Jennuine Teaching

I just recently went to Barnes and Noble to pick up some books related to teaching. I love watching hauls. In case you are not aware of what a haul is, it's a video in which someone shares what they bought. The reason I love watching haul videos is because I get to see things that are available that I may not have known of. I decided to create a haul video on my latest Barnes and Noble haul.

It has been a long December. Usually we only have two weeks to squeeze everything Christmas/holiday related in. This year we had three weeks and boy did these three weeks drag on. I don't think I've ever been ready for Christmas to be over. We did have a lot of fun though. Here are a few snapshots of how we spent our December. Since December started, we've been doing a lot of centers through out the day. December is a time when the normal, daily schedule is thrown out the door and you welcome the unknown. For our class we have a lot of testing during this time of year and a "normal" day is something we hardly ever see in December. Speaking of not normal, the last week of school was spirit week. We had red and green day, pajama day, twin day, backwards day, and my favorite... crazy hair day. Crazy hair day is a favorite for anyone who has naturally curly hair. I have crazy hair every day, for one day out of the year, I have an excuse.   On pajama day we made hot ch...

This year I decided to do Elf of the Shelf with my class. I have always wanted to do it with my own children, but of course I don't have any yet, so I had to improvise. I only had him in my room for 4 days and it's a little sad that he is gone. Next year I will be bringing him in after Thanksgiving and he won't leave until Christmas break. My students this year went a little overboard with looking for him. I guess you can say this was my "test" year. This week I also found so many great ideas to incorporate into my classroom for next year. Since I have nothing too special to share with you, I will go ahead and leave you with some of our pictures of our elf, Skip. We found Skip on Tuesday hanging onto our easel. After decorating our Christmas tree with ornaments, Skip decided he wanted to hang out on the tree as well. Reading a Christmas story to his friends. Hanging on the flag pole. Drinking Mrs. Ruiz's root beer. Closeup of the root beer. Just chillin' i...

With Thanksgiving coming up, I am reminded of all the things that I am thankful for. I am thankful for my wonderful family and friends. I am also thankful for such a sweet bunch of second graders this year. I want to keep this post short and sweet so I will leave you with one of my favorite writing activities, I'm not a turkey. I'm sure there are many variations of this activity, but I just love it so much.  I love the creativity that comes out during this assignment. One of my favorites... I'm not a turkey. A turkey has feathers. I have hands. Can I ask you a question? Do turkeys go to school? No they do not. I am a student. I talk a lot. If you eat me, I can talk in your stomach. If you eat a student, you go to jail. Ohhh so creative!!

Happy Election Day!! I love voting day. Ever since I was a little girl and they did kids vote in our area. Do they still do that anywhere else? Allow kids to vote for president at a voting location. They get their own little ballot and everything. I loved doing that. I started talking about the election on Monday and I started with Cara Carrol's unit . We started off by reading Grace for President . Yes, I am aware that I spelled Gracie on my anchor chart... ooops! :-) I modified one of the graphic organizers in the unit and turned it into an anchor chart. I teach an ELD class so we color coded our nouns and verbs. Then we read Duck for President and made a similar anchor chart. After reading both stories we had an election to see who would win. Grace: 10 votes, Duck: 11 votes DUCK WINS!!! Then we read the book My Teacher for President . We made a chart explaining why our teacher (me) would make a good president. Then we took another vote. Grace: 1 vote, Duck: 5 votes, Mrs. Ruiz: ...

Every month I like to read a chapter book to my students. Most of my students are reading below grade level and even though they can't read chapter books, I still want to expse them to great literature. Even though there are great picture books out there, I also like to incorporate chapter books. September is James and the Giant Peach and my students LOVE that story. I really wanted to make a unit to go along with the book, but I haven't gotten around to making it yet. I did make an art project or craftivity to go along with it. You can really use it any way you choose. You can visit my TPT store and get this file for only $1.50. Click HERE .

I am so excited that Monday Made It is back. I loved being able to link up every Monday over the summer, but now that school has started, I'm glad it's gone to once a month. Today for my monday Made It I created... Last week on my Show and Tell Wednesday I shared my math assessments that included addition, subtraction, and multiplication. I went ahead and made an additional 3 files. They are separate files for addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Each individual file is only $2.50 and if you would like all three together, only $5.00 So head on over to my TPT store to pick up a copy of your own.

Do you ever have those morning with your students where it seems like they are all asking you what to do? Every morning we have a routine. My students come in, take out their homework folders, put their back packs away, start their morning work, and when they are finished they can either read a book or work on their math facts. It's been the same since the first day of school, but I still have students who ask me what to do when they are finished, or even worse... they just sit there and do NOTHING! I have created a morning checklist that will have all of those answers for, "What do I do next?" and that will leave you time to get morning routines done like lunch count and attendance. I have made a checklist that follows my morning routine, but I have also created a blank checklist that you can customize in your classroom. You can get the file HERE for free.

Welcome to another Show and Tell Wednesday. I was so excited to see that people were linking up last week and also entering the giveaway. I want to thank everyone that decided to follow my blog as well as like my Facebook page. I am fairly new at blogging and hosting my own link up and I feel like the first one was a success. I know that it can only get better from here. Make sure to visit my last post to see who one. If you are the winner, please send me an email at darlinglittlelearners@gmail.com Now onto my Show and Tell. A couple weeks ago I wrote about my Bikini Bottom Math, or Ocean Math. It's a math fluency program that I made in order to have my students master their math facts. It's been a slow and steady process, but I can tell that it's working. My students know their math facts really well and now they are just working on fluency and speed. If you want to read more about my program, you can see the blog post HERE . I decided to make a video explaining my program...

I'm excited to announce that I am starting a new link up. It is called Show and Tell Wednesday. Every Wednesday I will be hosting a linky party. This is a place where you can share anything you would like. All you have to do is write a blog post about something you would like to share and tell us about it. It can be something from your TPT store, an activity that you did in your class, or anything else school/teaching related. I always love learning new things from fellow teachers and I'm always searching for new ideas. Here are a few rules for the link up. Become a follower of my blog. This is not necessary, but occasionally I will be doing giveaways and in order to be considered for the giveaway, you must be a follower. Also, you don't want to miss anything in the future! :-) Add the Show and Tell button on your blog post that you link up. Visit the person before your link and leave them some thoughtful feedback. Have fun!!!!  Here is my show and tell for the week. School...

We have been working on synonyms in my class for the past few weeks. When I saw this activity on Pinterest, I KNEW I had to do it one day. My students struggled with coming up with their own synonyms, but know they are coming up with them left and right. I will most likely wait until later on during the year. I wanted to share with you a few pictures that I took of my kids as well as the bulletin board that the whole 2nd grade team put together. Our bulletin board. Each grade is assigned a bulletin board in the cafeteria that we are able to decorate. This is the first year that we decided to decorate it and I'm so glad we did. This is me showing off our activity.  A few of my little darlings. They were all so cute with their little chef hats on.  Posing in front of our bulletin board. I love my team this year. I didn't get permission to use their pictures on my blog, but trust me, they are amazing!! Now on to a freebie!! While preparing for this lesson, I tried looking all o...

This week I tried to do a Day in the Life of a Teacher. It so didn't work. I even tried two separate times. I guess that goes to show you how busy us teachers are!! Ever since I found out about the monthly currently over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade , I have been loving it. Here is this month's currently. Needin g ... Now that I have been teaching for 5 weeks, I am now back into my routine of getting things done. Now I need to schedule time for work, studying for my masters, exercising, crafting, and spending time with my family. There is never enough time in the day. It's either pick one thing over the other each day. Favorite Things... I am loving my new macbook pro. I still have my desktop computer that is a windows machine, but I love that I have an apple computer as well. It is so handy and very easy to use. I am absolutely in love with imovie. Usually when I edit my videos, I used my work laptop or my husband's work computer. Now I don't have to worry about either...

I love Monday Made It and I'm a little sad that it has gone to only once a month, but I understand why. I guess that means I'll just have to keep going on my own.  Made-It #1 I have been working on a math assessment program for a couple months now. I created a bulletin board in my classroom that I wanted to post on a Monday Made It, but since my unit wasn't finished, I figured I would wait. I spent most of today (Labor Day) finishing the unit. On a day where we should be relaxing and enjoying our day off, I am working on school work. I love it though! First, I want to share with you my bulletin board. I have always had my students coming into 2nd grade, not knowing their basic math facts. It would be wonderful if they could come in knowing their addition facts and all I had to do was teach them their subtraction facts. Unfortunately, I haven't even been that lucky. I knew that I wanted a program to do throughout the school year, but I wasn't sure what I wanted. I d...

I love doing art projects with my class. It reminds me of what excited me when I was a young student. Last week we studied homophones and my ELL 2nd graders were a little confused. We're going to have to keep working on them, but they did enjoy making their little deer and writing them letters. I got this idea from Cara over at The First Grade Parade . I purchased her TPT file on camping last year and I never got around to doing it. We read Henry and Mudge later on in the year and it would go perfectly with that theme, but I was too excited to get those precious little deer up already!!

Now on to what I made this weekend. I saw this pin and I thought it was a good idea. Then my coworker actually made on in her classroom. It looked so cute. I've always had a compliment chain, but it always took too long to reach the floor and it just wasn't that cute. I knew I wanted sometime cute, but I didn't want to use the jar. At first I was going to make Brownie Points and when students earn all of their "brownies" I would make them brownies. Very cute idea, but I went ahead and made a gumball machine instead. That way the students will be able to vote on their reward, that is half the fun and surprise!! The gumball machine starts blank and whenever the class receives a compliment for making smart choices, or for having a nice line, they will get a gumball added to their machine. When the whole machine is filled up, they will be able to vote on a reward (extra recess, movie, free time, etc.)