Five for Friday...My First!

Yay!!!  It's Friday!  I wanted to try something a little new this week so I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs for her weekly linky party!  Here goes...I do hope that I'm following the guidelines of the linky and doing it correctly....

{1} So last week while I was on spring break I attended a cousin's wedding and kind of went crazy with taking pics!  On Sunday I uploaded the pics and it took me A LONG time to upload...145 pictures....and that's not all that I took.  Yep!  I thought that I was the wedding photographer!  I finally stopped uploading!  Here's a favorite pic that my aunt took of me!

{2} I'm a VERY busy woman!  (Who isn't, huh?} Aside from working during the day (and what seems like night) our kids are very active!  This week our oldest, Kiana, had region soccer playoff games!  SN:  They scored 10-0 in one of the games!  Mercy rule...the refs had to call the game!  Anyway, these shots made the newspaper in Augusta which is 45 minutes away from us!  Not exactly our local newspaper, but she was in the news!  Wish I could get my hands on one of the newspapers!  Anyway, one of the team members was able to get me some of the shots that was included in the article.  They've won each game this week which means we continue on next week!  Go Devils!!!!!  I couldn't resist adding both pictures!

She likes headers!  I don't understand why a
person would like hitting a ball with their head!

Kiana in action!

{3} Girls Trip Alert!!!!  My college girlfriends contacted me this week and want to go to Charleston, SC for a long weekend in July!  I'm SUPER pumped...one...the girls and I haven't had a trip together in about 4 years...two...I've never been to Charleston...three...I'm looking forward to relaxing ANYWHERE!  SN:  Ready for summer!  Here is a pic of the apartment that we are renting for the weekend!

Looks comfy!!!

{4}  Earlier this week my son, MJ, and I met Adrian Peterson from the Chicago Bears!  Peterson is a graduate and football legend from our local college Georgia Southern University.  He came to our school to give our students a pep talk before the CRCT.  He also did a book signing for his new book Don't Dis My Abilities!  My son is in PreK so I woke him up from his nap to meet him and for Peterson to autograph his book.  My son was rather grumpy so I'll post a picture of the book instead.   At least he has an autographed book!  The book is definitely on my "To Read Over Summer" book list.  Any other suggestions of books that I can read over the summer?

{5} This week I tried pinning some of my products!  I like LOVE Pinterest...just like everyone else!  I do get caught up in pinning my wants, dreams, etc.  This week I just wanted to see what kind of response that I would get from pinning some of my products.  I received a lot of repins and some Pinterest followers!  That was exciting!  If you're interested in my newest freebie Sweet, Sweet Arrays...check it out!  It focuses on helping students recognize arrays!

Please follow my blog and my TpT Store here if you're 

interested in learning more about me and my TpT products!  

Thanks for stopping by!

Jennifer

Teacher Feature...No Monkey Business!

Meet my friend Michelle from No Monkey Business!!!

Hello!  I'm Michelle from No Monkey Business...Just Bunches of Learning!  This is my 23rd year in education.   I've taught everything  K-3, and am now serving as my school's literacy coach.  I thought I had always wanted to be in the medical profession, which is hysterical now that I think about it.  I can't even watch the nurse take my own blood.  How did I end up here?   I was in my senior year of high school in an Advanced Placement Spanish class where my teacher required the AP students to TEACH basic Spanish to a local elementary class.  I fell in love the moment I walked in the door.  Kids were eager to learn, happy to see me each week, and I couldn't believe the amazing feeling of being responsible for making sure they were learning.  The rest is history.  I did cry my eyes out leaving my classroom last year, BUT it has given me a whole new perspective and even appreciation for everyone involved in the education process.  I now get to share my love of teaching with students AND teachers.  Instead of the 23 little friends within the four walls of my classroom, I have 775 little friends AND their 37 amazing teachers to work with.

Click Here

I began my TpT journey late in 2011 and have thoroughly enjoyed sharing some of my favorite activities with teachers everywhere.  My mentor teacher (who is now deceased and missed dearly) gave me the best piece of advice I've ever received:  SHARE!  Share your love of teaching, joy of teaching, and gift of teaching with kids AND adults.  Here is one of my newest and favorite FREEBIES.  It's on Main idea and supporting details...a skill our students can always use a little more practice with.  It comes with 6 sets of main ideas and their matching supporting detail cards, which can be used in a variety different ways.  It also has a main idea graphic organizer that can be used with any piece of literature.  

One of the greatest things I ever started in my classroom was interactive notebooking.  What began as a goal to make learning more fun and engaging, ended up being more than that.  It DID make learning more enjoyable and interactive, but it also made my students better writers and more responsible for their own
learning.  I quickly learned if they could explain their thinking through the notebooking process, they truly understood what they learned.  Students love making them, and parents love them because they serve as wonderful study tools when students prepare for the test on a particular unit.  Here are some quick snapshots of the interactive notebook on Money.  Students have some "Foldi-fun" with flips and flaps, cutting, gluing, manipulating money pieces, and explaining their learning as they go.    Once you try one notebook with your students, be prepared, though, to be hooked and ready to tackle more.  I currently have seven Math notebooks available. (Numeracy, Addition/Subtraction, Multiplication concepts, Division concepts, Money, Fractions, and Geometry, with MORE on the way!  (Bundled for less!)
The greatest thing about notebooking is that you truly don't HAVE to buy anything.  My first notebook attempt included students doing all the illustrations, folding, and writing.  Who carries the cheapest notebooks to put your material in? Any of the dollar stores are great for that. Walmart also runs those back to school sales, where I've gotten them for as little as .33 cents before.  I also got really lucky when a local business donated boxes and boxes of notebooks to our school!  The biggest piece of advice I have is to start small, and start with a topic/subject that you yourself enjoy teaching.  You'll be amazed at how creative you AND your students can be!

Enjoy what's left of your school year.  Thanks for letting me share a little bit about myself on Jennifer's blog!  Hoping you'll SWING on over to my blog sometime and say hi and grab over 20 freebies!  :-)

Bananas for bloggers that share their space!  

Michelle
No Monkey Business

Math Game Round Up

Yeehaw!!!  Laura Candler at Corkboard Connections is having a math game round up!  The end of the school year is near and you're definitely going to need something to keep the kiddos engaged!  This linky party not only has great awesome math games but also lots of tips on how to organize centers and games in your classroom.  

Train Before Letting Go

Sometimes teachers get very excited {I know that I do!} when you find this absolutely "fantastically" amazing game on the internet or Teachers Pay Teachers!  You're so excited that by the time you print and laminate it you are ready for the students to play.  STOP...pump the brakes!  Unless you want to get a gazillion questions and totally waste time, you have to teach the students to play the game.  You have to go through centers and games step by step as a whole group before allowing students to playing individually or in groups.  It will save you MANY headaches if you train the students how to play the game beforehand.  It is pointless to just give students a center game with directions without explaining it thoroughly first.  Students will miss the chance to learn because they are too busy being confused or trying to understand how to play.  Train before letting them go...

Sweet, Sweet Arrays:  A Game of Concentration

The math game freebie that I would like to share with you is Sweet, Sweet Arrays:  A Game of Concentration!  Sweet, Sweet Arrays allows you to give students quick practice on recognizing arrays.  To play the game students must correctly match an array to the appropriate multiplication fact.  Take a peek...click the images to download this freebie if you are interested!  Please don't forget to leave feedback!   

KaBlooEy! A Game of Factors

Here's another FUN game for your students! KaBlooEy! A Game of Factors is a game where students can practice or review finding factors for products! Students love this game because if a player pulls a KaBlooEy! strip all of the players get to yell {it can be a quiet, inside yell} KaBlooEy! and the player has to return all factor strips that he has earned back to the envelope. This is a great review of finding factors...and much fun for the students!
Game includes the following:
-Teacher Notes
-Student Directions
-36 Question Strips
-12 Blank Strips
-Student Response Sheet
-Answer Key
Here's another FREEBIE that students can use while playing KaBlooEy!  If you have a student or students who struggle with factors, they can use the Student Notes Handout on Factors, Prime, Composite and Multiple to help!

Check out tons of other math games and tips at Laura Candler's Corkboard Connections!

Happy Gaming!

Reading Olympians...and Amazon Gift Card Giveaway!!!

Disclaimer: I'm out of town and internet service is in and out.   Hoping this will post the way that I planned!

Join the Reading Olympians, The 3AM Teacher and over 80 SUPREME education bloggers as we take you through a tour of the Reading Olympians Root Study Program!!!

As an Instructional Coach, at times I am able to go into different classrooms to assist teachers or teach a lesson.  This is the best part of my position!  I LOVE teaching!  I also love helping teachers so it’s the best of both worlds.   This week I was able to teach a lesson in a 4^th grade reading intervention class.   The lesson of choice was from a cool program called Reading Olympians.   Reading Olympians is a vocabulary-building program for elementary students.  Krista and Julie of Reading Olympians created the program.  The purpose of the program is to deepen understanding of words and enrich student’s vocabulary by using groups of Greek/Latin roots and stems.

I chose parts of the first lesson, Nike.  I differentiated it for the group of 4^th graders, and they had a ball!  First, a little background about the program…Reading Olympians is a whopping 300 page program!  Students pace themselves through the groups of roots {which are named after Greek gods/goddesses} and earn reading beads for their personalized reading necklaces.  When they earn all ten of their reading beads and tags for their necklaces, they become a 

READING OLYMPIANNNNN!!!!! 

{in my deep announcer type voice}

It truly is a program that you can use throughout the whole year and help your student increases their understanding of Greek/Latin words by learning 100 roots!  The program comes with instructions, parent letter, teacher organizers, word wall cards, key ring word cards, root chants, graphic organizers, assessments, certificates and data gathering materials.

Oh, yeah, my lesson….The students had a BLAST!  I began the lesson by discussing the meaning of prefixes and suffixes {affixes if you want to get technical}.   I knew that in order to get the student's attention and interest I had to grab it quickly!  I let them choose a partner and told them that they were going to rap about a prefix or suffix.  Yeah, they looked at me like I was crazy!  I took the chants from Reading Olympians and called them raps.  They were on board!  I told them to personalize the chant so that it will help their classmates remember their prefix or suffix.  I gave them the chants, assigned their prefix or suffix and they were ready to go!  They were laughing, beating on tables (coming up with “beats” from what I was told Lol!)…but most importantly they were learning about prefixes and suffixes!

Their raps were so cute!

After each group's presentation, we discussed each group’s different prefix and suffix.  I gave them the Nike graphic organizer.  The graphic organizer is awesome!  Students come of up with a list of words with the prefix or suffix, picture, definition and sentence.  Since most of the students do struggle with reading, I placed them in pairs and gave them only one page of the graphic organizer and a dictionary for the remainder of class.  I told each group to come up with at least three words for each prefix or suffix, choose one word illustrate, define and write a sentence.  They enjoyed the activity and worked well together.

If you are interested in learning more about how to use this program in the class or want to see some more examples of the program in action join the Reading Olympians "Pass The Torch" Linky Party!  This is one HUGE party!  Over 80…YES!...80 bloggers have used lessons from this AWESOME program and have blogged about it!  All you have to do is click the torch at the bottom to read some FABULOUS posts of ideas on how to use the Reading Olympians in your classroom.  We have bloggers from K-6^th in this linky!  I’m sure that you will find a teacher’s classroom that may be similar to yours who used the program! 

If you are interested in Krista and Julie’s Reading Olympians program, click here!

Thanks Michelle (The 3am Teacher) for introducing me to Krista and Julie and their FABULOUS vocabulary program….READING OLYMPIANS!!!! {yeah, that deep announcer voice again}.    Michelle is the talented artist that created the clipart for the program and this linky party!

BUT WAIT!!!!  That’s not all!  There’s more to this awesome linky party!  

Krista and Julie are also having a giveaway!  

First Place Winner : Gold Medal

Prizes: Complete Reading Olympians Program

$50.00 Amazon Gift Card

50% off Discount Code for a 1-Day shopping spree at The 3AM Teacher's Etsy store!

Second Place Winner: Silver Medal 

Prizes: $25.00 Amazon Gift Card

40% off Discount Code for a 1-Day shopping spree at The 3AM Teacher's Etsy store!

Third Place Winner: Bronze Medal

Prizes: 30% off Discount Code for a 1-Day shopping spree at The 3AM Teacher's Etsy store!


LOVE Amazon gift cards!  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking…I can buy books, a laminator or other teacher goodies (I would too!).  Be sure to hop over to the Reading Olympians blog and enter the Raffle contest.  In order to win you HAVE to make sure that you follow all of the terrific bloggers who are blogging about the Reading Olympians program….so get to hopping!   Good luck!

PASS THE  TORCH!!!

Click the torch below to read the next blogger's
post about the Reading Olympians program!