Honesty is the best policy

  I've been thinking about my little blog space for a month now and how I have done nothing with it.  Time is probably the biggest factor, but honestly it's intimidating! I guess I just hadn't figured out what I wanted to blog about, and what I felt others would want to read about.

  I had an idea this morning after buying my 65th product on Teachers Pay Teachers, well over 300th book on Scholastic and Amazon, and credit card bills still reflecting summer teaching sale purchases from those big office supply stores.  I think it takes more money being a teacher than what teachers actually get paid.  Most of you are in the same boat as I am and have to choose very wisely when it comes to putting money into your classroom.  I do a lot of research before buying something.  I analyze, talk myself into buying it, talk myself out of buying it, wait around to see if it will go on sale, etc....  You know the drill. 

   So, I'm just a teacher here to share what's in my crate :-)  I cart this thing to and from school EVERY day.  I can't live without it!  I fill it to the brim every afternoon in hopes of actually getting something accomplished after the kiddos go to bed.  Some nights I do, some nights I don't.  My hopes are to share with you the must have items I use each week teaching, where I get them from, cost, and whether it's worth your time.  Maybe my posts will help 1 person purchase the right product or stay away from the wrong product!  

I leave you with a picture of my beloved crate.....

Jessica

Busy Week!

Not much to report in the way of plans this week!  We have a 4 day week with the kids with a workday on Friday, no school Monday, and teacher workday on Tuesday.  Hopefully this provides lots of rest, graduate school work, and lesson planning!

This week we have been testing our winter MClass assessments.  After these tests, the kids are pretty spent, so much of what is going on while I'm testing is some laid back review work.  Our scholastic book order forms came in and I purchased a great pack from the Clutter Free Classroom over the summer all about how to increase Scholastic book orders.  My kids worked on finding the nouns/verbs/adjectives in their book orders today.  They did fantastic, loved looking at the new book order forms, and reviewed some great objectives we have been discussing!

I hope to be back this weekend (in between graduate school work, playing with the babies, hanging with the hubs, and hopefully playing in our first snowfall of the year!!) to share something of interest to y'all!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jessica

Reflections for week of January 7th

Greetings and welcome!

   Well laid plans, doesn't always go, um....well.  I had great lesson plans worked out for the week and everything looked pretty in the plan book, but I hit a wall on Wednesday and we struggled a bit!  The 4th and 5th grade kids LOVED these two books:

  and    


These books were absolutely amazing for practicing the Summarizing Strategy: Somebody/Wanted/But/So.
We were on a roll and doing fabulous!  Then we popped out these task cards for summarizing:

  







(task cards from Rachel Lynette from www.minds-in-bloom.com)

      These task cards are amazing, but they are strictly for non-fiction/informational reading.  Doh! We were only practicing with the SWBS strategy with Fiction!  The students and I were trying to come up with a new formula for summarizing informational text and it was a struggle!  My students aren't able to just pull out the main idea of the text and use that as part of their summary.  They HAVE to have a formula or strategy for figuring these types of things out.   This coming week we will be working on summarizing with informational text (it is a 4th and 5th grade CCSS), so it has to get done!  I'm working on a strategy sheet and will share when I get one developed!

Onto the 3rd grade lessons:

     After reflecting on this week's lesson, I know we have a long way to go with character traits and really understanding what they means.  Our school has a character trait of the month program, but I just don't think my little 3rd graders brains are able to fully understand what those traits signify.  When we described the "Song and Dance Man", I mostly received character trait responses of - old, has a wife, etc...  Yikes!  Lots of work to do!  I have a set of activities in the works to help my kiddos and will share that with you as soon as I get it completed!  
     The second part of our lesson we read "Through Grandpa's Eyes'.  Wow!  Beautiful story, but mentally tough for the students.  We made many stops along the way, with a permanent stop where Grandpa and the child finish their breakfast.  The reading strategy we worked on was reading a passage more than once to see what we missed the first time around.  They HATED this and did not understand why they needed to read something twice.  This is a strategy that we will have to continue to push hard on.  When it comes to end of grade test, I want them to re-read passages so they catch details that they couldn't see the first time around!


Needless to say, I have lots of thoughts and reflections to sift through and gear up for another great week with a great group of kids at a job I love (oh, and graduate school starts this week....booo to more work, yeah to it being my last semester!!!)


Jessica

Pencil Sharpeners

    I have had the hardest time with pencil sharpeners.  The old school mounted to the wall pencil sharpener is so dull it is useless and extremely loud!  I refuse to let me students sharpen pencils in the middle of class because it takes away time from instruction and it is so distracting!

    Since there is no money left in the school budget, my own budget dished out the money for a new pencil sharpener!  You HAVE to have a pencil sharpener.  I started the year out with 3 cheap-o sharpeners that I got on sale at the big box office supply stores and those lasted all of 3 weeks.  After much research, I finally settled on a pencil sharpener and ordered the School Smart Pencil Sharpener from Amazon.  

    It felt like Christmas when I arrived home this afternoon!!!  I immediately busted it out of the box, grabbed 10 of my son's pencils and tested her out.  Oh. My. Word.  I'm in love!  I sharpened all 10 of those pencils in less than 1 minute to the sharpest point I have ever seen!!  I just hope this will make it until the end of the school year with the amount of students that I teach each day!  

    Here is a picture of the new pencil princess :-)

On a side note, the new February Scholastic catalog's went live on their site today!  There is nothing like the brand new Scholastic book order forms!  Love it!!

Tomorrow is TGIF!!! Yippee!

Jessica

Weekly Plans for January 7th, 2013

I had intended to post this yesterday, but as we all know, life gets busy!  

I teach 4 grade levels of English Language Arts using the Common Core and an intensive intervention reading program.  I spend the first 30 minutes of instruction with the intensive intervention program and the remaining amount of time on Common Core lessons and teaching IEP goals.  

It is extremely hard keeping up with 4 grade levels of lesson planning, but at least it's the same subject matter.  Being able to work with the same resource kids year after year will prove to be a huge benefit.  Not much time wasted at the beginning of the year figuring out the students strengths and weaknesses.  

Now onto my plans for the week!

2nd grade:

  ---Intensive Intervention Program: Fundations 
 ----We will also be using Tumblebooks .  While reading Tumblebooks we will be working on Beginning/Middle/End of stories by using a very simple worksheet I made up real quick.

3rd grade: 

 ----Intensive Intervention Program: Language!
 ----We are reading the picture books "Through Grandpa's Eyes" and "Song and Dance Man" this week.  The skills we are working on is: making predictions, story elements, and character traits.  To save on paper, my students work from reading/writing journals and record responses in their journals.  Hopefully I can remember to take a picture at the end of the week of those journals to showcase what those journals look like.  Once we have a good handle on character traits, we will be working on some independent practice using Rachel Lynette's task cards for Character traits.  On Friday, we work on literacy centers that work on IEP goals as well as provides 1:1 opportunities to remediate those students that need it.  The literacy centers we will be working from are from Cara Carroll's winter themed literacy packet!

              

4th grade: 

 ----- Intensive Intervention Program: Language!
 ----- We are working on the skill of summarizing.  Wow, this is a toughie!  I'm using the reading formula- Somebody/Wanted/But/So and teaching them how to place that information into framed sentences.  To practice this skill we will be reading two picture books " The Mine-O-Saur" and "The Very Cranky Bear".  We will practice this summarizing formula as a whole class, then work with a partner on this awesome packet of Summarizing Task Cards by Rachel Lynette.  I own several of her task card sets and they do not disappoint!  (The books I have linked up are to Amazon right now.  You can find them cheaper through Scholastic's website, but it is currently down.)  Once the students practice the SWBS strategy with these items, they will be taking a short quiz at the end of the week.  On Friday, the students will be working on literacy centers that focus on their IEP goals using a winter themed literacy packet from Cara Carroll.


              

5th grade: 

 ----- Intensive Intervention Program: Language!
 ----- We are working on the skill of summarizing- Just like my 4th graders, except for upping it a notch ;-).    I'm using the reading formula- Somebody/Wanted/But/So and teaching them how to place that information into framed sentences.  To practice this skill we will be reading two picture books " The Mine-O-Saur" and "The Very Cranky Bear".  We will practice this summarizing formula as a whole class, then work with a partner on this awesome packet of Summarizing Task Cards by Rachel Lynette.  I own several of her task card sets and they do not disappoint!  (The books I have linked up are to Amazon right now.  You can find them cheaper through Scholastic's website, but it is currently down.)  Once the students practice the SWBS strategy with these items, they will be taking a short quiz at the end of the week.  On Friday, the students will be working on literacy centers that focus on their IEP goals using a winter themed literacy packet from Cara Carroll.



           


Whew! Lots to cover!  Have a great week and I hope to be back mid-week with something a little more exciting!

Moving Forward!

Jessica

New Beginnings

Dear Readers,
      To say I'm nervous jumping into this HUGE blogging world would be an understatement. I started a blog a few years ago to showcase the activities I used in my self-contained class for students with autism.  After accepting a new resource position in a new county, I stopped blogging.  I began graduate school and had a second child.  So here I am, two years later, jumping back into the blogging world.  
     I can only hope to provide something that you can take away from this little ole blog!  I'm closing in on a graduate degree in curriculum and instruction for students with learning disabilities.  Every teacher has a student with a disability in their classroom, and I have taught in almost every special education position possible.  I hope that I can provide you with ways to support those students in your classroom that have disabilities!
    I'm sure the biggest question you have as of now is, what is with the blog name?  My very favorite book is "Eat Pray Love".  This book is very thought provoking and I read this novel at the end of every year to analyze the year past and to make plans for the upcoming year.    
   My 3 words represent my teaching career thus far.  My first four years, I learned.  I learned a lot!  I had an amazing mentor and taught at a pretty rough middle school.  The next four years, I had to adapt and adapt constantly.  I taught in 3 different positions in four years at the same school.  I guess that is the nature of being a special education teacher, but it was tough to say the least!  My last word is progress.  This is where I am now.  At a new school in a new county, and trying to make progress!  For the 2012-2013 school year we began the common core curriculum along with new district testing, MAP and MClass.  The standards at this school is like nothing I have ever experienced in my 10 years of teaching.  I'm up for the challenge and look forward to the progress I want to make in my student's lives.  
    So....Welcome!  I look forward to what the future holds!  My goal is to make it to July with my blog.  I have told myself that if I make it to July and have at least 100 followers, I will splurge on a fancy customized blog!  

For now,

Jessica