It's been a long time!  I'm so excited to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! She gets home tomorrow!  My oldest daughter has been in Costa Rica with our high school's travel club.  She was able to spend time volunteering at a local girls school near Puerto Viejo as well sightsee and enjoy the culture.  I can't wait to hear about her trip! I can't decide if I'm more excited about going to Vegas for the TpT conference or shopping for outfits to wear at the conference!  Here are a few of my purchases (so far). I have a thing for maxi dress ..read more

Who loves summer most?  We do!  I'm linking up with Aimee (I love her name!) at Primarily Speaking for her Teachers Love Summer linky. Friends!  I love spending time with my besties.  We have late night porch nights in the summer, and our families even spend every 4th of July at the lake together.  These ladies make me smile! Summer reading!  I love to read for pleasure and for inspiration during the summer.  There's nothing better than sitting out on the front porch in a rocker with a good book.  Right now I'm reading these two books... Pain ..read more

One of the first steps to teaching students to write with a variety of sentences is to teach them to recognize the different sentence structures.  This is easier said than done.  While my students seem to understand the way to write and recognize the structures during instruction, they often lose it when it's not practiced over and over.  I use jar activities during my workstation time to review and practice concepts that have been taught earlier in the year.  I recently made a jar of simple, compound, and complex sentences for this purpose. The Super Sentence Jar include ..read more

How many school days do you have left?  I have 17 days until summer vacation!  Right now I have two things on my mind... surviving the end of the school year and planning for next school year!  Luckily the Teachers Pay Teachers Teacher Appreciation Sale will help me start gathering items for the 2015-2016 school year, and my end of the year products will give me a few activities to use over the next few weeks!  I even bundled three of my end of the year products for you at a huge discount. Included in this bundle are my End of the Year Writing Prompts, That's A Wrap End of ..read more

I have a new obsession, or should I say my students have a new obsession.  They love filling out banners, and I love making them!  I have eleven banner topics so far... Most of my banners are for holidays and special occasions.  Genre Banners can be used year round. It includes nine genre banners (realistic fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, non-fiction, poetry, folktales, and biography).  Each genre comes in two different styles. My students completed the non-fiction banner yesterday.  You can see the two different styles above. Yo ..read more

Welcome to the "Bright Ideas" blog hop! I have O.C.D. (Organized Classroom Disorder)!  I like everything to have its place and things to be tidy.  One of the hardest teaching tools to find a place for are anchor charts.  I make anchor charts for every subject.  Some anchor charts are on chart paper, and others are made on Power Point slides to display on the Smart Board.  I like to keep anchor charts available for students to use as a resource throughout the year.  Unfortunately, anchor charts can quickly take over a classroom.  This is where the paper towe ..read more

I love teaching writing.  I hate teaching students to edit and revise!  This task can be especially challenging for reluctant writers.  In the past, I've made anchor charts, conferenced with students until I'm blue in the face, tried peer editing, etc.  You name it, I've tried it.  It wasn't until I made my Close Reading on a Ring product that I thought, "Why can't students edit and revise on a ring?" When my students finish their rough draft, they have the option of grabbing an Editing and Revising Tool Kit.  The kit contains everything they need to edit and r ..read more

That is a good question!  Our 100th day of school has changed three times now.  This happens every year with snow days.  Right now our 100th day should be January 22nd.  I'm not holding my breath!  I teach a 3rd/4th grade split.  My students have fond memories of celebrating the 100th day of school in K-2.  Every year they always ask me how we will celebrate this monumental day.  While we don't make it a day long celebration, I do like to recognize the day all week long.  I will put my 100th Day of School Jar out the week of January 19th. The jar ..read more

It all started years ago when my two daughters would fight every Sunday morning over who got to read the comics first.  Kids love to read the comics.  I put a comic basket in my classroom library and it quickly became a fan favorite.  This year I decided that I wanted to take comic reading a step further.  This is how Using Comics in the Classroom was born! Comics in the Classroom has 47 task cards with six categories (fluency, vocabulary, phonics, grammar, comprehension, and writing). This is a sample of one of the comprehension task cards.  There are 17 graphic o ..read more

What activities do you do in the classroom to help students learn to infer?  I do a lot of modeling during read alouds but I wanted a fun activity that students could do during workstation time.  I made a mystery box activity that I'll start using right after break. What's in the Box? has three different levels for students to choose from when working with a buddy or small group.  I have 90 picture cards and 90 clue cards included in the activity. To play the game, students can use one of the following worksheets... They can draw a picture of what they think is in the box ..read more