On a roll!

Well after not being motivated to create anything lately, I seem to be on a roll now!  We have a long weekend here in Australia for Australia Day, Happy Australia Day Aussies!!!! However seeing as I am still on holidays, it really hasn't made a dent in my lazing around :)

So I got this Reading Response packet up and running, which I will be using on my subbing days as well as my regular Year 2 classroom.

 More than likely I will add to this as I think of more response sheets, so if you grab it now you will get more in it later :)  This packet will be on sale for half price for the next 24 hours.

Text Scavenger Hunt!

We are looking at the end of the school year here in Australia and we are all about assessments, report writing and getting ready for Christmas in the classroom.
To help with some assessment in our spelling and grammar area I created a Text Scavenger Hunt.

This can be used with any book your students are reading, we used it with our guided reading books.  The idea is for the students to read a book or text and then identify words that they find, then record it on the recording sheet.  Each sheet has either a spelling or grammar focus and all you need to do is print and use! This is a great way for you to see if your students are understanding the concepts taught or as a way to find what they already know.

I have also found this file to be super handy for subbing or relief teaching.  I used one page with a Year 2 class yesterday and a different page with a Year 3 class last week.......they were SOOOOO quiet!  Seriously quiet, they were so intent on finding the words they forgot all about talking to each other.  That is a rare occurrence for a relief teacher my friends!

I was so glad to get this finished right in the middle of the Cyber Sale at TpT just make sure you use the coupon code CYBER at the checkout.
If you like the look of this you can pick it up right now at a discounted price in my store, just click on one of the pics.

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Spring into Contractions

I just wanted to pop in really quickly to share my latest pack with you, it is all about contractions with a Spring theme.
It includes a poster for you to display as a visual reminder for students, Match and Write, Contraction Caterpillar Craftivity, Contraction Snap and some extra printables for you to extend or consolidate.  You can get yours here from my TpT store as usual it is on sale at 20% off for the first week.

If you are a Facebook follower check out my Free for Fans button to get a freebie from this pack, if you aren't a FB follower click on th FB button above and like my page to get your freebie!

I enjoyed making this pack as it is just heading into Autumn here and starting to get quite chilly in the mornings so to make something bright and cheerful helped me forget about the cold weather a coming!

Enjoy your week

Teacher toys

I was going to post this last night but could not pass up the opportunity to join in Farley's linky...so it got bumped to tonight.
I want to share with you these waaaayyy cool teacher "toys" I got in the mail this week.  These talking points are so much fun

Basically you have a 10 second message you can record on them, then when you press them they playback the message.  I could see mountains of ideas using these and of course I could not wait to use them, so our first activity had to be a whole class activity so that we could ALL use them.  So I recorded a question about bullying on each recorder then each group of 5-6 children had to discuss the question and record their ideas or experiences on a piece of paper.  Each group was given a coloured Sharpie so we could see what ideas belonged to which group, the only "rule" was that they were not allowed to write something that had already been written.  Here are some pics of them hard at work.

 You can see the talking point in the middle of each table

Here is some of their ideas of  "Can you think of a time you or someone else was bullied, what happened."  They only had 5 minutes at each station so their responses were quite short, however the discussion preceeding was amazing!

This little boy is writing down what you could do if you saw someone being bullied.  As you can see each group had a different coloured Sharpie so it was easy to see what each group had contributed.

I was so impressed with the amount of discussion these talking points created and it meant that those kiddos who usually get left behind with having to read were able to make a meaningful contribution without worrying about their ability.   I plan on using them in Daily 5 next, oh my goodness the possibilities are endless!

The other really fun teacher "toy" I got in the mail a couple of days later were these babies

                                            
It is a homophone game called Double Duel, but I really just wanted it for the buzzers, hehe.  Each buzzer makes a different noise and the "caller" read the clues to what the word is eg a fathers male child and a bright object in the sky, the student has to answer and then spell the hompohones.  We had a blast with these but be warned...they are loud!  We also had a group quiz in the afternoon about their knowledge of our Austalian unit we have been studying this term.  I also put it into my Working on Words Daily 5 box.....any guesses if it was popular!

Well that is it! I have to say they were not all that expensive and I got them from Amazon.
I have had to have some stern words with a frown about making sure that we treat them gently if we want them to last for more than one game and only one student had to leave the game out of 25, not bad odds really.

Week in review and a freebie

Well I finally feel like I had a sowewhat "normal" week this week.

In Maths we focussed on reviewing multiplication and division and explored how they are linked.  I really like to work in small groups and let those students who are independent workers have a chance to forge ahead.  My littles that were struggling with this concept worked with me using a storyboard, if you haven't used one before they are great and allow students to explore numbers and operations using words, symbols, objects and pictures.

You can get yours here for free, this is also available in my Multiplication Mega Pack

The other students played Space Race or did speed tests.  I wish I had remembered to take photos!!!  

The last couple of days we explored Perimeter we demonstrated our understanding by creating a perimeter poster, the students had to write a definition of what perimeter is and then trace around some 2D shapes and measure the edges then calculate the perimeter.  Once again, I didn't take pictures :(  however next week I will take some pics when I have a quiet moment (WHAT? ).

In literacy we have started our Daily 5 rotations and the kiddos really loved it!  I did manage to get a couple of pics for this.  This year I jumped straight into letting the kiddos choose the activities they do and I was pleasantly surprised to find them choosing Work on Writing and Work on Words as their first choice.  How exciting!  

Here are a couple of littles writing the room.  They are finding the penguins from Plug-n-Plan's penguin punctuation pack.  I hid the penguins around the room and they had to search for them, then write the sentence that was on the card using the correct punctuation.  I hid one in a really hard spot and the little girl in this pic is the one that found it, (it was behind the door, heehee)  They loved this activity and can't wait to dive into Daily 5 next week.

It feels so nice to be able to do a post on the goings on in my classroom finally! 

I have decided to move my How Pinteresting series to my Saturday which is most likely Friday in the Northern Hemisphere, so pop in tomorrow to find some Pinterest inspiration for your classroom!

How Pinteresting and a Giveaway!

Hi friends!  I have to apologise for missing my How Pinteresting post on Friday but things have been crazy here.  I have started at my new school in a Year 3 class, I have so much to figure out!  I have been trying to get my head around all the policies and procedures that go with starting at a new school on top of getting a program together that uses their Whole School plans.....my classroom is still in the process of coming together as it was an un used classroom and was full of rubbish and leftover stuff from another teacher.  I have been so busy I haven't even managed to get any pics yet!  I also have my Mum and Dad visiting, (they are Grey Nomads and are on their way back north)  so I have been trying to get some quality time with them as well.
So onto my finds on Pinterest this week.  I have been looking at great anchor charts for using with Daily 5 and CAFE as I will be using this in my class again this year.  So without further ado.....

We will be looking at the Main Idea this term.

This links to a blog with lots of other charts.

I love the visual of this.

I am definitely making this one

Straight to the point!

I hope this has inspired you to use anchor charts in your room.  Before I go I want to share a fabulous giveaway my friend Shanyn at Coffe, Kids and Compulsive Lists is having for her 500.....yes 500 follower giveaway.  Head on over and enter to win 3 items from her TpT store.

How Pinteresting Working on Writing and a big Sale

Continuing my How Pinteresting series, this week I am highlighting pins that support Daily 5 Working on Writing.  I have really enjoyed doing Daily 5 in my classroom and I loved that it supports students writing everyday so without further ado here are some of my favourite pins!

A great way to keep track of where your kiddos are at, love it!

I used some shared journals this year for Working on Writing and my kiddos loved it.  They really enjoyed reading each others stories and it was a hoot to go back and flick through it at the end of the year.

Love that this uses post it notes.

Great Anchor Chart!

Lots of great ideas for writing here!

I hope you have enjoyed these pins for Working on Writing, feel free to pin and repin any or even this post.  I want to finish this post with an announcement........

Yesterday I was offered a contract in a Yr 3 classroom till the end of the year, YAY!  I am a teacher again.  I have spent the last day meeting my class, they are lovely and my new colleauges, they too are lovely.  My weekend will be dedicated to cleaning and setting up my new classroom and yes there will be pics.  Now onto my next announcement.......

I am proud to say I will be participating in the Sunday Super Sale at TpT, so you can get 20% off all my items and if you use the code SUPER you will get an extra 10% off at the checkout.

Thank you to Brooke from Teachable Moments for the graphic, too cute!

So if you are anything like me you will be clearing out that wishlist.

Have a great weekend

How Pinteresting Word Work

Hi friends!

I am continuing my How Pinteresting series.  This week I have been looking at pins that have great ideas for Working on Words (Daily 5)  I started using Daily 5 and CAFE in my classroom last year and my kids really benefited  from it.  So without further ado here are some interesting pins I found this week for Word Work in your room

Students get to build towers as they recognise different words.

A great kinaesthetic activity, particularly for boys

Another fun way to recognise sight words, using a familiar game.

I love this and did it in my classroom last year

Sight word practice with a smile

Love it!!!  A spin on the good old Boggle

Who doesn't love using colours to practice words, my girls loved doing this.  Great to highlight different types of words.

I hope you are enjoying my How Pinteresting Series and it has given you some ideas for Word Work.  Come back next week to see some more Pinteresting pins.

Enjoy your weekend, and all my Aussie friends have a great Australia Day...oi, oi, oi (sorry couldn't resist!)

Some Daily 5 pics and TpT products

I just wanted to share a couple of pics from our first week back at school.  At the beginning of the week my kiddos were struggling with adjusting to Daylight Savings but by the end of the week they were good to go!
Daily 5 is a part of the day my kiddos LOVE!  Don't you love it when they cheer about learning!  So here are a couple of pics of my kiddos during Daily 5

These are the sticker books I had planned to use for Working on Words

 

                                                         Here are a couple of my kiddos using them to practice spelling

This is my pockets that I use to store High Frequency Words.  We also add topic words and new or interesting words.  My kiddos use this to help with editing writing for the most part.  I was lucky enough to have a parent make this for me years ago.  (I just realised there is a coathanger hanging there????)

I also had time this weekend to upload a couple of resources.  The first is my rules posters that I made for my classroom a while ago, you can read about them here 

They are an apple and gingham theme and they are FREE!  Click on the pic below to get your copy.

The other item is my Space Race multiplication game.  It focusses on times tables to 6 and is also available as part of my Multiplication Mega Pack but I thought that maybe some people may just like to download it as a seperate item.  Click on the pic below.

We also had this lovely little visitor in the playground while I was on duty.  Try keeping the kids away from this one, hence why he is flattened out to make himself look scary.  (Yes I sent a kiddo to my room to fetch my camera when I saw him (;   heehee) 

Of course this meant I had to learn the Auslan sign for lizard, so funny it is your first 2 fingers and the action you make is like you are poking your tongue out but using your fingers.  Hilarious, I had about 40 odd kids out there all signing lizard.  Anyway he went on his way, hopefully he will come back another day!

All in all a good week, next week we start narratives!