Saying thanks to Police Officers!

I apologize in advance for the novel. If you don't want to read it, you can scroll down to the bottom to access the freebie associated with this post.

My heart is heavy this week.... here in the state of Utah, 2016 is coming to an end the same way it began: with the death of a police officer. Both deaths have touched me personally and I've been left wondering "why?" all week long.

On a cold Sunday morning in January, I awoke to an email from my mom - telling me a police officer had been shot, and she thought it was her neighbor. His wife had been at church but was pulled out and never came back - and the news channels were reporting that two cops had been shot. Minutes turned to hours while we waited for news... "critical condition" quickly changed to "he has passed"... I didn't want to believe it. Here was a man who had beat cancer TWICE, losing his life to a single bullet in the line of duty. Officer Doug Barney lived two blocks from me, and only one block from my parents... and though I never met him, I felt an immense amount of gratitude for his service to our community. Officer Barney worked in the area where one of my schools is at, so the students made cards for his family. I was able to deliver these cards to his wife and children, and I felt like I had done something. Although small, I was able to show my gratitude.

Fast forward to this Sunday - thanks to daylight savings, I was up bright and early... I saw a news report online saying a police officer from the West Valley PD had been killed overnight. I don't know why, but my mind immediately turned to an officer named Cody, who worked in my neighborhood. I had the opportunity to meet him this summer, and remembered him talking about how he preferred working nights, because that was when the "real" police work happened. Anyway, it was only 7:00, and I knew it would be a while before anything was announced on the news, so I tried to go back to sleep - unfortunately, sleep wasn't coming. I turned on my tv to watch the press conference and burst into tears as the Captain announced the name of the fallen officer - Officer Cody Brotherson. Officer Brotherson was born and raised here, and chose to serve his community.  He LOVED his job. He was so excited to become a police officer. The rest of the day is a blur. I pulled myself together and got ready for church, still not wanting to believe that this was happening.

Monday morning, the principal suggested to the teachers that the students make cards for the family and the police department. Times like this, it's hard for me -- I love my job, but I don't have a class to call my own. I still wanted to contribute - and knew how I could help. I made stationary and coloring pages for the students at my school. Having been in the classroom for 10 years, I know that I would be more inclined to do something like this if I had access to something that was already made. These pages are nothing fancy, but I hope others can use them as well. I have uploaded these as a freebie in my TPT store. All I ask is that you take some time to have your kids make a thank you card for your local police officers. Don't wait for another fallen officer - say thank you now! Let the men and women who serve and protect us know that they are appreciated.

Tonight I am headed to a candlelight vigil for Officer Brotherson. What I wouldn't give to see him and shake his hand, and thank him once more, for making our community a better place. Thank you, Cody, for your service.

Click on the picture below to access the freebie:

Holiday Activity Roundup!

Today I'm blogging over at "Busy Bees Activities" and sharing TONS of great holiday activities to help you make it through the next few weeks of school.  Click on the picture below to check it out. 

Christmas Cookie Mats

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me in the Holiday Blog Hop sponsored by The Elementary Grapevine.  Today I'm going to share with you a super fun and easy Christmas activity that I do with my students every year. All you need for this is some large red construction paper (12 x 18 size works best, but you could also do it on a regular piece of construction paper as well), a few other colors of construction paper for some circles, (any colors will work), some white copy paper, and crayons. That's it!

Here's a picture of the completed project (minus one circle, which has been covered by the plate):

This is a sample made by my nephew when he came to visit me at school a few years ago... He did such a good job coloring it!

I have included all the templates and clip art that you need in one convenient download... all you have to do is copy the templates you wish to use, and you're good to go!  Once the cookie mats are finished, I run them through the laminator for durability. I've been doing this with my students for years and it's always a big hit. I hope it something you can use in your own classroom. Click on the image below to download the directions and file :) Merry Christmas.

Want even more holiday goodies? Keep hopping along... Up next is a RAK idea over at Crayonbox Learning. 

Language Arts Graphic Organizers

Hi everyone... Just wanted to quickly let you know that I'm blogging over at The Elementary Grapevine today, and if you drop by, you can pick up these graphic organizers I made for FREE... I've been using them for close reading in my class. I hope you'll stop by and say hi :)

Rounding to the nearest 10 & 100 (freebie)

Hi Friends! Today I'm blogging over at "The Elementary Grapevine" where I'm sharing a tip and interactive math journal freebie on rounding to the nearest ten and hundred.  I would love for you to check it out! Click on the picture below to head over to the grapevine :)

5 Star Writing {& a freebie}

This year, my school set a goal to improve in writing. I will admit, while I love doing writing activities with my class, I am definitely not an expert when it comes to teaching writing. I think that's because we don't have to take standardized writing tests in second grade, so I've never stressed about it too much. I have my kids write in their journals each day, but it's more just for leisure as it's not graded. And while we do write stories and stuff, it's just never been the biggest focal point of my instruction (perhaps because the math and reading instruction take up so much time every day!)

Anyway, my principal bought each of us a "four-square writing" book at the beginning of the year, and it's been somewhat helpful, but there was still something missing and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.... Until now!!

Last month, we had a training with all of the lower grade teachers, and one of our kindergarten teachers shared with us a great freebie she had found on TPT. It was exactly what was missing from my writing instruction.... Except that it was designed specifically for kindergarten, and revolved around only writing ONE sentence. I decided to make my own poster, and also a kid-friendly checklist for my students to complete as they work on their writing.

** please note, I tried to contact the original creator of the kindergarten writing posters, but she never wrote back to me, so I hope she doesn't mind me re-working  the poster to suit the needs of my second graders.**

Here is my version of "5 start writing"... I love that it is very simple and straightforward. I emailed the poster to my principal and he was nice enough to order them in poster size from our district print shop so that we can hang them in our classrooms. And while this was designed with second grade in mind, many teachers in our building ordered it for upper grade classrooms too, so it's very versatile and can be used across many grade levels. (There is also a kindergarten version that has the 5 steps for writing just one sentence if you want that one instead.)

This week, as my class was working on their "Cat in the Hat" stories for Dr. Seuss week, they had to keep revising their rough drafts until it was perfect "5 star writing" in order to be given the cute stationary to publish their stories. Many students are still working on their 5 stars and will continue working on their stories next week, as they refine their "5 star" skills!

This has been a great motivator in my classroom, and I hope it's something you can use too! What do you do for writing instruction??

{Click here to download the 5 star writing posters}

{Click here to download the 5 star writing rubric}

Valentine Love {a FREEBIE and a giveaway}

In honor of Valentine’s Day next week, I wanted to share the love with you, my wonderful blog readers and supporters!  Today I have an AWESOME freebie, and a giveaway :)  Read on for all the details!

As a first year teacher, I taught in a really nice area, and the room mother had an amazing valentine party planned for my class. All of my students made home-made boxes, and we had a great party. The following year, I moved to a low-income school, and quickly realized I was not going to have that same support. Being a new teacher, I was still REALLY into parties.... So of course I had to order cute valentine bags from oriental trading. I won't tell you how many hours I spent hot gluing fuzzy pom-poms to curly pipe cleaners... But it's safe to say that I've taken things down a notch or two over the years. I still enjoy parties, it just gets a little hard when you don't have a lot of parent support and have to plan it all yourself.... That's where the idea for these valentine bags were born. It actually started as a hallway bulletin board idea, then I realized they would look perfect on a bag.... Ta-da! I've been making these bags with my class for a few years now, and they always get a kick out of it. I make these bags with the whole class a few days before Valentine’s Day, which ensures that every child will have something to take their valentines home in. My students are still welcome to decorate a box at home, but I realize that not everyone gets to do that, so these bags prevent any child from having to take their things home in a walmart bag.

Today I'm going to share them with you... you will be able to download the pattern and directions for FREE, exclusively on the blog :) (and I bet you already have everything you need to make these!)  If you use them and love them, please leave me some feedback... I love reading comments :)

 

Click on the picture for the pattern and directions.

And now… the giveaway!!  I had originally planned to do this for my birthday, but I was so sick that I had no energy to do ANYTHING… so why not do it now?! Up for grabs today is one of the “quietest pencil sharpeners” from Classroom Friendly Supplies… what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with a super cute PINK pencil sharpener (I think I will have to give in and buy a pink one since I can’t seem to get lucky and win it on any other blog).

 I’ve told you before about how much I love this pencil sharpener, and I still swoon every time I sharpen my students’ pencils.  One week recently, I was being lazy and used my electric pencil sharpener, thinking that my students wouldn’t really notice… OH NO… they definitely noticed!! I even heard one student say “Look, she didn’t sharpen them all the way” LOL! Busted!! Lesson learned…. Always sharpen with the quietest pencil sharpener :)  Use the rafflecopter below to enter… and don’t worry, if PINK isn’t your thing, you can pick any color from their pencil sharpener collection.  Giveaway closes on February 15th, so the winner will be announced next weekend... stay tuned :)

** please note, this giveaway is open to US residents only due to shipping purposes. Thanks!

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Student-Friendly Report Cards (freebie!)

Woah, where has January gone?? Time sure flies these days. Anyway, today I want to talk about report cards. Every teacher's favorite thing to do, right?! I can already hear your laughter :) So we just finished our second term, and with the end of the term comes report cards and parent-teacher conferences. This year, our school set a goal to have "student-led" conferences as a way to make the students take a little more ownership of their learning, and try to make the actual parent-student-teacher time more meaningful (10 minutes is just never enough time to really tell a parent how their child is doing). 

So in my district, we hold conferences twice a year, which is a new change that just recently started. Previously we had 3 conferences during the year, but found that holding a conference before school began didn't really accomplish anything because we hadn't even met the child yet, so we couldn't really set goals and whatnot.... So it was basically just a "meet the teacher" meeting, and we ended up having to hold individual meetings with many parents prior to the next "official" conference time, because we couldn't wait until November to address any issues or concerns we had once the year began. So now we do conferences in September and February, which is great, because it gives us enough time to gather our beginning of the year assessment data, and have a good picture of where each student is at, then in February we are about half-way through the year, so we can review their progress and see if each child is where they need to be in order to reach their end of year benchmark goals. 

Okay, back to the student-led conferences.... Back in September, as we were preparing for our first conference, one of the upper-grade teachers made a form for each child to fill out.... It was just a basic form with 4 or 5 questions for them to answer, but after only ONE conference using this form, it was very clear that this was NOT going to work out.... It was PAINFUL to sit there and make a seven year old do ALL the writing (because, after all, this is a "student-led" conference, so the student is supposed to be doing the writing and goal setting)... And it took waaaaaay longer than 10 minutes to complete this form. Clearly, we had a problem. One of the first grade teachers was nice enough to share a form with me that she had gotten from her cooperating teacher when she was doing her student teaching.... It was much more simple and just involved circling some pictures as a form of self-assessment.... But it wasn't quite what I wanted....and we all know how it goes when we get a copy of a copy of a copy.... It doesn't keep it's original quality, and unfortunately whoever went to all the trouble of making it didn't put their name or any copyright info on the page, so I couldn't google it and find who made it :( insert sad face here, right?? So, please forgive me in advance if you see this and think, "gosh, this looks a LOT like something I made".... I promise I was not trying to steal your thunder.... Anyway, long story short, I decided to make my own form, and I thought I would share it with all of you!! 

As you can see, this is just a basic form that the students can fill out themselves.... I plan on having the students do their own self-assessment 3 times during the year... First in September at parent teacher conferences, again in February at our second parent teacher conference, then we will do a final one in class at the end of the year.   I keep a copy for my records (which would be great to put in data binders or other "lines of evidence" folders you might be keeping throughout the year), then the students are given a copy to take home. In the past, I've had kids that have colored these and hung them up on their fridge! How fun is that for a report card?!

You can download it for free in my TPT store by clicking here!  When do you have parent teacher conferences?

Winner {and a freebie!}

Thanks for all the comments... It was fun to see how many (or how few!) days of school some of you have left... and for those of you that are done, I officially hate you! Just kidding... I'm super jealous though, that's for sure... anyway... thanks to my good friend, random number  generator, we have a winner....drumroll please.....




 Comment # 4 is the winner! YAY :)





Check your email, Karen! I wish all of you could win, and I appreciated all of your sweet comments.... so I decided to make a FREEBIE so that EVERYONE can be a winner :)  Click on the image below to snag your freebie from TPT.  And if you want to buy the full elf packet, it is on sale until Saturday. You can check it out here.

So glad that tomorrow is Friday.  Can I get an AMEN?!? :) 5 more days... I think I can, I think I can!

Shhhh... do not disturb! Freebie & Winner

I'm supposed to be making cookies right now.... but I'm watching General Conference and drinking hot chocolate.... so here I sit, blogging instead!

Today I wanted to share a little freebie with you.... A few years ago at a math training, I came across a clever idea of decorating folders as "office cubicles" for the students to put up when taking tests... the concept was that each child would decorate the folder much like adults decorate their cubicles... family photos, sports team posters, etc., then you would laminate it, and they had this great little privacy folder to put up when taking tests. I immediately fell in LOVE with this idea... then remembered the mobility rate at my school... I would be making cubicles every other week as new students came an went... feeling defeated, I tossed the idea out the window and didn't think much more of it.  Fast-forward to the second week of school that same year... It was very apparent that a few wandering eyes and chatty Kathy's were in need of some sort of privacy folders in the classroom (as well as a reminder to be quiet during the test!!), and that's where the "do not disturb" folder idea was born!

So what exactly is a "do not disturb" folder?  I'm so glad you asked :)  It is simply two folders that I have glued together and put this cute little cover page on... Here are pictures of the original folders my students made a few years ago.... the great thing about these folders versus cubicles is that I can use these folders for a few years and don't have to throw one away each time a student moves (which is quite often in my classroom).  The first year we made these, I printed them in black and white and let the students color them.... they loved using the folders that they had each created, and it was fun to see which folder they would get each time I passed them out for a test. (note: these folders are 3 years old and were created before I discovered the awesomeness of Kimberly Geswein Fonts... so the new ones have been updated with her fonts :) )

 

 

So, as you can see, the kids did a pretty good job coloring the folders themselves.... however, I didn't take into account the fact that my class might get bigger, and I didn't think to make extra folders.... so I made a full color version when I quickly needed to make a few more folders... this was a good and bad thing.... students were fighting over the few folders that were "better" because they were printed in color.... so I ended up making 6 of the "nice" folders, which I keep together and would give to the table being the most quiet as we are getting ready to take the test :) problem. solved. I think in the future, I might just make a full class set with the new full-color cover sheets... my kiddos this year are really into scribbling... I'm a little bit worried about how some of the cover pages might turn out!  Anyway, here's a few pics of the folders in action, as well as a pic showing how to make them.  Click on the colored pic above to download the freebie for yourself :)

"do not disturb" folders in action

These are kind of small... I used 2 folders, but have seen it done with 3 folders as well, to allow for a little bit more work space on each desk.  This is what I get for not gluing the folders together myself... I love parent volunteers... but sometimes, things don't turn out quite like I had them pictured in my head...*sigh*...

As you can see, this is just 2 folders overlapped, with the cover glued in the center.  I laminated the folders for durability.

I've seen folders where they put number charts or ABC / sound cards inside the folder... so you could totally do that inside the folders if you want :) I was in a hurry and didn't put anything on the inside of the folders.

I hope you find this useful!  I'd love to see pictures if you make them for your classroom :)

and finally.... the winner of the educents pin it to win it contest is.....

 

 

just a few more days to pick up this great bundle! Hurry before the deal expires!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

YAY!  You two lucky ladies get to pick any item from my store for free :)  Happy Sunday, everyone.

Winner! Sale! Freebie! Oh my!

first thing's first... here's the winners for the calendar sets... I'll be contacting you to choose your favorite set from my store :) thanks everyone who entered!
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Now, if you didn't win, I have TWO exciting things to share with you... first off, my entire store is 20% off for the HUGE back-to-school sale at TPT all day today and tomorrow!! So you can head over and pick up your favorite calendar set (or anything else in my store)!  Use the code BTS13 to save an extra 10% off the discounted price for a total of 28% off!

ANNND... as a little thank you, I put together a freebie for you with black and white apples and stars... feel free to copy these on colored cardstock and come up with your own patterns!  This freebie is only available on my blog and you can snag it here! Click on the picture to download :)

ONE MORE THING... holy smokes... I've been working on my latest project off and on since MARCH (it sorta got put on the back burner so I could finish the vocabulary cards).... but I'm so excited to finally have volume 1 of my bar model problem solving detectives pack finished!!  When I first learned about the bar model, I was confused... once I understood it, I was blown away with how EASY math was for me!  It was like a light bulb went off and suddenly upper-grade math wasn't scary anymore!! (Math is not my favorite subject... which is why I think I'm so passionate about making great math resources). Anyway, I am so excited to finally have volume 1 ready to go!  It has 10 weeks of problem solving pages, and volumes 2 and 3 will each have an additional 10 weeks, for a total of 30 weeks of problem solving when it's all done.  Click on the picture to check it out on TPT... 

And since giveaways are so much fun.... why not give two lucky winners this pack?! Hurry, the rafflecopter closes at midnight. You know the drill... enter below :) Happy Sunday... have fun shopping!!

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