Last night was Meet the Teacher Night. I truly love everything about a new school year when it comes to what is happening in a classroom. I can't

This form is to help get information about students present levels of performance in the general education classroom. I use this as it is formatted to help answer the areas found in the IEP online system. I have also included a second present levels of performance that is for TK and Kindergarten.

I hope your school year is off to a great start!In the past few weeks, I’ve received oodles of emails from readers asking for copies of the Art Assessment for Non-Readers and the Conduct Refl…

Hi everyone!!! I bet a lot of you are back to school already or headed there in the next few weeks (or, if you're in Australia you've been in the thick of it for a while!!!) As we're getting ready for back to school, a group of my music teacher friends and I are doing a blog hop of Back to School topics!! The Hop starts (and was organized by) Aileen Miracle of Mrs. Miracle's Music room so make sure to make it through all 6 stops! The hop includes six posts and I'm lucky number 6!! Let's talk games and activities!!! If you have followed my blog for a while you know that I use a lot of games in my classroom. They are a great way to establish classroom dynamics, teach students how to work cooperatively in the music room and to get to know the students. Before we get started, today we're going to narrow our focus on two specifics within the very broad spectrum of games: singing games/activities and music literacy games/activities #1 Singing Games Fore mentioned was that "games" is a very broad spectrum and that I was narrowing it down to two areas.... well.... within those two areas are many subcategories!!! Greeting Songs with games: With back to school singing games it's important to choose some games were all students have an equal part in the music making. This helps establish the community tone that you want: that all students are important contributors to the music classroom. These are the types of games/activities that I will start every class with for the rest of the year (I would go into how with older grades sometimes this might be with a round, etc., but that lends itself to another blog post!) I love using this song at the beginning of the year for my 1st and 2nd graders, it's a great little greeting song called "Good Morning" that I learned from Susan Brumfield (who learned it from Jim Ryan): Here are my 2nd graders singing it the first day of school (just last week)... the lyrics were changed on them as they had music in the morning last year and now they have it in the afternoon. There are also some kiddos who were in one of the first grade classes last year that LOVED this song and added their own little fancy turns by swinging their partner, so you'll see a few of them try to do that with their new partners: One of my other favorite first day of school greeting songs is Bonjour Mis Amis, also learned from Susan Brumfield. Usually, students would have learned this the year before, but if not it's fast and easy to teach if you're new to your teaching position. (It's very similar to "Bow Wow Wow" but has a twist of a double circle, which makes it more challenging! And also more appropriate for late second grade/early third grade.) Here are my third graders singing it for the first time this year: Name Game Songs: There are many, many name game songs and I actually compiled a few of them in my Back to School Set. This one is not in that set, but I learned it from my former student teacher, Charlie Matthews, who I'm sure learned it from Bonnie Jacobi: My 5th graders learned it yesterday, so here they are: Games with a "solo" part: This is another go-to for my 4th and 5th graders, called Going to Kentucky or "Round de doo Bop", either way I learned it from the Amidons and it's GREAT to get your older students moving and active and it's a fun way to break the ice! (BTW, this is my first activity of the lesson for these grades too!) The other nice thing is that the "solo" isn't a singing solo but a simple "stand in the middle, turn and point to someone" solo. Here are my 5th graders singing this in their first lesson: Games that will be used to review: Now, this game is a FAVORITE of my kids and I like it because there is so much that you can teach with this little composed song: Apple Tree!!! Here are my 3rd graders playing the game: From here, we went into singing the song with body signs: And then we went into reviewing the solfa and singing it from the staff notation: This brings us to: #2 Music Literacy Games I love having a variety of literacy games from lesson to lesson. Games in which the students prepare or practice rhythmic and melodic elements. Part of my rationale for doing music reading "game style" is the infrequency at which I see my students. I basically see all my classes once a week for 45 minutes. So in my planning for back to school I know I need to make the most of each minute. The games allow for the students to have a memorable moment related to music literacy and I have found have helped greatly with retention. Sometimes my games are reading only, but most times there is an extension in which the students have something tangible that they do in regards to the reading and writing. This really makes it more concrete for the students. This year I have used the "Read it and Write it" Games from my Back to School Songs and Games set and it's been great for transcription practice and review. The students have a menu to choose from that reviews a rhythm or melody, in this case a melody: Then, using the dry erase boards the students transcribed the patterns they saw: For my early finishers I had them transpose the pattern into a different position on the staff and for my really advanced students I changed the staff placement for each pattern, as they waited for other students to finish. One of the games that I'm really excited to use with my third graders next week is Tanya LeJeune's Skip Step Leap or Repeat game: This game is perfect for reviewing interval relationships, especially since we're reviewing do-mi-so-la. In the game the students see two notes and they have to decide are the notes a repeat (the same), a step, skip or a leap away from each other: I also teach a before school handbell group and this is a bass clef game from Elaine Ford of Mrs. Ford's Melodies that I am super excited about called Bitty Bugs. There are three games. One is a "swatting" game that has a picture of bugs with letter names. You show the students a pitch on the bass clef and they have to swat the bug with the corresponding name. Another is a matching game. You have bug cards, like this: and then there are flower cards with the staff notation and you match the bug to the flower. The third game is GREAT for assessment and I will be using as part of my "audition" for the hand bell choirs. The students get a set of cards like this: And then there are answer pages, in which the students write the letter names of the cards: This will give me a nice little assessment of who knows bass clef and who doesn't. I'll be honest, with seeing my kiddos once a week we usually don't get to bass clef notation. This will help me know who I can put on those bells. You can find more singing games, teaching PDFs and review games in my Back to School set: Again, thanks to Aileen for hosting thie blog hop. If you "jumped in the hop" here, make sure to go here to see all the other amazing posts!!! I hope you all have a fabulous start to your school year!

We are on our 4th week of measurement in my class! PTL the rulers are put away this week because we've moved onto learning about area! After 3

At first glance some viewers assume this chair may be a form of punishment, but their assumption couldn't be more wrong.

After my post last week about ways we can engage our students, I wanted to follow up and give some ideas on activities we can do during reading in lieu of

These beautiful editable slide templates with timers are great for your daily agenda, morning meeting, classroom management, displaying centers, stations, rotations, objectives, schedules, and more! The modern calm colors slides come in both Google Slides and PowerPoint versions, so they are suitable for your Microsoft or Google Classroom. Every slide comes with a completely text-editable version to suit your class's needs! What's Included: - 75 Powerpoint slides- text-editable - 75 Google Slides- text-editable - Countdown timers: (30 sec., 1 min, 2 min, 5 min, 8 min, 10 min, 15 min, 20 min, 25 min, 30 min, 40 min, 45 min, 50 min, and 60 min included in both the PowerPoint and Google Slides versions) ⭐ Grab these slides templates and SO much more in the full modern calm colors classroom decor bundle: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1318988852/modern-calm-colors-classroom-decor?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=calm+colors+classroom+decor&ref=sr_gallery-1-7&organic_search_click=1

I promised a big reveal today, so here we go! Key a huge puff of smoke, hundreds of Pink Floyd neon laser-lights flashing, and that music you hear during time outs at basketball games . . . oh yes . . . It’s time for The Perfect Pen Pal Pair Up! Okay, now that I

Hi all! Happy almost Halloween! I *am* planning on doing on better on blogging, it's just been an INSANE fall. See, in addition to the every day teaching, taking on a student teacher, having a fundraiser going on, three extra curricular music groups, we also moved our concerts to the high school this year. So, I thought today I would share with you about one of those, and how it went. The first thing I do when planning a concert is look at the specific class of students I have and what their particular interests are and what would be fun and different to try with them. Last Tuesday we had TWO concerts, the 4th grade concert (at 6:00 pm) and the 5th grade concert (at 7:00 pm). For the purpose of this blog I'm going to focus on my 5th graders. Can I just say that my 5th graders, ever since they were kinders have been blissful. I have never had a group of students that are so incredibly kind to each other, that you can joke around with and then they get back to business and who are so excited to be with you. They were our first kinder class when we opened the school and they have grown into 146 amazing 5th graders. Last spring my technology teacher came to me with the idea to collaborating together on the 5th grade. So... knowing we were moving the concerts to the high school we decided to go for it. Ya know, cause crazy is how we roll! There are some things that I would do differently but overall it went so well. We started the concert with Firework (not a favorite of mine because the range is hard and for this particular group they struggle getting up to those high notes.) You can give it a listen: So for this song they used finger flashlights. (I also have to mention that the man that was suppose to record our concert had an emergency heart surgery so I was able to get videos of 5 of the 10 songs). I had two student leaders helping me because this group is so large and our goal with this song was to work on expanding our vocal range. Whenever possible I do like to incorporate art music or a listening/movement activity in the concert. For this concert we use The Aquarium from "Carnival of the Animals," with most of the movements from John Feierabend's Move It DVD. They used white gloves and black lights: We also sang "Catch a Falling Star" and "Epo i Tai Tai" (for Epo i Tai Tai we used PVC pipes with glow in the dark tape and glow sticks to do a stick pattern. One of the 5th graders played Epo i Tai Tai on violin with our tech teacher playing cello as an introduction. (Note, they also added glow sticks to their bows and instruments... I wish I had a video!!!) And then we went into Counting Stars: Another song we did that was really sweet was "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka. One of our grandmothers played piano for us and it was so sweet to see her perform for the first time with her granddaughter. The tech teacher also had the students program the Spheros so that they could toss them to the macro beat of the song and they would change colors. It was a pretty cool effect, despite them dropping the Sphero a could times (Yikes, those things are loud! And of course it was the ONLY time they dropped them.) Then Tracy King blogged about this song, Fireflies. Knowing we were doing a "Glow Show" I knew we just had to do it too. The kids LOVED it and the parents were just in awe! Then they went into Ghostbusters (I know, I know... this concert is so NOT Kodály... and that's not a bad thing... because I don't give them musical candy all the time!) The tech teacher's son actually made the Slimmers... had we more time that would have been a good collaboration with the art teacher. We originally had them build Slimmers on the 3D printer but they were too small to be seen on stage. Then you'll also see the Spheros... the students had programed them to move in patterns on the stage but the night of the concert we realized we didn't have enough floor space. So, in the spur of the moment we had to change it on them and they had to manually drive them on the stage. The highlight of the concert was having the students walk off the stage, picking up a candle flashlight and they walked up the aisles of the auditorium. I was so surprised at how seamlessly this went, provided they had NEVER performed in this space before. From the audience they sang "This Little Light of Mine" and it was just tear jerking, there were mom's crying. It was AWESOME! Really, isn't our goal to make the moms cry at some point (tears of joy, not from any sounds they hear, lol!) Then, again, the programmed Spheros that, as they faced the stage, started moving forward and gradually turning yellow as they sang "Here Comes the Sun" and they walked onto the stage. It was awesome, all 146 were on stage by the final verse and it was fun to hear the sound grow and grow as they joined each other to sing the final verse. I cried... and I don't cry at my kids' concerts... Were there things that could have gone better? OH YES! Should I have picked more musically rich songs... maybe... but it was an aesthetic experience that these kiddos were raving about all week. I hope you all are having an amazing weekend! Good luck on Halloween Monday! I know I'll need it!

Learn About the 7 Continents! Exploring the 7 Continents has never been more exciting! It’s a Small World Continent Study is filled with over 35 activities to help your students gain a greater understanding of the seven continents. This 130+ page unit is filled with great resources, posters, printables, activities, and projects that will open […]

Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!

Instruction around word parts is usually reserved for word study, but this skill is so prevalent in reading comprehension and vocabulary and I believe it to be an important part of shared reading. …

**Join my private Facebook Group to join fellow Pre-K, Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade teachers that use my curriculum! Collaborate, chat and share ideas with like-minded teachers! Join the private Facebook group H E R E! **What are the Distance Learning Visual Cues? Thanks so much for sh...

Our literature-based learning often lends itself to discovering other places and cultures, which is one of many reasons we love this method! Learning about Italy, Japan, and China have been some of our richest homeschool moments so far. Along with learning about other countries and their continents, we learn where those places are located on the globe. In order to help my girls learn the 7 continents, I created a set of printable Continents Cards that we use in a variety of ways. Note: This post was originally published in 2014. The Continents Cards and the post have been freshly

With Father's Day coming up, I thought that your students may enjoy drawing a portrait of their dad, grandpa, uncle, coach, etc. This is something that I did

How many of us have learned about Bloom’s taxonomy, back in the days we went to college? Very likely, one learned to start teaching at the base: knowledge and comprehension, before moving on…

Hey y'all! Last week I posted a picture on Instagram about some Math Fact pockets that I came up with. I'm here to give you a little more details

Your class will enjoy this unique icebreaker activity! This get to know you activity is perfect for the first day of school or the first week of school!

Yes, I have not fallen off the face of the earth, lol! I hope you all had a wonderful December! Things are back in full swing in Erie but I wanted to share a song that my 5th graders started before winter break. They're reading songs with ti now. I'm so excited! I've not gotten this far in the Kodály sequence before! The school I was at before was a "bilingual" school (I've blogged about this before) and there was such a gap that we could never "get to it." With this being my 3rd year at Red Hawk I've been able to "catch-up" my students and get them where I'd like them to be in the sequence. With them reading ti at this point in the school year I'm hoping that we can start to get into altered tones before the end of the year! Okay, I took a tangent, but here's a song that my mom actually told me about that can be found in "Singing Games and Rhymes for Middle Years", which is published by the National Youth Choirs of Scotland. I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song I can't find nor do I have a primary source for the song. But, I'm using it with my kids regardless because it contains ti in a pattern that they haven't practiced as much. Here the song: The game is super fun and the kids LOVE it: Formation: lines of 6-7 students, all facing "forward" in the line. Action: The first person of each line has a playground ball. On the first beat of the song they bounce the ball. On the second beat they catch the ball. On beats 3-4 they pass it over their head to the person standing behind them. That student takes the ball and repeats the pattern of bounce-catch-over head (2 beats for this action). This repeats through the end of the song, for a total of 4 times through the pattern for the entire song. The student who has the ball at the end of the song runs to the end of the line. All the students in their line spread their legs and the student with the ball rolls the ball through the legs of their teammates. The first team who rolls their ball through all their team members' legs "wins." I have added that between rounds of play they have 10 seconds to shuffle their line. If you don't do this, only the first 4 people in line get to bounce the ball and only the back people get to roll the ball. Here are some pictures from one of my 5th grade classes playing the game: First person is bouncing and catching the ball: The ball is passed overhead The second person bounced and caught the ball and is now passing it over head: The last person (the 5th in line) got the ball at the end of the song, ran to the back and rolled the ball up between their team members' legs: On my to-do list is to create a PowerPoint for them to practice reading this song. It's quickly become a class favorite! I wanted to let you all know about a collaborative Kodály blog that I'm taking part in!!! Aileen Miracle, Lindsay Jervis and I started talking about it around Thanksgiving and are now getting it up and running (in huge part to Aileen's work, thanks Aileen!!!) It's called Kodály Corner and will consist of blog posts from 8 different Kodály teachers from across the nation. Aileen has started us off with our first post and will be posting again this weekend. There will be two blog posts weekly in which we will take turns sharing different teaching ideas and strategies. Please head over to Kodály Corner to check it out!! I hope you all have a GREAT week!!!

Tired of hearing, “I’m done. Now, what?” Implementing these tips for your early finisher activities and setup will give your students the answer to that question every.single.time.

Chrysanthemum First Day of School FREEBIE and lots of ideas for the book by Kevin Henkes and using it for back to school.

These free printable 3D summer coloring pages are tons of fun to color and add 3D details for a fun and colorful work of art. Grab them here!

Here are Winslow Homer art projects for kids that help us understand the famous American artist, Winslow Homer, and his amazing work!

Recently people have been asking me to share my timetable and term planning templates that I showed in a previous blog post. Click here to read that post. So here is a link to the term planner that you see below. Just delete the info you don't need and you're good to go. Click here. Here is the template to my timetable template that you see below. Click here. . Unfortunately, I don't give out editable copies of my unit planner template but check out my store to fine planners for many different year levels and subjects. The documents will open up in an internet window. Click on the open button in the top right corner and select 'Open in Word 2016'. Make sure to save to your computer before you begin entering. Make sure you join up to my email subscribers list where I send out a monthly newsletter featuring exclusive freebies and follow me on facebook for giveaways. ⇨ Like us on Facebook ⇨ Follow us on Pinterest

As much as I love to read, sometimes I dreaded teaching reading. I was reading by four and everything in language arts came easily to me - it just clicked. When I had students that didn't improve their reading with my strategies, I didn't understand why. Now that I am working with my son, I am un

I have compiled an entire page of my FREE directed drawings for you to enjoy with your students. Access the full collection right here.

My 5th graders need to be able to identify quadrilaterals by their attributes. This interactive foldable graphic organizer helped them to organize their information. I drew this on the board as a flo

Have you ever read Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker by Christianne Jones? My kiddos have always LOVED this book. It's actually PERFECT for Back to School because

There are three kinds of teacher-decorators: those who were born for Pinterest, those who can’t, and all the ones in between (such as the broke, the tired, and the I-have-no-time-to-decorate). However, making a classroom appeal to middle and high school students doesn’t HAVE to involve serious crafting or expensive, time-intensive projects. Check out these tips from me and Bonnie from Presto Plans as you prepare your classroom for the fall (or at any time of year that you want to give it a boost!) You might also like Sara's more recent blog post, Inside My Farmhouse Classroom Makeover. 1. Have a color scheme (if you can) Sara: My principal gave each teacher the paint for one accent wall, so that shade of turquoise inspired the rest of my blue decor: milk crates, bulletin board borders, etc. It helped unify the room to make it look pulled-together instead of random. I've also learned about the importance of contrast. Even a full-blown rainbow color palette can look clean and cohesive (instead of cluttered) if you pair it with black or white to balance it out. Bonnie: If you are looking for inspiration for colors that look great together, check out this Pinterest board. There are lots of combinations that will help you choose colors when you are shopping for classroom materials. 2. Stick to a few favorite fonts Sara: Just like businesses create a brand, you are creating a classroom “look” or persona that you will be known for... or, at least a mood you will create. (Friendly? Professional? Fun? Minimalist?) Try to pick a few fonts that most of your labels, signs, and other wall-hangings will consistently use. For example, I used the Google font Crushed to make and laminate labels for my whiteboard (see below), along with mint-colored painter's tape. 3. Make your classroom library a focal point Bonnie: Your class library should draw students in and works well as the focal point for any English classroom. Here are a few things you can do to make your library stand out: Give bookshelves a makeover by rolling them a new coat of paint and/or taking the shelves out and attaching wallpaper or scrapbook paper to the back. Put a few floating shelves on the walls near your library area where you can feature particular novels recommended by students. Add comfortable, flexible seating near a library to make it more welcoming. These items can be more expensive, so shop around online or scour garage sales until you find seating that may work. Use old books as decorations! When a book is unusable, find a way to repurpose it. One easy way to do this is to cut out the pages and write a reading-inspired quote in black permanent marker on top of the page. Frame the page and put it on your bookshelf! Sara: If your classroom library is small, nonexistent, or needs some attention, check out this blog post for more ideas about how to strengthen it. 4. Display student work Bonnie: Use student work as decor by making a framed gallery wall. All you have to do is pick up some inexpensive 8x10 frames (check your dollar store) and arrange them on your wall. When you get a piece of exceptional student work, add it into the frame! If you don’t want the hassle of buying and hanging frames, order a pack of mixed color picture mats and use them to frame student work on a bulletin board. Sara: Another way to get student work on display (while also practicing literary analysis!) is to have them complete this Quote Illustration and Analysis assignment; students use Canva (or any tool you wish) to make an inspirational or literary quote come to life. The results are stunning! 5. Use author-inspired decor Bonnie: Find ways to incorporate the authors you will be studying into your classroom decor. You can do this by featuring fun facts or by sharing quotes by the author. For example, I use an interactive Shakespeare Hashtag of the Week bulletin display that exposes students to one quote from a Shakespeare play each week. If you don’t want to make your own, you might even consider assigning an author to each student and having them develop a bulletin display with a biography, fun facts, and quotes that you can swap out weekly. Sara: Don't forget to interject moments of literary ALLUSION or author-inspired inside jokes as well, like my favorite light switch art... 6. Make your posters work together Sara: On at least one bulletin board or section of wall space, add some symmetry or consistency by hanging posters in a similar style (color, font, or other), or by displaying images that have a common theme. For example, check out these posters of stylized quotes to get some English class wisdom on your walls. Bonnie: If you are looking for some ideas of common themes you could use for posters, try some of these ideas that could work in any English classroom: funny grammar quotes or fails, literary terms or genres, author quotes, famous lines from literature, idiomatic expressions, or jokes using puns! To read more about my favorite bulletin board ideas for middle and high ELA, check out this blog post. "English is Weird" poster set 7. Make displays that are EASY to update Sara: Two of my favorite bulletin board spaces were ones that took VERY little effort in updating, so I didn't have the self-imposed pressure to redo the whole thing multiple times per year. For example, my Word Nerd Challenge is quick to update on a Monday morning because all I have to do is add this week's word to the list. (I made each word tile a magnet that can go on my whiteboard!) I also made low-prep Quote of the Week flipbooks of reading and writing quotes, which students often asked to flip FOR me. I used Command hooks and spiral binding to hang it on a cabinet. Do you have additional ideas? Tell us in the comments!

Great ideas from an librarian, SLP, and PK teacher!

These simple horizontal and vertical posters are a cute addition to ANY classroom. Wrap them around the corner of your whiteboard or bulletin board and they hardly take up any space at all. These posters will help your students remember the difference between horizontal and vertical.This is a black...