All I Want......For Black Friday

So how is everyone's Thanksgiving breaks going? I don't start break till Wednesday at the school I am currently student teaching at, but in return we also get the Monday after off. I am looking forward to just having a few days to relax, work on products, my portfolio and read some of the instruction books I recently bought. I have almost finished reading The Daily 5 and I love it so far. I'll be writing a post about what I learned once I am finished with it.

Today I am linking up with The Primary Pack for an awesome Black Friday linky. I love Black Friday shopping and I go with my mom every year. This year I am really looking forward to starting to shop for classroom resources and materials for a classroom that I will hopefully have next year (fingers crossed as I start to put applications into different schools as I see jobs posted). The past few years one of my favorite parts of Black Friday has been working in retail at Bath and Body Works and I am kind of sad that I will not be working this year for it.

This is more of a Christmas Wishlist for me. I spend most of my Black Friday getting my Christmas shopping done for my family. I am kind of a nerd when it comes to reading education books, so I am mainly wishing for some more of those this year as well as Nicholas Sparks new book See Me. The big gift I'm asking for (and already know I am getting) is an iPhone 6. My current iPhone 5c is starting slow down and not hold a charge as long as it used to, so I am really looking forward to getting a new one.

These are some of the things that I have found over the last few months on TPT and am hoping to be able to purchase in the next few months. They all look like amazing resources and I would love to be able to use any of them in my future classroom. I'll provide the links below to them, so if they aren't already on your wishlist, you can add them on!

1. 2nd Grade Growing Math Bundle (45+ Centers) 

2. Daily Language Complete Set

3. Daily Math Complete Set

4. Rise and Shine Binder

5. The Big Phonics Bundle- A Year of Spelling and Phonics Interactive Activities

6. Math Journal Bundle First Semester
7. Math Journal Bundle Second Semester
8. Big Bundle of Math Centers
9. The Ultimate Writing Station

I chose 4 of my favorite items from my store for you to check out for your Black Friday Wishlist.

1. State Research Project

2. Cupcake Contractions Scoot

3. Urban, Rural and Suburban Communities Unit

4. 2nd Grade High Frequency Word Wall Card

The Primary Pack is also having a huge giveaway featuring tons of items that have been wish listed from their stores. Go check it out if you want to enter. You can also link up your Black Friday Wishlist over there!

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2nd Grade High Frequency Word Cards

This is just a short post to let you know that I have completed my second grade high frequency word wall cards and that they are now posted in both of my stores. I have posted the complete list of words here that are included in the pack.

This pack includes 135 word wall cards, a blank sheet of cards that you can use to add more words if needed and a complete list of all words. This set is $5.00 dollars and can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and in my Teachers Notebook store. 

The 3rd and 4th Grade packs are currently in progress and a bundle of them all will be posted as well when they are all done. Keep an eye out for them. I am also starting to work on monthly word wall cards that would be great for any writing center or seasonal bulletin board. 

I am currently in the process of reading The Daily 5 book and will have a post with a review of it and what I learned once I finish it as well as the other books I bought. 

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New Purchases!

I have been working on getting my educational philosophy/teaching styles and a classroom management plan for my portfolio as I finish up student teaching. To support my thoughts and ways that I want to teach, I recently have purchased some books and resources that I wanted to share, that I will be referring to in my portfolio.

The Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

I love to go through different teaching blogs and kept seeing The Daily 5 come up on different blogs, but especially on Mel-D's blog. After reading all of her posts about the Daily 5 I knew I had to get it and read what it was all about. Just from the blog posts, I can tell it is the style that I really want to for my literacy block. 

The Cafe Book by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

As I was reading the reviews for The Daily 5 on Amazon, I kept seeing people mention that they wished they had talked more about CAFE in the Daily 5 book and that if you are buying the Daily 5, then you should buy this book too, so I decided to give it a chance. 

The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson

This book showed up as a suggested purchase with The Daily 5 on Amazon, so I looked at it and read some reviews and it sounded amazing, so I am giving it a chance. The price on this one was a steal! It was only 15 dollars on Amazon. 

Guided Math: A Framework for Mathematics Instruction by Laney Sammons

This book came up as suggested reading when I was looking into the book Guided Math in Action. It seems to have good reviews on Amazon so hopefully I will find some good information in it. 

Guided Math in Action by Dr. Nicki Newton

I read about this book in the Scoop on Primary's blog and it sounded fantastic. I am extremely excited to read this book and it sounds like just how I am thinking I will want to teach math in my future classroom. 

Launching the Writing Workshop by Denise Leograndis

This book showed up on my books you may like based on past purchases on Amazon and it looked like a good book and had great reviews, so I thought why not try it out for just 13 dollars.

I am starting to read these books this week and will be blogging about them all as I do so be on the watch for posts on the notes I have taken from them. I will be starting with The Daily 5, which I am starting to read today. 

The other purchase I made recently pertains to my future classroom management plans. I wanted to come up with a plan that could be adjusted to different primary grade levels k-4, and I also knew I wanted to have some kind of  economy plan since I loved the one I had in the classroom I was student teaching. One of my favorite blogs is Mel-D's blog and I fell in love with her classroom management plan involving the WARM FUZZIES! It is the cutest idea ever and I totally can't wait to use it. I knew I wanted to do some sort of more coupon based award system and her's is perfect. Last week I purchased one of her coupon sets, her classroom management ebook, and also her classroom jobs. They made me so excited to have my own classroom in the hopefully near future. Here is what I bought with links to them.

Reward Coupons

Classroom Jobs

Classroom Management Tips

Go check out these awesome products that she has. They are reasonably priced for all that you are getting!

Other than getting these books and resources, I have just been working on finishing up with student teaching and working on creating some new products for my stores which will be done soon. I graduate December 12th and I am so excited!

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A Sale and a Pinning Party!

I just wanted to post a quick update. First, congrats to the three winners of my teachers notebook store giveaway who won my first grade high frequency word wall cards. From now until Saturday, I will have them on sale at 50% off, which makes them just 250.

You can find them here. They are also on sale in my TPT store at 20% off, so they are $4.00 dollars there. They can be found here. 

The second thing I wanted to post about is that I am having a pinning party on teachers notebook. For those of you who don't know what a pinning party is, it is when you join a party and pin each others products for that party them on pinterest at least once a day to help everyone get more publicity and sales. The theme of my party is Social Studies and it is starting tomorrow and going until November 21st, which is next Saturday. There are still plenty of spots left to join. For more information or to join the party, you can find it here. 

That's all for now! I recently made a few purchases I am very excited about and can't wait to post about them soon. 

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Rural Urban and Suburban Communities Unit!

Recently, I completed a unit on Rural, Urban and Suburban Communities with my 3rd grade students that went amazing and I wanted to share it with you all. The third grade social studies curriculum that the school uses in 3rd where I was student teaching focuses on all different kinds of communities. We had previously just finished a unit on different communities based on their geographical region. Now I am very passionate about Social Studies, so I always love to focus in on it and put a lot of time into developing great Social Studies Units!

I started the unit off with a pre-assessment using a community sort with a list of words to describe the 3 types of communities and the students had to sort them into where they thought they would belong. I had them turn the sorts in so I could look over them and then as a class, we completed a sort on a giant piece of paper together to figure out what went in each.

We spent two days learning about each community. For all of the lessons, I would teach with a power point presentation of pictures describing what I was talking about and a few key points. For each lesson, we would spend the first day learning about the general facts of each community and then the second day we would look farther into either the history or the life of that particular community. For Rural we looked at the different kinds of farming, for Urban we explored the history and growth of a city and for Suburban we looked at how one of the first suburbs was created. On day 1 for each community we would fill out the corresponding pages in the workbook that I created. They would draw a picture to represent the community and then write what the community looks like and interesting facts that they learned about the community. 

On the second day for each community, they would work on adding to their Rural, Suburban and Urban mobiles that we hung in the hallway once they were completed, showing how communities can be centered around a city and then grow out to the suburban area and then the rural area. My students were so creative with this project and they came out great. 

The final part of this unit was making a triarama. My students thought this was the coolest idea ever and were so excited about making them. I got this idea from Buzzing About Second Grade. This project took two days for my students to complete. For the directions on how to make them check out the above link. I allowed my students to use any craft supply we had for this as well as having things like paint chips and cotton balls. I created an example of one to set the expectations for my students that looked like this:

The students did such awesome work with this project and really put a lot of time and detail into it. 

This unit is for sale in both my Teachers Pay Teachers store and my Teachers Notebook store. This product costs 10.00 dollars.

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First Post!

Hello, so as you can tell I am a student teacher who is ready to take on the world teaching and now blogging. I love to create my own curriculum tools to implement into the classroom, and then share them with others. It has taken me some time to figure out how to set this blog up but now I have and am ready to roll with it. I have a store at both teacherspayteachers.com and teachers notebook.com, which you can find on the side of my blog.

I have always been a fan of other teacher blogs and am so excited to now have one of my own. This first post is just going to highlight some of my favorite products I have so far in my store, that I think are really great.

The first item is a social studies project that I created to make a states book. I did this project with my third grade students and they absolutely loved it. They thought it was so cool that they got a state to call their own and got to research and find out so much information about it. This packet in my store includes everything you will need to create this awesome project other then the craft supplies and a laptop! I let each student choose a state name out of a basket. We had almost every state covered since I taught a morning group and afternoon group with 22 students each.  I originally had a week planned for this project, but because of all the work and interest the students were showing, we took a second week to make this project just right. When they all finished their projects, we spent a little bit of time each day before starting social studies to let students present their work to the class. I gave about ten minutes each day and five students went at a time.

Since I am located in PA, I used PA as my example the whole time and then did not let the students pick that state since I wanted them to learn about a place they did not live.

The finished product was great.

The projects in the middle are the state books. Here is a link to the product in my Teachers Pay Teachers  store and my Teachers Notebook shop for 10 dollars in both stores. The packet is 31 pages long and includes links to websites I have used to research the states, a note taking page, all the pages needed to create the book and a link to a site to grab free coloring sheets to include the state flag, state map, and state seal. Also included in the pack is a list of all 50 states that can be cut up and placed in a basket for your students to pick as well as a name plate for each state and an empty sheet of name plates that you can add your students names to. 

The other item I would like to highlight in my store currently is the start of my word wall packets. Currently I have published to both of my stores the Kindergarten and  1st Grade Packs. These packs contain the High Frequency Words for each grade level. The number of words vary based on the grade level. The theme for this version is pink and purple polka dot borders. All the packs come with a word card for each word, a blank set of word cards so you can add more words if needed and list of all the words that are included in the pack. Here is what they look like:

 Here is an example of what the word cards look like:

 Here are the lists of words for kindergarten and 1st grade:

The Kindergarten set has 50 words and the 1st grade set has 105 words. I am currently working on sets for 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade and hope that I will have them done in the next week. I will have a post about them when they are done. I will also be putting all of the packs together in a bundle at a discounted price if you would like to buy all grade levels together.

Here is a link to the Kindergarten Words in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and my Teachers Notebook store. The Kindergarten packet is 3 dollars. 

Here are the links to the 1st Grade Words in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and my Teachers Notebook store. The 1st Grade pack is 5 dollars. This will be the price for the other 3 grade levels as well. In addition the 1st Grade pack is currently on a giveaway in my Teachers Notebook store. It will be open until November 9th and then 3 winners will be chosen. After the giveaway ends I will put the pack on sale for a few days. The giveaway can be found here. 

Finally I am hosting a pinning party on Teachers Notebook in a few weeks and I will provide more information on that during my next post. 

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