Silent e {or Magic e, as I like to refer to it} is one of my favorite Phonics skills to teach to my students. I have a lot of great activi...

Well, it's a "snow day" here in Austin! And by snow day I mean less than an inch of snow on the ground, but since we Austinites can't drive in ice and snow, no school for us! I'm still in pajamas and got to sleep in until 10. It's been a good day! :) Since I had some extra time on my hand, I thought I'd do another blog post to attempt to get caught up! We did my economics unit way back in November! I revised it a bit and added a few activities so if you have purchased it on TpT, make sure to redownload it! :) Most of the week was focusing on the vocabulary words needs, wants, goods and services. The first day we talked about the difference between a need and a want. A need is something you must have to live and a want is something you would like to have. The kids sorted needs and wants and came up with their own ideas: The next day we talked about the difference between goods and services. A good is something you can use or consume while a service is something someone does for you. Once again, the kids sorted and wrote their own ideas in webs: Next we talked about how when we buy things we have to make choices. We talked about how you can't always buy everything that you want. The kids did an activity where I gave them 85 cents and they had to choose what they wanted that cost less than that: We also talked about how it's important to use our money to buy what we need first. We discussed how we need food, clothing and shelter and the kids drew examples of each: At the end of the week the kids made their own economics books where they illustrated examples of all the vocal we learned! a house money ice cream One thing I really like to emphasize during this unit is the importance of saving your money. The kids and I brainstormed ideas for things they could save for. It's never too early to talk about responsible spending! :) If you enjoyed this unit, click on the picture below to get your own!

Help students organize their paragraphs by finding related facts and ordering the facts. Students learn how to group facts by a central idea or topic.

Silent e {or Magic e, as I like to refer to it} is one of my favorite Phonics skills to teach to my students. I have a lot of great activi...

Here are a few happenings from this past week. We've been learning about sentences this week. I made this anchor chart to help us remem...

All About Me Freebie **This resource also includes an additional Team Avatar/Selfie Activity! This download contains four Smartphone activities! The perfect resource for back to school or wrapping up the end of the year. All About My#Selfie - Students design a profile with a drawing, a description, and they list their favorite hashtags. My Life in Apps - Students draw and label 9 apps that represent their favorite things or activities they enjoy doing. ***NEW*** Team Avatar - Student groups design an avatar Team Apps - Design apps that represent their class team or group These beginning-of-the-year activities are engaging ways to get to know your students! **Ratings on free resources are greatly appreciated!!! _______________________________________________________________________ Tips for Savvy TpT Shoppers: How to receive credit on TpT to use for future purchases: • Go to your My Purchases page. Under each purchase you'll see a Provide Feedback button. Simply click it and you will be taken to a page where you can give a quick rating and leave a short comment for the product. I value your feedback greatly as it helps me determine which products are most valuable for your classroom so I can create more for you. Be the first to know about my new discounts, FREEBIES, and products: • Look for a green star near the top of any page within my store and click it to become a follower. You will now be able to see FREEBIES and customized emails from my store! ©2016 StudentSavvy All rights reserved by author. Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Electronic distribution limited to single classroom use only. (unless you purchase the multiple license)

As the year rolls on our spelling patterns get more challenging. I want my students to have every chance for quality spelling practice because they need it daily in order...

Informational writinand expository writing in second grade is all about animals. We go in depth with gathering facts, sorting the facts, and writing.

This post will share with you some of the things we are thinking about in KC. Shapes {Circle Maps} The kids worke...

I've been awful lazy here lately and haven't taken pictures of our classroom happenings, so be warned: there's a lot of pictures coming up!...

+JMJ So I've been working on this below.... Feel free to download if you can use them. The first one is actually specific to our Texas Process Standards for 5th grade. The others are just general to help you if you need help in small groups. I'll actually add more specifics for the other contents soon. Happy Teaching! Edit: I will not be able to put up a free editable version as intended. I apologize for the inconvenience. =( Please feel free to print out the above. =)

Creative Art Projects for Busy Teachers

Informational writinand expository writing in second grade is all about animals. We go in depth with gathering facts, sorting the facts, and writing.

Imagine yourself on two separate trips to a popular tourist destination, let's say... to Paris. Trip A is planned to the minute, ma...

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company, Kellogg Company, J.M. Smucker Company, and The HERSHEY’S Company. All opinions are...

This Daily Calendar Notebook is a fun, engaging way to begin your calendar time each morning! Perfect for Preschool, Kindergarten, or 1st Grade. 160+ pages.

Check out these MUST do things to check off before you leave for the summer! {TONS of FREEBIES to help you get prepared for next school!}

If you're looking for unique and engaging ways to help the students in your classroom develop their social, communication, and problem-solving skills while simultaneously fostering peer relationships and promoting inclusion, this collection of team building

Hello! It's been a while since I've blogged. Why is that? I've been SUPER busy with some recent unexpected changes. Two weeks ago, I interviewed and was offered (on the same day) a job at a different school district. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the school I was at, however it was far away from the family and boyfriend (around an hour drive one way), so I've been wanting to find a school that's closer to home. The district I interviewed with is only a 20 minute drive from the family, so obviously I accepted the offer right away. The only catch was that the school year was going to start in TWO weeks and the grade level the position was for was not the one that I had be preparing for all summer. That's right! I'm not teaching second grade this year. I am back in first grade! This also means a need for a blog name change, but that will have to wait until I am settled into my new job. Anyways, after a full week of trainings and setting up the classroom, we started school on Wednesday this week. So I'm back to Five for Friday (well...Saturday now) to share what we did during our first three days! First thing's first...some classroom pictures! To be honest, I'm not completely satisfied with how the classroom looks decoration-wise. Most of my time was spent getting manipulatives and books organized. But eventually things will look the way I want them to (I hope)! Sorry for the horrible picture. Can't really avoid the glare and reflection. But, below are two part of the room that I'm proud of. The previous teacher in this room left her bulletins up so rather than start all over again, I just did some changing things out so that the decor matched my classroom theme, Magnificent Monsters! Before (left), After (right) I'm only semi-proud of this, but I do like all the colors! This is my classroom library. The top two shelves are student book bins (from Steps to Literacy) that I still have to label with numbers. The right shelf is sorted by F&P levels in bins from Dollar Tree. The books on left shelf are not leveled but organized by categories: class books ("Create" basket from Michaels), Spanish books (my class is mainly Hispanic students), Readers, Picture Books, and Non-fiction books. The green bins are from Dollar Tree and the light blue bins are from the Target dollar spot. I plan to switch out the Dr. Seuss cut-outs with monster ones. I definitely feel like my classroom library is lacking in comparison to my previous school. When I started working at my previous school, the classrooms were all filled with books that previous teachers accumulated and left behind. This new classroom had no books left behind so all I have right now are books I've purchased in the past and books my previous colleagues gave to me. I could definitely use some more books, especially ones that are leveled so I created a DonorsChoose project to help me out with that. Maybe you can help me out? It's half off thanks to the generosity of the Bill & Miranda Gates Foundation if it gets fully funded by Sunday. Plus, if you use the promo code INSPIRE you get your donation matched. So essentially I only need around $115 to reach my goal! Please help spread the word and help a fellow teacher out here! :D First day of school! This is what the kids saw when they entered the classroom. On the desks were their MONSTER folder cover and a monster bookmark to decorate. More will be explained about these in a bit. We had a lot of read alouds this week to get us settled into first grade. (click pictures of the books covers to buy it on Amazon through my affiliate link) We read The Night Before First Grade and First Grade Jitters and talked about how we felt the night before the first day of school. We read First Grade Stinks! and did a kindergarten and first grade comparison. We also read Monsters Love School (of course) and talked about what school is for. We also talked about the school rules and classroom rules, along with how to listen with our whole body. The poster above is from Growing Kinders. Perfect for my monster theme and free too! Click below to get it yourself! Had this printed and laminated at Office Depot. I LOVE Office Depot lamination! I wish I could take their machine home with me! Our Fridays are short days (thank goodness!) so I was able to get a bit more decorating done including putting up some student work! So this is where that picture of monster cut-outs on the table comes in. I had the kids pick a monster to represent them and wrote their name on it with a Sharpie. I no longer have a hallway bulletin like my previous school since we have an outside campus. I still wanted to display some work for parents to see without having to come into the classroom so I decided to turn my window into a bulletin board instead! I taped (well..rather, the boyfriend helped me put all this together) a mini clothespin to the back of the monster cut-out. I also used pen to write the kid's name on the back of the monster cut-out so I know which monster belongs to who when I'm putting up the work. Then I taped the cut-outs to my classroom window so they are facing out and viola! I apologize for the glare and reflection, but that was the best I could do! Phew! That was a long article. Hopefully you made it through! I'm super glad it's the weekend although there's still SO much to do! Hope everyone's first week of school goes well, whenever it is! Please help share the word of my DonorsChoose project! Thank you! :)

A blog with tips, ideas and freebies for first grade.

I hope each of you have enjoyed some rest and relaxation during your Christmas Break! I’ve had the best week with my family! We made some gingerbread houses, played a lot of games, Beckett got a haircut (without sitting on my lap!!), and we really just had a lot of fun! Pinterest I’ve also been […]

Hi Friends! Here's an idea I use to get my kids excited about practicing their sight words at home. I make a "word wallet" for each stu...

+JMJ So I've been working on this below.... Feel free to download if you can use them. The first one is actually specific to our Texas Process Standards for 5th grade. The others are just general to help you if you need help in small groups. I'll actually add more specifics for the other contents soon. Happy Teaching! Edit: I will not be able to put up a free editable version as intended. I apologize for the inconvenience. =( Please feel free to print out the above. =)

Without the knowledge of maps, directions and geography, no one would be able to find a new doctor's office, the post office or the local elementary school. This is why by the end of kindergarten children should have a solid understanding of neighborhood or city maps as well as world maps and continents. ...