I am linking up with Amanda at The Primary Gal for her first Friday Freebie link.
Here is a quick math freebie that I made as a reference for my kiddos.  I printed it on colored paper and laminated to use in small groups or at stations.

Hope you find this helpful and please become a follower! :)

From Our Last Days....

I know... this is a bit late in coming but It really was stewing in my brain... If only it would have written it self!! ha So during the last few days of survival of the fittest quality, meaningful instruction I forgot I had bought this cute writing activity on TPT from Funky Fresh Firsties during the BIG sale after Thanksgiving... and really wanted to use it!

So we have verbally been working on Genius sentence writing (for more info see www.wholebrainteaching.com), we have done some practice with actually writing some genius paragraphs but this time I wanted a formal step by step way and also my goal was to help me carry this over to Writers Workshop (shhh... I am sad to say NOT my strong suit!).

Day 1: I read Jan Brett's (our current author of study) Wild Christmas Reindeer Then we talked about what if Rudolph had a crazy cousin that wanted to help they needed to decide if yes they would let him or no they would not what the cousin to help. I told them they needed to have 3 reasons to support their position. I really just wanted them to get to writing and get ideas on paper.

Day 2: We took our rough drafts and I modeled how to go back to those words I was not sure about when I was writing and circle them in red. Then I ( we reviewed!!) went back and used my tools to find the word and spell it correctly on my rough draft. They have student sight word books at their desks and they also used dictionaries or the thesaurus in the classroom.




The next step was getting those three supporting details to each have their own paragraph. I created these color coded graphic organizers to help them to create those genius paragraphs:



Day 3 & 4 were spend getting the rough drafts done. When they had made the corrections I looked at it and then they were able to put that onto the FINAL COPY!! (which I modeled of course) They had some GREAT stories!!! OMG I have some great authors!! (SHHH!!! Don't tell my class but one of my favorite stories was one where the cousin should not help and one reason the student gave was that he would poop in the sleigh!! lol cracked me up!!!)

The very last thing was making the crazy cousin. They had so much fun with this project!! It was a blast!

Holiday what not

Well Friday no school!!  yeah!!  3 days of 27 or less degree days and being iced in... The natives are getting restless!!  Monday:  We go from having a 2 hour delay  YEAH!!  to No school in a matter of hours--HELP!!!

As I sit here listening to the bickering loving sounds of my stir crazy offspring children I created an activity that was inspired by these cute holiday fruit snacks I picked up at Target!  Friday is Polar Express day at school so crazy town lots of fun learning to be had!!

I will TRY to remember to take pics of the munchkins hard work on Friday!!  Stay warm North Texas and PLEASE bring the sun out again!!

 

Simply Kinder: December Freebies & Gifts for Teachers!

Simply Kinder: December Freebies & Gifts for Teachers!: I also got my son's teachers presents in the mail yesterday!  I am so excited because they are so cute!    (Yes I had to get 4.. his r...

BRRR!!!

Well here in North Texas we are ALL either celebrating because school has been cancelled or if you are unfortunate enough to live in Collin County ; ) most of us are anxiously watching the news to see if we get a delay or a school closer from this ice storm that has arrived.....

Me personally I would prefer to sleep late and get a delay.... I want my day off in the spring..

I am sorry to say I forgot to take pics but my kids are amazing me with how they are writing some Genius level sentences!!  As this was my first time to teach this of course I don't think I did my best.... ya know that things always get better the more you do it...  So I can only get better with each year!  :)

I am excited to start out Jan Brett study next week!!  Using one of my great purchases during the TPT big sale.

Last day ;(.... Currently....

Oh man its Sunday... tomorrow its back to 5 am wake up calls for 3 weeks...  I can do it for 3 weeks right???  It has been a great week off from school... Sleeping in late, hanging with the family...  This year I am behind on Christmas but we have been laying tile in the Kitchen area which is HUGE.  It's the kitchen, a hall 1/2 bath and my HUGE pantry/laundry room.

I am just procrastinating lesson plans, grades, and papers.....  This day has gone to fast!

I am linking up with Farley for her CURRENTLY linky!!

OH and a huge THANK YOU to Angela @ Hippo Hooray for Second grade.  I won her Mighty Math unit for the year!!!  So excited THANK YOU :D

Well I am going to try and get stuff done only 4 more hours left... :(  

I can do this ... I can do this...