Birthday Sale

I'm sure you have heard about TPT back to school sale this weekend, right?  (I seriously have 50 items in my wishlist right now!!)  Well my birthday also happens to be this weekend so I am having a birthday sale!  Everything in my store (with the exception of the custom word wall letters which are only $1 anyways) will be 25% off all weekend!  

Click the picture to go to my store! 

Now I need to go clean my house because I invited my entire family over this weekend!  

Happy Shopping!!

Christmas in August

I went to my classroom today to see if I could get in and to see if they moved the new (new to me) furniture into the room.  I've mentioned before that I'm switching positions this year and will now be a self contained classroom teacher.  The previous teacher of this room retired and I jumped at the chance to have my kids all day long.   The previous teacher was a...collector.  She knew how hard it is to get materials from the district so she anything she got, she kept...even if she didn't use it for 20 years.  So on the last day of school, her collection was moved into my classroom.  At that time, I had no bookshelves and no cabinets to store all of this stuff so I walked out in June and tried not to think about it :) 

Now, it's time to start going through everything!  Thankfully, the custodians moved 2 bookshelves and a cabinet up for me.  My cousin Ryan came with me today and we moved another cabinet upstairs (thanks Ryan!!).  He also helped me move all the furniture to where I want it (or at least where I think I want it).  We started going through the "collection" and it was like Christmas!   I didn't take pictures yet but here is some of the stuff I found (click the pictures to be taken to the product): 

 

She had BOTH of these!  I almost bought one ($70) to use during our morning meeting.  I was sooooooo excited when I saw these!!  

These are search and find alphabet bags from Lakeshore...brand new!  

I also found a TON of rigby books with cds and big books with tapes, 20 or so tubs of math manipulatives,  a ton of alphabet magnets, and 40ish phonics and math games.  

I also found some weird things like: 

A tarp...

...and disposable scalpels.  Why in the WORLD would I need these?

I plan on going back a few times this week (we will see) and when I'm a little further along, I'll take pictures!  

Monday Made It

Monday's are becoming my favorite day of the week this summer thanks to Tara's Monday Made It linky!  I love looking at what everyone is making!  Here is what I worked on this week: 

1. I made my guided math stations rotation board and signs.  I love the way I have my math stations set up...I'm actually excited to teach math! And I'm not really a math person...You can read more about how I do guided math here.  You can get the math tub signs and rotation board cards here.

 Group names or student pictures will go on the blank cards.  

These are math tubs labels I made.  

2. I made objective posters too.  My principal wants everyone to post their objectives in the room and refer to them throughout the day.  If you like these, you can get them here. 

3. Next, I made a quick comprehension prompting sheet to tape to my guided reading table.  I saw a co-worker do this last year and I stole the idea from her.  Since I'm OBSESSED with these new backgrounds, I had to redo my prompting sheet to make it cute! 

This week, I plan on printing and making all of my journals and notebooks and centers for back to school!  I also hope to get into my room to start going through everything.  

Don't forget to link up with your projects too!

Classroom Buddies & a Discount

A few days ago I posted my pictures of my shopping trip.  I told you that I had some plans for Skippyjon Jones. 

He is going to be our class buddy for lack of a better name.  Each week, a student is going to get Skippyjon.    He will stay with them throughout their school day and even go home with them one night (not Friday).  Throughout the week, the student who has him will take pictures with him, read to him, and do school work with him.  We will print out the pictures (or possibly post them to a classroom blog...I haven't decided yet) and students will write about their week with Skippyjon.  

If you like this idea or just love Skippyjon Jones, you can get a 10% discount at Kohls.com!  Someone from Kohl's contacted me so I could offer you this discount!  Use the code BLOGIT10 through August 23 and stack your savings with one other department specific code as well.  Thank you Kohl's! 

http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/toys/features/only_atkohlsfisherpricehideawayhollow.jsp

I made this simple journal to go along with it.  Two covers are included, one says My Week With Skippyjon Jones and one is just My Week With.  

Grab your free copy from my teachers notebook store!

Also don't forget to check out my post on my simplified guided math plan! 

Guided Math

Have you been wanting to try guided math or math stations in your room but aren't sure how to manage it all?  I wanted to share with you briefly how I run math stations in my room.

First, it's important to keep in mind that I have a class of students in 2 grade levels who all have special needs.  My students this year need to work on anything from identifying numbers to multiplication.  Because of that, I don't really do whole group teaching.  However, I usually start math time with a whole group number talk or number sense routine which takes about 5-10 minutes.



I haven't been back in my classroom to fully set this up for this year so sorry the pictures are not the best (The signs aren't attached to the containers either).

Next we break into stations.  I have 4 stations (TIME) and my students do all 4 every day.

1. Teacher - This is where I teach small group lessons.  I also may introduce new games during this time so that I can differentiate it to meet the needs of that group.

2. Independent work - I try to have my students go from meeting with me straight to independent work.  That way the lesson is fresh in their mind.  During this time my students might do a worksheet, solve problems in their journals, take pre and post assessments, or work in their math textbook.

3. Math Facts - All of my students need to work on math facts!  This station has flash cards and games students can use to practice their facts.  At this time, students can also take timed math fact tests.

4. Explore Math - This is where all the great games and activities I get on TPT and Teachers Notebook go.  I rotate games based on skills I want students to work on and the season.

Obviously, this was a VERY brief explanation of my stations.  I explain in more detail (11 pages of detail) in my Math Stations Kit.  The kit has 3 sets of rotation board cards - 1 using the acronym TIME, 1 for MATH (math facts, at your seat, teacher, hands -on), and 1 blank set.  I also included some management forms, my lesson plan template, and my math journal cover.  Grab your copy in my Teachers Notebook Store.

I went shopping...

...and now my dining room table looks like this:

I found these cute chalkboard label buckets in the Target dollar spot. Right now I have pencils and glue sticks in them...I'm not sure what I will use them for yet.  

While at Target, I got these pencil pouches for .49 each.  I plan on using these for my kids supplies.  The boxes drive me nuts...they always fall and open and crayons go everywhere.  I know that these will get picked up while they aren't zipped closed and the same thing will happen but I still like them better.  I plan on having the kids bring their bags with them to different stations so they aren't walking around when they need something.  

And I bought these box sets for $5...Target had blue, pink, and this dark gray.  I figured dark gray would go with any color scheme I do in the future so I bought all of them (Sorry if you wanted this color and live by me!).

Then I went to Kohl's and bought some Skippyjon Jones things.  I have plans for Skippy that I'll post about later.  

After Kohl's, I went to Staples to get the 1 cent folders.  I asked about their new teacher rules and they let me get 10 folders for 1 cent and I paid the .20 for the next 15 of them but I will get a full refund (in the form of a credit) on the ones I paid full price for meaning they are free.  We will see if it works! 

I also needed spray paint for some projects...the buckets I wanted to paint were sold out :(

 ...and $1 stamps form Michaels for another project that I will be sharing soon! 

Now it's time to clean the house and start some of these projects!!

Monday Made It

I absolutely LOVE Monday Made It (Thanks Tara!) because even if I have done nothing all week, I always feel like I have to have something to share on Monday.  This week has not been a do-nothing week and this is what I've been doing: 

This is my Where Am I? board.  I only have 7 students (so far) but there will be times when 4 of them are in 4 different locations.  I printed out a whale for each kid and a bunch of different locations, laminated them, and stuck magnets to the back.  The Where Am I? sign covers the dry erase marker at the top.  I grabbed the pink dry erase board from Target (it's a little small though...I also need spots for adaptive P.E., nurse, bathroom...).  I plan on having 2 little baskets (or a magnetic ribbon on the wall) for Home and Bathroom.  Every morning when the kids come in, they put their whale in the classroom spot.  If they go somewhere, they move their whale.  When we have fire drills, I can quickly see where my students are (so can a substitute).  

Here are the Home and Bathroom signs.  

My next project was my Sub Binder.  You can see more pictureshere and grab your free copy here.  

 Cover

 A few of the sheets included

The section dividers

Last night, I started making my lesson plan binder when I saw Kimberlee's post on Two Fulbright Hugs.  She made a free, editable teacher binder for you to download.  I made my own cover but most of my binder came from her resource.  If you haven't started yours yet, definitely go grab hers! 

Cover

My divider tabs

I would share more pictures but most of the sections can't be filled in until I have my schedule.  Once it is more complete, I will do a more detailed post and share some of the sheets I use.  

*Hopefully* next week I will post pictures of my guided math set up.  I'd rather have it set up in my classroom before sharing it here but I have to wait for some bookshelves and cabinets to be moved into my room so I can put all of this away: 

I can't wait to see what all of you have made this week!  

Sub Binder *Freebie*

I'm feeling a bit lost as far as what I should be doing to prep for September.  As a resource room teacher, I didn't have a lot to do over the summer but now I know that there is a TON to do and I'm not sure where to start!  I know that I'm taking my *LAST* grad class in September on top of managing a self contained classroom for the first time so I'm trying to get as much done in the summer as possible.  (Please feel free to leave any suggestions!)

Today I decided to make my Sub Binder.  As you know, I'm doing a whale/blue-green-pink theme so I wanted my sub binder to match.  Here's how it turned out: 

Cover

Section One - Essential Info

These are the other 2 section cover...I don't have a schedule yet so these two sections are empty right now but it's a start! 

I'm uploading this into my Teachers Notebook store...grab your FREE copy here! It will only be free for a limited time! 

Monday Made It

I'm linking up with Tara again for Monday Made It!  I am so glad she is doing this linky party because it pushes me to get at least 1 project done a week.  

This week has been busy...last weekend I was on Long Island, this weekend I was in New Hampshire...I haven't had a ton of time to work on projects.  Anyways, this week I made mail boxes.  I already had these half done when I thought I could just do file folders so for this year at lease we will use mail boxes.  

Front view

Side View

Top View 

I used Priority Mail Boxes and taped them together.  Then I hot glued fabric around them and added ribbon to cover the cut edges.  

I also made Writing Leads posters for fiction writing.  I've wanted to do this for a while and just never got around to it.  I think they came out cute: 

There are 8 different leads (each one is one page).  They have a short description of the lead and an example of that type taken from a children's book.  If you are interested in this, you can get it at my Teachers Notebook Store. 

I stopped at Michael's Today and grabbed these cute name plates (I know I'm not doing an owl theme this year but these were too cute to not buy). 

I also bought this cute alphabet puzzle...

...and these sentence strip dry erase boards...

Now I'm off to spend some time looking at everything you guys made this week!