My first Pin it to Win It!

I've been working on these centers for over two weeks now (my surprise winter break last week didn't help), and I'm SO excited to say that I finished with one week to spare before the Olympics actually begin!

TPT or TN

These centers are very similar to my others. They include:

• fact and opinion (with a more in depth graphic organizer to make kids really think)
• cause and effect
• main idea and details
• drawing conclusions (students have to guess the sport)
• prefixes
• synonyms
• antonyms
• abc order (with flags!)

And two lucky people are going to get them for FREE!! All you have to do is visit my pin: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/153333562287234274/ 

Click on the link and repin it to your boards. Then copy the URL of your pin and paste it in my comment section. Be sure to leave your email address so I know where to send the pack if you're a winner. Otherwise I'll have to choose someone else, and I'd HATE for that to happen.

I will choose a winner on Wednesday morning. Good luck!

My two wonderful winners were Monica and Erin. Thank you to EVERYONE for pinning!

Winter Planning Giveaway Stop C-16

I am SO excited to be a part of Erin's fabulous Winter Planning Giveaway! Instead of a simple giveaway, you will skip from blog to blog and collect secret words. Then you go back to Erin's blog (click on the image above) and enter all of the words for each prize pack you choose. And the best part? EVERYONE WINS!!! I found some amazing resources last time and can't wait to collect more to start planning for after Christmas (wishful thinking)!

For those of you who are new to my blog, I am a Title I Reading Specialist for grades 3-5. I've been teaching for about 8 years, and I LOVE working with upper elementary! Some of my favorite products to create are my drawing conclusions mysteries (be on the lookout for a Christmas themed one VERY soon) such as my Case of the Secret Admirer...

...and my literacy center packs. For my free product, I decided to share my Winter Literacy Centers. These include 4 comprehension centers and 4 word-knowledge centers. 

I hope you enjoy them! If you would like to see more of what I do, please follow me on Bloglovin!

You can also click on the buttons in the top right corner of my blog to find me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TPT and TN. I love finding new followers and getting to meet other teachers from around the country/world. It's so neat how we have this amazing teacher blogging community!

Okay, now what you're really here for: I am the last stop for Prize Pack C, so make sure you go back to I'm Lovin Lit to start at the very beginning. Then collect this word for your list:

And if you've made it through all of the stops, still head to Erin's blog to enter all of your clues!

I hope you enjoyed your scavenger hunt as much as I did!

Duck Dynasty Centers Complete!

Okay, I know this is technically two posts in one day, but I wanted to make sure you knew that I finally finished my Duck Dynasty themed literacy centers! I'm SO proud of them, mainly because I know that my students are going to eat these up. Since I have mostly boys in my pull-out program, this was especially important to me. Many of the kids I see love to hunt, and even those who don't seem to love the Duck Dynasty guys as much as I do (if not more). I added a mixture of facts about hunting and the show, and then I had a good friend of mine (and avid hunter) check them over to make sure all of my facts were correct since I don't hunt.

As usual, these centers include 4 comprehension-based centers and 4 word-knowledge centers. They are geared toward upper elementary and include some more difficult words than normal. For instance, in this suffix section, there are a few words this time that they will have to manipulate a little to add the correct suffix (offend - offensive), but I want my students to realize that it's not always cut and dry for them!

TN or TPT

Today was our first day, so I'm a little tired and ready to spend some time with my little man. Don't forget to enter my pencil sharpener giveaway that went live early this morning.

Teacher Week '13: Now Teach!

Okay, so I skipped out on yesterday since I've only been in my classroom once this summer (that's HUGE for me), but it looks basically the same as last year. So, for now you can click here to see my room reveal from last year. When I actually finish it this time around, I will post again!

Today, the theme is organizational ideas. I have evolved my organizational strategies a lot over the years. For a while, I was ALL ABOUT file folders, but I hate how they bunch up and how it's not as easy to stick something back into the file neatly. Last year, I moved to the binder system. I liked it okay, but I didn't want to invest in all of those page protectors. So I just hole punched and moved along. My only issue with the binders is that they're SO bulky. I'm very much a minimalist (which makes set-up and tear-down of my room pretty simple), and I hate clutter. So I'm working to get almost all of my files digital. I've already narrowed down a LOT. 

We use gmail at work, so I have most of my files on the Google drive. Not sure how much it holds, but I think I may find out this year. I also got a dropbox account and am working to put all of my clipart and TPT products there. That way I can use it at home or school.

Dropbox is free, and you get extra storage for referrals (up to 16 GB). If you don't already have it, I recommend getting it! You can even download it on your phone and get some of those freebies that pop up while you're away from your computer! Click on the image above to get it.

The only thing that I want to keep in my filing cabinet (because I'm going to get down to just one) are games/centers and student files. My student files are the biggie because I am Title I and have to keep a file for EVERY child who received any services while they were at our school. They may have only gone for a week in kindergarten, but I have to keep it until they leave. Since I just have 3-5, this takes up 2 drawers. I keep one drawer for students I currently see and another for those who have been dismissed. I'm working on color coding these by grade, but I need to buy more colored files. Right now I only have green.

If you've been following me for a while, you know that I've been creating almost monthly literacy center sets. I wanted to show a picture of how I prepare them so they can be pulled out and easily used, but apparently I've never taken a picture of them. Something to add to my picture list (I will try and be better about that this year). Anyway, I took my inspiration from Amy Lemons because she's a genius and made a cute instruction page for each center. When I print, that page is glued to the front of a file folder and then laminated. I put all of the cards in a baggie that is stapled to the inside of the folder (I open the bag and staple inside so it can be opened), and then I make a few copies of the graphic organizer that accompanies each center to add to the folder. The centers go into a hanging organizer, and I write a short description on their tabs so I can pull out (or have my kids pull out) what I want easily. So easy, and I look forward to making it full circle so I can reap the benefits of my hard labor last year. 

Speaking of literacy centers, these are the themes I currently have in my TPT store:

Thanksgiving

Christmas

Winter

Valentine's Day

St. Patrick's Day

Spring

Summer

Camping (for summer and/or fall)

Each back has at least 8 centers geared toward grades 3-5. I have about half for major comprehension needs and half for word knowledge. Many of the skills are repeated through all packs, although I change it up for some. I plan on creating Back to School, Fall, and Halloween centers soon, but right now I'm enjoying my last full week of summer break! Can't believe I just said that...

Hop on over to Blog Hoppin' to see what other organizational tips you may find, and I PROMISE pictures later this week!

A few random things on my LAST MONDAY!

**Make sure you read to the end!!**

It's the last Monday for the kids this year, and I'm so excited! Today was supposed to be Field Day #2 and I even made it to school dressed for field day, but we had to postpone again. The weather has been nasty since Friday. Last night, we were actually under a tornado warning. Somebody snapped this picture at the Lowe's not even a mile away from my house.

Our power had flickered, but everything was fine. I think it jumped around a few times, though. We were at my in-law's about 5 miles from our house and noticed it was really windy. I think we were very close to the tornado there. Craziness! Fortunately tornadoes in Virginia are nothing like the ones in the Midwest, though.

Have you heard about Sara's big 1 year celebration? She's had a giveaway every day for the past 5 days, and I'm involved in today's giveaway. Winner will get their choice of any item in my store, and you could choose my brand new summer literacy pack! Sara actually was one of the lovely ladies who reviewed it for me. I posted it in both stores this morning.

TN or TPT

Since I'm not running games today, I will be busy working on end-of-the-year progress reports, and I may even work on packing up my class. I'm dressed to work, after all!

Oh, and if you're still reading...did you see that I've reached 300 followers? So excited! I have a little something planned to celebrate. Just be sure to check out my blog tomorrow.

Currently and Five for Friday

Can you believe May is already here? I'm in shock! We don't get out until mid-June, but May still symbolizes the end of the year because this is testing month. We actually only have one more full week of instruction before SOLs begin May 16. Once SOLs begin, I don't pull kids anymore. Craziness!

Anyway, with the beginning of the month comes Farley's Currently (which you know I have to join). Plus, it's Friday, so I'm going to do my Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching. Hey, I'm home for the day, so I've got time for this!

I'm pretty sure I can explain everything in my Five for Friday, so it will be mixed in there. I'm going to do this a little backwards this week.

1. I've been fighting a sinus infection since last Friday, but I'm stubborn and had put off going to the doctor. Then I started to lose my voice on Wednesday. By yesterday, I could barely speak over a whisper, so I left at lunch and went to the doctor. Last night was so miserable that my hubby actually slept in the guest room (sorry, sweetie!). Today, I started the steroids and am hoping everything's back to normal by Sunday. Why Sunday? I sing with our church's praise team occasionally. A few months ago, one of my friends asked me to fill in this Sunday because the lead for their group was going to be out. I was happy to agree to it. Well, I went to practice on Wednesday to make sure I knew what was going on in hopes that my voice was back. We'll see though. There are other singers, but they kind of need me to help lead some of the songs. Prayers that it comes back quickly!

2. Some of you know I've been doing Insanity. It's a 60 day challenge, and next Saturday is supposed to be the end. However, I haven't been able to keep up with it this week because I can barely breathe. I tried last Sunday on the "easy" day and had to pause the video. So I've missed 3 workouts this week. It's frustrating to be this close to the end and have to stop. Maybe I can work my way through it today, but I probably shouldn't. Grrr....

3. I did some TPT work this week! First, I updated my Candy Awards and am so proud of the new look!

TN or TPT

Then I worked on my camping themed literacy centers some more, but I will have to finish them next week. I come up with all of the sentences, and that takes a LOT of time. So far, I have 2 1/2 of the 8 centers completed. I start with the hardest and work my way down, so Main Idea, Cause and Effect, and Fact and Opinion are almost done. I'm changing Drawing Conclusions to context clues this time, and then I'll have Synonyms, Antonyms, Guide Words, and S'more Suffixes.

4. I participated in my first #teachertalktuesday linky on instagram this week! This is the main idea center from my Spring Literacy Centers. I always have four main ideas and three details to match. Students have to sort them. I did this with one of the third grade classes that I push into, and they loved it! We did the black and white version (I have a color option I laminate for centers), and the kids enjoyed coloring in the pictures after they glued.

5. Last weekend, we spent most of Saturday sorting tons of bags and things for our yard sale we're doing tomorrow. We head to Steven's parents for it because they live in a bigger neighborhood that does a community yard sale in the spring and fall. We'll be pricing and all that fun stuff tonight. If you live in the Richmond area, come out to Summer Walk Parkway in Mechanicsville and check out our stuff!

Now I'm going to attempt to get off the couch and do a little bit of cleaning. Our house desperately needs vacuuming, and laundry has piled up again. I feel like I just finished laundry...

The truth is...

Alright, I had a lot of fun reading everyone's truths and lies and can't wait to see how many I actually got right. I was surprised and amused that EVERYONE got my lie wrong. However, to be fair, I was a little tricky and only gave a half lie. 

• I did want to teach math (although I've always loved working with little kids) and I WAS failing my first college level math class before I dropped it. The problem was that I had only taken up to Trig in high school and tested in for college Calculus. There's a HUGE gap between the two. I cried. But my brother (who's 8 years younger than me) also told me that if I taught high school, he would never be able to listen to me. So maybe it was God's way of showing me I wasn't cut out to teach them. Instead I work with the high school girls at church, and it's the perfect balance!
• Yes, I did want to be a preacher's wife, and yes, Steven was a deacon at our church. This is his year off, but he'll probably be back on soon. We go to a very small church, so the rotations are kind of tight.
• I actually started teaching myself to sing alto in ELEMENTARY school, not middle school. (Sorry, maybe I was being unfair but I wanted to keep people guessing!) My best friend was the music minister's daughter, and we were probably in 3rd grade learning how to sing it. It kept us entertained!

In other news, I finished my Spring Literacy Centers yesterday and had two wonderful ladies review them for me last night. You can find them at both stores now. Enjoy!

TN or TPT

School craziness and some St. Patty's Day fun

This has been a CRAZY week! How about we spread out a few holidays so we have time to do everything? Not only did we have Valentine's Day, President's Day, and Mardi Gras (well, I did a little something for that), today was the 100th day! Oh, and did I mention that not only was I out Monday, but I ended up being out again yesterday? This week might has well have been a wash, and it's a good thing that Monday is a holiday.

Then I come back today, and we have TWO big incidents. First, a kid gets hit by a bus. Really. A kindergartener. I don't know exactly what happened because I missed bus duty while trying to catch up with teachers about what we were going to do (I would've done this yesterday had I been here). He's fine, but he's got a big bruise. The parents let him stay at school though. But WHILE this is happening, a fourth grader started choking and they had to call 911. Apparently he looked really bad, and his teacher (my former neighbor and teammate) was in hysterics from everything. She had to go home. Everyone was pretty shaken up from it, so it must've been a big deal.

So I know everybody at my school is very ready for this weekend. If it decides to snow Monday night, we might even take that, too.

Anyway, I have been working on my next products, and I've got a few things coming! I want to do something for Dr. Seuss's birthday, and I'm leaning toward some activities with his very first book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street.

 

 No real ideas yet, but if you have suggestions or things you'd like to see, let me know!

My second favorite holiday is coming up soon, and that's what I've been working on this week. I finished my St. Patty's Day Literacy centers, and it's going through the editing phase right now. It should be posted by Monday. I think it's adorable. I used Ashley Hughes' clipart, and I love it!

I'm also working on two new literacy units. The first, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is one that I'm starting with one of my groups of kids. I LOVE Roald Dahl books, and this is a great one for struggling readers in the upper grades. It's a level P, but the story line is easy to follow, and the book is short - like 81 pages. I need short books with my groups because we only have 30 minutes (if that) AND mine check to see how much longer the book will take.

The other unit is related to St. Patty's Day again. I forgot I had a copy of Magic Tree House: Leprechaun in Late Winter. I emailed both of these to myself to work on this weekend, but we'll see how much I actually do. I am at least to chapter 5 for both, so it's possible! I'll probably ask for help reviewing both of these packets when I finish, so make sure you follow my Facebook page to get this chance!

Okay, now I'm going back to work on those packets some more. Steven's helping his dad, and Keagan's down for a late nap, so this might be the only chance I get to work on them this weekend! In case I don't get back on here this weekend, enjoy your long weekend!

By the way, if you want a chance at a free blog design, go check out Ruby Slippers Blog Design. She's having a giveaway!

Sick day, Fat Tuesday, and Valentine's

Today's a sick day for me. Poor Keagan has had a runny nose and a cough for the past week, but last night he woke up 4 times screaming! I went to check on him the first time, and he had a fever. So I called in sick and took him to the doctor this morning. He has an ear infection, so hopefully the meds they gave him will kick in quickly. I hate seeing him so miserable!

One of the nice things about my new position (well, for me) is that when I'm out, they don't give me a sub. So I don't have to write sub plans. The negative side is for the teachers I work with, I can't push into their classrooms or pull their students out for the day.

Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, and my sweet friend, Andrea, from Reading Toward the Stars created this adorable unit that I plan on using with some of my kids. My favorite parts are the vocabulary cards (since everything about Mardi Gras is foreign to my kids up here in VA) and the main idea game. I think the kids will have fun with it. If I were in the regular class, I would have to also bring in a King Cake to see who found the baby. Mardi Gras is so much fun!

For the rest of the week, I'm going to be doing centers to work with kids on a smaller scale. At the writing center, they are going to work on my Valentine Writing Craftivity. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

You can buy this packet at my TN or TPT store.

I am also going to be using some more of my Monster Valentine centers. We've already done a few of them to go along with skills being taught in the classroom, but I'm going to have some of these out for students to practice with.

You can buy this packet at my TN or TPT store as well.

What are you using to celebrate Valentine's Day this week? And do any of you celebrate Mardi Gras?

Valentine's Day already?

Can you believe that Valentine's Day is less than a month away? This time last year, I was at home with my sweet one month old (today he's 13 months - eek!) enjoying maternity leave. I came back right before Valentine's Day and survived the rest of the year. I didn't do well with missing time in the middle. It was too hard to get back into a groove. This year, I'm finally falling into a nice groove. One of my favorite things to use for centers during pull-out time is my literacy centers. I bought some of Amy Lemons' earlier this year and they were adorable, of course. My kids did well with them, but the centers focused on skills geared more toward 2nd grade (which Amy teaches). I looked for comprehension centers that I could buy by theme and couldn't find anything. So I began creating my own. This is my fourth set, and I'm in love with them!

Like the rest, I have a mixture of comprehension skills and word knowledge. This one has the following centers (bold centers are new skills I'm adding):

• Fact and Opinion
• Main Idea and Supporting Details
• Cause and Effect
• Drawing Conclusions/Inferring
• Synonyms
• Antonyms
• Prefixes
• Guide Words

I took out Author's Purpose and Suffixes to replace them with the others because I felt like there was more of a need for those two, at least at my school.

If you like these centers and missed the others that I've created, here are the pictures and links:

 

Snow themed - great for January

Christmas includes an extra Sequencing center for The Polar Express

Thanksgiving was my very first. I plan on adding more to it later!

Drawing conclusions, advice, and another giveaway

I have a new product in preparation for Valentine's Day! We have been working on drawing conclusions in 4th and 5th grade, and I found a cute little "Case of the Missing Santa" here for free. I liked it, but I decided there was more to it that I wanted to see. For one thing, it wasn't obvious enough for my kids to be able to figure out who kidnapped Santa once they narrowed it down to two. So my plan was to have my 5th graders help me put another mystery together. Epic. Fail. They were WAY too hyper to do it, and the fact that it was based around a love letter made it worse. So I ended up doing it on my own and keeping a few of their ideas to flesh it out. 

The packet includes background info on the boy and his 5 female suspects. Then it also includes a letter and a graphic organizer for students to fill out if each suspect is the admirer and why or why not. I already started it with my 4th graders, and they loved it! It takes longer than 30 minutes though, so we'll have to finish it tomorrow.

On to my advice (or need for it): So this quarter was AMAZING for me on my TpT store. I made just shy of $300, which is WAY more than the previous two quarters combined. I still am a basic seller right now because honestly we can't afford much of anything nice this year (hence the reason I wasn't thrilled that we had to replace my car that was already paid off). Steven took a teaching job next door to me teaching Criminal Justice at a Career and Tech Center, which is awesome, but this year he's only part time. We know he'll get a full time salary next year because he'll continue with his current class of juniors for year 2 of the program AND add a new class of juniors, but money is tight right now.

I feel like moving up to a Premium seller would be worth it, especially since I can pay for it with the money I earned last quarter (once that money comes through), but I want to know if it's really worth it. How many of you are premium sellers? About how much more money do you make for each item sold?

In other news, Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper is having her 300 follower giveaway, and there are some GREAT prizes! 

I am offering my Winter Literacy Pack and winner's choice of any other item in my store.

What I'm doing for Christmas

We've been busy in my Title I class recently, and even though I'm missing out on all the fun crafts and activities that I did/would do as a classroom teacher, I've still been able to fit in some fun literacy centers.

I've also had the pleasure of pushing into the same 3rd grade class every day for the past week and a half to work with them on Daily 5/CAFE lessons. That's been so much fun to me! I got to help train on all of that this summer, but I never got a good opportunity to do it since we only piloted it last year and I was out on maternity leave for part of that time. Tomorrow will be my last day to push in though, but I think we're going to do two activities with the Polar Express for those two days. We're already working on Read to Self for Daily 5, and they will hopefully be able to start Read to Someone next week. In CAFE, we added Activate Prior Knowledge (where I taught them my favorite word: schema!), Check for Understanding, Find Good Fit Books (with IPICK), and Use the Pictures. Today We're going to do Back up and Reread. They're so excited about it!

Now back to Christmas:

I said I've been doing literacy centers, and it's been so much fun. The kids remember the format for most of the centers from my Thanksgiving pack that we did. So there's less set up and explaining required. I just focus on the new centers to talk them through. Fifth grade has already started them, and I'm noticing some improvement. 3rd and 4th will start either today or next week.

With my younger kids, I focused on the book The Great Christmas Crisis by Kim Norman.

If you remember this post, she was the author we had come visit back in early November. Anyway, I created a packet based on the book.

It had two little activities that I used as centers (one for sequencing and one game using words from the book). There's also a cute writing activity that I may let them do tomorrow. I'll even let them color and decorate their elves if they finish the writing! Here's a sample of that.

I have also completed my winter literacy centers. These are the same format as the Christmas ones, just without the Polar Express sequencing. 4 comprehension centers and 4 word-knowledge.

What are you doing in your class right now? Or are you allowed to do Christmas-y activities?

Kim Norman visit

Okay, I said I was going to get this post up by the end of the week, and technically that's today! This past Monday, we had our Title I night, and it was a great honor to have a local author come and do a program for us! Kim Norman (from Smithfield, VA - the famous hams) has some great books, especially for younger children, and she did a few read alouds with the kids.

Her first read aloud was I Know a Wee Piggy (remember I said she was from Smithfield - this is a little play on her hometown), which my students were so excited about. This is the book I used to introduce them to the author a few weeks ago.

Anyway, it's about a little pig who makes a big mess of himself by rolling in lots of colors. For younger students, it's a perfect way to talk about colors, but it's also great for rhyming patterns. With my older kids, we predicted what the word would be with the rhyming pattern and also noticed that they used alliteration to help you predict what the color would be (i.e. yard of yellow, wash of white). It's saying a lot that one of my 5th graders told me this was her favorite book! And I was scared they'd hate it because it was too "babyish"...I guess you never can predict what a kid will think!

Then Kim read Ten on a Sled. She had LOTS of kids come up and help her with this one. It's basically the same as 10 on a bed, but it's so cute!

The kids really enjoyed helping her out with this story, and the illustrations are adorable! She had a powerpoint so we could all enjoy the pictures as she read.

And as promised, here are a few pictures from the night:

There were about 16 kids up helping her with this story, not to mention the kids she had pull items out of bags for I Know a Wee Piggy. Then she also used all of the older students who were willing to come up to do a reader's theater with her. They had a blast!

Kim made sure to emphasize to the parents the importance of reading with their child. She even sang the Storytime Boogie to Crocodaddy (I was a little bummed we didn't get to hear that story, but I did read it while she was signing books).

She almost completely sold out of books! I thought about buying this one, but it comes out in board book in January, so I decided to wait. Keagan would tear this book up in no time! I did, however, get her to sign my copy of The Great Christmas Crisis, which is her newest book! I plan on putting together some kind of unit to go along with the book because it's so cute!

Speaking of Christmas, I know I JUST posted my Thanksgiving literacy centers earlier this week, but I have already finished my Christmas ones and posted them yesterday! 

I wanted to make sure they were done before Thanksgiving so teachers could have them ready to go when they got back from break. This set has 5 comprehension centers and 4 word-knowledge centers. It's HUGE, and I love it! My parapro told me it was her favorite one yet. She may not still agree when she's helping me cut out all of this laminating when we haven't even gotten all the Thanksgiving centers ready yet!