Five for Friday--I'm back at it!

Hey, y'all!  Two blog posts in just under 12 hours!  I'm practically patting myself on the back over here.  The things that I can accomplish when the hubs has the day off and the twins are down for their morning nap.  So, here are my five random things from this previous week.

Are y'all following any teachers in Vegas?  I've never been to the conference in Vegas; it hasn't worked out for a variety of reasons.  This year, it's obviously the twinnies.  I'm hoping that next year I'll be able to make it, but I'm having major Vegas FOMO.  I mean, I get FOMO pretty bad anyway, but now that my IG feed is blowing up with pictures and people are using Periscope all the time it's some pretty aggressive FOMO.  Which brings me to number 2.

Are y'all doing this Periscope thing?!  It's so cool!  I haven't done any broadcasts myself yet; I kind of feel like I'm not sure what to say, but I'm really into checking out the broadcasts that others are doing.  Shroeder's Shenanignas in Second and Lucky Little Learners are doing AWESOME broadcasts.  If you aren't on Periscope you can learn about it here, but basically you download the app to your phone and then you can use it to broadcast yourself.  The broadcast is stored for 24 hours and then deleted.  It's owned by Twitter, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to have the twitters to use Periscope.  Like I said, I haven't 'scoped myself yet, but I'm so into the broadcasts I've seen.  I think my personal goal is to do a broadcast before next Friday.  I can update y'all next week in the Five for Friday.  =)  

                                                       

This is totally gratuitous, but here's a picture of how I've been spending my days lately.  With these two gentlemen.  

Next up in the TpT store is more Fundations units.  It's all very slow going, because as lovely as these gentlemen are, they don't really care so much about Mama's plans.  They just want to eat, sleep, and play.  Mostly eat and sleep.  

Next up on the blog, I'm thinking a series on organizing.  Parent form and communication, lesson/unit plans, calendars and to-do lists.  Is this something potentially helpful, or redundant?  Is there something else you'd like to see here?  I aim to please.  =)  

Okay, team.  That's it for me.  Nap time is almost over, and I can hear the gents starting to wake, so that's my cue.  Have a great weekend!

xoxo

August Currently

Y'all.  How can it be August?!  I literally feel like June 24th (my first day of summer break) was just a few days ago.  This summer was so busy, with a week long visit from our nephew and a 10 day trip back to the Midwest that I refuse to believe that it's almost over.  For the first time in I don't even know how long I have not been to a pool or a beach all summer long.  That's a shame.  A damn shame.  As I generally take up residence at the pool over the summer.  But, it just didn't work out that way this year.  C'est la vie.  Well, I don't want to spoiler alert anything, but I'm linking up with Farley for the August Currently.  The design this month is super cute.

We got a new puppy almost 2 weeks ago, and she's so dang adorable.  I just want to play with her all the time.  Except that puppies are like babies, so after like 2 minutes of activity she wants to sleep for like 20.  It's so nice that she's gotten along with basically every other creature she's met, and she loves kids.  She's just been such a love bug.  Tonight, I took her to a grill-out (the reason this is a evening post, and not an afternoon post) with a bunch of friends, and a few dogs.  It was great!  Everyone had a great time.  I definitely am putting off a few things until tomorrow that I had planned to do today, but I figure that I'm allowed to have a fun evening with friends, yes?  

One last thing, friends.  Tomorrow (well, technically I think in an hour and a half) starts the TpT Back to School sale!  I'll be back with a more detailed blog post tomorrow, but I just wanted to let you know that I am participating and everything in my store will be 20% off, plus you can get an extra 10% off with the code BTS14.  I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a Fundations bundle?  I don't have my units bundled now, and I know that not all of them are out, but I was thinking maybe bundling by 5s for now, and then I could also offer a 10 as well, once I complete more.  Is that interesting, or a waste of time?  

Thanks for stopping by!  Enjoy the waning hours of summer.  =)

xoxo

Sunday Smorgasbord on Vacation

Hi, sweet friends!

Currently, I'm enjoying my second cup of coffee with my brand new puppy sitting under my chair, my nephew watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates in the next room and a beautiful Midwestern backyard right out the windows.  (But it's literally 100% humidity outside, so we're definitely doing this blogging inside.  That's a little too much stickiness for me.)  Without any more babbling, I'm here to share my Sunday randoms with you, courtesy of one of my favorite bloggers, Michelle over at Fabulous in First.  You can check out her blog here.  Seriously.  Check it out, if you haven't before.  She's all types of fantastic.

{ONE}

Mr. Spouse and I finally added to our family.  We got this sweet, new puppy earlier this week.  On Tuesday, to be exact.  =)  She's such a little love bug, and she's been so well behaved!  We picked her up from a rescue and then we drove from DC all the way to Indiana on Wednesday.  We've been hanging out at our sibling-in-law's domicile since then, and they have a bigger dog, who has in turn made Sadie believe that she is also bigger than she is.  

These are post-play pictures, after they've tuckered each other out for the moment.  =)  Then they take like a 30 minute break and get going all over again.

{TWO}

I'm working on reading this great book right now called Smarter Charts.  It's a really great book about how to give your instructional charts more bang for their buck.  The authors focus on literacy strategies, but as you read it's easy to see how the same ideas could be using for math or science charts.  I think that the biggest take away for me has been that if you want students to use the charts you have after you've made them you have to teach the charts to kids.  It sounds so simple, and maybe it makes me sound like an idiot for not knowing this before, but that has totally been my biggest light bulb moment while reading this book.

  If you're looking for an easy read before you head back to school this book is definitely it.  It's incredibly easy to read and the layout makes it very useful.  I've read teacher books on occasion that are really dense and you have to put a lot of effort into reading them.  That's totally not this book.  It's really user friendly and there are multiple times during each section that I feel like I could use the idea/strategy/method right away.  I mean, it's summer, so I don't need to use right away, but it's on the docket for back to school charts.  =)

{THREE}

I FINALLY posted something new in my TpT store!  It's been so neglected.  :(  I always have great intentions, and then it's just hard to follow through on them all the time.  But, I just posted a new Fundations sort for unit 6.  If you're not familiar with Fundations, unit 6 is the unit when students are introduced to plurals, and the suffix s.  It aligns really well if you use Fundations, but it is also useful to introduce students to building regular plural words.  As it says in the product description, it DOES NOT include words that are made plural with -es or -ies.    You can check it out here.  So far, I have activities for the first 5 units of Fundations, and I'll continue to add to them.  I'm hoping to have units 7 and 8 up in about a week and a half.

I've been sitting at the island entirely too long now.  I need to get some family time in.  And maybe a third cup of coffee?  Have a great Sunday, friends!

xoxo

I'm nothing, if not a woman of my word.

Even though the Cyber Monday sale was literally a week ago, I just now finished my unit 3 word work activities.  As promised, they are 20% off in my TpT store today and tomorrow.  You can grab them by clicking right here!  I'll also give it away to the first 2 people to leave a comment with their email address.

Happy (faux) snow day!
xo

Two Posts in Two Hours?!

It's because I'm a sucker for a good linky party.  And, of course, my paralyzing FOMO.  An old roommate gave me FOMO and since then it has really negatively interfered with a lot of my productivity.

In any case, Susan over at Thank God it's First Grade just moved from Las Vegas to Mass, and is hosting a super interesting linky.
                                          
And, since I have a paralyzing fear of missing out on fun, I of course need to participate.  Despite that the fact that I have already blogged once today and despite the fact that I have a grand total of zero lessons planned for tomorrow.  Actually, that's not true.  I have one lesson planned for tomorrow.  I planned my whole week of Fundations before brunch this morning.  Without any more babbling here's my schedule:

And here are some preemptive answers.  My grade level partner and I set this schedule together, and our admin team approved it, so we have roughly the same schedule, but we set our blocks.  Some times (GLM, specials, lunch, etc) are set by admin, but outside of those times we set our daily schedule, which is a nice piece of autonomy.  We have duty 4 times a week--3 lunch and 1 breakfast.  I didn't mark this on my schedule, which I also didn't realize until now, but when I go to GLM my students go to 2 consecutive specials.  If there's no GLM one week then I have all of that as personal planning time (which is really nice, but doesn't happen terribly often).  Earlier this summer I blogged about Responsive Classroom and the RC structures that our school uses.  Morning Meeting is one of them, so MM has a very distinct structure and the kids really get into the structure/routine of it--greeting, share, activity, morning message.  I've also added in calendar math this year, which isn't really part of RC, but has been helpful for me and building in some additional math time for my littles.  

If you have any other questions about my daily schedule I'd be happy to answer them.

Happy Sunday, y'all!  (And go Colts!)

xoxo

Rachel

Whaaaaaaa?! A Blog Update and It's NOT Friday?!

I have really great intentions every week of blogging more often, but somehow it always seems that all of the sudden it's Friday and I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday.  But today?  Today, friends, I'm coming at you on a WEDNESDAY!!

Previously, I blogged about how we use Responsive Classroom structures is in my school.  One important aspect of RC is that you take the first 6 weeks of school to establish routines and procedures, and then after your routines, expectations, and procedures are established you can generally move forward throughout the year focusing on instruction.  We're in week 4 of the first 6 weeks right now, so we're practicing our routines and structures daily, steadily incorporating more each week, and moving towards small group instruction and independence in 2 more weeks.  So far, we're kicking independent reading's tush, and  we're dominating Fundations.  This week, we launched partner reading, and I'm really surprised with how well it's going.  They l-o-v-e it!  So much!  We've really just been practicing sitting hip to hip, knee to knee, balancing our book, and taking turns as they read each page.  If I was better at remembering to photograph my nuggets I would insert a picture of partner reading here.  We've also launched writing workshop, using our new writing curriculum.

Another structure that I've started this year is calendar math.  It's something that I've never done before.  Right now, we've been adding the date on every day and tracking the days we've been in school, but that's it.  In October we'll start keeping a tally chart of the weather and using the tally chart to make a graph.  Is that all you do during calendar math, or do you do more?  (If we're being totally honest I feel like I always hear about calendar math, but that everyone does it a little bit differently.)  I'd love to hear about the way you do calendar math.

Have a great Thursday!  =)
Rachel

It's past my bedtime. :\

Holy moly.  I can't believe my life/social calendar decided to explode at the same time as back to school.  The mess I leave on my circle table every day shames me until I get to school the next morning.  I am so exhausted; I feel like a little hamster on a wheel, just running and running in circle and never going anywhere or accomplishing anything.

I wanted to stop by tonight to let you know 2 things.  First, I'm working on (what I hope will be) a really great resource for anyone who does Fundations in their classroom.  And maybe even for teachers who don't use Fundations?  I'm hoping to roll it out unit by unit or several units at a time.  Look for the first unit to be up by the end of the weekend.  And secondly, once I can get my act together I'll be sharing the structures and routines that I've been setting up these last 2 weeks.  And maybe, maybe I can even get some pictures of my classroom together.  (As long as you promise not to judge my anchor charts!)

Have a great night, friends!  =)
Rachel