What! Am I the worst Blogger ever?

So, tonight was our winter program which came out a million times better than this mornings run thru where, 1st grade powerpoint failed, my imovie would not work on the cafetorium PC, the lights on the back of the stage fell on top of my students as they danced, a 1st grader punched  another on the stage while decorating the Christmas tree as part of their performance. What!

But tonight my little Frozen people did a fantastic job they looked quite amazing in the suits, and gowns. We even had Elsa and Anna and Olaf( he was a crowd pleaser). I uploaded my Frozen imovie to youtube and launched it from their without a hitch.

Here is the link if your want to do a fun sing along in your classrooms.

http://youtu.be/sgueVu4mSa8

Anywho tomorrow we  continue our frozen theme with a few games that I will posts photos of.

1. Snowball race- straws cotton balls and cups  Who can fill the cup with cotton balls by sucking through a straw.

2. Freeze dance- We are playing freeze dance and winners get Candy Canes

3. Candy Cane  Dissolving Experiment -  Here is the link with more info on this fun Christmas Science.
http://lemonlimeadventures.com/dissolving-candy-cane-christmas-science-for-kids/

4. How to draw Olaf-  We are going to sit in front of our Smart board and learn how to draw Olaf.
http://artforkidshub.com/how-to-draw-olaf-frozen/


And I must not forget it is the last day for our Elf friend so guess what she hacked our Class Dojo.
Here is the link from Tatooed Teacher on how to change Avatars. She also reset all our points for the upcoming New Year. The kids will be excited to see this it is a great way to close the Elf on the Shelf.

http://mrslambsclass.blogspot.com/2013/12/changing-class-dojo-avatars.html

The Grand Finale and best part of my night before the last day of winter break was when my old student from another school Angelina showed up at my classroom door with her little cousin and she said" Do you remember me?" I said no tell me your name. She said" Angelina" and it hit me like a lightening bolt I remembered her with her cute little bob, no braces and sweet smile. She was so excited and did not believe I remembered her. Then her mom and aunt walked over and I remembered them as well. She is in middle school now and quite a lovely young lady. I was in the midst of sending my current students off with their parents so I stepped away to dismiss a student. Angelina did not leave she was just standing outside my door.  Then, her mom came over and said"She wants a picture with you. Is that Okay?" I said of course but you are going to make me feel old though. She was very thrilled to have a photo with this old lady. It was great to see one of my little people grow up and become  an amazing young lady. In this hectic time when I just want to give up this experience reminded me to continue and do the little extras, book exchanges, winter shows, family projects, Frozen themed parties because they do remember and it does matter.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
My News Years Resolution is be a more consistent blogger!

What am I lovin right now?

I am lovin the chronicles app from powerhouse education!





I am lovin my new Poly 8 pocket folders to plan and orgainize my groups!




I am lovin Language Wall! I finally feel it is of learning to the kids!



I am loving Math Wall but I need to revamp and amp it up a bit!

What is hands on equations?

Well, this is a really great program to help students visualize algebraic equations. It is designed for grade 3 and up but now I teach 2nd. I thought,could they, is it too much, possibly this would fly over their heads? No, no and no are the answers. 

I dove in with my seconds because they bombed the assessment on balancing equations. I mean boom there goes the whole city bomb. I thought I will just create some simple little balancing situations and see how it goes. We started with 10 = 5 + ---. Nailed it we moved on to working on some doubles work another Area of concern 8+8= 6+6+--. It took a bit longer but oh yeah! (This is a really cheesy oh yeah where you shake your head and make an awkward smile) they got it. We continued for 5 more minutes and I really was dumbfounded they were really making progress in this standard. Yay! I am going to try some more complex versions that are in the teachers Manual next week. Right on! ( again this is super cheesy 70's right on) second graders.

If you are interested here is the link;

http://www.eaieducation.com/search.aspx?keyword=Hands-On%2bEquations&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Product%20Lines&utm_content=Hands-On%20Equations&utm_term=hands%20on%20equations

Well worth it!!! I will keep you posted on their progress.

Happy Friday!

What is Mt. Teachermore?

What is Mt. Teachermore? Well it is not my phrase as much as I would love to claim it for my own ;it is the thought of the cool intelligent Kathy Collins. Yes, Kathy Collins,  a la
Reading for Real and Growing Readers

                                                                           These are two amazing books, written by Kathy Collins, that helped me several years ago during my Reading Fellowship when I was attempting to craft a Reading Workshop in my classroom. Key word attempt: I look back on those days with bittersweetness. It was an incredibly exciting time I felt like a new teacher again energized and ready to dive in. However, it is like eating a bag of sugar you go go go go and then the sugar coma sets in and you   can not move. These books and others were my sugar bag and Christmas break was my sugar coma. I read Growing Readers before going to Teacher's College University of Columbia Reading Institute in hopes that I would not be totally lost but those Teacher's College TCWRP consultants are insanely thoughtful and smart: I was still lost.

Lucky, for me and my teacher friend when we went to TCWRP, Kathy Collins was our session leader at the Summer Institute. She combined comedy and very thoughtful teaching practices which was so refreshing because the other consultants were so intense and amazing that I thought well this is not the right group for me. I cannot be this serious and intense this long. To quote Jay Z" work is not always hard" yeah! I enjoy my work sometimes it does not seem like work but these TCWRP folks speak English with such thought and precision it is just too intense for me. Kathy made me feel, even goofy me can put my own twist on this powerful learning and work and do this level of teaching in my rowdy classroom. Thank you Kathy Collins.  So, during her amazing session I went to this Saturday I gained a ton of insight and ideas into how I can improve my conferring and how I can better my shared reading and close reading. I often find one powerful way to improve shared reading  is to have literature and poetry that is amazing because then it is easy to sit back and let the words swirl around the classroom and turn in to magical teaching moments. I have already ordered one of here recommended texts in hopes it will arrive before Constitution day.

Thomas Jefferson: Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman
I want to use this as a Shared and Close reading lesson that to give the students a taste Jefferson and hopefully inspire some wonderings. I will post later on the results of our Shared reading. I wanted to at least share the title so you too can find this gem at your library, bookstore or amazon prime it, in time for Constitution day.

 Conferring is the most amazing teaching tool that often leaves me saying Um Um Um well how do I push this little guy what question do I ask? So here is one big A- HAAAAA ( this sounds like the yahoo sound because it was more than just the regular a ha it was a A-HAAAAA) any way it is simple. Skill vs Strategy, What the Hello Kitty. Yes, Kathy this is a great topic so basically she says it is: skill: I can  Strategy: how.

Go ahead drop an anvil on my head that was so simple but so true. Ex: I can read tricky words and my teacher taught me the strategy of chunking the word into parts. Wow! this helps me I don't know about you. Anyway, during her session Kathy Collins said she had asked this question to all of Mt. Teachermore, Lucy Calkins, Kylene Beers, and so on. I thought wow very cool I felt like this conference was a chance for me to be around my Mt. TeacherMore.
Here are a few of the faces I was fortunate enough to learn from this week end:

And here is me taking that crazy photo every family takes when they visit National Monuments. Let's all line up and smile in front of this thing so we remember we are came here and were happy for a at least one minute.

My Teacher Friend, Kathy Collins and Me!
Check out the load of books we bought! Can you say teacher NERDS!

Happy Learning! ( FYI my hair looks so bad because the water went out in the hotel the morning of the conference in the middle of my shower)

Will I make it through back to School Night?

Well, I did. I made it through back to school night. With the help of my super duper Aide. Yes, I said aide I only have an aide because I have a student who needs a one-one aide. So, sometimes she has down time and she completes tasks for me. Today she saved my buns by helping me pull together my student handbooks.
So here they are. They were a free download from a super duper blogger. I will post her link in a future post only because I am writing this blog on my iPhone post. 

All went well and I am super stoked because parents are using and checking our Class Dojo. I am in love again with Mojo! Here is an example yesterday I dismissed my class and her comes my fast talking twins dad. He said "twin 1 got a disrespectful on her Class Dojo!" What?you should have seen their faces. They said" Dad how did you know it is not Friday, teacher did not give us the reports." Dad" I signed up today at lunch. I guess I will be checking this at least once a week." Same face of fear, not surprisingly the twins had a much better day today. Then last night my friend whose name is a video game character and I often pronounce it as if I we were in the video game. He likes it. Well video game boy likes to leave his homework, stuff it on his desk, walk in circles so he can never find it, or my fav. The air search( you know where you look into the air and look for something that does not fly, you can even look left and right into the air and never find it) well grandma saw he had no homework and messages me on class dojo. Bam! I told her he Actually did do it in class he was clear. For today!

So, definitely check it out if you have not already. Class dojo is adding voice messaging, it is in beta now. I think that would be super cool especially for whole class message blasts. Maybe the student of the day can record the message or I can do it too.(because I really don't like the sound of my voice played back to

me) Very excited about this. So, I made it through back to school night and the week has been sucessful partly because of Class Dojo!

Happy Teaching!

How much do I love my big tpt purchase?

I can not believe how helpful my 2nd grade units of study for reading and writing workshop is, I mean really,really worth the big purchase. 

Here is the link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Units-of-Study-Bundle-Grade-2-10-Months-of-Reading-Writing-Lessons-w-CCSS-1072004#

It is by Jen Bengal and it is truly a time,no life, no allow me to actually have a life saver. I have been to Teachers College and learned from the amazing Lucy calkins how workshop works. I have kept up by following tcrwp on twitter and being a stenohouse and heinamann addict.

But this big purchase I made during the big tpt 28% sale was so worth it. Today really proved it to me. I was thinking well maybe I should just stop with launching workshop and get into it and prepare these lil people for their first benchmark. Well well well,today we did a writing lesson using the book Tuesday as our mentor text. If you have not read Tuesday it is just a beautifully crafted story that is driven by the amazing illustrations. So, the idea was that my kiddos were going to write the words by using the illustrations as a guide. We began and of course I could not find my copy of Tuesday so I found a youtube video and added it to my teachem account so it was cued and ready to go. 

Dum dum duuuuuuum.....

Here they are frantically writing about the illustrations, giggling with delight as the story progressed, shrieking out please stop it here I want to write about this. I mean really. Loving this, budding little writers being created. They were utterly amazed at how much and with how much detail they were writing. 

So, if your budget will allow and you have a bit of knowledge about reading and writing workshop this is a valuable tool to organize and gain ideas for mini lessons and independent student products.  I am truly impressed and after this lesson I feel confident I am really preparing these lil people to handle the common core.

Well, that's all for now.

Happy Monday!

How do ribbons and robots go together?

Well, I made it through week one of my first week at my new school teaching second grade. 

Thanks to the help of my mother and brother we were able to pull together a decent looking classroom. Here is an old pic I found of my brother. Clearly, he is not this size any more or he would not have been that helpful setting up my room. He is now over 6 feet tall. My classroom library was in place in about 30 min because of my two helpers.

Now back to robots and ribbons.....Here they are.

Greeting my students and other guests at the door is this little robot guy.

My sink area was yucko and I just did not have time to jazz it up so I merged this robot and a really dreamy fairy tale mirror. The robot is from creative teaching press riveting robots collection and the mirror ikea.

Greeting us at the other door is this robot light and a picture frame with a bow. The picture frame has monthly subway art.

That is my idea is seasonal decor. Ladies I just do not have time or energy for too much more seasonal decor. I know I am a stinky grinch and I should find I way but for now this works.

We are they lions here. So,I found this 3- d lion from Darby smart to hang on my door.

Here is a tiny glimpse of the library and my math bulletin board. More robots!!!

Here are two ideas I got from pinterest and bloglovin. 1. Use clothes pins to put up student work the numbers are student numbers. 2. My mini robots are also on clothespins, hot glued to the back the I made one robot for each of the 8 mathematical practices, and turned them into compliments Ex:"Great looking for structure." The plan is to move the robot compliment clips on to the work of a student who is demonstrating that math practice. I also think it will help me figure out which practices we should focus on as a class and which we are showing strength in. 

Math wall and my Sit Spots are very much in the skeleton stage. I do have ribbons on the math wall binder bins and robot icons on the math tool boxes. 

Well, that is how robots and ribbon work together in August I am sure it will evolve as the year continues...

Happy Sunday!!!