Jennuine Teaching

Mrs. Sheehan over at Learning in Wonderland is having an amazing link up. She is asking us to share our top 5 projects we have made this year in our classrooms. Here are my top 5 in no particular order. I will leave link to each blog post if you want more information on each activity. I Chews You Autobiographies Pot of Gold If I Were President Dear Deer

To say that my class has spring fever is an understatement. We had district benchmarks this week and we still have another long week of conferences to go until spring break. We are holding on though!! To make this week a little fun since it's been so stressful, I made sure to add in a lot of craftivities, my , I mean my students' favorite!! 1. Contractions In order to get ready for our district benchmark we did a lot of review. One of the things that we reviewed was contractions. We used these little contraction crocodiles from Cara Carrol's Crazy for Contractions file. We also played a cute little contraction memory game that I found over at Learning in Wonderland and you can it for free here from Caitlyn Taylor. 2. Dental Health I'm cheating a little. I actually did these last week, but I wasn't able to share this cute little dental health craftivity. I also found this over at Learning in Wonderland and the best part is that it is FREE ! My students need to be ...

Today was anti-bullying day at our school. I'm not sure if it's a national day, but today all our classrooms taught a bullying lesson. Our second grade team decided on this lesson to teach. At first I didn't think my kids were understanding it. I had them draw a picture of themselves. While they were drawing I wanted them to look at their picture and think of all the good things about themselves. What were they proud of. Then we sat on the floor a traded pictures. After trading we talked about how bullies treat people. I had each student say things that bullies tell others to their paper person. They crumppled the paper up. Then I had them apologize to the paper person while uncrinkling it. Then I had them give the paper person back to the original creator. I asked them if their paper looked the same or different. They all said that it was different. We all went into a discussion on how bullying will affect you and even if someone says they're sorry, we will never forg...

I have had a busy week, to say the least. I figured the best way to recap is to participate in Randomness #1 Valentine's Day was on Thursday. It was a lot of fun. I loved that it was on an early release day and the following day (Friday) there was no school for the students. Teachers had an inservice day. I want to share some of our pictures from our mustache party.  I used A Cupcake For the Teacher's Valentine's Day file to write a conversation heart story. My students LOVED it and some of their stories were amazing. Here is my favorite.  While my students were passing out their cards, we played some fun games. I make it into a rotation so every 10 minutes the students rotated to a new station. One of the stations was passing out their cards. Another was this fun little pin the mustache on a man game.    I also made a few props for our version on a photo booth. I brought in my new Canon t4i. My students felt like celebrities. Then came the cupcakes. These cupcakes...

I love reading books of all kinds. Maybe that's one of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher. To be honest with you, I never liked to read when I was younger. I was always jealous of those people that could get lost in books. Now that I have gotten old older I appreciate books and reading a whole lot more. I think teachers are one of the few professions that you need to keep up with on a daily basis. I enjoy reading books for pleasure, but I also really love professional books. If I'm not currently in the middle of a book to push me professionally, I go crazy. I am at that point. So when I found the Books I Want to Read Link Up Party , I knew I had to join. Professional Books Teach Like a Champion is a book that I saw this summer over at Cara Carroll's blog . She is one of the many teacher bloggers that I look up to, so when she says it's amazing, I just had to get it. Unfortunately, I have yet to read it. I will make it a point to get to it though!! The second book is...

With the New Year here and 2012 gone, I just want to look back on what was a must have in my classroom during 2012. I know that we all have those tools of the trade that we couldn't live without. Today I will be sharing with you what my must haves of 2012 were and still will be for 2013. Scholastic Storybook Treasures We all have those teaching days where we can't stop looking at the clock waiting for the day to end. This is when "stories" come into play. I love stories. They are a collection of popular children's books put on film. Some are just narrated and others are recreated to be actual cartoons. I love being able to pop in a story and have my students watch a couple each day. It's a great way for students to enjoy reading, they get to see their favorite characters come to life, and it's also a great way to incorporate with current themes you are studying in class. Thirty-One Organizing Utility Tote I'm sure we all saw this lovely bag all over ...