wasn't until my third year of teaching when I finally invested in a Teacher Bag. *I know right?* I was so tired of all of my bags falling apart into a shredded mess of pieces! I'm pretty sure that was a sign that I needed to stop lugging teacher junk home… however, I just took it as a sign to go shopping for a bag that could handle this problem. 

So, last year I bought this lil' number. And I love her.

 

I purchased her online from LL Bean and chose to monogram it. I love the material, it's so sturdy, it can handle it all. However, it has left bruises on my poor lil' arms from that problem mentioned early. Punishment? Sometimes I pack it to the top with teacher things which I can barely carry. Why do I do this? Not sure. Most of the items never get touched.

Exhibit A: The pile of stuff I cleared out of my bag on Monday. What it is, I'm not sure… I guess I'll sort through it one day. I'm sure I will be searching for something soon and it will be located in this pile. Oh well. 

Items that are currently in my bag: planner, notebook, binder for my grades, lessons, etc.

Clipboard with our current Units of Exploration Topic: Ocean Animals, my new read, and random cut outs that I didn't know were in there?

Pen Pouch, Calculator, Crayons…. the necessities. 

 As far as my teacher purse goes… I recently had to take reduce the size of this lover. I love my red Chanel but it was TOO much to carry with the teacher bag. Plus, I could NEVER EVER EVER find my keys. It was seriously annoying. So I started using the brown Chanel. 

I love looking inside people's purses but I won't torture you with mine. Its a mess! I carry my life in those purses. 

Hope you link up with The Inspired Apple so I can snoop inside your teacher bags! 

Anchor Charts...

I had a question today about introducing anchor charts to students. So I will tell you a little about how I typically introduce mine,  how we use them in our classroom, and how I decide which anchor charts to create.  My anchor charts are always based upon the skills I am teaching for the week or an important topic that we use daily (rules, morning routine, what is a good listener, etc). This week for example I am teaching about the phonics skill short /a/ and character and setting. Therefore, I created an anchor chart to go with each of these topics. 

How to introduce the Anchor Chart?

I like to create my anchor charts that involve our skills of the week with my students… therefore, I always do my "sloppy copy" with them.  That way the students are involved in the process of brainstorming what will go on the anchor chart. I like to guide this brainstorming process however, the students think they are in charge of this process. Then I take that "sloppy copy" (which means my messy quick handwriting and pictures) and recreate it on my own time into a neat and pretty anchor chart. The following day I reintroduce it to my students and we review what we talked about the day before. 

During the rest of the school year I tend to leave a lot of my important anchor charts up in various parts of the room! These are the ones that we constantly need to be reminded of. This is helpful when we need a reminder of this particular topic, we can just refer back to the anchor chart!

Anchor charts are also great for modeling neat handwriting, modeling your standards of great work, and AWESOME for a print rich environment!

Here is the current Anchor Chart I introduced today about IPICK! These type of anchor charts I always create before since the students do not brainstorm ideas to help create the poster. We then all together go over and discuss each part of the chart! 

*Thanks Cara for the inspiration of my chart!

Here is some others I have posted in previous posts...

Hope this helps!