Another New Classroom, Another New Set of Pics

This past summer was a whirlwind of packing and unpacking...and more packing...and more unpacking...

As we moved from 5 team members down to four I had to move my classroom down the hall. 

While it is nice to be in a quad with my team members instead of down the hall on my own it is definitely a double edged sword. I love the social aspect (and having three teachers and two aids in the quad who can keep an extra eye or ear out if need be) buttttttt I am having trouble getting more work done since I am near everyone else.

While I have an AC (that somewhat works and by somewhat might take some staleness out of the air...) I ended up further from the bathroom and the printer/copier...two seriously important items during the school day.

Overall I love my new classroom (and I cannot thank my incredible husband enough for all of his help) but it was made that much more difficult by the fact that I also moved in (and out) of my summer school classroom. Needless to say at the current moment I am very much looking forward to Christmas Break where I'll have more days off than I did all summer!

Check out a few new pics below! 

I'll be following up with some more posts about each one...

Small Group Table

(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)                                                       

This is one of my FAVORITE upgrades in my new room. 

Check back soon for some tips on integrating stability balls in your classroom.

Rocking Chair/Morning Meeting Area

(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)

I was lucky enough to stumble across this awesome blue and white flowered fabric while cleaning out the cabinets in my new classroom. My husband had picked out the shiny blue fabric for my last year. Somewhere in the course of the year it came away slightly stained and tattered. 

Both wall hangings actually came from Dollar Tree. I was nervous that I would damage the whale when I took it down so I bought the palm trees as well. I absolutely love the way it brightens up the whole back corner. I even used it for a backdrop for some first day of school pictures. 

Last year my door was fairly boring. I had fish labels on the door and eventually added cards and letter to/from my students. This year the hubby (super handy with a straight edged razor) helped me to wrap the door in blue fadeless paper. Check back for future posts and my super cute Captain Mickey and Sailor Minnie name tags! 

Updated job chart! This time I (and by me again the hubby) used felt as the background for all of my bulletin boards. Check out last year's post about my job chart (http://mrsnpartyka.blogspot.com/2013/10/all-hands-on-deck-pirate-job-chart.html) for information on the jobs and where to get your copy!

Last year I hated how dingy, dirty, and scratched my desk was. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day to do something about it. This year it was a priority and my wonderful husband and his straight edged razor again saved the day. We (and by we again I really mean he) wrapped the desk in fadeless green paper. I use the bottom half of my old whale wall hanging from my last classroom to spruce up the side. I then decorated the front with magnets I made myself using Lilly Pulitzer 5x5 designs and some of my favorite designs from Lilly. (I hope to share some of my magnet templates in a future blog post so make sure to check back!)

Another dingy metal area I spruced up (this time on my own!!) with fadeless paper and Lilly magnets!

Plenty more ideas, freebies, and TPT ideas to come. Make sure to check back for more posts in the next few weeks as I get back into the posting routine. 

For now enjoy this freebie 

Click here to get these numbers!

Associating With MONSTERS--SALE ALERT

I am a typical New England girl. I love fall. I love the leaves changing colors. I love pumpkins. I love ghost stories. I love monsters!

This has been one of my favorite lessons for the last two years. I am already super excited about creating these monsters with my students this year!!

We teach multiplication and division over the course of two units in our math workshop (and of course continually revisit for the rest of the year...).

Our second unit with multiplication and division introduced the distributive, commutative, and associative properties of multiplication.This introductory/exploratory lesson requires students to apply their knowledge of the associative property of addition and multiplication facts to create a giant monster. I love how different and creative they all come out! It is a great opportunity for students to work on their fine motor skills. 

Last year I took some small video clips and tons of photos of the kids while they were working and of their finish products. To surprise them I edited it quickly together in iMovie on my phone using the "horror movie preview" template. The kids LOVED it and it was a great way to showcase a project like this when our bulletin board was in use and we have limited display space inside of our classroom. 

In honor of my love of fall and Halloween...Associating with Monsters will be 20% off until the end of the month! Check out all 32 pages here in my TPT store (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Associating-with-Monsters-388319) 

From my product description;

A great lesson that can be adapted as an exploratory, introductory, or review lesson regarding the Associative Property of Multiplication. This lesson plan includes Five worksheets for your "on grade level" students as well as several accommodations for students below grade level, students who need review, and enrichment students. Plenty of open ended graphic organizers to keep students brains working!

This is a perfect tool for teaching these Common Core Standards

Content Standards: 

CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.A.1 

Interpret products of whole numbers, e.g., interpret 5 × 7 as the total number of objects in 5 groups of 7 objects each.

CCSS.Math.Content.3.OA.B.5 

Apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide.2 Examples: If 6 × 4 = 24 is known, then 4 × 6 = 24 is also known. (Commutative property of multiplication.) 3 × 5 × 2 can be found by 3 × 5 = 15, then 15 × 2 = 30, or by 5 × 2 = 10, then 3 × 10 = 30. (Associative property of multiplication.) Knowing that 8 × 5 = 40 and 8 × 2 = 16, one can find 8 × 7 as 8 × (5 + 2) = (8 × 5) + (8 × 2) = 40 + 16 = 56. (Distributive property.

Happy Haunting (and Multiplying) Friends!

PS This is also a great excuse to watch the clip below:

Time for CHANGE

Last year I totally fell behind on my blogging and TPT-ing!

In January I hopped on board our Language Arts Curriculum Committee...and spent the next nine months submerged up to my eyeballs in common core reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening standards. Now that my time on that committee is done I've moved on to some work on Google Docs and trying to get my own classroom up and running!

I also tried to take some time to focus on myself. Between graduate school, wedding planning, and moving to a new school I had forgotten that important detail. I started working out again, dropped 30 lbs and started teaching fitness classes for the first time since I was an ungrad. I feel better than I have in years!

Now that things finally seem to be settling down (well as much as they ever do...) it is time to get back into one of my favorite hobbies of creating materials again.

To get back into the blogging aspect I wanted to hop back to a material from my days in second grade. 

Normally priced at $10 I am putting my "Changeopoly Jr." on sale for $7.50.

This 65 page packet is available in my TPT store.(http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Math-Workshop-Change-and-Coins-Change-opoly-Jr-548067) 

Change-opoly Jr. encourages students to work on cooperative play, coin identification, coin counting, addition, and subtraction.

Included in this kit:
• One “change-opoly” 32 square game board
• 30 ? card fronts
• 30 ? card backs
• 4 game pawns
• 48 (12 of each color) “math books” to mark classrooms owned
• Coin cards to print on colored paper
• Colored coins to print on white paper
• Directions for assembly
• Directions for set-up and play
o Directions are a bit wordy. I would recommend walking through the game play with students before sending them off on their own.
• A tracking sheet to follow students’ progress

When I used this in second grade, I glued the game board onto the cardboard from the back of a pad of chart paper. I store the game board and all of the pieces in a Nordstrom shirt box---perfect size for a game box! 

Since we do not explicitly teach change in 3rd grade I use it as a review station and sometimes the students choose to play with it during our "Ketchup and Pickles" time or even indoor recess.

Check back soon for more new posts and pictures of my new classroom!

Please Like and SHARE!!

Help out my super cute kids who want to meet the UConn Huskies!!

Post by Newington Public Schools.

Love is in the SALE!

Pre Valentine's Day sale!!!

Take advantage of 20% off all items and 33% off of my Valentine's Day Fractions!

Stock up on great word work and math workshop items, then enjoy your snow days instead of planning and prepping!

Sale goes through February 8th!

Life is Like a Box of Chocolate...Valentine's Day Fractions!

Between a snow day on Monday and an anticipated snow day on Wednesday (that came true!) I knew my students were going to be a bit of an itch on Tuesday.

We got some of our "business" out of the way, February Spelling Pre-Tests, working on our recycling project in Reader's and Writer's workshop etc. but the last thing I wanted to do was really jump head first into our new unit on fractions when I knew their heads weren't 150% in the game.

It was also time to update our New Year's Resolution bulletin board, so Monday night I decided we were going to do Chocolate fractions as an introductory/exploratory lesson....and to help spiff up our bulletin board.

I was super excited over break when I stumbled across some really cute borders in the clearance section of Walmart. I scooped up a ton of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day border trim for 50 cents! So now I had my border trim, what to put on the board?

Thinking of boxes of chocolate obviously made my mind wander to one of my favorite movies--Forrest Gump.

"Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get!"

I quickly put together a packet for my students (get yours here!!) that introduced them to fraction vocab like "numerator" and "denominator" (and was full of cute graphics from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/).

The packet asks students to fill a heart shaped candy box with as few as 4 or as many as 12 chocolates. Then determine the fraction of uneaten and the fraction of eaten chocolates. Making sure that when they add the two fractions together...they should have a whole box of chocolates.

I created a tracer to cut out the hearts, and asked two students to use it to make a few extra tracers. They sat with me at the reading table while the rest of my students unpacked and settled into their morning routine. While they were tracing and cutting I was assembling my example piece. They started questioning why we were making a Valentine's Day craft when we hadn't  "filled our bucket" and earned a class Valentine's Day treat yet. I told them they were learn more later in the morning but it was to be our first math lesson on fractions. They excitedly continued cutting and talking about how this was SO much better than just doing a worksheet...and how much they love my class.

The quick intro lesson and craft took about an hour and a half. We spent about an hour in the morning, then finished the last bit after lunch. The kids took great pride in decorating their candy boxes.

In the TPT packet you will find directions for your students on how to assemble their candy boxes, example photos, a worksheet for students to determine the fractions of chocolates eaten/uneaten, labels for their candy boxes, chocolate clip art, candy wrapper clip art, and clip art to decorate their candy boxes.

--I also let my kiddos decorate with some sequins!--

In the end we made it through our introductory fraction lesson, listened to some great Disney Pandora, and we have a super cute Valentine's Day bulletin board that cost all of 50cents!

Macaroni Multiplication-Associative and Distributive Properties

During our second unit on multiplication and division, where we delve in deeper and explore the properties, one of my FAVORITE lessons I've done for the past two years is my "Macaroni Multiplication" lesson.

We kick the lesson off with a silly song about pasta (link in the lesson plan here) and then students are divided up into 4 groups. Two groups work on solving and writing distributive word problems, one works with just associative, and a challenge group uses associative and distributive properties to solve word problems that involve 4-digit numbers.

While I consider this a challenge and extension lesson for all of my students, I place my strugglers in the associative group, my "on-grade levels" in the distributive group, and my high fliers in the mixed group.

Each group is named after a different type of pasta and has to use sauce and pasta food labels to solve word problems and to write their own. Each student completes a finished project using elbow macaroni in place of the (round brackets).

While many students complained the project made them hungry--even though it was right after lunch on penne pasta day!!!!!--they loved it and begged to listen to the pasta song again at the end.

Get your students in on the fun by clicking here!!

Ringing In The New Year (FREEBIE ALERT!)

Well...this week we had ONE half day of school, so I suppose you could say we eased back into it!?

My students and I did a quick writing project. We have been working on parts of sentence so the students had to write two complete sentences for this quick check in. WHAT was their resolution for the New Year and WHY.

As I had a few students who were absent, so my bulletin board is still under construction but the final result is just too cute NOT to share.

I printed this paper in black and white for their rough drafts, and in color for the final.
(CLICK HERE FOR YOUR WRITING PAPER FREEBIE!)

I had a student help me cut out the ovals for the faces, and gave each student a piece of paper to "cut" their own hair.

I drew two versions of a party hat on white paper and 2014 in bubble letters then photocopied these onto different colors of construction paper. I prefer this method to having students try and share tracers, saves a little bit of time.

Students colored and decorated their hats and glasses with crayons, colored pencils, and of course some sequins for some added sparkle!

Once the students assemble their people, I stapled some ribbon to the top, cute out circles for their hands and attached their final drafts. The final projects are just too cute!

Since I have been procrastinating a trip to the teacher's store, I printed out some cute clipart from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/ to jazz up my bulletin board!

I was in a hurry to get the board up, but now I regret not laminating the pieces I used to use in the future. Oh well!

 

As an added bonus, one student brought in plastic New Year party hats to share with the class!

I let the students wear them while working as "thinking caps"

 

The bulletin board in progress...

 

 

 

 

Quick (and cheap!) Gift Idea For Students!

I have to admit--this one I stole from a good friend of mine. She posted a picture of the scarves she was making for her students as Christmas gifts and I just HAD to copy!

I lucked out--the Joann's Fabric near my house was having a moving sale...I got four yards of fleece for less than $10! (I even had enough to make myself one and keep a few for emergency gifts!)

I made each scarf 6 inches wide and 3ft long. I tied knots on the girl's scarves and wrapped them up in cute snowman paper. Over all the project took about two hours from start to finish, just enough time to watch a Christmas movie and sip some hot chocolate.

My only regret? I should have stocked up at that moving sale for future years!!

I wasn't sure how well it was going to go over with the students but they loved them and kept them on nearly the entire day!

 

 

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...(3D Snowflakes!)

Today was our first early release day due to inclement weather!

The students (elementary anyways) were already expecting a "half day" since parent-teacher conferences were scheduled for the afternoon...the thought of snow just made them THAT much crazier.

Normally I keep my blinds shut (which I hate!) but if not the kids can't see the SmartBoard and the sun ends up uncomfortably in their eyes.

I noticed early on in the morning that I was losing the battle. All 19 sets of eyes were trying desperately to see out the open blinds behind my desk. Around snack time I knew I was defeated. I reminded myself that my students are 8 and we decided to embrace the weather.

I shared a Brainpop Jr. with the students about winter (http://www.brainpopjr.com/science/weather/winter/)
Right now the link is a free video but normally you need a subscription to view.

Then we spent some time making 3D Snowflakes. I had never done it before but a quick Google searched turned up this great tutorial!
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-3D-Paper-Snowflake

Every now and then students need to refine those fine motor skills!

They were so proud to march out with their snowflakes at the end of the day to the "oohs" and "ahhs" from the other 3rd and 4th grade classes!