School Year Ending

As my fourth year of teaching comes to an end, I find myself reflecting. These past four years have flown by and all of my school years are starting the blend. I guess you can say that I am now a veteran teacher about to start her fifth year. Scary!! I started this blog at the beginning of the second year and didn't use it that much to document my teaching or share new things. Towards the middle-end of this year I got reenergized to teach. I found myself making more time at home to read more about teaching and finding new ideas, thanks to pinterest and all of those amazing teacher blogs. Who knew that one website could excite me again? This summer I am going to be doing a lot of planning as well as things to make teaching fun again! Sometimes you just need a little revamp to things. Speaking of revamp, I have been working on a new layout for my blog and hopefully this summer I will have time to finish it and get it up and running. I will be around through out the summer, but towards the end of July- beginning of August, that's when I will be back. Bring on year 5!!!

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I'm Not a Turkey

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!!

Before Pictures

Many people that walk into my classroom think that it is such a clean and organized room. Clean... yes. Organized... NO WAY!! Here is what everyone sees my classroom as... I love my room and I spent a lot of time rearranging it to make it fit my needs as well as my students' needs. It is a very functional classroom, aside from the organizational piece that is missing. Today I am going to share with you my "secrets". Are you ready for them? I must say that they aren't pretty. Be warned, you are about to see my BEFORE photos. This area looks fairly organized, except for the fact that I don't use ANY of it. I ocassionally lift up the fabric to get the students' reading books and a binder here and there, but other than that, these shelves are taking up prime real estate. One of my few cabinets that lock is filled with supplies that don't need to be locked up. Math centers that have never been used because I still have no clue how I want to organize them. ...

Classroom Management

With the school year starting soon, I'm sure a lot of us are reworking our classroom management plans. Some of you may even be making your for the first time. No matter where you are in the process, I always believe that it is the most important. I've always believed that if you don't have good classroom management, then everything else you do is a waste of time. What is the point in teaching a lesson while your students aren't paying attention? You're just going to have to reteach it. Why not use your time wisely and be productive. With all of the right procedures in place, your classroom will run smoother than butter! Sure classroom management and procedures take a while to teach and learn, but it is all worth it in the end. I am currently reworking my management procedures and when I do I will make an updated post. For today though I want to share with you what I did last year. When I first started teaching I was using this behavior chart. I wasn't really a f...

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