Five for Friday: Another Week in 3rd Grade

Another great week in 3rd grade! 

Math training "Increasing Student Proficiency in Math Part 1" 

Love getting out to talk with other teachers about how they do things! 

Tried text mapping with our non-fiction text. We started simple, the text was only 4 pages... but it was REALLY cool! Can't wait to try this again and again! 

Speaking of text mapping, we have been working all about text features and I finally posted this bad boy up to TPT. A few hours of touching up and this creation from my first year of teaching was posted! Check it out - CLICK HERE!

We continued our measurement and data unit with some awesome tools and hands on activities this week! Love when math automatically makes itself engaging! Great activity from What I Have Learned

Because I shared about our positivity journey. Here is another favorite that got us through the week! 

Finally! Five for Friday

It's that time again! Linking up Doodle Bugs Teaching to share 5 awesome things about my week! 

This time of the year in 3rd grade is very challenging for the kiddos! This is the time of year when we are learning about fractions. YIKES! What they are expected to be able to do with their limited knowledge of fractions is so complex for some of their little minds to even begin to understand. Thankfully our school ordered us TONS of hands on manipulatives to help build that concrete understanding first. They couldn't have arrived at a more perfect time, and the kids were so excited for new hands on tools! 

Speaking of fractions.... we ended the week with a comparing fractions review yesterday and it went PERFECTLY! This was their first time ever doing a Kagan Carousel and they did great! We put on some jams from the SING soundtrack, and worked with smiles through the afternoon! 

My next door neighbor and fellow 3rd grade teacher and I have been really pushing each other to remain positive the last few days. This is the quarter where the pressure is the worst, with testing looming in the next few months. There is a ton to do, and sometimes it can get overwhelming. I have to tell you, having someone to hold you accountable to remaining positive is a wonderful thing. Here are some of our quote goals for the week! 

This is what my weekends look like lately. Tons of coffee! Trying to find a nice balance between me time, and prepping for the weeks to come. It's so nice to love what I'm doing again that I honestly don't mind working a little too hard! I'm currently reading Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige. I read her Dorothy Must Die series and LOVED it. I'm impatiently waiting for the next book to come out. But for some reason I just can't get into this one.... oh well I'll keep trying! 

It's a 3 day weekend this weekend and I'm looking forward to the extra day with my boys! These little ones just love to be outside! We have a date with a trail and some ice cream today and I'm excited. 

The Chaos and Choices of Life

"It took leaving, for me to understand. Sometimes your dreams aren't what life has planned." - Lady Antebellum 

It has been a very interesting year. As I sit here again, staring at the last blog post written in July, so much has happened and I don't even know where to start. I have spent the last several years worried about the "what ifs" and possibilities of a life I hoped for... only to find out that life just wasn't for me. It's been a rough few months- emotionally, financially, and physically exhausting- but at this point the only thing left to do is forgive myself. I quickly admit that I had made a mistake, I set about fixing it (which was a very hard choice) and now I am here. Back to a life that for such a long time, seemed so temporary, so not-quite-right. I need to forgive myself for being human and wanting something better, and understand that everything happens for a reason. Then I move on and make the most out of this life I never fully wanted, with the understanding that it's the right choice for me and my family. 

Soon this blog will be lively and beating with the hearts of new 3rd graders, cute smiling puppies, and one happy teacher <3

Guided Reading Idea

Moving back to first grade this year, I loaded up on the #targetdollarspot magnetic letter packs for $1. What perfect use for word work during guided reading or even word work during centers or whole group phonics. I knew I wanted to get some small container so the students could easily store the letters... so I went hunting! I found the perfect little containers at Michaels! These 4x6 photo holders are MADE to fit these letters- AND the best part is that they were $1.19. Talk about a bargain! I grabbed six for my small group table and set to organize and prepare them. That's when the genius idea of magnetic tape hit me! How awesome is that! Now the kids have a small tidy little workstation right at their fingertips! 

Monday Made It

Linking up to start the week with #MondayMadeIt 

It's been a crazy 2 weeks of summer so far. I am busy get prepped and ready for another amazing year! 

I have been slaving away the last few days creating a new clean and colorful label set for my classroom this year. I was having so much fun creating it, I just kept going! I am so excited for this beautiful baby and cannot wait to use it in August! It's 20% for the first 48 hours to celebrate! Stop by and grab it for $1.60 until Wednesday night! Pick them up here!

It's a little late but I wanted to share the simple, quick, and cheap end of the year thank you gift I put together for my parent volunteers. Lets be real for a minute, great volunteers make the classroom experience that much better. In all honesty, I may have lost it a few times throughout the year with everything there was to do and these three lovely ladies stepped up, often with very little notice, to help out! 

Throughout the year, I snapped a photo of the parent volunteers helping in the classroom with their child. I edited them only to make them black and white, because black and white images are just so precious and seem really upscale to me-- then sent them out for prints. I picked up three simple black 4x6 frames at Dollar Tree and VOILA! I found these super cute summery bags at the Dollar Tree too. Throw in a thank you card from the heart and prepare for tears! I also added in some extra treats, but the photo was the best and I could have done just that! 

Frame $1.00

Photo print $0.19 

Thank you card $1.00 (for pack of 8)

Cute gift bag $1.00

Summer Reading

It's Monday....

We have 2 days left of school....

My to do list seems to get longer with each item I cross off.... 

I'm ready for summer!

So today I decided to do a quick LINK UP with Lucky to Be in First all about my summer reading plans! 

I just finished both Raymie Nightingale by Kate Dicamillo and This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp and both were AMAZING! I am working my way through The Reading Strategies book right now and I LOVE IT! The other three were books from previous summers that every teacher NEEDS to read! 

The last Land of Stories by Chris Colfer comes out this summer and I am so exited! I have read all the other ones, and my kids love them! I also just bought the last book in the 5th Wave series by Rick Yancey. 

Five for Fraturday

IT'S THE WEEKEND! So I'm linking up late to Five for Friday

Sometimes life weaves into your lessons so perfectly, it creates better learning than you ever could have imagined. With my organized and driven personality, my lesson plans are very detailed, but I am also a firm believer that when those precious teachable moments present themselves you RUN with them! 

This was one of those times! Our novel study is The Lemonade War, which is just perfect for our standards and kids. Aside from that we were also reading a read aloud called Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. On the same day a few Fridays ago, they both brought up the topic of animal rescues. The kids were very interested in this topic so we stemmed off and had a quick conversation about it before lunch. Then it got even better, while grabbing stuff out of my mailbox I saw the cover story of our local paper was about Maverick a paralyzed dog that had been saved by a local animal rescue. I grabbed all the copies they had and brought them back to the classroom so the kids could check them out if they wanted after their quiz that afternoon. 

It just snowballed from there. They were really interested in helping out Maverick and the local rescue so we emailed Heidi the owner and asked what we could do. She is such an amazing person, and is bringing Maverick in to talk with the kids about how they can help and all about her job. The kiddos got to work right away and have started a school wide pet supply donation drive, penny wars competition, and are selling lemonade at a school function (just like the book) all to raise donations and funds to surprise Heidi and Maverick! 

We have 17 days of school left! CRAZY SAUCE! I decided to do the ABC Countdown to Summer instead of the balloon pop countdown this year just to mix it up! The kiddos have made paper airplanes, played with bubbles (which had to be inside thanks to a crazy hail filled thunderstorm), ate cookies, danced their little hearts out, and the list goes on! I'm loving each little activity and so are they. Just 10 minutes around recess or dismissal to bring in a little more silly fun as the year is winding down is really keeping them focused and working hard. 

My sister is here to visit which makes me so happy! We decided to go try something different yesterday and go blueberry picking. It was super hot, so we weren't there for long. But we have blueberries to last a lifetime now! 

I ordered all my books for the summer, and they have started trickling in over the last few days. Last summer I read Word Nerds and posted about it weekly (or at least attempted). I also read Words Their Way, and re-read a few classics. This summer I am excited for these babies, as well as Guided Math, and all the re-reading I can handle! 

In case I haven't already told you- I have the most amazing students. I love this group so much my heart could burst <3