TPT Sale Reminder - 10 Recommended Stores

Yesterday and today there is the annual TPT site sale going on.  There are a ton of things that I have loved using in my classroom, some of which I have already shared about on here.  

I haven't added any 5th grade items into my store since I bumped up from 4th.  I wanted to get used to the new grade and become an expert before I made anything, and in the meantime I found some wonderful 5th grade teacher stores that I highly recommend.  

If you are in need of some retail therapy, may I suggest the following TPT stores to wander down the aisles? You might find that perfect new product to test out in your classroom.  

Jennifer Findley - I pretty much own her entire store.  Math task cards, math center games, error analysis, ELA stuff, lots of things that I use on a weekly basis - basically I love her store.

Joanne Miller - I use a lot of her ela and math ideas all year long - love her Reading Conferences.  

Create Teach Share - I have quite a few math and ELA resources - love her math interactive notebooks.

Hello Fifth - I have a lot of her social studies and math ideas - love her STEM ideas with history.  

Miss 5th - I have quite a few math activities - kids love her escape rooms.

Mrs. J's Resource Creations  - I have a lot of her math mysteries - love how engaging they are.  

The Book Umbrella - I have units for all the novels that we read in class - I love the format.  

Science Spot - I have a lot of fun activities for Social Studies, Science, and Math - love the cootie catchers.

Lovin Lit - I have her interactive notebooks for both ELA and also her powerpoints for SS - love all the information.

Jenifer Bazzit - Thrive in Grade Five - I have quite a few ELA and Social Studies projects - love the history snip its.

If you do need to go shopping, I hope you find the perfect product. :) Don't forget to use the code for extra discounts.

Have a great day! 

I Love Lamination...

It's that time of year, the chance to cover all the paper with plastic... again... At least they will remain durable over the next year.  :)  

I wanted to share what I've been busy laminating.  I still need to cut them out, but I do have some shows recorded to watch over the coming weeks.  i.e. It's a boring job...

For this coming year, I have those whiteboard signs, I showed them to you last week.

I also have prepped some Game cards by Katelyn's Learning Studio  for quick access.

And a set of Bloom's Questions by Kim Miller. These are for me to use as a reference. Sometimes I need a little help making sure my questioning goes deep.  

  

I grabbed some Math Sentence Stems from Keep Your Chin Up to add to my bulletin board.

I'm still waiting on my class list, then I will update name tags, and laminate those as well.  

There are other things in my classroom that were laminated long ago that are still in perfect shape, hanging on my walls and ready for a quick dust when it's time to head back into the classroom. Wanted to share, in case you were looking for ideas of things to prep...

I have pictures of all the covers of my read aloud novels laminated to hang up as we read them throughout the year. I shared how to do it back on this post.  

I use these Voice Levels by Fourth Grade Flair on my board at the beginning of the year.

I have these Class Dojo growth mindset signs by Whale-come to Elementary right inside my door. My students seem to always like Class Dojo animals...

I have used these Job cards by Lindsay Flood for years - I have them taped on the side of my file cabinet, and we change out the jobs weekly. 

I have all these Math Anchor Charts by Teaching and so Fourth prepped, as a quick reminder.  As a class we also come up with our own anchor chart to review our strategies for the units. I have the kids copy these into their Math comp. books. I hole punched on a corner, have a binder ring on them, and then hang them up on a magnetic curtain rod near our math board. 

I also have a pre-made set of ELA strategy anchor charts by The Stellar Teacher prepped.  These stay up on my board as a reminder, and they do copy them into their notebook as we go through them, but we do make our own anchor charts as well.  

I have all my the Root cards by forkin4th prepped. Then it's easy to throw up the certain ones that we learned that week in our spelling.  

I also have the Grammar circles by Hello Fifth to use with our Mentor Sentences by Jessica Ivey.

I have this entire math task card bundle from Jennifer Findley prepped and in task card holders. It's a lot easier to prep this kind of thing (my opinion) during the summer.

So, yes, this year isn't at all as much as past years' prep.  There's something to be said for finding things that work well that you can prep once and use a long time. A personal laminator is by far one of the best investments I've ever made for my classroom.  

I personally like the Purple Cow one the best.  :)  It has lasted the distance.  

What have you been laminating lately?

Math Review - Shout Out

Backtracking a bit today... Wanted to share a few math review activities that my kids enjoyed as we were reviewing full class.  Now in a normal year we do a lot of playing with task cards and Jenga year round, and then they create their Math Board games for the major end of school review... but this year it was just hard... for a lot of reasons... I was searching for that classroom magic. I started searching through my purchases on TPT and found these math mysteries.  I had picked them up last year before the world shut down...  

These Math Mysteries by Mrs. J's Resource Creations definitely helped and are awesome! For a couple of weeks we did them together on our full distance days (Wednesdays). I would take screenshots of the pages to drag into our TEAM meeting conversations. The kids click on the images and it went larger so the kids could see, and then we would work together to find the codes. I tried doing them in breakout groups so the kids could work in small groups, like I would have had them do in the classroom.  But they needed the accountability that came with whole group.  We did them together.  The kids were so engaged. 

So a little different than what was expected. 

We did the Case of the Bee Bandits. It reviewed a little of everything which was perfect for one more review of those tricky units.  The kids used copy paper to solve the problems, and we had full class teamwork to figure out the bad guys. Major detective skills!

We also did Case of the Puzzled Pirate. Another winner! It reviewed Place Value.  Next year I think I'm going to add this to my Pirate Day.

I picked up some other Math Mysteries so I’m ready for next year. She has a lot to choose from.  I focused on the areas that I know kids usually have a hard time with, a little extra review is never wasted. I now have her Case of the Disappearing Donuts (Decimals) and the Case of the Divided Dragons (Division). 

What other awesome resources do you use to review at the end of the year?

Hope this helps! 

End of Year Countdown - Shout Out

Summer started a week ago and I'm now starting to feel like a human again.  :)  Today I wanted to share what helped me fill the last 2 weeks of school - you know, when life was crazy.  

The Core Coaches has this incredible resource that I've used the last couple of years.  

10 Days until Summer

When I picked this up a few years ago, I was more thinking for easy sub plans or random theme days for Fridays to spice things up a bit.  This year it was completely used for the end of school.  I wasn't able to do all of them, but we did tackle a lot of the theme days.  Each day comes with a math review and ELA activities, and then some STEM, research, art, fun stuff, etc as well.  

To make this work with my hybrid classroom, I printed off the papers I needed and added them into file folders, then wrote the "to do" list on the outside so I could keep my plan in order, as I was adding in other links and activities as well.  During the actual lessons I took a quick picture to add to our TEAM conversation, and then put the paper under my document camera for my in class kids.  TEAMS was acting glitchy, so I was trying not to screen share for a long time. 

For the most part I did use it as is - highly recommend the articles and activities.  It's a complete unit. There are digital links as well, and those helped to find links for online read alouds, etc.  The kids just used copy paper to work on the activities, we did them whole class.  It kept them engaged over the last weeks of school. 

The days we did tackle: 

Aeronautics Day - tied in perfectly with our Science Design Parachute Challenge. We also made reflection 3D Hot Air Balloons about our dreams for the future, and had a Paper Airplane challenge.

National Parks Day - the kids loved to research. I added in a virtual field trip to Yellowstone, and I did take the kids outside to do the Mentos and Diet Coke. I had joined our class TEAM conversation on my phone so kids at home could participate, and my colleague dealt with my phone when I was dealing with the soda and candy. 

Weather Day - I added in some youtube links with Natural Disasters and the reminders how we can help others that have experienced them.

Summer Safety Day - Oh, the kids were also so good at brainstorming "rules" for their younger siblings of things to remember and why... The articles included were awesome. 

Summer Holidays - This was a fun one. I added in an Art Hub for Kids drawing. We used youtube links for each of the holidays as well.  

Reflection Day - This I used over a span of 2 days as I added in our ABC's of 5th grade, our Class Memory Jar, and Yearbook.  

Like I said, I highly recommend this.  Even if you don't know when you will use it - it really is a complete day worth of material, and you don't have to print tons of papers if you do things full class. To prep for each day, I simply got the specific file folder with hard copies and had added the links to my email drafts so it was an easy access. 

Hope this helps,

ELA Review - Shout Outs for Great Resources

In one week the kids will be taking the ELA state tests. You know, the tests that I didn't think would actually happen, but it's now back on... hmmm... I think I have figured out a game plan for testing... But first it’s last minute review time. We have been spiral reviewing all year, and with ELA they either know it or they don't.  But usually they do... I finally settled on a last minute cram plan over spring break - in class vs homework, whole group vs breakout groups. All with the knowledge that in just 5 days my class will not be altogether much anymore. It will be 3 separate groups, moving at their own paces, as I am with the kids testing for hours upon hours...

Back to ELA...

When I moved from 4th to 5th grade I didn’t really know what to expect for state testing, I mean I knew it would be similar, but there's the additional pressure of learning something new.  Jennifer Findley made it easy with her blog posts and her resources.  I met her in real life years ago at a conference, she was so friendly and personable.  I felt like I could trust her advice, so with the move to 5th grade, it was easy to trust her blog.  Today I wanted to share some links that I have found helpful.

Her blog posts about testing... she even has a some free resources. I'm all about not recreating the wheel... I use her post about Test Taking Strategies throughout the year.  I use her free Reading Test Prep Helpers as reference in their notebooks.  I also use her 10 Days of Test Prep Freebies and then have modified to fit my own classroom.  I also use her Test Prep Coloring Pages to help relieve some stress...

This week I am using her Reading Test Prep Task Cards whole class, a handful of questions per day. The last couple of years they have helped to hit all of those standards one more time. I have them printed and will snap a picture to add to our morning conversation. That way the kids at home can click the picture and enlarge it on their own screens. I will then put my copy under the ladybug so kids in class can also follow along.

I also purchased her ELA task cards Rock the Test task cards. I have those prepped for one day to slide into our color channels. It’s a couple pages of task cards per skill. One center per color channel. The kids will get into breakout groups to have a race, and will slide through the rainbow together, answering questions. My in class kids will use their pouch of Brain Flakes to show off what color (aka center) their team is currently working on. 

Rock and Roll theme - I bumped it up a notch and brought in my son’s musical decorations from his bday celebration, and even bought a banner to keep at school. The kids went nuts yesterday when they walked in and saw it. 

Another day we will be working through Jennifer's Survival themed Reading Review.  It's all about survival this year... This is both informational and fiction.  There's also a cute bulletin board prompt to put up.  

For Homework, the kids will be doing another set of review task cards by forkin4th. I'm uploading the task cards to their TEAMs assignment, and the kids will fill in their answers on a separate page before uploading.  

I also like to put these little testing notes by Math Mojo on their desks for testing days.  Just a little something to let them know that I know it's not fun, but that I'm proud of them for their perseverance.

All these resources have helped me keep my sanity in the jump to 5th grade.  I use other things for all year long, most that I've found and bought, some that I've created. I'm the type of person that needs to know that something works before I will buy it, so that was my hope today. Just in case you didn't already know these existed.  These are great review and they are awesome.  I hope this helps you!

Making Grammar Fun using Scissors

Today I wanted to show what I've made for my new batch of kids!  Last year I realized how much my big kids (fourth graders) still loved cutting out shape books.  Paper would turn into snowmen, apples, pumpkins, etc. throughout the year.  It motivated them to complete a brainstorm when it was deemed "fun" and by fun it meant a shape.  So, this summer when I actually had time, I created these 9 shape books for my kiddos.  Each batch of books has 10 pages that can be stapled together.

Why grammar?  Well every week my class works on Mentor Sentences.  Every week we are labeling the words in our interactive notebook, and every week we are discussing the parts of speech.  So I wanted to let them create brainstorm booklets that can let them show what they know.

   

My plan is to have the kids use one shape per month August to April:

September - Apples

October - Pumpkins

November - Acorns

December - Winter Hats

January - Snowmen

February - Mittens

March -  Butterflies

April - Clouds

May - Flowers

Each booklet has a shape/page dedicated to nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, a cover page, and a blank one that could be used for anything I can dream up.  Just wanted to share what I've been getting ready, here's the link if you think they might work in your classroom too.  

How have you been prepping for school?    

Color those California State Symbols!

I absolutely love the addition of art projects in my classroom.  Everything has a purpose though... practice following directions, a tie in to our unit, something that motivates kids to do their best.  I'm a California teacher through and through, and learning about our California State Symbols is a big deal in my fourth grade classroom.  I wanted to show you this coloring book I made for my class that we will work through during the school year.  My plan is to have them color one symbol per month August through April, to be ready to put the books together for Open House in May.  There are facts that are also included on each paper for reference.  

I know not everyone teaches in California, but I want to highly encourage you to use your own state symbols as Fun Facts for your students.  They are so interested in these little odd pieces of information and to find out the backstory how these symbols came to be important.  :)  

If you are a California teacher and want to see my coloring book up close, here's the link to it over on TPT.  I hope it helps someone!  

Day 12... ELA Bulletin Boards

Hi Everyone.  I've fallen into the black hole that is called Back to School.  Where the days are long, sleep is short, and a teacher's energy is zapped!  I wanted to share what we've been up to the past 12 days of school.  Yep, only 12!  I can't believe August is almost over - time has seemed to move at record speeds!

We started our novel studies.  Each week we have been focused on a specific reading strategy, but also spiraling through all of them.  I've been using my Reading Exit slips on Fridays as a quick check of what the kids should be able to identify.  The kids drop them off on this pocket chart, right next to their classroom number.

Nearby this entire wall has turned into a reading center.   Don't mind the mail crates underneath. :)  

Over in the corner are character traits from Joanne Miller (our intro. to that was this week), and then our strategies.  The kids brainstorm different examples from our text, and I stick them on to the reading graphic organizers.  The kids have the same ones in the front of their reading comprehension notebooks as a reference of what we are learning.  It has made it pretty easy to fill out!  

Across the room is our Writing wall.  We have started Rainbow Editing and Word of the Day.  Little by little this wall is filling up, which makes me happy!  

How are you doing?  Are you surviving Back to School?  

Monday Made It - The 6th Monday of Summer

This is my 6th Monday of vacation... Time has flown, especially this past week.  I was so busy between teaching VBS, selling fireworks for school, getting ready for Vegas, and reading my book as I avoided housework :) , that there are only 2 Made It's for today.  

Like I said - I've been getting ready for Vegas... I had a pile of business cards to bring with me, and I couldn't figure out where to put them... I had a feeling they were going to fly all over my purse, and I wanted something a little sturdier than a plastic sandwich bag.  We picked up 2 plastic pencil pouches (99 cents at Target), and I stuck a label on them.  No fancy fonts, just me going old school with a Sharpie marker.  I'm so excited to meet new people and fill up my "To Get" pouch.  Looking forward to making connections and growing my network!  Who knows, maybe those new business cards will turn into a future Swap - a - Card giveaway.  :)  

Every year (for at least 7 years), I've gone to Big Lots to pick up a desk calendar for $3.  You see, I really do NOT like to change a calendar every month.  It was more necessary when I taught primary, but with my big kids, I just need someplace to record important information that will help remind them (and myself) what's coming up.  It's not an exciting made it, but it's functional.  I filled in my calendar with the things I already know.

 I'll still need to fill in student birthdays when I receive that information, and assemblies, due dates, blah, blah, blah... But right now I have the end of the trimesters, minimum days, holidays, conferences, etc...  It has saved me so much time and headache using a paper calendar.  Highly recommend one!  In the classroom, this is always hung using small binder clips on my information wall.  It is very satisfying to rip the paper off at the end of the month.  :)  

Well that's it for now... go check out the other link ups over at Tara's blog!

Public Service Announcement: My Store is On Sale

This week has been absolutely wonderful.  Spending days with my family with the beach in the background... sure beats the 100 degree heat of living in the valley.  Celebrating my hubby's birthday, visiting CA missions with my now fourth grader, eating at all our favorite spots...  This is what vacation is all about.

Then we got home, and laundry happened.  I lost count of all the loads I tackled Thursday and Friday.  Trying to get my boys back into home mode (rather than at the beach mode).... mainly meaning trying to motivate them to complete chores.  "Let's clean your room!"  "I need you to empty the dishwasher."  All the "fun" things that I don't have to say during our time away.  

Hubby and I have stayed up way too late the last couple of nights having a TV marathon, catching up on shows and I was updating products over on TPT.  Changing up covers, adding some extra pages, etc.  This morning I was looking at my statistics, and realized that there are a lot of wish listed products.  That makes me super happy, so I wanted to throw a sale.  EVERYTHING is included in the next 3 days... even bundles are 20% off!

Hope it helps!  

The Idea Behind the Comprehension Notebook (Work in Progress)

I know I've been sharing a lot of behind the scenes lately.  It helps me when I write down my thoughts and to bounce ideas around.  It also helps when others give me feedback... especially if they know it's NOT going to work!! :)

For years I've used a composition book to record vocabulary and reading strategies inside.  Last year I added a section for themes (one theme per page).  We recorded the titles of our stories on the different pages, and our reasoning why we stuck it there.  This year we are switching to using novels to teach the strategies... something that I started doing this past year as well with our Read Aloud Wall.

Right now I have a bunch of post it notes stuck inside the book.  The first section will have genres, one per page.  I picked up Blair Turner's Genre Add On Cards and printed them off tiny like to add to the corner of the pages.  We will do the same thing like themes last year and add titles and reasoning.

With the strategy section I have my own graphic organizers (again printed multi pages per sheet) to add to the description pages.  These worked great last year as a ready reference when kids were tasked to write their own examples.

Behind these 3 sections (Themes, Genres, and Strategies), I have spaced out post it notes every 5 pages for each novel that we tackle throughout the year.  5 pages, 10 sides... plenty of room to have a single strategy per side, to which we can add examples as we go through the books.  Last year I had the strategy posters on the Read Aloud wall that my class added to, this time they will also be in their notebooks.  We will be able to tie up the strategy practice using those Reading Exit Slips to show comprehension with a quick assessment. 

 

Like I mentioned yesterday, the vocabulary and comparing chapters have been taken out of the notebook and will be kept in file folders for each specific novel. 

It feels really good to have a plan going into summer.  

Anything else you can think of that I need to remember?  Thanks!