March Freebie!

Are you a fan of my facebook page??
No??
You should be.
I do a lot of giveaways and Facebook Fan Freebies over there!

Here's tonight's freebie. I decided my calendar needs a make over, so I'll be redoing all the calendar cards for it - go to my facebook page and "like" me to grab your freebie!

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All this writing leads to a celebration!

So here's a quick picture update on my class this week so far!

We've been working out my Bear Snores On pack....

We listened to the non-fiction bears on Bookflix (did you see my video on it!?)

They've been doing some labeling - with caption writing....

And word sorting - with sentence writing....

And some sentence scrambles - which they LOVE!

They also did their "Pictionary" lol...(remember that game!)

They choose only FOUR words from the vocab list...

That's what I use to hold my words that we're working on

red section is the sight words

blue section is the spelling words (they're gone right now - in the center)

yellow section is science/social studies/reading words (the go hand in hand a lot of times)

green section is the math vocab (right now we're doing my fraction pack)

So they chose 4 words to do the definition on - here's rumbled...

So, I'm sure you noticed a pattern?

Yep - there's A LOT of writing going on.

Let me tell you why.

In the beginning of the year, I had 

16% of my kids score a level 3 (out of 6) or higher on the writing test.

Really???  I was beating my head against the table...almost EVERY day.

Could you hear it from where you are?? 

I wanted to cry. Literally. lol. 

I mean, I've ALWAYS loved teaching writing. It's always been one of my favorite things about teaching. But not with this class....lol.

But I turned to one of my writing gurus, Lori 

(Teaching with Love and Laughter) 

and asked for her help, used lots of her ideas... and LOOK what they can do now!!!

This, my friends, is a score of a 5!!!  

Our whole county did a writing test (since 4th grade FCAT Writes was today).

And look at the planning page they ALL did (all by themselves!) - I got the idea from Lori, but changed it a bit... but this 4-square planning works GREAT!

Topic sentence in the middle... details 1, 2, and 3 and in box 4 is the closing... so easy for them!

So - are you curious as to what my on grade level writers is now?

65%!!!!

And almost all the ones who didn't score 3 or higher, were at least at a 2, so they are ALMOST there! You have no idea how SUPER excited I am about this!!!

Speaking of writing... LOOK how cute these are!

We read Molly Lou Melon on Friday...

I just ABSOLUTELY love this book!!

And we are still hounding in those adjectives, so I thought this would be the perfect activity.

I'm sure you've seen the cute picture of me with adjectives around it floating around blog-land....

I took that a step further and added a writing component to it (yep - more writing!)

Click HERE to get the writing paper freebie!

AND

Click HERE to get a freebie for another version of this activity, from my writing guru, Lori.

And in math, for our Numbers Every Day folder we do, we're working in 3-digit numbers now, 

so I've upped the mystery number clues... these were the clues for this week...

four tens

three more hundreds than tens

two less ones than hundreds

They're getting better at them  - I'm impressed! And today, in the addition/subtraction section of the folder, I added in subtraction with regrouping - they got it like "THAT!" (envision finger snapping). I'm so excited! So, I can check that chapter off the list in the book - CHECK! And that's what I love about that folder. I don't have to teach them as chapters in the books.

While I'm teaching 3-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping, my kids are doing my fraction centers from my Hands-On Fractions pack.

Here are just a few activities in the pack...

This is the "Grab Bag" center

And the matching center.

And I have to show you a funny.... Monday, my teammate/friend and I showed up in the EXACT same outfit! lol. So funny! Totally not planned - and what's even funnier? We both usually wear different shirts with our red pants, but we both decided to change it to a black shirt on the same day. lol. It's the little things in life, right!?

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Bears, Fractions, and Bookflix Visual Plans - with Freebies!

It's Sunday Plan Day! This week I'm FINALLY getting to my Bear Snores On pack. I'm kind of bummed though because I usually do my Goldilocks unit the week after...kind of a nice slide into it. BUT I did it in the beginning of the year this year for some reason. Silly me. Oh well. ANYWAY... here is this week's plans. 

Remember...click the picture of the plans (or click HERE), and it'll take you to a PDF document to download...when you download the PDF, you can click on all the pictures and links to take you where you can find all the activities (TpT, blogposts, websites, or Freebies!)



Make sure you snag the freebies in there - the spelling tic tac toe and the letters freebie!

What is Bookflix you ask???? I made a Video for you to see what it is - down at the bottom of the post!

And yes, that DOES say FL FCAT WRITES!!! My POOR, POOR, POOR 4th grade teacher friends!! I will pray for your sanity and good scores on Tuesday!!!

I like doing the gameboards as my small group center because I use them for my informal evaluations to see if they know what they are doing....and they don't even know that I'm "testing" them!! It's great. When they are in centers, they can get help from their group members, so I can't really "grade them" on those...but working with them on the gameboards, I really get to see if they know what they are doing, and they think they are just playing a game. haha!

Speaking of.... 

I FINALLY got finished with my fractions pack... It's on sale for the rest of the day if you wanna snag it up!

This pack is great when learning learning about fractions.

These hands-on activities are sure to get your kids excited about learning fractions.

Included:

Fraction poster with definition

Equal/Not Equal sort

Fraction sort

Fraction action gameboard

Fraction match up with picture cards

Grab Bag fraction activities with bear counters or unifix cubes

and a cookie fraction student work sheet.

Here's the video on the website for bookflix - it's a great site!
   

AND I'm part of a big giveaway with Rachel....over at The Tattooed Teacher. Go check out what you can win - there are a lot of goodies!!

And I want to apologize. I've been HORRIBLE about showing you what we've been up to at school. But between doing my portfolio for my evaluation (ugh!), updating packs and creating new ones, and then making sure I spending some Q.T. with the fam, I just haven't been able to keep with it all... I'm hoping to get better at it throughout the week. BUT, I have these pictures of my girls to hopefully put a smile on your face to make you forgive me.

My B - she' such a happy silly girl...

"Let's GO fly a kite - and send it sooooaaarriiing!"

Now you can see more visual plans! DeeDee has made a linky! She's the original creative mind behind it all!

 

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Updated St. Patty Day Bundle!

I just finished updating and uploading ALL of my St. Patrick's day units!

I put them ALL into ONE bundle too!

This St. Patrick's Day unit includes all of my St. Patrick's Day themed activities in one bundle!

  Pot O’ Gold Literacy Centers

Pot O’ Gold Math Centers

Money Pot Differentiated Centers

St. Patrick's Day Sentence Scramble 

 Literacy Centers include: 

-ABC order to the 3rd letter, using blends and digraphs, with a writing & illustrating extension 

-Parts of Speech Sort (noun,verb, adjective) 

-Fact and Opinion 

-Sentence Stretcher with a book extension 

-Label It! labeling the parts of a leprechaun

 -Pocket Full of Nouns - common and proper noun sorting and writing activity 

 Math Centers include: 

-2-Digit addition with and without regrouping 

-Graphing with addition AND/OR multiplication extension and write about the data extension 

-Missing addend

 -3-digit number order 

-Time to the hour and half hour with option for quarter hour 

-clover measurement - standard and nonstandard units of measurement 

 These can also be bought as separate units.

The bundle is on sale for 20% off tonight and Saturday. 

BUT - you can head over to my FACEBOOK page and try to win it!

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Winner and A Pep Talk

Hey everyone! Sorry I didn't post the winner last night,  but here is the winner from the "All You Need is Love!"

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I will be emailing you soon!!!

And I wanted to show you something that is one of my NEW favorite videos.

Today our principal showed us this video at our faculty meeting. I just love her - she's so good about trying to keep up the morale. You seriously need to watch this - it made me laugh so hard, and cry too....but I fell in love!

That's it for tonight my friends. Short and sweet.

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President's Day Visual Plans

TECHNICALLY, I could have waited to do these plans until Monday, BUT, unlike most of y'all, I actually have to go to work on Monday. Boo. The kids have off, but we have to go for professional development day. Double boo.

So, now I have to cram everything into 4 days....and it's a BIG THEME week.

Triple boo.

BUT, anyway - here are my visual plans for this week - LOTS of good stuff...and some freebies too! 

Remember...click the picture of the plans (or click HERE), and it'll take you to a PDF document to download...when you download the PDF, you can click on all the pictures and links to take you where you can find all the activities (TpT, blogposts, websites, or Freebies!)

I'm not quite sure what my new "skill" is for my intervention kids. I just tested them (PSI'd them) and they graduated from short vowels - yay!! (I took about 5 weeks to do the short vowels - omgosh...lol). and 2/3 of them passed the CVC skill and the blends skill - but they are on the cvcE skill. So I'm thinking that's that I'll be doing, but I'm not sure - so I didn't put in my plans for my intervention group just yet. 

How perfect is it that we're still working with money and it's Presidents' Day!?!

We'll be doing the book from my Learning with Money: Coins pack. It's perfect because it talks about presidents AND symbols! woo!

One of my favorite packs I have for next week is from DeAnne - this pack is great! Lots of activities about U.S. symbols and and actual facts about presidents and symbols. It's great! Y'all should definitely check it out! (HERE) See? I hate doing research, so I LOVE when I can find packs that give me what I need.

Another one of my favorite packs is from Stephanie - COMPLETELY different from DeAnnes - has all kinds of activities. I'm going to be using some of her activities throughout, in addition to her measuring Abe activity in my math centers. Check hers out HERE

Kelley has some awesome crafts in her pack, so I'll be sticking those in there whenever and WHERE ever I can. 

And in other news.... since I knew I wasn't worried about making anything for Pres-Day week, I decided I was going to start updating my stuff from last March. Well, it was my first month of creating and selling - my, oh, my, how much I've learned!

SO.... 

you saw how I have updated and reactivated my Fish Math (formerly, Math with One Fish, Two Fish, but still the same skills)

And I also updated my St. Patrick's Day Scrambled Sentences

AND my Pot O'Gold Literacy Centers

I also added two more centers to this pack, so make sure you download the revised version if you've already purchased this pack.

Next one is the Math centers, and then I can update the bundle too. I'll let you know when I finish those - hopefully by the end of this week. 

And now I leave you with my favorite pics of the week

For Valentine's Day, I tell my hubs to keep his money for the flowers (although I do love me some tulips! But here in FL, it's hard to have them :-/ boo!) 

BUT, when I was at my meeting (yes, we had an RTI meeting on Vday, which was also the day interims went out - boo!), I came back and found THESE yummy delights on my desk - mmmm...

And my other favorite picture is of A....

She LOVES chasing lizards....well, she just loves being outside. But what makes this picture so perfect is not only is it her catching lizards - but with a Wild Child shirt on. perfect!

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Fish Math

One of my best sellers used to me Fish Math....

I use it during "Seuss week."

But since we're not allowed to sell anything anymore with Dr. Seuss in it, I had to deactivate it. 

But I've had some people asking me about it - so I decided to change it around and I took out the Dr. Seuss....

so now it's back up!!

This is a great packet to use in March, or you can use it all year round on its own! 

You will need to buy the box of COLORED Goldfish crackers....

(If you are a school that isn't allowed to use food in the room, I have included a page of fish pictures for you to copy off onto colored paper and laminate to use.)

Included are:
-Fishbowl Sorting Mats (color. bw, and big single page fishbowls - and one for adding the fish or one with fractions!)
-Graphs (Tally, bar, picto- and pie chart!)
-Think About It (with addition or multiplication)
-Write About It
-5 different Journal prompts at different levels. These can be used all week long, to differentiate your groups, or used in centers.

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All You Need is Love!

I know I just did a MEGA giveaway, but I am LOVING this FUN giveaway that I'm joining in! Some of my favorite bloggy friends are doing a little "All You Need is Love" giveaway, and were' each giving away something different, and you keep on hopping to each blog and entering - they're all different entries!

It's jammed pack with TONS of good stuff!

67 pages

 Activities include:

Sequencing

Tree Map - is, can, do for both Bear in the story and nonfiction bears

Sentence Scramble

More book study pages

Non-Fiction Student Reader

Picture Dictionary with vocabulary cards for the book and the hibernation unit

Label a Bear with caption activity

Show what you know!

Compare and contrast - spring/winter bears and two different books

Writing extensions

Noun, Verb, adjective sort with cut and paste activity

Bear Facts writing pages

Extra Story Review Pages

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Giveaway Winners!!!

The winners have been picked!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Congratulations Kristy, Susan, and Cindy!!

Susan and Cindy, we will be emailing you to see which 3 products you would like from our stores.

Again, thank you SOOO much for everything this last year. I sure have learned a lot - and GROWN so much! I would not be the teacher I am today if I didn't have all of you, my blogging friends, and this little endeavor.

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On the Menu Monday #4

Tonight's On the Menu Monday is the beginning of my "cajun style" cooking...

Mardi Gras is upon us....and I LOVE me some Nawlins cookin'!

So last night, I made a Crawfish Boil - YUMMMO.

hehe - A was all excited about them

BUT FIRST

let me "disclose"

If you are from Mississippi or Lousiana, this is NOT the real deal.

lol

This is a "Florida Girl's" way of doing it.

The best way is to get FRESH crawfish, straight from the levies....yummm!!!

Anyway - 

Boil a big ole pot of water - best if you have one of those BIG pots that have a colander that you can stick in it, but again, I don't have that.

Add the seasoning. You can just use a bag of the crawfish seasoning - or look online for other people's recipes for the seasoning. There are a million and one ways to make the rub. So I just opted for the bag - and added some bay leaves.

Bring it to a boil.

I cut up the veggies.... corn, celery, potatoes, garlic, onion, and lemon.

After about 20 minutes or so, add in all the veggioes.

Then you add in the crawfish.

Now, the crawfish I get are already pretty clean,  but make sure to rinse them off really good before you put them in the pot!

(oh my goodness - so yummy!)

Then you dump it on a table that is covered in trashbags and/or newspaper - and YUMMMY!

Oh wait - forgot to tell you what we use as a "dip."

yep - a mix of ketchup and mayo - and some hot sauce if you like it hot.

I was going to show you a picture of how you eat them...peeling them and such, but umm... we were too busy digging in! lol

And the best part about clean up??

pick up the trash bag, and voila! clean up is done! lol

Want some more ideas for Nawlins cookin'??

One of my FAVORITE posts from Plain Chicken has TONS of great ideas - Cajun Favorites - and last year, I actually made a lot of them.

And one of my favorite go-to meals is Bayou Gumbo (it's in a crockpot - I know - don't throw tomatoes, please!)

Check out my post on it from lats year - HERE

And I made these too - mmmm

Ok - if your mouth's not watering yet, I don't' know what WILL make it water. mmmmm....

Ok - I will be back soon with the giveaway winners!!

Have a yummy menu recipe?? Link up!

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