Five for Friday

Good Morning, and no it isn't Friday. Meant to do this last night, but College Girl came home - and.....

So here we go this morning!

1. "I feel like giving you a hug." I have one little friend that says this to me at least twice a day, sometimes more. And it always starts a chain reaction - I get more hugs. What a nice feeling!

2. I bought Deanna Jump's Interactive Reading Journals and used one for the first time this week. She has graphic organizers for all sorts of things! I really like how they copy two to a page - and I think the smaller size makes it feel more manageable to the kids. My thought is for the kids to use a glue stick to put these in a spiral - but I didn't get that far last week. 

3. My new little dry erase board - see my whole silly post about that here.

4. Math has been pretty discouraging this year. We took a test over the first unit on Wednesday and it was sad times {for me} while I was grading them. So Thursday, we went over them, and I had the kids write answers in colored pencil as we did it together. And when we got done, we still had about a half hour of "math time." So I pulled out the laptops and everybody got on ABCya in the math section. I think I heard audible sighs of relief from the kids - the kind that says, "Now here's something I can do!" 

5. Ack, ack - the last thing I was going to tell you - I meant to take pictures of yesterday. Totally forgot. We've been reading and learning about insects - and we read a book about dragonflies one day and the next I had them draw a dragonfly and we added facts to the page. Then I let them write Dragonfly in decorative writing - oh, they are so creative! 
       and 5b - I had a student check out a book on dragonflies from the school library and it had some wonderful pictures, so we read that together on Friday. Love when that happens. 

I'm enjoying College Girl this weekend - what are your plans?

It's the little things

It's the little things really - 

My guided reading table is at the back of my room. There aren't any dry erase boards back by it. For a while, I set a dry erase board on my chair and held onto it with one hand while writing with the other. Last year, I had a quest to find a better way. 

First, one of my students had a neon colored marker. I tried it out on the black file cabinet that is right by my guided reading table. It was great - it really showed up. But after I bought my own neon colored dry erase markers, I realized that if those colors stay on my file cabinet for any length of time - well, it took a lot of work to get them off. 

Then I started googling dry erase boards - and don't you love the way that you google something and all the sudden it's on your facebook page All The Time! But I couldn't find something that I wanted for a price I was willing to pay.

Then, right before school started, I was at Wal-Mart. And I saw for like 7.97 dry erase boards that I thought would fit right on the side of my file cabinet. And they were pretty lightweight. So I was thinking I would put some magnetic tape on the back of them and they'd stick to my file cabinet. But Wal-Mart only had lightweight repositionable tape. Hmmm. Not sure that would hold up. I bought it any way, but was pretty hesitant to take that finally step. 

Well, last weekend 

 

opened up in my little city. So I headed out on a mission to find strong magnetic tape. They didn't really have any, but they had a set of  6 very strong round magnets. I grabbed them, and Monday hot glued them to the back of the dry erase board.

And now I'm one happy teacher - all because I have a dry erase board by my guided reading desk!

Five for Friday - 9/6/14

I had decided I wanted to do this {again!!!} - because I really want to keep track of the good things happening in my classroom. But today, the first one has nothing to do with that.

I am so thankful that my hub-bub didn't have a heart attack last night. When he actually said to me, I think we need to go to the hospital, yikes - that's enough to scare me. They aren't sure what the problem was, but after finally getting a pain shot two hours into our visit, he felt better and this morning is his usual old self. Thank you God!


I even thought of it, but didn't do it then, and didn't remember - 
I sure needed before and after pics -
I went up to school for 4 hours this morning and tore through my closet. Got rid of a BUNCH of stuff that when I actually looked at it, said why in the world am I keeping this? Emptied out 3 big boxes and put things I thought I might use in places that I might actually remember them!
When I went in at the end of the day after my DRA testing {we get a sub day for that}, several of my kids asked if I was going to be there on Friday. I was a little annoyed, and was thinking Duh. But then I thought, I think they missed me, those little sweeties!

This is such a silly thing - but my 2nd grade team has changed a little - one person left, and another person from the school moved to her position; and we got a new teacher - anyway, I'm loving it. After eating alone in my room for 2 years, I now have 20 minutes of adult conversation every day. It's so nice - either to do a little vent about kids or curriculum, or share what's going on in our lives.

I had meant to do an insect unit at the beginning of the year, but things just didn't work out. So I went ahead and did some this week. I read this book:

to my kids on Friday. It's one of a series I got through Scholastic books theme sets. It starts out by asking, Are you a Grasshopper? And then tells you all the things you would do if you were a grasshopper. I actually hate the little buggers - most years they tend to eat my vegetables before I can get to them {My favorite grasshopper saying is "The only good thing about a grasshopper is that it doesn't want to come inside the house!"}. Anyway, this is a pretty engaging book - We'll also read about dragonflies, ants and bees.

Enjoying my weekend, even if it is a work weekend!

Testing and Characters

Today was DRA testing day for me. Does anybody else use this? 

Depending on their level - lower levels read a story out loud and then tell about it; higher levels read the story to themselves and then retell it, and finish up with reading part of it to the teacher for a running record.

I fee like I need to get all these books back off the shelf!

I put these books up when I started back to school, thinking I wouldn't have time for them. However, only 5 of my students moved up from their end of 1st grade level. And my four lowest students - argh - almost torture listening to them read. Watching one little friend just pull and pull on his hair as he tried to read and another do nervous giggles while I can smell the sweat - trust me, I feel their pain. And all I can say is that we are in this together little friends. This 2nd grade teacher may be pulling out all the stops - and working to find new tricks - as I hope to help these students find some joy in reading.

On a better note - we've read several character building books since school started. I shared a couple of them on my last post. We also read



and









And then I realized we hadn't really actually discussed the character traits I wanted to emphasize. So one day last week, I had the students wander around, then high five a partner, and talk about a character from one of the books. Then we all talked about the character. And we did it for another character. Next we made a chart {This little guy is a little funny looking - but I decided to go with him.}

Then {after a quick die cutting session in the teacher's lounge} I gave each student a little person die cut - it's actually a gingerbread person, I guess - and each student added words to their little person describing the kind of people we would want in class. I put them on the wall - and darn it, forgot to take a picture. I'm sure that's all they will need to remember to be kind and nice and helpful and etc. Right? 

Well, I leave you with this - and if you're a fan, you know it's good news. No, GOOD NEWS!