Meet the Teacher Night

I'm always excited about a new year.  This year with the change from 3rd to 2nd I was also a little anxious.  All of the fears and anxiety went away tonight as I met my new class.  I'm in love.  They were so cute as they came in and explored our new room.  I can't wait until Monday as my new adventure in 2nd grade begins.

Below you'll find pictures of the gift my kids received at meet the the teacher night!

Welcome Back Owls

Owl close up

Note on the back.

He Keeps Me Young

Normally, this is a blog about school and my classroom happenings, but, today I just had to share my little munchkin's fun third birthday.  I always thought I would have just one child.  When I became pregnant after 40 and 17 years after my oldest son was born, I was thrilled.  Needless to say, he is spoiled by many.
His latest passion is firetrucks.  So when it came time to plan his party that is what he chose.  We decided to have a water party because July in Alabama is Hot.

This Birthday Boy is ready for his party!!!





Kids Table and Crate Seats







Dessert Table

Mini "Car Wash"









Ready to blow out the candle!

What is a party without a splash in a mud puddle?

Camden had a blast at his third birthday party.  Now to start planning for next year!



Happy Apps

Recently, I was able to present a workshop for the elementary teachers in my school system with two other teachers that love to integrate technology in their classroom. We presented a model lesson that showcased the apps Screenchomp, Brain Pop, and iCell. We also presented 30+ apps in 30 minutes. With each app we gave strategies to use these apps as something other than a game to kill time. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some of our ideas on how I plan to integrate these apps in my second grade classroom. Until then, this is a link to our Symbaloo that bookmarked all of the apps we shared.

Super Giveaway from Kleinspiration

Erin Klein the author of the great blog Kleinspiration has an awesome giveaway.  She is celebrating 1,000 followers! There are way to many prizes to mention them all here but I promise that you will want to enter.  You can click on the picture below to go to her post about the giveaway!!  Good Luck

http://www.kleinspiration.com/2012/07/biggest-give-away-yet-thank-you-readers.html

Wax Museum

Days like today make me proud to be a teacher.  After a trying week, I needed today.  I was so proud of the efforts my students made with their 7 Habits Wax Museum.  During the past few weeks students researched a person that represented one of the 7 Habits of Happy Kids.  After their research, they wrote and memorized a speech about their person and how they represented one of the habits.
As 1:30 approached I could feel the nerves of my students.  I was worried they would freeze when visitors and parents arrived.  I was ecstatic when my normally silly, rambunctious kids performed flawlessly.  They spoke clearly and not one forgot their speech.  This activity and idea came from a unit I purchased on Teacher Pay Teacher here.

Bear Bryant, John Heisman, and Shug Jordan

Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller, Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver

Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver, Clara BArton

Mae Jemison

John Heisman, Bear Bryant, Bill Gates

Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan

Clara Barton

Parents watching the performance!

Now we continue working on our PBL unit planning a field trip for a class from another school.

Have I told you lately....

I LOVE blog stalking.  I knew that that was thing I needed to do as I was preparing and planning for ARMT review.  Alabama's standardized test will be given soon and my students needed some fun, active way to review.  I found some great ideas here and here.  I took those ideas and created a Bootcamp activity for the entire third grade and a Surgery Center review for my class.  Both days were a lot of fun and gave meaningful practice to an otherwise boring review.
On Tuesday, camouflage was encouraged.  Dog tags were made and passed out to each student. Students marched into the lunchroom.  They were assigned a table and the fun began.  As any recruit would do the students responded to a chant to get them fired up.  They played a game of Scoot with twenty different objectives.  They had 4 minutes at each station to complete the activity.  Then they responded to the call of ARMT with Bootcamp as their signal to rotate.  They had fun reviewing and working in a group discussing the process and answers.  After the bootcamp, students reviewed the questions in their homeroom and a "Bootcamp Manual" full of testing tips was sent home.

Working Hard at Boot Camp

ARMT Review

 Today our classroom was turned into Broadhead's Surgical Center.  As students returned from PE, I yelled to them that we had an emergency and they needed to get to the room STAT.  They were hilarious running down the hall.  While they were gone I had changed into scrubs, so I was ready to be the supervising physician during surgery.  They were given a medical kit that included a mask and gloves to put on and then they were ready for surgery. They went into surgery to find a body on the table and ARMT open ended math practice problems.  They worked in groups and each time they were caught synergizing, they were given a band aid for their patient.  I loved seeing my students solving problems and working together.   After surgery, they gave their patient some body parts to give them life and we hung our "beautiful" creations in the hall.

I know my students are prepared for the ARMT.  They have been working hard all year.  I only hope their ability is reflected in their work next week.  Good luck!!!!

The Leader in Me

This is our first year implementing The Leader in Me program at our school.  Teachers were trained this summer and we have spent the year implementing the program in our lives and teaching practices.  We have also introduced one habit each month to the students.  I wanted to see if the habits had impacted the students and to see if they understood their meaning.  I had groups of students conference and as a group come up with a way to illustrate the habit in a photo.  After I took the photo, each group went to the "motivater" on big huge labs. They uploaded the photo, typed in the Habit and its meaning.  I think they did a great job showing the seven habits in the Leader in Me!!

Sharing the Love

Sunny Days in Second Grade is a really neat blog that has all kinds of useful information and giveaways.  I can only hope to be as crafty an organized as she is one day.:)  She is giving away a set of Cause and Effect game from Really Good Stuff.  Click here to enter.  Good Luck!!

My Favorite Time of Day

I love when my third graders collaborate.  Each morning we begin our day with what we call Committees.  Students are divided into five groups.  The Morning Message group works together to write a letter to the class.  The Webkinz group takes care of our "class pets," Fluffy and Owlivia, on the Webkinz website and records their information in a notebook.  The Problem Solving group works together to solve an open ended math problem.  The Fact Finder group reads a nonfiction article and finds three facts within the article that tells a summary.  The Digging in the Dictionary group finds and introduces a new vocabulary word. 
After some work time each group uses the Elmo and projector to share their work with the rest of the class.  What a great way to start the day with communication and collaboration.

(Click on the links for some of the recording sheets we use in our committee notebooks)

Tasty Tuesday

This year I found and began reading a blog called Second Grade Shenanigans. I have found many funideas on the blog but my favorite is her Tasty Tuesday writing activity. I bought her unit on Teachers Pay Teachers and it has been well worth the money. This is my class's favorite thing to do. They ask every Tuesday if this is the week we get to cook. With her unit the students complete a functional reading activity by reading a recipe. They then practice handwriting by copying the recipe. After that, they follow directions by making the recipe. Finally, they practice writing by writing a review of the recipe. Here are some pictures from the unit.