Classroom Library

So for the past six years, I have struggled with setting up my classroom library. Books everywhere in tubs, racks, and a complete disorganized mess.

Nothing was more frustrating than a week into the school year seeing all the precious books you had spent days organizing being put in the wrong tubs. I would try to get on to kids and rationalize with them: if it's an animal book, put it back in the animal tub. However, that seemed to fall on deaf ears. By about October, I gave up each year. "I'll deal with it next year." I told myself.

Well, six years later I decided to tackle this problem as school let out this year. I was DETERMINED.

So when I was packing up my room this year, I took an inventory of all my books and tubs. I counted every tub and the number of books in each tub, once they were all back in their proper homes. I ended up with 65 book tubs and too many books to total.

I created book tub labels for each book tub. Some people sort by lexile levels, genres, authors, etc. Mine are by topic and authors. This one happens to be "Girl Fiction".

Notice the brown dot on the side? That is the lexile level. A couple summers ago I went through and lexiled every book in my library. Longest. Task. Ever. And then we created a color coding system at my school so it would be consistent from room to room. When our kids MAP test, it gives them a lexile so when they do independent reading, they read books on their level. By leveling all the books, the kids can chose whatever they want, as long as it's their "dot" color. I stick with telling them their dot colors and not focusing on numbers, that way the kids can't really tell too much about each others levels.

I then took this to the next level. I printed matching labels for each book in each tub. Obsessive. Crazy. OCD. Yes, yes and yes. But I am *hoping* that this will make it super easy for the kids to just look at the number and put it right back in the correct tub.

This took HOURS. But I am so glad I did it! Hopefully this will keep my classroom library under wraps this year and many more too come! All 65 books tubs are complete and I am feeling good about it!

How do you organize your classroom library? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Brit :)

Volume? I Want YOUR Ideas!

Hey everyone! Hope y'all had a great week and your weekend is off to a great start!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am taking a big leap next year and moving from 3rd grade to 5th grade! We are semi-departmentalizing next year, so I get to teach all the 5th grade math!

So of course I have ZERO self control and am already freaking out about next year, so I ran to school the other night and searched through all my packed things looking for some of the common core book resources.

I've been looking through Buckle Down, Crosswalk Coach and Ready Common Core. Also, my goodness. See that book right there, Two for the Dough. It's book #2 in the Stephani Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Please tell me WHY I haven't read these books until now. SO GOOD.



Anyways, back on track here. I'm looking at the standards, the books and the unit outline for my first unit and it's volume. And I'm a little bit freaking out. I have taught area to my 3rd graders before, but volume is a completely different story.

So I need your help. If you have had some experience teaching the 5th grade volume standards or volume in general, what were some fun lessons you taught? Were there any resources, websites, games, etc that were extremely helpful in teaching volume? Hands on way or real world experience type stuff/explorations with volume?

Leave me the ideas in the comments and I will choose one person on Wednesday July 2nd @ 12:00pm and for the winner: I will personally create one thing just for YOU for your room next year! Desk nameplates, labels for tubs, book tub labels, schedule signs, ANYTHING you want! I will make it for you! You pick the design, clip art, anything!

Thanks! I know the best ideas come from other teachers so help a girl out!

Brit :)

Giveaway Time! :)

Hello there everyone!

So after my post the other day I realized that I was getting super close to 1,000 hits on my blog which is exciting! :) I'm really trying to be a better blogger and I'm working on some posts about stuff that I did towards the end of the year and never got around to posting buuuuuuuttttt I thought it would be fun to do a GIVEAWAY!

So here's the deal:
You have two ways to enter. One: Leave a comment below telling me one fun thing you have done so far this summer (and your email would help as well!). Two: Share this blog post to Facebook.

That's it. Simple. In the words of my students, "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy". The winner will get to pick one thing from my TpT store! Your choice- whatever you want! :)

Do both and double your chances to win. Be sure to use the Rafflecopter to add your entries!

a Rafflecopter giveaway I will choose a winner tomorrow night at midnight, so technically 12 am on June 27th!

Good Luck!

Brit :)

Summer Fun

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I don't know about you guys but I am having a *GREAT* start to summer vacation. After a few days of training, packing up the room and cleaning it up, I was officially on SUMMER BREAK! Wahoo!

But, back up: We had to do some training at the end of the year, which turned out to be awesome! I work at seriously the best school and our administrative team had such a great idea. We had a lot of new teams next year, myself included on a new team, so they decided to do one morning of team building. Which *insert eye rolls and groans here* but seriously, it was a-ma-zing. I won't go into too many details or give incriminating information, but we did a variety of things which included an obstacle course in the gym with blindfolded people and an Amazing Race style challenge around our town. It was so much fun and I know my team laughed so hard! What a great day! Here is a picture of our team pyramid in a park by our school:

So much fun. AH! It made me really jazzed for the upcoming school year!

So then I headed home to the parent's house and spent a few days relaxing with them! I celebrated Father's Day! I took my Dad golfing- it was my first time ever- and it was alot ofun! I also made these bad boys for my Dad- I like to call them a Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake! My dad is a sucker for anything Reese so these were perfect and he loved them!

I worked a couple of days at my serving job and spent yesterday dealing with a busted hot water heater and now that leaves me to today. I'm currently watching Vikings reruns on my DVR and drinking coffee. Spiced Pumpkin coffee to be exact. I hoard that stuff in fall and then my mom gave me a box that she had hoarded for my birthday in April because I was out! So so good. I like ration it. But it's so good. So good.

I have been working on a little summer reading- I started the Stephanie Plum series and read the first book in like 2 days. I'm waiting for the 2nd one in the mail so I've been tackling the summer reading for school, which is "The Leader in Me". If you haven't read this book, do it now. It's an easy read and so good.

 
We are implementing this program in my school next and I am really looking forward to it. We are needing  little extra "something" and I think/hope this will be it. I am excited to teach my new students about leadership and great skills in order to be a leader. I have been thinking about my room and how I want to set things up, reinforce those qualities, etc and I thought about a simple reminder on the desks. And then I was like "OH! I'll just put the 7 habits on their NAMEPLATES."

So this was born:

I can't wait to put these on my desks. And what a better way then to have the 7 habits right there on the student's desks to remind them constantly. The 7 Habits are: 

The 7 Habits

1 Be Proactive

2 Begin with the end in mind

3 Put first things first

4 Think Win Win

5 Seek first to understand

6 Synergize

7 Sharpen the Saw

The 7 Habits are explained in more detail in the book so I completely recommend that you check them out! If you want to purchase these nameplates for your classroom, head over to my TPT store by clicking here!

They are chevron (duh, I love me some chevron) with coordinating labels, black with multiple colored labels and grey with multiple colored labels as well. There are 15 pages of nameplates in all so you can mix, match, and use them however you want! They work best when you print them on cardstock first. Then using a white-out pen, silver shaprie, chalk, or neon sharpies, write the names on them. Then laminate them and you are good to go! If you need additional colors for labels or backgrounds, feel free to e-mail me and I will see what I can do! 

Now, back to the coffee and putting together some of the things I got from IKEA last week. This item for sure has been "cat tested, mother approved". :) 

Have a great day! 

Brit :) 

 

Hey You Guys!!!!!!!! (Yeah, it's me. I'm alive.)

So I may just be the worst blogger on the planet.

I took a little *break* from the blogging/TPT world the past couple months. I had a lot going on with my family, friends, school, testing, ETC. This just fell to the back burner. And now that it is summer, *ta-da* I have returned. Technically we are not on summer break yet, well I mean,  today was our last day of trainings.  So TOMORROW is the first official day of summer for us here! I do have to go clean out my fridge at school, but other than that, I'm FINISHED! I've decided to treat myself to a nice mani/pedi tomorrow after that- I think I deserve it after all this packing.....

I will say that even thought I wasn't blogging, I was taking pictures and jotting down post ideas in a notebook as I finished the year. I can't wait to share some of those ideas with you. Also, BIG NEWS, I'm moving to 5th grade next year. I have taught 3rd grade for my entire teaching career (except that one year in second, but I knew I was looping and going back to third....) so this is big for me. It's a huge jump and I will  be teaching my own class reading/writing and then I will be teaching math to all the 5th graders. This was something along the lines of what I probably looked like when my admin team approached me about the idea....

I am excited though and I LOVE teaching math, so look forward to a TON of math posts in the coming months because my summer is going to be spent learning all this 5th grade math content and figuring out how to teach math in one hour. And do it 3 times.... HOORAY!

I do have lots to do this summer: reading, gardening, painting, visiting some places around here, and re-organizing the house. I hope to spend a lot of time blogging and uploading stuff to my TPT store that I created this Spring. I also have to take the GRE so I can start Grad School AGAIN in the fall. It'll be a busy summer and go by QUICK since we only have 8 weeks. 8 weeks. MEH.

I'll leave you with this. :D

March Currently!

Super pumped that my friend Kenz at Webster's Little Dictionary shared with me how to do this! :)

I am linking up with Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this month's currently: check it out! Her blog is AWESOME and I already wasted more time than I want to admit looking at past blog posts of hers....

Listening: "The Vikings"

I'm *such* a history nerd. I missed this show when season 1 was out and saw that they were re-playing every episode before season 2 started on Friday so *naturally* I recorded them all to watch now....

Loving: "Gone Girl"

I am way behind the times in getting started with this book but I have heard from so many people that it is a good book so when I was getting my hair done on Saturday and had about 30 minutes to kill under the dryer, I started it. So far, so good!

Thinking: Winter Storm Warning

Yeah I see this... but nothing is falling *yet*. They say we could end up with 4-8 inches of snow... well I will believe it when I see it.

Wanting: Coffee, a new computer, and a new suitcase!

It's cold, I love coffee, I could drink it any hour of the day. :) A new computer is in the near future- this one is driving me NUTS. It took 3 hours to back-up my new phone yesterday and transfer everything. THREE HOURS. Suitcase is needed ASAP- I head to London in 25 days. 25. Holy cow.

Needing: Lesson Plans

Need to do those lesson plans just in case. Because when they are finally done, that is when it will actually start snowing.....

??? What do you think? :)

Brit :)

Sunday Funday!

Well we are all sitting ducks here waiting for this "snow-pocalypse" to show up- we are supposed to get anywhere from 4-6 inches of snow with freezing rain, sleet, and snow mixed in. If that does in fact happen, it could be a hot mess around here.

I am using this to get caught up on some stuff because I am going NOWHERE. :)

I finally finished my St. Patrick's Day riddles! Wahoo! Just in time!

 These are just like the Valentine's Day ones I made for my 20 followers FREEBIE! :) There are 6 riddles for your kids to solve- they figure out the answer to the multiplication problem and then use the key at the bottom to find the answer! They are great and FUN for the kids - mine absolutely loved the Valentine's Day ones we did that week and kept asking for more! They will be so pumped when we start working on these in the next week or so! :) They are great multiplication practice for any grade level!

You can get your copy of these in my TPT store HERE!

I've got some other stuff in the works, including a HUGE post about I Love to Read Week for Dr. Seuss's birthday (we had to do ours a week early because of some scheduling issues)!

Stay tuned.... what are you working on today?

Brit :)

TPT 3 Million Strong

Hey y'all!

Been a busy week here! We are doing our I Love To Read Week activities a week early, we had a field trip, a snow day and all kinds of other shenanigans in between!


BUT... I did want to let y'all know that TPT is having a HUGE sale until midnight tomorrow!

3 million people have signed up and so in order to celebrate, everything in my store will be 28% off!!!!

I may even extend the sale through the weekend when I add my St. Patricks Day Riddles and my Spring Word Problems! But first I need all this mess settles down!!!

But head on over to my TPT store here TPT Store!

Share the news with friends!! :)

Brit :)

Starting to feel like Dorothy....

Well today it was 70 degrees when I left school at 6 pm. 70. I snapped this screen shot at about 1:00 at recess when it was this...

It was 67 and the wind was gusting at about 20 miles per hour. Right now, we are experiencing wind gusts up to 40 mph and we have a tornado watch in effect. Hooray.

Anyways, things have been crazy this week at school and I have had a meeting during planning and a meeting/something after school EVERY day this week so it has been SUPER HECTIC!

But, tonight I decompressed and got started on this bad boy:

My Valentine ones were such a HUGE hit! I couldn't wait to bring these to the table! I hope to have them posted by Sunday! And I can't wait to share some of the Dr. Seuss stuff I have in the works for next week!

What are you working on right now?

Brit :)

T-T-T-Tuesday? Only Tuesday?!?

Well, well, well. It's looking like we are going to have a full week of school in the books! After school today I was chatting with some teachers and we swore it felt like it was already THURSDAY at least!!!!

Today we had our second practice for Girls on the Move! It's basically a running club for 4th and 5th grade girls! I am so happy to be helping out this year and I'm glad to be moving!

So, I decided to treat myself to some new shoes :)

I LOVE THEM!

Pink and orange and purple- what a combo!

They felt great running today even with the pace quickened this week! About half way through the other coach and I exchanged a look of "oh my gosh- this has gotten harder!"

We are running the Color Me Rad 5k with the girls on April 12th- it is sure to be a great time for all!



Also, wanted to share this wonderful little snack-a-roo I came across in Walmart the other day...

Um hi. Best treat for dessert after dinner EVER. Dark chocolate at that too. You get 6 packs in the box and there are 4 strawberries in each pack. Pull it out of the freezer about 10 minutes before you NOM- oh my gosh- so delish! And at 60 calories- it won't blow you diet for the day!! Kenz (Webster's Little Dictionary) you won't enjoy these because of the "strawberries" lol

Anyway- school has been hectic but I'll have some goodies to share later this week! I Love to Read Week is a BIG deal at our school and I'm am already like foaming at the mouth with ideas! :)

How's your week going?

Brit :)

Slackin'!!!

Hello all!!

I have been seriously slacking here lately! School has "sort-of" gotten back into a routine... a little bit.And it's taking some getting used to sadly.

This past week we were off Monday, had a 2-hour delay Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were "normal" and Friday we sent the kids home 2 hours early for "impending" weather- which really didn't show till after 10 pm that night. So.....

But things have picked up. I help sponsor "Girls on the Move" and Drama Club. So between those 2 practices after school two days a week, team planning another day, and meetings on Mondays, Fridays have been the only non-hectic after school day here lately. SHEW.

Anyways- I wants to inform some that I updated my Reading ACED posters. I wasn't loving the color scheme, so I changed the first blue one to a nice pretty green and uploaded the update to TPT.

Much better in my opinion! :) Remember this set is 4 posters to help your students with answering short answer questions and it's TWO sets (one with owls and one without!) Get your copy for just $1 in my TPT store: Reading ACED Strategy Posters!

And if you are wanting Math ACED posters, I've got those too! You can get them too: Math ACED Strategy Posters!

Anyways- today I am going through a TON of data. My living room looks like this:

I have been sorting and sifting and pitching. But my data binder is starting to look a little normal now. Got to get it all together because now starts the push till testing! With about 3 months-ish or so to go, we have to hit the ground running. Unlike my cat right now...

Sleepy Oliver has got it BAD. I want to be a cat. *Sigh*

Happy Sunday y'all!

Brit :)

Showin' the LOVE!

So, ya'll showed me the love by getting my TPT store up to 20 followers in a month, so I thought I would show you all some love with a sweet little freebie!!

TADA! This little gem was my project for today and I am so happy with how they turned out! I can't wait to use them with my kiddos if we EVER get back to school!

Included in the freebie is 6 Valentine's Day themed riddles that they students have to solve by completing various multiplication problems and using the code! I included the color version and a black and white version, if you wanted to save some ink!

AH! Love these! So if you want to pick up your own copy of these Valentine Riddles, get it here: Valentine's Day Themed Miltiplication Riddles FREEBIE!

Thanks again for following my store and if you haven't already, DO IT! I am already brainstorming something to create when I reach 50 followers!

Brit :)

Coffee, Snow Days, and Word Problems- Oh my!

Well, we have reached *snow day* number 10, yes that's not a typo TEN. And I went to bed at normal school time because I didn't really think we would have a snow day... soooooo

I have been up drinking coffee from my fancy Keruig since about 8:30 now. :) I love coffee. Lots of it. Anyway......

But that means I have FINISHED the word problem pack! Woo-Hoo! I got it finished last night and then had a huge fight with my computer. Like I wanted to chuck my computer across the room all over trying to get some thumbnails for the product to upload. GRR. So frustrating. This computer is so old. After my vacation to London on Spring Break (!), that's the next thing I'm buying- new computer!

But here it is!

I just started using this pack specifically in my room but I have always done a word-problem-of-the-day type thing. Not to toot my own horn, but this is great!

I project the problem of the day up on the SmartBoard, give the students the half sheet to work on and glue in their math notebooks, and then we go over it. I have the kids come up and write directly on the SmartBoard to solve the problem!

Here's what the notebook pages look like. They glue them in their notebook and then solve the problem right on the page. The problem projected on the SmartBoard looks like this:

They are all multiplication and division word problems- some missing factor, some missing product, some missing dividend, some missing divisor, and some missing quotient- it's a good mix of them all and there are 20, yes, TWENTY, problems in this pack! :)

Grab your own set here Winter Themed Multiplication and Division Word Problem Pack!

Brit :)

Blog Lovin'

Morning y'all!

Happy *snow* day! It looks and feels just plain nasty outside so I'll be inside doing a TON of work today!

First on this list- Blog Lovin'! Thanks to my BFF Kenz to giving me the heads up on this! Her blog Webster's Little Dictionary is here BTW.

But I've added mine to Blog Lovin' too! So go ahead and follow and I will be following back other blogs like crazy!

I have a feeling this is going to be a multiple post kind of day around here! I am DESPERATELY trying to finish up my Winter Word Problem pack and get that posted today too!

Brit :)

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/11708283/?claim=3wtta8zr2ya">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

<script type="text/javascript">
(function(d, s) {
    var js, tjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
    js = d.createElement(s);
    js.type = 'text/javascript';
    js.async = true;
    js.src = 'http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/widgets/get/6714';
    tjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, tjs);
})(document, 'script');
</script>

MATH ACED posters!!!!

Hey everybody!

I posted last week about some ACED posters that I had made for reading short answers and I promised some posters for Math short answers!

It may have taken me a little longer than I had planned- silly WORK! (Funny how you have all these snow days and then when you have to actually work, your whole system goes into *shock* lol)

But here they are: MATH ACED Strategy Posters!

YAY! These are great too! The Math one is a little different than the reading one but it basically the same premise! This makes the acronym easy to remember and the kids can apply it to both reading and math short answers! My kids really struggle with explaining their math responses: they can get the correct answer down but the written explanation they often *magically forget*, so this is a great reminder to them to do ALL parts! The ACED stands for (with math):

A- Answer the question
C- Computer your answer (*this is the different one*)
E- Explain your answer
D- Double-check your work!

They also have a small description at the bottom of each one, that sort of adds to the basis of each letter!

I am going to put together both my Reading and Math posters tomorrow! I plan on laminating them and arranging them on a pretty little black and white chevron ribbon I bought tomorrow! I'll take pictures and post them here when I finish!

If you want to snag your own copy of these MATH ACED posters, you can get it in my TPT store here:
MATH ACED Strategy Posters!

We are having some pretty gnarly weather here- rain, freezing rain, ice and snow! They have already called off school for tomorrow, so I'll be posting some more on here then! I'm convinced we will be going to school year-round this year!

Brit :)

ACE Those Short Answers!

Hello everyone!

Well, we have been "sort-of" back in the swing of things! We had 5 days off last week and I caught up on a bunch of stuff around my house! We went back to school Monday and it was great to finally get going again.... only to be out Tuesday and Wednesday due to dangerously cold temperatures, like -15 with the wind chill! Poor babies can't be out at the bus stop in that! YIKES!

I did spend the last two days at SCHOOL working on a grant with some other people! So I haven't been able to work on all this jazz so much lately!

BUT, that all changed tonight! :)

In third grade, it is the first year we do KPREP, which is Kentucky's standardized state testing. Third grade is responsible for testing in only Reading and Math. They have to do multiple choice and short answer questions.

Multiple choice is not the struggle--- it's those DARN short answer questions! They have such a time trying to get them answer COMPLETELY.

So, we have been using this acronym, ACE...... however, I changed it to be ACED. You'll see why in my explanation of each letter!

So, it stands for:

A- answer the question
C- cite your evidence
E- explain your answer
D- double check your response

See why I added that D? :) So many kids finish and then move on, never checking their work which is a habit that I desperately try to break them of!

So, I decided I needed some "cutesy" posters to hang in my room to remind my students of this acronym when working on short answer questions.

TADA!!! Posters for the classroom! I made a set with owls and a set without owls! (I am aware not everyone is an owl fanatic like me lol) I love them and think they are super cute!

If you would like a set for your classroom, head over to my TPT store and download a copy here! :)

We have to go back to school tomorrow! I am actually excited and ready to teach these plans... we have been working on the same set of plans for about 3 weeks now, so I am OVER it, ready to teach, and move on to some new stuff! 

Brit :)