First Week and Friendship Salad

I can't imagine a better start to a school year than the one we just had.  I am pretty sure I have some of the best kiddos, to ever set foot inside of Wooster! We have been busy learning procedures, exploring our new classroom and getting to know each other this week. In our room we have dancers, singers, artists, ropers, Cardinal baseball players, Minecraft champs and more! 

We also have friends! With our friendship salad recipe, we explored what it means to be a good friend---honest, caring, loving, and hard working just to name a few!  These qualities were represented in our salad with yummy things like fruit, marshmallows and yogurt.   We decided on things friend would never do, such as be mean or rotten (like the black banana.)  We will keep those things out of our classroom just like we kept the rotten banana out of our friendship salad. Friendship salad was mighty tastey. 

BTS Blog Hop and Giveaway

Whew!!!!! I don't know about you, but I think that was a great bts sale on teacherspayteachers.  I was able to purchase many new items for the upcoming school year and even snagged a couple freebies.
After all that fun, I am so excited to keep it going with a give away and bts blog hop!  Enter the Raffelcopter for your chance to win, prized from all these great sellers.

To enter, just check the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Then, check out Dropping Knowledge's blog to find even more giveaways and freebies. http://droppinknowledge2.blogspot.com/2015/08/back-to-school-blog-hop-giveaway-time.html


http://goo.gl/XhI50i

All things bulletin boards

I am so excited for the up coming school year.  I will be moving from teaching Special Education in an inclusion setting to teaching first grade.  I am saying to myself, "Yikes and Yay!" all at the same time.  One very excited part of the upcoming school year is having my very own classroom to decorate, organize, and make special for my students.  I have already been working many hours in my new classroom cleaning, organizing, planning and more.  Not to mention, guess what is smack dab right in the middle of my room?!?!?!  A bulletin board!  I only have one in my classroom so I wanted to make very good use of it. 
I considered several things as I was thinking about what to do with my bulletin board.  I thought of math vocabulary posters, a behavior chart, class jobs, and more-the ideas just kept coming! Today though, I finally decided on (and created) Drum roll please.........A spelling and sight word bulletin board.  I know, that is not very out of the box, so why did I choose to use my only bulletin board in this particular way?  Well let me explain.
First grade is a huge year for many students.  With CCSS in use in my district, first graders begin on day one building on the literacy skills they learned in kindergarten.  We will practice our letters, sounds, spelling, phonics, phonemic awareness, and more each and every day.  I will have a whole classroom of visual, kinesthetic, auditory, and hands on learners.  So how do I grow those literacy skills in so many different ways? 
We will start by looking at simple cvc word patterns.  These patterns will be right in front of us every day on our....?   That's right bulletin board!  The spelling words chosen each week will intentionally pull out a certain pattern that students will study not only in spelling but also in writing, small group reading, whole group reading and more.  By studying a certain word pattern in just a few spelling words, students will hopefully generalize that pattern across multiple content areas and outside of the classroom to develop well rounded literacy skills.  The patterns will grow in complexity of course throughout the school year. 
With the spelling words being front a center, students will have ample opportunities to visualize those words each week.  In addition to visualizing the words, we will clap the spelling patterns, cheer the spelling patterns, stamp them, play games with them, rainbow them and more all week long.  There will be an activity for every type of learner throughout the week and an assessment on Friday.     
Here is how my bulletin board turned out.  All it needs now are some spelling and sight words. 

Welcome to our giveaway!  I am so excited to be a part of the Big Heartland Big BTS Giveaway.  We want you to be prepared for your upcoming school year so we are giving away lots of products to get you all set.  Enter the rafflecopter below to win my Addition and Subtraction Fact Fluency Unit, created with a cute fishing theme.

This unit is full of addition and subtraction strategies (for problems within 20) ideal for 2nd grade.  This unit also has fluency quizzes that an be used to measure growth all year long.

After entering the raffle-Check out my tpt store!  August 1,  I will have my forest classroom decorations on sale for 1$.  https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Special-Adventures

Thanks for visiting and I hope you have a wonderful 2015-2016 school year. 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

The idea has been on my mind for quite some time.  The teacherspayteachers challenge as well as a little extra time over this summer break was all I needed to get the idea from my head and into a unit.
For this challenge, we had to switch products with another challenger to give and receive feedback.  I traded with my new friend Kim, she had some great suggestions for my product and I enjoying getting a taste of her work as well.  She has some amazing science experiments over at http://kimberlyscottscience.blogspot.com/2015/07/create-your-masterpiece-investigating.html#comment-form

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CLOUD-FORMATIONS-AND-TYPES-UNIT-INSPIRED-BY-CLOUDY-WIT H-A-CHANCE-OF-MEATBALLS-1944811

My week 2 tpt challenge is to blog about why I began my teachers pay teacher store.  Well I think first and foremost, I wanted all teachers to have access to resources that were already differentiated and could be used to include all learners in as many lessons as possible.  As a special education teacher, I see students struggle each day, to do their best, try to fit in, and fall short time and time again.  I also see their teachers, with the best of intentions run out of time to differentiate assignments, or do it with a sharpie, or scissors.  I have done it myself and that is just a neon light that something is different with this students work.  Being different or struggling academically is the last thing most students want to be in the classroom. 
As a solution for myself, and hopefully other teachers, I create entire units for a whole general education classroom.  Within the unit, I differentiate some of the pages in the most subtle ways possible, all you have to do is print off and pass out right along with all the other assignments.  Most look almost identical so no one, but, hopefully the teacher will know anything is different.  I hope this eliminates some struggles that special learners may experience and helps facilitate complete inclusion in a general education classroom. 
Another more personal goal for my tpt store is to make a little extra money to help remodel our older home and travel more. 
I also want to be able to give more when I see needs in my community and world. 
Those are my reason I dare to dream with tpt!

I am most excited to be kicking off my summer as part of a tpt challenge group!  I have already learned so much and improved an old product as part of the Week 1 Challenge. 

Check out the link below to find this product in my store!  It's 20% off right now to celebrate the makeover. 
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/MODIFICATION-AND-ACCOMODATION-QUICK-REFERENCE-849842